Why Can’t Gen Z and Millennials Find the Dermatologist They Need?

Hello, everyone. I’m Adeesha. And today on the Business of Aesthetics podcast, we are tackling a challenge that’s on the minds of many dermatologists. Why can’t Gen Z and millennials find the dermatologists they actually need? Even with high demand, younger patients are struggling to discover the right providers and many dermatologists aren’t visible where these patients are searching. In this episode, we’ll explore the marketing mistakes that keep your ideal patients from finding you, share practical strategies to connect with Gen Z and millennials, and discuss how to stand out in an increasingly crowded digital landscape. Now, for this podcast, I’m excited to welcome Naren Arulrajah to the show. Naren is the mastermind behind the Business of Aesthetics podcast and the CEO of Equa Marketing, one of the most trusted digital marketing organizations in US and Canada. With over 18 years of experience supporting dermatology and plastic surgery practice owners and a dedicated client base of more than 500 healthcare owners, Naren brings unmatched insight into helping practices optimize marketing, educate clients, and achieve sustainable growth. Hello, Naren. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much Adeesha for having me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation and really our community, the business of aesthetics community has been now going for five plus years and it’s very vibrant. So I’m so glad I’m here and I’m able to share my 18 years of experience and knowledge, working with practice owners literally for 18 plus years. My first dermatology client I started working with 18 years ago. So we do focus on dermatology, plastic surgery, aesthetics, and many of the clients I started working with 15 plus years ago are still my clients. And that’s the thing I’m most proud of, right? Like our clients, once they become clients, they never leave because they find in the long run, having a strong SEO based organic marketing campaign is the most cost effective way to attract patients. Literally, sometimes it’s even like one fifth the cost of ads and so forth. So it’s really, really powerful.

Wonderful, wonderful. So then Naren, thank you for being here and we’ll jump right into the questions. So what are the biggest marketing mistakes dermatologists are making that prevent Gen Z and millennials from finding them? You know, that’s a great, great, great question. And I think it’s a really important question because if you don’t know the mistakes people are making, you will make the same mistakes. I’m gonna name two mistakes and then I’m going to let you think about it because I don’t wanna give you too many things to think about. Number one is I think there are a lot of doctors who are not growing their aesthetic patient base. And the reason they don’t do that is they don’t know how to do it. So they just don’t even try. So years go by and they get squeezed more and more and more by insurance plans and nasty reviews from patients who don’t want to pay co-pay or who have to wait a little too long and so forth, right? Versus those fee-paying aesthetic patients, they’re paying five ten times more on a per hour basis and a lot of those things can also be done by extenders so you don’t have to do all the work so eventually as you think about building network think about building uh you know a very profitable business having a part of your business that can be grown without you having to do all the work is very, very, very powerful. Or where you get paid a lot more is very powerful. The other thing I also hear from clients who focus on aesthetic in addition to medical dermatology is, you know, it’s rewarding because, you know, you’re always learning, there’s new technology, so it becomes like a, you know, you get really good at, you know, helping people look 10, 15 years younger with practice and experience. And I know clients who, I’m thinking of Dr. Lupo, for example, going back 18 years or Dr. Janine Downey, again, going back 15 years. They have changed the lives of so many people. And I go to their websites and I see some of the cases and it’s just mind blowing the kind of things they’ve been able to do. And 10 years later, the patient looks younger than they did 10 years ago. And it’s awesome, right? So that’s, I think, one of the key things. Focus on aesthetics, even though you are a board-certified dermatologist, in addition to focusing on medical. The second thing I would mention is not having a strategy and relying on things like ads or promotions. The reason is it’s kind of like a hole. You don’t want to keep digging that hole. Because the more you dig, the deeper the hole gets and the harder it is to get out of that hole. When you start attracting patients through ads, they don’t trust you. And they think you’re not as good. That’s why you’re running ads, right? Especially if you’re trying to grow your aesthetic business through ads, I would caution against it. it kind of makes it harder to climb out of that hole. Instead, focus on organic. Help them discover you without you paying money on ads. Now they trust you. Why? Because you didn’t pay money on ads. They think you must be good. That’s why you keep showing up in their circles and in their orbit when they’re looking for someone like you. So focus on organic, not on ads. So those are my two lessons from mistakes I’ve seen practice owners make.

Right. And how can dermatologists use these digital channels like social media, search engines, and online reviews to better connect with the younger patients? Yeah, I think that’s an excellent question. And I do think… Younger patients want things to be easy. So even before we talk about marketing, are you letting your younger patients communicate with you, for example, through text? Is your website mobile friendly? Meaning I’m on a smartphone, it loads up fast, all this website adjusts itself to optimize for a smaller screen size. Like, are you doing those things to make your website, you know, friendly and powerful? So those are the two things, you know, I would focus on to attract younger patients. The other thing I would also do is, you know, young patients and older patients, they want proof. So are you getting or collecting cases and are you highlighting those cases on the relevant pages? So on the page that talks about wrinkles and how you can use Botox, you should have dozens of cases where you can show the before and the after. And the last piece also is, are you connecting with them on a human level? So think of it like almost like edutainment. So short video clips where you answer simple questions, you talk in simple language. I’m talking 45 second clips. And again, customized for that particular need they have. So if I’m on your page on psoriasis, talk to me about what you can do for psoriasis. Don’t talk to me about everything else you do, right? Customize it based on that particular page. And that’s the beauty of proper organic marketing because people will go to that page directly when they are looking for that particular thing. And when they go to that page, you having those relevant cases, relevant videos would make all the difference.

