By Ned Barnett, APR
Adjunct Professor of Marketing and Public
Relations
Marketing and PR Fellow, American Hospital
Association
Author - Hospital Marketing: Step-by-Step
To put this review in perspective, for the
past 30 years, I’ve been successfully marketing and promoting aesthetics
medical practices and related businesses.
I have worked with major hospital companies and individual hospitals, I’ve
worked with aesthetic trade associations, anti-aging service and product
providers, and scores of doctors, spas and medical practices. I have also successfully and profitably managed
hospital-based surgery programs and free-standing medically-based cosmetic
spa/fitness facilities. So this review
is from someone who’s been there and done that.
With that in mind, I have not seen a book that offers more useful practical insights than Cheryl Whitman’s new book, Beautifully Profitable / Forever Profitable. Cheryl is a previously-published author in the field of cosmetic practice management, but more important, she’s the founder of beautiful forever, one of the leading aesthetics consulting firms out there, and the just now opening beautiful forever university, which will provide practice and spa executives and staffs with critical hands-on instruction that will directly impact profitability.
has decades of very hands-on experience with
cosmetic surgeons, physicians and dermatologists, med-spa managers.
Building on this experience, Cheryl has
pulled together a book that is remarkable in its scope, its depth – but most of
all, its practicality. The book’s range
of topics ranges from Business Management and Business Building to Profitable Promotion. Sections focus on hosting events, branding,
social networking, private labeling, adding a spa to a medical practice and
much more. The book also includes, in
the appendices, useful hands-on tools for events, mystery shopping and much
more.
The first and most extensive section of the
book provides a strong focus on business management – hammering home the idea
that a medical spa or cosmetic medical practice is, at its core, a retail business
that must be managed as a retail business. It also includes nuts-and-bolts on
business planning and marketing planning, branding and other key operational
issues. Especially helpful is her guide
to turning practice staffs into a motivated sales force. This section is about building a profitable
business, and gets into detail too often ignored by other practice-building
guides, which “assume” that doctors or managers understand how to create and
run a business … a tenuous assumption at best.
The book then gets into practice specialization
– from ethnic and niche marketing, to creating a medical spa within an existing
practice. Private labeling comes in for
some keen insights – this can become both hugely profitable and a great way of
marketing the practice or spa, but only if done right. In this book, Cheryl shows how to do it right.
Moving into practical promotion, Cheryl devotes an entire chapter to staging effective events, and even includes practical check-lists in the appendix, ready to be used for your next event. From there, Cheryl digs into social networking and related marketing communications, showing how a combination of social networking and “earned media” – the current buzz-word for media public relations, can build a business’s brand image and enhance through-the-door patients or clients. This is one of the book’s most extensive sections, and for good reason. Cheryl realizes that creating a business and effectively promoting the business are the two most important elements in sustained profitability.
Cheryl Whitman’s earlier book – a handbook and how-to instruction program rolled into one, is The Aesthetic Medical Success System – The Complete Education Guide to Building, Managing and Marketing Your Cosmetic Practice or Medical Spa. Currently in its second edition, the first edition was distributed by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, one of the leading professional societies in the field.
Her business, beautiful forever, can be found on the Internet at http://www.beautifulforever.com. Her current and former books are both available from Cheryl Whitman directly (in printed or eBook format), and Beautifully Profitable / Forever Profitable is also available from Amazon.
