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Google Analytics | Marketing Your Cosmetic Business Online Part 4

Using Google Analytics to Monitor Success

Whatever the size of your website, I would recommend that you or your web company install Google Analytics to monitor it.  This is a free service from Google which measures the amount of people who visit your website, the entry paths that they choose to take to get there and the activities they pursue whilst on your site.

You can install Google Analytics by inserting a small amount of code in the background of the website; all web developers should offer this.  You can then choose to receive regular reports – most people do this weekly – about the use and performance of your site.

The amount of information offered from Google Analytics is staggering and you could spend your life analyzing it.  In fact many people do just this and website analytics is a profession in itself and large online companies such as Amazon employ hundreds of people analyzing each aspect of their websites performance.

What to use Google Analytics for

The main information you need from Google Analytics is:

  •  the number of unique visitors coming to your site
  • the most common pages
  • the bounce rate
  • the search terms that people are using to find you

Hits vs Visits

Many web companies will try to impress you with the number of “hits” you are getting to your site.  The number of hits is not the same as the number of people who visited your site.  Hits are the number of times the server which hosts your website is asked for items.  This may be a photo, text or something else.  This means that if one person looks at lots of pages they will be creating many hits.

Likewise, should you count one person who visits your site multiple times each time they go in?  You or your team will probably look at your website many times over a month and you should only be counted once.  This is why the metric to track is unique visitors.  This is the amount of different individuals you have looked at your site during the specified period.

For most websites the most commonly visited page is the home page, from there however where to do people go?  This gives you and indication of which topics they are interested in.  You should use this information to show you what your users are most interested in.  Focus on improving the most popular rather than the least used pages.

The Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the number of people who looked at a page and went no further through the site.  Essentially people who left your site for whatever reason.  It is good for some pages to have a high bounce rate but bad for others.

For example if the page is the fill out an enquiry section you would hope the user fills this in and exits the site- hence a high bounce rate is acceptable.  However it is not good to have a high bounce rate on your home page.  This means that people are looking at what you have to offer and choosing not to leave your site.  If this is the case you need to look carefully at your home page.

Keyword Reports

Finally look at the report in Google Analytics on the words people use to find your site.  Are they the words you would expect people to be using and is the number of words used increasing month on month?  An increasing amount of words is a good sign that Google is increasingly recognizing your site.

Google analytics is an incredibly powerful free tool that allows you to see how your website is performing in minute detail- the amount of data that it can give you is immense.  However don’t get bogged down and concentrate on the main factors discussed above.

In our next Marketing Your Business Online Blog…SEO & Ranking! If you are interested in more in-depth business marketing training for the medical aesthetics industry, Cosmetic Courses are experts in providing this. Call us today on 0845 230 4110 or [email protected]

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Marketing Your Cosmetic Business Online Part 3: Creating A Website

Creating a Winning Website

Once you have achieved the first stage- you own and have registered your chosen domain name with your details – you now need to create a winning website on that domain.

There are a myriad of options here, ranging from employing a web company to design a website for you, to building it yourself.  The best option depends on what you want the website for and your budget.  The most expensive option is not, however, necessarily the best.

WordPress

  • I would recommend www.wordpress.co.uk as a good place to start.
  • WordPress is an “open source program” – free and maintained by enthusiasts rather than a single company
  • WordPress was actually started as a blogging platform but, over time, people have used it more and more to build websites
  • WordPress is easy to learn and use
  • Sites built in Wordpress tend to perform very well in Google searches

Beware, however, because external web companies you hire may not be very keen for you to develop sites based on WordPress:  building your site on this platform gives your company and employees a lot of independence to edit your site without a great deal of technical knowledge. Web Design companies would obviously prefer you to need them to administer and maintain your site so they will probably try to talk you into using more complicated platforms than WordPress. Crafty Web Companies!

There are a large number of WordPress themes  available.  These are essentially different designs of blank websites into which you drop your content, text, photos and videos.  Most of the designs are free but some of them may cost a small amount.  In general they look great- very clean and modern – and increasingly many of the sites you see on the web are designed in WordPress without you even realizing it.

