Dr. Gus Galante, a board-certified plastic surgeon, would have been the first to admit he needed a makeover in 2006. If a local woman in the market for a tummy tuck had searched for plastic surgeon and northwest Indiana, his Web site came up so low among Google searches that he might have had better luck attracting patients by screaming from a mountaintop. What’s more, there are 145 board-certified plastic surgeons within 60 miles of his offices in Schererville and Valparaiso, Ind., and twice as many doctors offering face-lifts and nose jobs. His old site had before-and-after pictures and a laundry list of his impressive credentials, but nothing close to the online theatrics it takes for a plastic surgeon to make a sale today. Heart-to-heart videos in which doctors reveal why they got into this field, or why a patient should choose them over others, have a way of enticing patients. In March 2006, Dr. Galante hired Etna Interactive, a medical marketing company in San Luis Obispo, Calif., to help raise his profile. He worked with an Etna copywriter to create pages for each procedure he offers, including information about how breast augmentation or liposuction is performed and what recovery entails. Etna advised him to pay for listings on directories like smartplasticsurgery.com and yourplasticsurgeryguide.com, which are frequently visited by potential patients. Last year, his marketing costs came to roughly $20,000, but Dr. Galante, who joined eight directories in total and is happy with his Web site, galantemd.com, said he’s “definitely gotten more patients through the Web.” Dr. Galante’s site has four times the traffic it did in 2006 and consultation requests have doubled, said Ryan Miller, founder of Etna.
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