When I came to San Francisco three years ago, I took over an existing practice in a large medical office building. The previous doctor retired and I made the decision to stay open when the building was open and close when the building was closed. After three years, the building continues to remain open on the day after Thanksgiving. Sure, many doctors take the day after Thanksgiving off but I think that’s a missed opportunity. If patients are out and about shopping for Black Friday Deals, we should be available when they’re available. Therefore, we continue to be open for Black Friday. But that doesn’t mean we’re doing Black Friday Deals anymore.
Why no more typical Black Friday Deals?
Each of those last three years, we had a Black Friday Deal of $10 of Botox or Xeomin for that day only. As you can imagine that first year, we had a great response. We even had a great response the second and third year. The purpose of a Black Friday Deal in my opinion is to get new and former patients coming back. What we found was that the same patients came back each year but only those same patients. No one new, and even more interestingly, the patients that came in for the Black Friday Deal only came back into the office that one day. We never saw them the rest of the year!
Once-a-year-patients are not our goal. So this year, I decided to stop doing the Black Friday Deals…well sort of. We’re just not doing that Black Friday Deal. This year, we want patients who have or have not come in for a consult with us, and get them to “pull the trigger” if they were considering surgery. So for medically qualified individuals, we’re offering a BOGO, or buy one surgery, get one surgery 50% off. There may be other doctors or consumers out there that think a BOGO is inappropriate for a surgical procedure. And I don’t totally disagree with them. However, in this Amazon world with Black Friday Deals all around, we want to reach patients in any way we can. Keep in mind, even if our marketing changes, our commitment to safety does not change and the two are mutually exclusive.
And for those not considering surgery, check out the Cyber Monday Deals available through the BuildMyBod Health website where you can buy discounted non-surgical items here. The Cosmetic Surgery Times actually wrote about our Cyber Monday experience last year in this article.
Happy Holidays.
