Bariatric Surgery Marketing, Increase Patients

As a surgeon, your priority is transforming lives through bariatric surgery, not navigating the complexities of digital marketing.

With an estimated 279,967 bariatric surgery procedures in 2022 alone, the demand is apparent—and so is the opportunity for your practice to grow.

Rather than spending your valuable time mastering online advertising, let us do the heavy lifting for you. Our team specializes in bariatric surgery marketing, and we understand your unique challenges.

But if you’re reading, you’ve likely worked with several agencies before, getting results you know could’ve been better for the amount of money you invested.

It’s a frustrating situation—something many of our clients were in before they entrusted us with their bariatric surgery marketing needs. The word to focus on here is “were.”

That’s because we leverage a dataset built from managing over 2,000 marketing campaigns, allowing us to find the perfect strategy to amplify your practice’s visibility, attract patients, and book more consultations.

And unlike many digital advertising companies, our tactics are tailored to tackle your unique challenges and deliver your desired outcomes.

To prove our confidence in our work, we’ll research, analyze, and audit your website, ad campaigns, and competitive landscape and give you a marketing plan—all before you sign up.

Don’t believe us? Call (+1) 310 362 6373 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com to schedule a no-pitch, no-obligation consultation with one of our digital marketing experts.

Strategically Market Bariatric Surgery: A Formula for Success

As a bariatric surgeon, you play a significantly critical role in treating weight-related issues like obesity, which is prevalent among adults in the United States (US).

Therefore, it makes sense to approach consultations and treatment strategically—with scientific backing. After all, your words and actions can profoundly impact people’s well-being.

But we’re not here to tell you something you already know. Instead, we’re here to say that adopting a strategic approach to bariatric surgery marketing is essential, too.

We’ve successfully and consistently bridged the gap between healthcare professionals and the individuals who need their skills and expertise.
How, you ask? By looking at digital marketing through the lens of mathematics—the language search engines and social media platforms speak.

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Comprehensive Solutions for Bariatric Success

We offer several digital marketing services that can help improve your bariatric surgery practice’s online presence, get patient leads, and increase consultations and procedure bookings.

These services include the following:

Paid advertising: Creating, managing, and optimizing your paid adverts on platforms like Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords and AdWords Express) and Bing Ads
Search engine optimization (SEO): Tweaking your website and online business listings’ elements to improve organic search rankings
Search engine marketing (SEM): Using organic advertising techniques like SEO and paid ads to boost your practice’s online visibility
Social media marketing (SMM): Enhancing patient engagement, brand awareness, and website traffic via paid ads and organic content posting on social media platforms
Email marketing: Reconnecting you with your existing bariatric surgery clients to help keep your practice top of mind

The question is, “Which service would supplement your marketing efforts the most?” To answer: most agencies will experiment, wasting your advertising dollars.

But not us. Our digital marketing approach isn’t based on expensive guesswork but on the mathematics that search engines and social media sites use to run their calculations.

This math-backed approach allows us to pinpoint which opportunities are worth your investment and are most effective in driving prospective patients toward your medical practice.

Adopt Bariatric Storytelling in Marketing

Why did you pick your previous digital marketing partner from the countless others? While we don’t want to put words in your mouth, we think they made promises too good to pass on.

In hindsight, choosing an online marketing agency based on lip service is wrong. However, there’s a lesson to be learned here: effective advertising requires you to be compelling.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying you should trick your target audience into booking bariatric procedures—because that’s not what marketing, especially healthcare marketing, is about.

Instead, it’s about highlighting what’s essential to potential patients and giving them what they want. Fortunately, we can confidently say we excel at this.

From writing ad copies and website content to showcasing patient reviews and testimonials, we ensure our marketing efforts involve storytelling techniques that build trust and encourage people to take action.

Increase Your Bariatric Topline Revenues

Unlike most online advertising service providers, our formula for bariatric surgery marketing success doesn’t revolve around getting you as many clicks as possible.

Yes, the number of clicks your website receives can give insight into how your marketing tactics are panning out. However, they’re not the most critical metric to track, especially regarding topline revenue.

After all, what are those clicks worth if they’re not translating to more patient leads, consults, procedures, and, ultimately, sales for your practice? That’s why we focus on delivering leads.

But not your run-of-the-mill leads. Instead, high-quality ones—the individuals we’ll work tirelessly to capture and the only ones who’ll matter to us—that you get to define.

Why Invest in Bariatric Surgery Digital Marketing?

