What Every Medical Practice Needs to Know About Before and After Pictures

Healthcare practices often feel like marketing is a tricky subject. They want to grow their practice, as any business would, but they want their patients to trust them as care providers and professionals instead of seeing them as someone who’s going to push sales. As a marketing agency that specializes in healthcare marketing, our team at McCauley Marketing Services knows how to strike that delicate balance.

One of the most important things you can do to win over new patients is to show them the honest truth: no gimmicks, just results. The natural way to do this is with before and after photos. Here’s what you need to know about using before and after photos to market your practice.

Tips for Taking and Using Before and After Pictures

As with anything else in the marketing world, the success of your before and after photos lies in the execution. You need to take your photos the right way and use them the right way to make sure they help your practice grow while protecting you from legal problems.

Written Consent, Always

As they say in the legal world, if you don’t have written proof, it didn’t happen. A patient could tell you a dozen times that you can use their before and after photos but if you don’t have a signed and dated consent form, that consent off the table.

This consent form should also specify that you can use their photos for marketing purposes. There is a big difference between putting photos in a private medical record and showing those pictures to the world on social media. You want to make sure your patient understands that while the photos won’t be tied to their name, they will be public.

Conceal Identity

In any before and after photo, you need to conceal your patient’s identity as much as possible. If the treatment focused on their body, you can crop out their head entirely. If it was a facial treatment, you can put black squares over their eyes. There is always a way to be discrete, and you need to show your patients that courtesy.

You also need to conceal any other identifying marks like tattoos, scars, or distinctive jewelry and clothing. The exception is that if your photo shows the results of a surgery and that surgery left a scar, you can’t remove that scar from the photos. This would be seen as being deceptive to make it look like you can deliver great results without scarring.

Be Consistent

Blame it on the unethical companies who have taken advantage of people in the past, but all your patients today are looking for “the catch.” As they review your before and after photos, they’re looking for any sign that you’re trying to make the results look better than they are.

To show that the results are real, be consistent with your before and after photos. Take the “before” and the “after” in the same lighting, in front of the same background, at the same angle, and from the same distance. Many practices set up a specific station for taking before and after photos, with marks on the floor where the patients should stand and where the photographer should stand.

Take Advantage of All Marketing Channels

As important as it is to take before and after photos on a regular basis, you also need to know how to use them. In short, use them in as many forms of marketing as you can.

On your medical practice website, have a designated photo gallery that is easy to find. Especially for practices that focus on cosmetic treatments like plastic surgeons and medical spas, this is one of the first things patients will look for. In addition, add a few photos to the landing pages for each procedure on your website.

Beyond your own site, use before and after photos in your social media posts and in your e-blasts. Highlight them on your blog and create YouTube videos that display them. Everywhere that you could get traffic, you should be advertising your results.

Creating Your Strategy

Before and after pictures are a crucial part of an effective marketing strategy for your practices, but they’re one of many. For a comprehensive strategy that can help you grow, call McCauley Marketing Services to schedule a meeting. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more top marketing tips.