Okay. So speak a little bit more on that. How do we figure out what is relevant to the audience that we’re looking for? Yeah, like for example, Google has a tool called Google Keyword Tool. And you can also use Google Analytics. And when you log into Google Analytics, it’ll tell you all the different keywords people are using to find you. So, for example, a keyword could be dermatologist in Chicago or dermatologist Chicago or best dermatologist zip code or best dermatologist near me. You know, they are typing in hundreds of these phrases. Google will tell you exactly what phrases people typed in, how many of them typed that phrase in in the last 30 days. And where are you showing up? Is your average rank? 4.2 or 19.7 obviously if you are in the top 10 meaning the number is less than 10 that means you keep showing up again and again and those who are below top 10 hardly show up so you want to make sure that you continue to um you know find the relevant keywords using tools like google analytics don’t guess don’t make up keywords you don’t know like things are changing so fast and there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds if not more than a thousand keywords so you want to use tools like google analytics to find out what actually is going on in your area and then go after the relevant keywords that make sense for you right and then once you find those keywords what’s next

Yeah. Once you find those keywords, so think about the buyer’s journey, right? So people go through a buyer’s journey, whether they are finding a restaurant or a plumber or a doctor such as yourselves. And the way they do that is they start by researching their interest. So for example, I want to do a new kitchen. I start by Googling kitchen renovation, kitchen renovation for high-end homes. I might even type in my city name. So I’m starting to research what I’m looking for, or, y ou know, I’m looking for somebody, you know, for skin tightening. I’m Googling those keywords. Are you showing up, right? So if you’re not showing up, they can’t even consider you. How can they ever become your patient if they don’t even know you can do that for them? So that’s the first part of the bias journey. Are you helping people find you? The second part of the bias journey is once people are finding you, when I go to the relevant page, remember we talked about going to the exact page for the exact keyword, do I have the right videos that makes me want to come and see you as a patient? Do I have, do you have Google reviews? So first is helping people find you in the buyer’s journey, then helping them like you. That’s where the easy to understand videos and even cases are coming in. And finally helping people trust you. That’s where Google reviews come in. Cases also help with trust, right? If I am seeing one doctor who has done 15 cases versus another one who might be a board certified dermatologist, but has no pictures of cases or no reviews, who am I going to pick? The one who has done a lot of this and who has lots of reviews or somebody who may have done a lot of it and may have a lot of reviews, but I can’t see those easily. So optimize for the buyer’s journey, helping people find you, helping people like you and helping people trust you. So thank you very much for those actionable tactics and strategies that you just laid out so well knowing.

So how important is personal branding for dermatologists today? And what are some effective ways to stand out to digitally savvy patients? Yeah, that’s an excellent question. So in 2025, I’m sure if you haven’t heard the word AI, you are probably living under a rock. AI is having a huge impact on everything, right? From self-driving cars to robots, not too far away from, like we’ll be having robots working in factories and homes perhaps within a few years. but we’re also seeing products like chat gpt and google for example has google ai overview and even like few months ago two billion people are using google ai overview so google ai overview has become the dominant ai tool right now when it comes to people you know people online and those tools are you know, prioritizing things like credentials. So for example, the fact that you are a board certified dermatologist, perhaps you have affiliations, perhaps you have extra certifications and qualifications, include that in your bio. Create videos that you know that again has a bio next to those videos so google knows that you are not just anybody creating content but you are somebody who’s an authority i think in the world of you know machine content where ai can create infinite content and a lot of it is just made up having content that is you know linked to a trusted authority is super super super powerful and So I’m answering your question in two ways. One is this helps you with your branding because the more you do things to make Google happy, not only are you gonna get a lot more traffic from Google, but also it’s gonna make your patients trust you more because of the branding and all the things you are doing consistently. So I really think having proper bios, having videos, using those bios religiously on relevant pages, they are all extremely important techniques.