As per a report by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), 2022’s estimated 279,967 procedures were a 6.29% increase from 2021 and a 33.97% rise from 2020.

If these figures can tell us one thing, it’s that more and more people are seeking bariatric surgery services to resolve their weight-related issues. So, how do you leverage this trend?

“Incorporate a digital marketing strategy into your promotional efforts,” a statement that may come off as disingenuous, especially from an online advertising agency like us.

However, your desired audience is likely searching for your offerings on the web, especially considering that roughly 97% of people use the digital landscape to discover businesses and services.

While referrals, word-of-mouth, and other traditional advertising methods are still viable—it’s how we get many of our clients—in today’s market, the web gives you the best odds of reaching new patients.

What Is the Trend in Bariatric Surgery?

There’s no denying the upward trend in bariatric surgery utilization. However, according to a study, this healthcare field is still underused by the people who need it.

One of the primary culprits is the lack of information surrounding the topic. But here’s the truth: people are searching for information about bariatric surgery procedures and services.

To back that statement up, here are the monthly search volumes (number of searches) for the following keywords based on May 2024 data:

Keyword	Search Volume
bariatric operation	135,000
gastric bypass surgery	74,000
gastric sleeve procedure	49,500
fat loss surgery	49,500
bariatric surgeons near me	18,100

Do you want to know something interesting? These are monthly metrics for only five of the countless search terms US-based internet users enter into search engines to discover bariatric surgery-related info on Google.

With digital marketing strategies like SEO and paid ads that can bring your bariatric surgery practice to the first page of Google, we ensure you get the opportunity to address your target audience’s needs and desires.

If we’re successful, we can position your medical practice as the go-to source for information related to the field, driving traffic to your services and increasing your odds of securing prospective patients.

Who Is the Target Population for Bariatric Surgery?

Common sense dictates that, as a bariatric surgeon offering bariatric surgery procedures, your primary target audience is people seeking information and services connected to obesity and weight loss.

Under these criteria, your target population is 39.8% of Americans between 20 and 39, 44.3% between 40 and 59, and 41.5% 60 and older, which amount to millions of potential patients.

But before you get excited, imagine you’re looking for a bariatric surgery practice specializing in sleeve gastrectomy. Would you connect with an advert for a clinic offering only gastric bypass procedures?

Probably not. Enter digital marketing. Unlike traditional advertising methods, online marketing tactics let you exclusively promote your bariatric surgery skills and expertise to those likelier to become clients.

After all, digital marketing allows you to define your desired audience based on the following criteria:

Keywords
Location
Demographic
Interest
Device type

Key Takeaways

There are various reasons to invest in digital marketing to acquire more patient leads, consultations, and procedures for your bariatric surgery practice. But to sum up, here are the most critical ones to consider:

Rising demand: Leveraging online advertising can help you capitalize on the growing demand for bariatric surgery procedures, as most people turn to digital channels to discover them.
Online visibility: Using digital marketing tactics like SEO and paid ads can ensure your practice appears on SERPs (search engine results pages) and on your target audience’s radars.
Target audience precision: Online marketing lets you promote your offerings exclusively to a specific patient base depending on various options, such as keyword choice and interest.

For more information on the benefits of digital marketing, schedule a consultation with our online advertising experts. Call us at (+1) 310 362 6373 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com.

Don’t let your competitors steal the spotlight.
We’ll make sure your orthopedic practice stands out.

Ready to grow your practice?

In-person consultation:

Visit our office at:

2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Prefer a virtual consultation?

Call: (310) 879-8003

Email: contact@digitalspotlight.com

Grow Your Bariatric Surgery Marketing Strategies With These Marketing Approaches

“Digital marketing” is not a single process. Instead, it’s a broad term encompassing various strategies that share a common goal: to attract potential patients. Think of it like your vast surgical toolkit.

So, here are the various online marketing tactics we can offer and the ones you’ll have at your disposal to help you overtake your bariatric surgeon peers and increase your qualified leads and consultation rates:

SEO Services

Search engine optimization is all about, as its name implies, optimizing your online presence for search engines. The goal? To improve your organic rankings on SERPs.
Although the precise optimizations will vary depending on your unique objectives, competitive landscape, and current online standing, they generally involve the following efforts:

Minimizing exposure to penalties by removing thin or duplicate content and boosting your website’s PageSpeed score—a metric that measures how quickly users can open your site
Auditing existing content and producing relevant, high-quality, and rank-ready articles and blogs
Raising your domain authority (DA) and credibility via backlinks (referral links) from authoritative online entities

Optimize Google Business Profile (GBP)

The top three organic results generally get 75.1% of the clicks. In other words, the higher your website and content rank on SERPs, the better the chances of potential patients discovering your practice.
You can boost these odds further by optimizing your online listings, such as your Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business). After all, your online business listings can also appear on SERPs.

