Plastic Surgeons: Measuring Social Media ROI

Plastic surgeons can build their clientele and reputation through social media to draw in new
clients while keeping their existing patients aware of your practice.

But how do you properly measure your social channels to tell if they are worth the resource
investment? 

Here are our tips for social media marketing for plastic surgeons looking to grow their practice
and generate revenue from their social media channels.

Categorizing Your Goals

Every action online can be put into two categories: tangible and intangible goals.

Intangible Goals

Intangible social media goals are actions like keeping in touch with friends or looking through
Pinterest or Instagram for interior decorating ideas. While these are fun activities, they have a
non-quantifiable return on investment.

Tangible Goals

Tangible social media goals are actions you can attribute with a cost. Using social media for
professional reasons means tracking your goals, your costs, and your ROI.

Some examples of professional social media usage include:

  • Educating the public about different procedures
  • Posting excerpts from journals
  • Creating or joining a special-interest group (examples: women plastic surgeons,
  • microsurgery)
  • Engaging in patient recruitment campaigns
  • Crowdsourcing feedback through surveys

The primary reason most plastic surgeons start their social media accounts is to build their
practice by publishing their branding and attracting (and retaining) patients.

How to Measure Social Media ROI

How do you measure social return on investment as a plastic surgeon?

Social media is a free tool that just about everyone can use to promote themselves or their
business. 

There are a few factors you’ll need to define before starting your social media campaigns.

Monetary Costs

Anyone can open an account and start posting content to their feeds, but unless you pay, your
posts might not get seen by your followers at all. If you really want to expand your reach, you’ll
need to tailor your content to your primary target audience.

Content is your best tool for gaining a loyal following. 

For social media efforts to be effective, you need to measure costs, produce quality content, pay
to boost specific posts, and run targeted ads based on your target audience.

Time Costs

As the old saying goes, time is money

Social media takes time to see results, which means you’ll need to dedicate someone to manage
it while you focus on running your practice. 

Consider how much time you are spending taking photos, creating videos and making posts. If
you have staff members or a third party helping you, how much are you compensating them for
that time?

How to Calculate Social Return on Investment (SROI)

Social return on investment is the process of understanding, measuring and reporting on the
social, environmental and economic value that is being created by an organization.

 Calculating ROI for social media depends on the metric you want to measure. 

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) defines SROI as the social value of the benefits relative
to the costs of achieving those benefits. It is a ratio of the net present value of benefits to the net
present value of the investment. 

For example, a ratio of 3:1 indicates that an investment of $1 delivers $3 in social value, etc. For
a more detailed explanation of SROI check out this resource here.

All these factors should be included in your initial pricing plan before running your accounts.

Social Media Followers & Engagement

Measuring your ROI on social revolves around two key factors: Followers and engagement.
Building an organic following on social media as a plastic surgeon takes time, effort, and specific
tasks to reach your targeted revenue goals.

How to Measure Social Media Followers

The number of organic followers can indicate your level of success in attracting interest. These
organic followers are valuable—they’re potential leads for your practice. 

While you are able to buy followers, we highly recommend not doing it. There are tips and tools
to detect fake followers
that use audience spikes to show brands purchase them. It’s also shady in
general, while your page follower numbers may spike your engagement rate on your posts will
still be the same. 

How to Measure Social Media Engagement

Engagement is the process of communicating (engaging) in an online community. This could be
a like, share or comment on your post.

A rule of thumb formula to calculate social media engagement rate % is as follows:
Just like followers, you can also buy likes. But if no one is commenting or sharing, that
engagement can also be considered fake by potential clients. 

Social media is meant to be social, so interact with others, comment on, like and share posts. If
you get a comment, respond quickly and build relationships!

Referrals to Your Website

The information you can provide on a social media profile is limited, so ultimately you want to
drive people to your website to book appointments. Your website is the best place to convert
leads for your business as it’s the central hub of your operations.

Social media platforms rise and fall all the time, but your website will stay as long as you
maintain it. Your site could include before-and-after photos, client testimonials, photos of your
office, videos of procedures, and a virtual consult form.

Use Google Analytics to see how many website referrals you get from each social media
platform and compare that with organic searches, your blog, etc. You can adjust your budget
based on the channels that are generating you the most business.

Patients Referrals

Patients are arguably the most valuable referral you can provide to your audience. The best way
to generate referrals is to ask new patients all the different ways they heard about you, including
social media.

Word of mouth is still a powerful channel to utilize, and best of all it’s practically free
advertising!

Revenue

At the end of the day, the only key performance indicator that really matters for your social
media efforts is revenue. 

Having a lot of followers, likes and shares on your posts help drive interest in your practice, but
they aren’t helpful if they aren’t good candidates for your services.

This is where customer relationship management (CRM) platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, and
MyMedLeads can help you track how patients interacted with your practice. You can determine
how leads were acquired (social media, website, referral form, etc) and see if they led to a
procedure being performed.

Conclusion

Measuring social return on investment for your practice may seem like a lot, but at the end of the
day, it’s a worthwhile investment for any plastic surgeons looking to reach a larger target
audience.

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