Overall, if you like technology and have the time, I would advise you to look at WordPress.  If technology terrifies you or you simply do not have time to spare from the day-to-day running of your business, perhaps it might be best to look for a Web Design company to create your website for you.

Choosing a Web Design Company

Contrary to popular belief, websites do not need to be expensive. I would recommend that you create a brief detailing exactly what you want from your site and get quotes from at least three different Web Design companies.

TIP: Where possible, it is often best to use a local company because building and maintaining a website requires a lot of communication which may be best performed personally rather than on the phone.

In your website specification you will need to let them know how large you would like the website to be (how many pages) and what content you want on the pages.  It is possible to include text, photos, audio and video.

Generally web companies are happier to create a website that you have provided  content for.  You have the expertise and will know the topic better than them. This unfortunately means that in most cases you will need to provide all the content for the website yourself. This will either require allocating time from yourself or employing a copywriter.

Plan Your Resources

It is important to think about what you have time to create before approaching a website company.  A bit like planning an extension to your house and employing a builder- it is best to have thought things through and come up with a plan before hand rather than making it up as you go along.

Remember that a website is an evolving creation.  It should be updated regularly with new content which is often done via a Blog (the quickest, easiest and most current method).  Google actively encourages websites to regularly add new content and actively penalizes the rankings of companies which do not do so.

Creating a Winning Website

Once you have achieved the first stage- you own and have registered your chose domain name with your details – you now need to create a winning website on that domain.

There are a myriad of options here, ranging from employing a web company to design a website for you, to building it yourself.  The best option depends on what you want the website for and your budget.  The most expensive option is not, however, necessarily the best.

I would recommend www.wordpress.co.uk as a good place to start.  WordPress is an “open source program”. This means that it is free and maintained by enthusiasts rather than a single company.  WordPress was actually started as a blogging platform but, over time, people have used it more and more to build websites.

The advantages of WordPress are that it is free and easy to learn and use and sites built in it tend to perform very well in Google searches.  Beware, however, because web companies may not be very keen for you to develop sites based on WordPress:  building your site on this platform gives your company and employees a lot of independence to edit your site without a great deal of technical knowledge. Web Design companies would obviously prefer you to need them to administer and maintain your site so they will probably try to talk you into using more complicated platforms than WordPress.

There are a large number of WordPress themes  available.  These are essentially different designs of blank websites into which you drop your content, text, photos and videos.  Most of the designs are free but some of them may cost a small amount.  In general they look great- very clean and modern – and increasingly many of the sites you see on the web are designed in WordPress without you even realizing it.

Overall, if you like technology and have the time, I would advise you to look at WordPress.  If technology terrifies you or you simply do not have time to spare from the day-to-day running of your business, perhaps it might be best to look for a Web Design company to create your website for you.

Choosing a Web Design Company

Contrary to popular belief, websites do not need to be expensive. I would recommend that you create a brief detailing exactly what you want from your site and get quotes from at least three different Web Design companies.  Where possible, I feel it is best to use a local company as building and maintaining a website requires a lot of communication which may be best performed personally rather than on the phone.

In your website specification you will need to let them know how large you would like the website to be (how many pages) and what content you want on the pages.  It is possible to include text, photos, audio and video.  Generally web companies are happier to create a website that you have provided  content for.  You have the expertise and will know the topic better than them.

This unfortunately means that in most cases you will need to provide all the content for the website yourself. This will either require allocating time from yourself or employing a copywriter.

It is important to think about what you have time to create before approaching a website company.  A bit like planning an extension to your house and employing a builder- it is best to have thought things through and come up with a plan before hand rather than making it up as you go along.

Remember that a website is an evolving creation. It should be updated regularly with new content which is often done via a Blog (the quickest, easiest and most current method). Google actively encourages websites to regularly add new content and actively penalizes the rankings of companies which do not do so.

In our next Marketing Your Business Online Blog…Tracking Success! If you are interested in more in-depth business marketing training for the medical aesthetics industry, Cosmetic Courses are experts in providing this. Call us today on 0845 230 4110 or [email protected]

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Marketing Your Cosmetic Business Online Part 2: Claim Your Domain

Claim Your Cyber Territory – Marketing

The second stage in our medical aesthetic business marketing blog series is to look at domain registration.