That’s why part of our digital marketing services include setting up your GBP and ensuring it displays essential information about your practice, such as your contact details, services, and Google Maps location.

Use Geo-personalized Web Pages

Imagine how a potential patient would feel if they found a bariatric surgeon who’s the most equipped to treat their weight-related problems, only to discover that they’re thousands of miles away from this surgeon.
Hence, your landing pages—the web pages users “land” on after clicking your ad or your website from a SERP—must be customized for your target audience’s geographic location.

Fortunately, we can help with that, as our web page localization tactics include the following initiatives:

Incorporating geo-relevant keywords into your H1, H2, and H3 headings
Producing market-relevant articles and blogs
Tweaking your web pages for mobile search

Build a Local Keyword Strategy

People trust Google to give them the most relevant results based on their search query. So, when you and your practice appear on the first page, people can’t help but think you’re the best.
A significant factor influencing whether Google picks you or not is your target keywords. After all, those search terms trigger your ads, website, and content to appear on the SERPs.

But don’t worry. We have full-time researchers who monitor trends, ensuring your marketing campaigns target the keywords your local audience will likely use to discover bariatric surgery.

Reputation Management

Building a positive reputation is everything in an industry that can significantly affect an individual’s life. Think about it.

Would people consult a bariatric surgeon with a negative standing among patients?

For this reason, we offer reputation management as part of our digital marketing services, including efforts such as the following:

Identifying the primary culprits negatively influencing your bariatric surgery practice’s online reputation
Highlighting neutral and positive citations and reviews to counteract the impact of negative ones
Recommending PR (public relations) opportunities to help you control and protect information related to your medical practice

Digital Reputation Management Best Practices

The more positive reviews your bariatric surgery practice receives, the more trustworthy it appears to your target audience, improving the likelihood of potential patients booking a consultation or procedure.

That’s why one of our many responsibilities as your digital marketing partner is encouraging patients to leave reviews, particularly on your Google Business Profile.

What we don’t do is purchase positive feedback or discourage people from leaving negative ones, as these acts are against Google’s policies and can result in penalties that can wipe your website from search.

Develop a Usercentric Website

When you address your target audience’s needs, you don’t have to promote your services—they sell themselves. It’s this principle that guides our marketing efforts, including our web design and development services.
As such, our aim when designing and developing your website is to ensure that it speaks to and can engage your practice’s target audience.

The question is, “How do we ensure your website is user-focused and not solely as a means to advertise your skills, expertise, and bariatric procedures?” Here are some of the techniques we utilize:

Build a Fast, Intuitive, and Responsive Website

If a website takes ages to load, makes it hard for you to find what you’re looking for, and doesn’t translate well on other devices, chances are you won’t enjoy your visit.
Your target audience is the same. That’s why we take steps to make your website fast, intuitive, and responsive. These steps include the following:

Keeping your bariatric surgery website’s PageSpeed score above 90 at all times
Ensuring your website is navigable through well-defined headers and internal links (hyperlinks) that can take users to other pages within your site
Making your web pages more mobile-friendly, such as by integrating design that scales based on the user’s screen size

Make Key Content Easily Discoverable

Imagine you’re a prospective patient looking for information on the latest innovations in the bariatric surgery field. How would you feel if, after clicking on a SERP link, you’re redirected to a page that doesn’t contain what you’re seeking?
You’d probably say, “That was a waste of time.” If you don’t make your content more discoverable, such as by hiding it behind several links or menus, your site visitors are likely to say the same thing.

For this reason, we create dedicated landing pages for your essential content. This way, you make an excellent first impression by giving your target internet users precisely what they want.

Implement Analytics and ROI Measurement

How do you determine whether a digital marketing agency is putting your investment to good use? You look at the numbers—the leads, conversions, and sales.

That’s precisely what we do through Google Analytics. With this information, we get insight into your campaign’s areas for improvement, guiding our optimization efforts.

Fortunately, you don’t have to wait for us to relay this valuable analytical data to you. After all, you own your account and we just manage it. This way, you also see the results you’re getting from our efforts.

