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What Separates The Top 1% of MedSpas, Plus How to Fix Your Generic Offers and Stand Out In A Saturated Market
00:23:02
Feel like your services are getting lost in a saturated market? It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s about branding it. In this episode, I break down what I call the Brand Power Ladder framework that shows you exactly how to move from...
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When you decide to go all in on branded products, it's literally your creative genius coming up with the positioning of the things you are differentiating by zhuzhing what already exists and then recreating it as a branded product. Welcome to the MedSpa CEO podcast where I teach you how to grow and scale your med, spa or aesthetic practice so that you can have the income and impact you know you were meant for without overwhelm, stress or feeling like you have to sacrifice your personal life and happiness to do so. It's totally possible for you and your business. Plus, simpler than you think. Keep listening to find out how.
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Well.
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Hello my beautiful friend. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. In this episode we are talking about something I call the branded power ladder. And I'm gonna explain what that is in a little bit, but I wanted to talk about a term that is used that helps businesses no matter what type of business you are. So we're obviously gonna apply this to our industry, the aesthetics industry, but it's what's used in every type of industry in order to be able to create a blue ocean for yourself rather than be trapped in the red ocean. If you've never heard that term before, there is a book called Blue Ocean Strategy that is awesome. You can go and look it up. But it's basically this idea that many of us find ourselves in the red ocean and the red ocean is like the sea of competition. So for example, I'm based in most of, you know, Scottsdale, Phoenix, and when it comes to to med spas and aesthetic practices, it can feel like a red ocean here. Cause there is so much competition in the area. And so the question becomes, how do you create a blue ocean for yourself so that you don't feel like you are having to be like a shark in the red ocean, right? The bloody red ocean is sort of the visual that he uses in that book. And so brand equity is how you can create a blue ocean for yourself. So about 10 years ago I had an E commerce business. I've mentioned this before. And in order for my smaller, non enterprise level E commerce business to be able to compete with selling physical products with other much larger businesses that were selling similar things, I had to create and establish brand equity.
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Okay.
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And in order to have really strong brand equity, we actually have to have branded products. And so I decided I was going to focus on bridal gifts that brides would give to their bridesmaids and to other people who were participating in their wedding.
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Okay.
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So very niche, not surprising. So you Know, key number one in establishing brand equity is actually knowing who it is that your services, your products are. You know, I've used this example as well too, where I talk about when I was in grad school getting my master's in communication, I did a research paper on the difference between Pepsi and Coke and how they used brand storytelling to actually differentiate themselves, right? Cause they're very similar dark colors, okay? And so they used brand equity and they branded their products in order to differentiate themselves. This is when you hear the term like commodity or generic, you hear me use these terms a lot, right? I don't want you to be in the generic commodity category because what happens when you're in the generic commodity category, you have to compete on price, right? You have to compete on having the most options, right? Because everybody else around you, you keep yourself in that red ocean. And so my goal for every single one of you that's listening to this or that's watching this, is that I could help you create enough brand equity to where you would be in a blue ocean so that you can charge more, so that you can have incredible cult like loyalty from your patients and clients so that you don' have to worry about the endless sea of competition and the new places that are opening up down the street from you. And so that you can actually have the confidence that you truly are a category of 1 in your market. So back to when I was first launching my products, my physical products, if you will, I was focused on canvas tote bags, okay? So I had canvas tote bags and then I also had bridal jewelry. I marketed and positioned them for the bride that was looking to get gifts for her bridesmaids. I did that very strategically because I knew that when brides were buying gifts that they would buy more than one, right? So I knew that that was what I wanted to target. So I flip flopped between two different product lines. I actually first thought I was just going to sell bridal jewelry. And so what I did is I started buying and sourcing jewelry initially overseas, some domestic. And so what I discovered was I did not have as unique of branded products. Now I did brand them to me, right? I had logo and really like strong marketing copy and positioning and all of that jazz. But I ended up testing out some canvas tote bags, okay? And these canvas tote bags initially I purchased was, were already created by another manufacturer, okay. But then I took those tote bags and I actually licensed artwork from a designer and I paid for the licensing of these like gorgeous calligraphy style quotes and what have you, and started actually having professional artwork screen printed onto the tote bags.
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Okay.
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So this was level one of creating branded physical products. And so the reason why I knew I needed to have unique branded to me products is because I needed to 5-10x my landed cost in order to even have some profit margins and to build a sustainable business.
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Okay.