A domain name is the name of a website: cosmeticcourses.co.uk , for instance, is our teaching and training company. This is also known as the URL (uniform resource locator). Mr. Adrian Richards of Cosmetic Courses owns adrianrichards.com. But who owns variations of this, such as adrianrichards.co.uk? He tried to buy this some years ago but it was already taken by a professional person from Shropshire! Whilst researching this article, he looked it up again and this person has not renewed the registration so we have added it to our portfolio.

This is an activity you should consider performing at regular intervals to ensure that competitors are not gaining traffic for terms related to your business.

Buying Domain Names – Marketing

It can cost from under £10 a year to buy yourname.co.uk. To find out if your name is available, simply search for domain registration companies on Google and a search bar will appear. Type in your name and select .co.uk and you will see if it is available. Generally most of the more common names are taken but if you are called something unusual you may well find that it is available.

In recent years, more and more people have become aware of the value of URL’s and it is very rare to find any one or even two word combinations left. Some investment and pension schemes are even starting to value URL’s as a valuable asset which are increasing in value and are adding these to their portfolios.

You will see that there are many variations of domain endings available. (.com .biz .edu etc.) Names ending in .coms are the most popular and therefore most expensive as they are not county specific. Amazon.com for instance is the international version of Amazon, whereas Amazon.co.uk is the UK branch. If you live and work in the UK, we would advise you to buy the .co.uk version as it is likely to appear higher in searches performed within the UK.

What Happens Once You Have Bought Your Domain?

Once you have purchased your domain name, it will be registered to you and if you have entered your card details and selected the automatic renew it can be yours for as long as you want.

Once you have your domain name or names, you need to make sure they are registered to you at your address- this way you have control over them. A favorite ruse of many web design firms is for you and them to choose the name of a website and they then register it in their name. This means that technically you may not own it although you have paid for the website. In most cases this is fine but if you ever want transfer your website or have it re-designed by another company the fact that you do not own the domain may come as an unpleasant surprise.

Many astute people realized the power of domain names in the early days of internet marketing and registered lots of them for under £10. They are now worth many times this; just recently I received an offer to buy plasticsurgeon.co.uk for a figure over £10,000. Is it worth it? Why would I want it? The main reason is that URL’s containing an exact match for the term a user enters into Google are more likely to appear higher in a Google search. If I search for ‘plastic surgeon’ in Google (all other factors being equal) plasticsurgeon.co.uk will appear higher than adrianrichards.co.uk.

There is a group of experts who scour the market for high value lapsed domain names. This means that if either a large company or individual fail to re-register their domain name, after a period of time the domain is released to the first person to buy at the normal rate of under £10. This way it is possible to obtain a valuable asset for a minimal cost.

In our next Marketing Your Business Online Blog…Creating A Winning Website! If you are interested in more in-depth business marketing training for the medical aesthetics industry, Cosmetic Courses are experts in providing this. Call us today on 01844 390110 or [email protected]

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Botox Training Marketing | What to do after your course

How To Market Your New Medical Aesthetics Business | Botox Training Marketing

After you complete your botox training or dermal filler course, you will naturally be raring to go and get started with setting up your own medical aesthetics business. However, one of the main hurdles to jump over in making a success of your medical aesthetic business is the way in which you market yourself. In this Blog, Cosmetic Courses share some Tips for Botox Training Marketing:

1. Print Advertising

Most new aesthetic practitioners initially start with print advertising (local newspapers, fliers, maybe even cheaper local glossy magazines). Whilst this approach may work for some people, it is quite an outdated method of medical aesthetics marketing and can prove very expensive if not approached smartly and monitored carefully. Traditional print advertising essentially falls into ‘local’ and ‘nationwide’ audiences but the average start-up business will be aiming at the local publications to begin with. Even here, where the advertising costs are cheaper, our advice is that there is always room for negotiation: do not take the advertising cost quoted in the publication or by the sales rep. as gospel – be prepared to haggle, stand your ground and you will find that you can get a real bargain (especially just before print closes). Research your desired client’s demographic very carefully and make sure that the publications you are advertising in really are aimed at them or the response could be poor / made up of timewasters. Always ask the readership of the publication to see how many people it actually goes out to (some which seem like a great offer actually have a tiny readership so your chances of getting much work from them are slim). And check out the legal implications before handing out fliers – at local events, for example, you may need to get permission from your local authority (and are very unlikely to be able to specifically advertise medical aesthetic treatments, so be careful not to violate any trading standards!)