But we’re not done. We’ll also set up conversion tracking for your bariatric surgery practice’s website, allowing you to measure whether your campaigns deliver excellent returns on investment (ROI).

Social Media and Targeted Advertising Campaigns

Social media sites not only give you a platform to reach prospective patients but also engage with them. That’s why our catalog of digital marketing services includes social media marketing.

This service primarily involves building brand awareness, driving traffic to your bariatric surgery website, and fostering meaningful connections with your target audience through organic posts and paid advertisements.

The best part about entrusting us with your SMM needs? Our unique audience analysis allows us to target your desired leads based on your specific criteria at 30% to 70% less cost.

Local Facebook Ads for Awareness

Your local market is one of your most valuable traffic sources. That’s why our social media marketing efforts, including Facebook Ads management, leverage geo-targeting features.

Doing so lets us pinpoint and reach potential patients in specific geographic locations who are likelier to engage with your bariatric surgery practice.

Create Engaging and Informative Content

Effective marketing is all about addressing your target audience’s needs and desires. One way to accomplish this goal is by producing compelling and educational articles and blogs.

Fortunately, we have an in-house content team comprised of editors, proofreaders, and writers spearheading our content marketing efforts, which includes the following:

Analyzing your existing content and updating it to match the proposed online advertising strategy
Strategically incorporating high-value keywords into your content
Creating new compelling, relevant, and rank-ready articles and blogs

Improve Networking With Referring Physicians to Source Selected Bariatric Cases

Don’t you wish there was a way your medical practice could source the bariatric surgery cases it’s more equipped to handle? There is—by establishing a referral system with other physicians.

We can help with that. How, you ask? Our digital marketing services include connecting you with relevant and authoritative figures in your industry, which can help improve your referral network.

Customer Journey Mapping

The key to bariatric surgery marketing is knowing who your ideal patients are. But it’s also essential to identify where they are in their customer journey.

After all, you can’t expect an ad targeting people ready to book a procedure to work as effectively on those still on the fence about bariatric surgery.

Using advanced statistical analysis, data modeling, and multi-variant testing, we can identify where potential patients drop off in your marketing funnel and tweak your campaigns to remedy the causes.

This math-based approach ensures that we drive not only individuals who are ready to become patients toward your practice but also those who are interested in your offerings but still aren’t ready to convert.

Use Google Ads for Bariatric Surgery

If you want a cost-effective online marketing avenue to drive instant, guaranteed traffic toward your bariatric surgery practice, you should consider advertising through the Google Ads platform.

Do understand, however, that launching and managing a Google Ads campaign can be intricate, especially considering that you can promote your services on the search engine giant’s four primary products.

These Google products are the following:

Google Search: Lets you promote your bariatric procedures on the Google Search Network or Google Search Partners, including Amazon.com and NYTimes.com
Google Display: Gives you access to over 90% of internet users, as it lets you advertise to users on the millions of websites, apps, and videos on the Google Display Network
Google Remarketing: Allows you to “tag” your website visitors, enabling you to engage with them even when they’re on other sites
Google Shopping: Lets you showcase your bariatric surgery practice and services specifically to individuals actively seeking your offerings

If you select the wrong product, you can say goodbye to your marketing budget. Here’s where we come in to ensure your hard-earned dollars are distributed correctly—to find the right mix.

PPC Marketing Best Practices

Depending on your unique marketing situation, the best practices to ensure your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, such as your Google Ads campaigns, deliver your desired outcomes will vary.

Fortunately, you can trust us to identify what needs to be done. After all, we have a dataset built by investing millions of campaign dollars that tells us which moves provide the best returns for your investment.

Host a Free Seminar on Weight Loss Surgery Topics

Hosting live events, like a webinar on weight loss and bariatric surgery, can allow you to engage with prospective clients, showcase your expertise, and expand your social network.

If you need help determining whether a free seminar is the best move for your medical practice and whether we can help, call us at (+1) 310 362 6373 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com.

Examples of Effective Bariatric Marketing Campaigns

We understand that investing in digital marketing services requires careful decision-making, especially if you’ve had negative experiences with hiring a provider.

So, if you’re still not convinced about the benefits of investing your marketing budget into online advertising strategies and entrusting us with it, consider these alternative promotional tactics:

A Weight Loss Surgery “Visualizer” App

Our web development services include curating photographs, which can help you showcase before and after images of bariatric procedures and help users visualize their potential results.