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And I'm competing with a lot of really big businesses that are also targeting brides that also have canvas tote bags as well too. So how could I make these products, products unique and branded to me? And so at the time, I did this really well. And so level one was I was buying other people's tote bags and then I was putting my unique spin on them. And then I went as far as I started to have designers. I was commissioning designers with quotes and different things that I knew brides would like to have on tote bags that they would gift to their bridal parties. So I ended up selling 10,000 units within 18 months of these tote bags. And I was able to charge 40 to $50 per bag on some of these tote bags because I eventually actually started manufacturing. I worked with a product designer and came up with my own specific product design for the canvas totes after I had spent some time purchasing other totes canvas tote bags that had been manufactured by other people. And so I was able to charge 40 to $50, which I was selling on Shopify, I was selling on Amazon, and I was competing against other similar canvas tote bags that I was sometimes as much as 10x the price of those other canvas tote bags. How was I able to charge so much more? It is because I had branded products and I had brand equity because of it. And so when you decide to go all in on branded products, it's literally your creative genius coming up with the positioning of the things you are differentiating by zhuzhing what already exists and then recreating it as a branded product. I think a lot of times when we think of successful businesses, we think of new inventions, right? Like coming out with new technology, because those are really sexy stories. But most successful businesses are taking something that already exists and actually repositioning it or finding a different way to actually deliver it and brand it in their own unique way for the unique humans that they know they want to target. So what happens? What happened with my canvas tote bags?
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Right.
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I was able to have compared to some of my E Commerce peers who were also at Shopify stores, who were also selling on Amazon and many of Them were just doing arbitrage or resellers, right? They were wholesaling. And so they had way smaller profit margins than me because they were competing with everybody else who had almost the same exact product that they had.
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Right?
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So because of how I decided to create branded products, which took more effort initially than it just being a reseller, I was able to have higher profit margins. I had some of my products that went viral and then I had like a cult like following. I started having bridal coordinators and bridal photographers and other people in the bridal industry. I started getting press for the tote bags as well too. So, you know, the question then becomes, when you're in a service based business, how do you create branded products for yourself? It's a great question, right? Because the key to creating brand equity is being able to take your generic service offering and be able to productize that with unique to you branded products.
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Right?
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And we talk about this a lot. If you're not new around here. I preach all the time about having a signature menu of unique offers. And I think where people get hung up on this is that because we are in the service industry, right, you have different service offerings, this can get a little muddy for many of you. But what I want you to know is, is that the same principle applies. And this is where I call the brand power ladder comes in. If you're at the bottom of what I consider the brand power ladder to be, is that first rung on the ladder that step one is where some of you are at. And that's where you just have like the commodity canvas tote bag, right? You have the commodity generic a la carte, the microneedling, the Botox, what have you, those line items, service offerings that everybody else in your local area also has. So that's step one. Now, one notch up the brand power ladder from that is actually having customized treatment plans or maybe series. So let me actually define these for a moment because, you know, these are words that get thrown around and I want to make sure that you understand what I mean by a customized treatment plan and what I mean by a series. So a customized treatment plan, at least how I define it, is when you and your team, every single time you see a new patient or client, you customize a random list of services based on what you think on the fly is going to work for the human in front of you.
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Okay?
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So there's no standardization of your clinical protocols. There's no decided ahead of time, like intentional roadmaps, depending on the human that I See, depending on the provider that I see in your clinic or your med spa, they will customize it for me.
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Right?
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Because everybody's a unique human and you got to start from scratch and think on the fly for everybody.
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Okay?