2. Online Advertising

Much more of-the-moment and with (potentially) the ability to reach a far bigger audience at once, online advertising for medical aesthetics has become increasingly popular with aesthetic practitioners. You can set up a free medical aesthetics website relatively easily these days if you are fairly tech-savvy, or for a small price if you need to get help. However: please do be warned that this is just the start of the process. There are hundreds upon hundreds of websites out there advertising medical aesthetic services…the challenge is to get yours indexed and found by anyone searching on the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) This is a process known as SEO and involves clever use of keywords (the most commonly used words related to your industry that potential customers are searching at any given time), regularly creating and updating content (information, photos, blogs, maybe videos and social media usage linked to your site can really help you get increased rank and visibility quicker too). If all this sounds like complete gobbledygook to you then chances are that you may have a bit of learning to do before you embrace this form of marketing, or you might need to employ someone to help. This is, of course, a Catch 22 as you need to be earning before you can start employing! Do not be put off, though – there are abundant sources of helpful information about SEO and optimizing your site for the search engines…particularly good ones are SEOmoz and Mashable. If you just want to advertise without getting too involved with any of that nitty-gritty stuff, online sites like Gumtree provide quick and easy access to large numbers of potential clients and have options ranging from completely free – approximately £49 per week depending upon your region and the level of visibility that you want for your advert.

3. Word of Mouth

It may be horribly boring, but building up a great reputation via word-of-mouth really is a great way to build yourself a client base. The trouble is that it’s a slower approach than most medical aesthetics practitioners like. Start off with friends, family…anybody who would like botox and dermal filler treatments from you. Encourage them to spread the word. Perhaps offer a ‘refer a friend’ scheme where for each entirely new client who refers a friend, they get a small discount off their next treatment. If you have Social Media pages like Facebook and LinkedIn, encourage clients to leave reviews / endorsements. Try to form a link with an established business, perhaps, like a hair salon or existing medical aesthetics clinic (at least initially). Even if you ideally hope to be independent or freelance, this could be a good stepping stone to get reviews, spread the word about your new talents, link-build and hopefully create a client base. Whilst we never advocate stealing clients from another business (this is simply dishonest and poor practice), the networking that you do whilst working alongside others can help you greatly when you branch off alone.

Final Words of Wisdom for Botox Training Marketing

  • Whatever your method of marketing, always remember to ask “Where did you find us / hear about us?” It is vital that you do this consistently or your marketing efforts are wasted because you have no idea what is bringing clients in and what is not, so you could be spending money on completely the wrong types of marketing.
  • Get into the habit of taking down contact details from every enquirer, whether they book or not. These will form the basis of your ‘marketing database’ – a list of emails, addresses and phone numbers that you can use to sell to in the future on an ongoing basis. Remember that once you have these and as you add to the list, you have a responsibility under Data Protection to look after these details, not to spam them with constant heavy sales pitches and to always give them the option to ‘opt out’ of future promotions.
  • Remember that saying the words ‘Botox’ or ‘Botulinum Toxin’ in a sales-orientated manner violates MHRA standards. So always be careful to use alternatives like ‘wrinkle-reducing treatment’ or ‘anti-ageing injections’ instead!
  • Words are everything – keep track of the language you are using, split test and be prepared to vary it. If something isn’t bringing in clients, change it and try saying it in a different way.

We hope this Botox Training Marketing Blog has been helpful. Cosmetic Courses are market leaders in both Cosmetic Training Courses for medical professionals and providing medical aesthetic marketing advice. If you would like more information about training with us, Book Online now or call our friendly team on 0845 230 4110.

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