Now, I want to say that, you know, it is not easy to show up on Google for free. Google makes $250 billion from ads. So they make it really hard. Only like three, 5% of you will get free traffic from Google. But the three to 5% who gets free traffic will get so much free traffic, almost 95% of the free traffic. But everybody else, the 97%, you have to pay ad money. So you have no choice but to pay Google ad money. So that’s just the way the world is. And you just have to understand how things are going. And you have to adapt. For example, we have been spending months and months totally revamping our company to make it AI relevant. So not only ranking on Google, but JetGPT, Gemini, and pretty much every other major search engine. Now, the good news is Google still controls 95% of the market. But just in case some of the other guys become stronger when it comes to search, we don’t want to take a chance. I mean, we believe in dominating the market and helping our clients crush the competition. So we just always, you know, go the extra mile when it comes to, y ou know, how dominant we are when it comes to people looking for information and our clients, our doctors are the ones they’re finding. So it would be correct to say Equa is found or based on dominating search Absolutely. You could have said it better. And the reason is Google ads are five to 10 times more expensive for the same new patient. So it’s probably the best thing to do, even though it’s really, really hard. It takes time. It takes hundreds of hours. But if you can master it, then it’s a matter of maintaining it, which is much easier than mastering it, which takes effort and time. So we tell our clients, you have to give us one year. If you don’t give us one year, you’re not going to be happy. But those who give us one year, 95% of dermatologists, they never leave us. They love what we are doing and the results we are producing.

And just to speak a little bit more, you spoke about authority being one of the key criterias for ranking. Are there any more that people should be aware of? Yeah, Google looks at many, many factors, you know, Google CRUX, which is Chrome UX, NAP, Google Lighthouse Go, original content, quality backlinks, and Google reviews. Now, I can spend whole 30 minutes going through all of this, but I’ll touch on a couple. So NAP means name, address, phone number, consistency. There are hundreds of directories and websites with your business name, with your address, and with your phone number. Even if there’s a slight change in the way the name is written or the address is written, that can cause problems and that can make you rank less. So fixing all of that. So we have a dedicated team, that’s all they do. Find and fix these issues constantly. Again, CRUX, Google is used to have, you know, Google Lighthouse code, but now they’re replacing that with CRUX. And that’s really, is your website built the right way, the way Google wants it. And if you do, and Google is always changing its rules around all of these things, and you keep it up, you’re going to have an unfair advantage. It’s kind of like getting into a top university. If you do really, really well in all these areas, you will get in. You will rank in the top 3%. But if you don’t, you are kicked out immediately. So, Not only do you need to do it one time, but you have to keep doing it because Google keeps changing its rules. Again, I don’t blame them. When you make $250 billion from ads, you would do everything in your power to make sure the free traffic is limited to as few people as possible.

Wonderful. Now, if dermatologists want to attract more Gen Z and millennial patients, right? And what small changes can they start with today? And how can expert advice guide them further? That’s a great question. I do think the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is not brains, it’s not hard work. It’s the ones who are failing have the wrong map. Stephen Covey talked about it when he explained the concept of paradigm. He said, paradigm, you know, if you change the way you think, the things you look at change, your entire world change, your entire life changes. I think the missing link is a lot of people don’t sit and think about the buyer’s journey. How do I help people find me? How do I help people like me? How do I help people choose me? And because they don’t think from first principles, they don’t understand how buyers are going about making these decisions, they don’t optimize for it. If you did, then you would be the one ranking for hundreds of keywords and getting 95% of the free traffic when people are looking to find someone like you, right? Because you rank for hundreds of keywords near the top of Google. If you did, you would have amazing landing pages that these people go to, which has cases and videos and you know, easy to use and easy to, y ou know, relate to and like you. And finally, you will continue to work on Google reviews. So one of the things I would recommend is, you know, have someone who has a lot of knowledge, like we have, you know, people with decades of experience, do a thorough review, we call it a marketing strategy meeting. And the link is businessofaesthetics.org slash MSM. Book that marketing strategy meeting. You know, really, really, you know, have somebody give you a report card. How many keywords am I ranking for? You know, all the different areas that I want to rank in. How is my competition doing? Am I doing as well, if not better than my competition? Once you know those two things, then you also need a plan like, okay, how do I go from being in the bottom 95% that gets no free traffic? So my only option is either get medical patients and obviously that’s unlimited or my only option is Google ads versus I have a new option. I can go after attracting patients organically and somebody else can do it for me. Of course, we spend 600 hours to help our clients get to 100 keywords or more, but it is possible. 95% of our clients, they never leave us. Book that marketing strategy meeting, businessofaesthetics.org slash MSM. And after you book that marketing strategy meeting, you know, take the report and decide what you want to do with whether you work with us or somebody else. At least now you know what the correct map looks like. Now you know what the correct set of steps look like. Now you can make some decisions. Right. And, you know, Naren, as they say, education without action is just interpretation. with you laying out so much strategies and so many valuable insights today to our listeners make that next move and let that next move that actionable move be booking the marketing strategy meeting so once again business of aesthetics that’s one word dot o r g forward slash m s m forward slash

So with that being said, thank you, Naren, for joining us today and sharing your insights on why can’t Gen Z and millennials find the dermatologist they need. Your expertise on digital marketing and patient acquisition in the dermatology space is incredibly valuable. And I know our listeners will walk away with it. plenty of actionable strategies they can implement in their own practices. To our listeners, a huge thank you for tuning in. Your support makes this podcast possible. If you found today’s episode helpful, please share it with your colleagues and friends in the dermatology community. And don’t forget to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us more. People discover the podcast and benefit from this conversation. Until next time, keep innovating, keep connecting with your patients and keep building practices that truly stand out. Wishing you all a fantastic week ahead. Until next time, take care.