The UK Aesthetic Industry has seen a dramatic increase in good-quality celebrity endorsement in recent years; a huge image overhaul in comparison to the traditional celebrity association with botched surgery and horrifying results.
This is a great tool for attracting more business to your practice, gaining further visibility and outshining your competition. Celebrity endorsement is for everyone, regardless of the size of your business, although it can often be harder for smaller businesses outside of Harley Street and other London hotspots.
This is why we, at Kendrick PR, have put together a few of our golden rules when it comes to seeking celebrity endorsement for your clinic:
Resourcefulness
In an ideal world, you would pin your hopes on the chance of a national celeb walking into your clinic in need of some rejuvenation, but as mentioned this is probably unlikely outside of London, even for a local celebrity. This is when you need to get strategic and make the most of your resources.
Word of mouth is crucial and is still the root of most clinic celebrity endorsements, whether you reach out to your business partners, your suppliers or even your patients. Making connections is always beneficial so dont hesitate to exhaust every contact that you have.
Its also never a bad thing to look at some of your top treatments with great results and try to contact the agent of a celebrity that you feel this treatment would benefit.
Judgment
It is important to have confidence in your own judgment when it comes to finding the RIGHT celebrity for your image and your brand.
Your connections may lead you somewhere but don’t let the prospect of ANY celebrity endorsement cloud your judgment as it’s easy to get excited and carried away. Its okay to bypass a collaboration opportunity if you feel it’s not a good fit because at the end of the day your reputation is on the line.
You need to consider whether this person is going to appeal to your client base in terms of appearance, age, lifestyle, career, values, personality etc; not to mention that you need to be able to successfully work with this person! I
f you are happy that this could really work, then it’s a waiting game: biding your time and deciding when and how to go about sensitively approaching them from a business point of view. The subject can still be rather sensitive, with a lot of celebrities reluctant to publicly acknowledge that they’ve had any work done at all.
You need to first build a good rapport through an excellent service identical to that which you would offer any of your clients, and with any luck they may even approach you first in order to offer their testimonial and endorsement.
Organisation
Now that you’ve sealed the deal, you need to put a business plan in place to define exactly what you’re getting out of this mutual relationship and what level of celebrity endorsement you are looking for.
Some clinics simply want public confirmation that the celebrity belongs to their client base, whereas some may wish to take this partnership for everything it’s worth in terms of imagery, testimonials and advertisements.
The key is to be clear about your intentions from the off and NEVER do anything without their expressed, written permission as this could end badly by way of a lawsuit. In most cases, you’ll work with their PR team to put together a concise contract outlining every aspect of the endorsement deal.
Anticipation
This should go without saying, but you need to have a plan in place ready for if and when you experience a surge in business as a direct result of your celebrity endorsement.
There is no point in wasting your time and money on celebrity marketing if youre unable to satisfy and maximise the customer demand that will surely follow. This involves everything from staffing and team briefing, to phone handling services and product supplies.
Maximisation
Now it’s time to reap the rewards and make the most of this amazing opportunity. Open up your chances for increased visibility and media coverage through a press release and blog articles.
Think about adding your celebrity testimonial and imagery to your website, newsletter and marketing material. Implement a social media strategy to cover the endorsement as and when it happens and following the launch, including tagging the celebrity as well as relevant brands, journalists, media outlets etc.
Like and share/retweet related posts and consider paying for boosted post promotion in order to expand your reach.
Would you like some more information, or to book some time for a consultation with Julia Kendrick at Kendrick PR? If so, dont hesitate to get in touch!