You can take this strategy to the next level by providing a visualizer app. At their fingertips, prospective patients can get an instant preview of how your services can transform their lives.

A Fashion Show for Bariatric Success Stories

Sharing patient experiences through your website content instills confidence and trust in your bariatric surgery skills, expertise, and unique selling points.

Unfortunately, not everyone likes to read. So, why not spice things up and consider hosting a fashion show that features your clients and the positive impact your procedures have on their well-being?

Celebrating Weight Loss Success in a Letter

Are you aware that the average person receives and sends 121 business emails daily? While there could be countless reasons, email inbox overcrowding may be why your email campaigns aren’t effective.

If you’re looking for an alternate avenue to share and celebrate your patients’ weight-loss success stories, direct mailers may be the tangible solution you’re looking for.

Why Partner With Us?

Any digital marketing agency can claim to be the best. So, us saying, “We excel in digital marketing for healthcare businesses,” may not be enough to convince you to partner with us.

You’ve probably heard that line before and were left disappointed by the results you got. But before you write us off, allow us to make a case for why our services are the solution your practice needs.

We Understand the Needs of Bariatric Programs

We’re not going to sugarcoat it: we know how to deliver quality patient leads and more consultation and procedure bookings for bariatric surgery practices.

Case in point: The Khalili Center, a Southern California-based weight loss surgery provider. Here are some of the results our digital marketing efforts have given them:

A 17% improvement in leads, which means our services helped them get more potential patients
A 130% increase in appearances on Google’s top 3 rankings, which made their practice more visible to their target audience
A 23.6% growth in their Google Ads click-through rate (CTR), which translated to more website traffic
A 317.1% boost to their conversion rate, which led to higher consultation and procedure appointments

Feel free to check our case studies to see what outcomes we’ve delivered for other bariatric surgeons and healthcare businesses—results they didn’t and wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Minimize the Burden on Your Staff

It will take time for your in-house team to master digital marketing—too many online advertising strategies to learn, test, and implement before you can determine your bariatric surgery marketing plan.

But it gets even more challenging. The digital landscape constantly evolves, requiring your staff to adapt to shifts continually, which sometimes means starting from scratch.

If you partner with us, you will skip the steep learning curve, reduce the burden on your staff, and tap into our over 15 years of experience managing more than 2,000 campaigns.

So, why not leave your digital marketing needs to us and dedicate your staff to helping people resolve their weight-related issues? Call us at (+1) 310 362 6373 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com.

Ready to stand out online? Contact us today!

Get in Touch With Digital Spotlight

At Digital Spotlight, we help medical practices and healthcare businesses grow, attract more patients, and dominate their market in the US.

Our clients come to us for two powerful digital marketing strategies—paid advertising and SEO, so they can focus on running their practice while we handle the rest.

Ready to stand out online with us? Contact us at 310 879 8003 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com for a no-pressure consultation—just honest insights on your orthopedic practice’s digital potential.

Feel free to stop by and see us in our headquarters at
2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is patient acquisition?

Patient acquisition is the process of driving new patients toward your medical practice.

There are various ways to accomplish this task. We, for instance, provide what your target audience wants, making selling your bariatric surgery services unnecessary.

What is the 30-30 rule after sleeve gastrectomy?

The 30-30 rule is a guideline you must follow after undergoing a bariatric procedure like sleeve gastrectomy: you must not consume any liquids 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after eating

The reason? Too much food and liquid in your stomach may cause it to expand. If this expansion happens, you may experience increased hunger, rendering your surgery ineffective.

Can you target someone needing bariatric surgery?

Yes, you can be confident that we can track, follow up, and target people who need bariatric surgery.

After all, precise audience targeting is one of the many advantages of leveraging digital marketing.

How much is the bariatric surgery market’s growth rate?

Demand for bariatric surgery has risen since 2020. Emergen Research, a market research company, estimates that this healthcare industry will record a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9% from 2021 through 2028.

In other words, digital marketing can become even more critical in ensuring your bariatric surgery practice overtakes and stays ahead of its competition.

Schedule a no-pitch, no-obligation consultation with our online marketing experts for more information on how we can shine a digital spotlight on your bariatric surgery practice.
Call (+1) 310 362 6373, email contact@digitalspotlight.com, or visit our California office at Suite 700, Encino Gateway, 15760 Ventura Blvd., Encino, CA 91436.

Contact us today for a no-pitch consult

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