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That is still one step above just delivering back. Oh, they booked talks. I'm just going to do talks. Oh, they booked microneedling. I'm just going to deliver microneedling. So that's step one on the brand power ladder. That step two is customized treatment plans like I just described, and then series of things. So series of things is a little bit better, right? Because on the brand power ladder, there's two things happening from step one to step three. When as we go up that visual ladder, the bottom of the ladder, you are competing on price, but you're also delivering less results and outcomes. So you're competing in price, you are more susceptible to the local competition near you. And then at the top of that brand power ladder is where we have lots of brand equity, right? We have unique offering, we can charge a lot more, but not only that, we are getting incredible outcomes, right? So at the bottom of the ladder is lower prices, less results, more competition. At the top of the ladder, where we have more brand equity is where we can charge a lot more. Our lifetime value for every single patient or client we see is so much higher. Our ability to create outstanding outcomes for each patient or client goes up as well too. So again, hang with me. If you're watching me, you see me like making the visual of going up the ladder. But if you're listening on the podcast, you just gotta imagine a ladder, okay? And that first rung of the ladder is step one or rung one, which is like the generic commodity offers. So rung two, the second step is customized treatment plans and series. So what is a series of something? So the reason why I'm clarifying this is because I use the word signature packages a lot. Signature packages, in my mind is where you have some unique clinical protocol that usually is multifaceted. A series of something is just like three microneedling, three ipl, right? It doesn't have to be three, but it's just like, you know, a bundle of one type of thing. It doesn't have any sort of uniqueness to it. So this is on step two because as we go up the ladder, having a customized treatment plan or a series is better than just delivering on the one off thing that the person booked. So as we go up, it creates a little bit more brand equity, creates a little bit more results for your patients and clients. And it creates some more revenue and profits than that. Step one. But where I want each of you to get is that I want you to get to the top of the brand power ladder where you have the most brand equity. And at the top of that ladder, on that third step where we're standing up higher, where we have more brand equity, this is where you own the actual branded solutions that you have. So you can go back to another episode on the podcast where I break down the CVS menu framework and go back to some of the other episodes where I actually kind of dive into this even more, but it's having a unique menu of branded solutions, right? Comprehensive, expensive signature packages, CSPs as we call them. These are the things that are three to $10,000, sometimes more than that, just depending, but typically in that price range that really actually solve a multifaceted problem for your unique patient who's looking for to have a high value problem and a high value desired outcome solved for them. And then bmos Branded elevated mini offers is where we actually take some of the a la carte things or the things that might, you know, that are usually priced between 500 and $3,000 that maybe aren't as solving as big of a problem, but we give our own unique branded elevated spin to it that makes it so that when we use this framework, we can take your generic a la carte offering and then create branded solutions. And so why does this even matter? So, because there's something called and I'm going to dork out for a minute. So like hold with me for a moment. But it's called Keller's Brand equity model. And this is how and Keller termed the word brand equity. I'm pretty sure the idea that you can actually build brand equity and his model is about, okay, so who are you? What do you do? What do I think about you? And how do you make me feel? Okay, so you've probably heard other branding experts talk about some facsimile of this. When you've hired a website developer or some branding person, as we've talked about before, they probably had you fill out some sort of branding questionnaire so they could help you hone in on these things. But the one key part that typically gets glossed over is the idea of what do you do? Like, how do we create brand equity with your service offering? And that's why I am so dang bullish on having a signature menu, right? So if you look at any of the top brands in the world, they have taken something, you know, you think of Peloton and their bikes. They have taken what is just an exercise bike and created an entire brand experience and brand products around the experience that is unique to them. You think about, you know, Nobu and their exclusive offering that is different from a lot of the other restaurants that they compete with, right? You can get a filet mignon from the local grocery store, right? Or you can get a steak at Outback, right? Or you can get a steak from a very elevated restaurant that they actually name the steak, if you will, too. You know, I always love using Gordon Ramsay because he's done such an amazing job at creating brand equity, right? And personal brands and other things. We could go down the rabbit hole of creating even more brand equity. But. But what ends up happening is you could have these other things, building your brand equity, like knowing your experience, having certain parts of your white glove experience that we talk about, which is all important and valid. But if the heart of your brand, literally the heart of your business, which is your offer, which is how you get people from point A to point B, is generic, and we're at the bottom of that brand power ladder, when it comes to your offer suite, your brand is equity is always going to be lower and you won't be able to charge as much as other people. You will always feel like you're competing because you literally are competing. So I felt inspired to share this with you because everything that I have done in my career that has helped me succeed, there is an element of brand equity involved in building it. And so I hadn't talked a ton about my E commerce business on here. I got really quick results in that business and I was able to sell products quickly for a premium price because I've always understood brand equity and I've always understood how markets work and creating products that differentiate yourself. I think where the hangup has been in our industry is that, like, how do we do that? We offer services, right? And so I hope that you will take this lesson. I hope that you will start really thinking about that brand power ladder and how you can apply it to your aesthetic business or med spa. Because my hope for you is that you can build incredible brand equity for yourself so that you can charge more, pay yourself more, work with the dreamiest, most amazing patients and clients in your market that are all in on what you and your team provide. That is what I have for you this week, my friend. I will see you next week. Hey, if you're enjoying this podcast and you're a boutique Results Driven Med Spa owner who is looking to drive more sales profitably each month without hustling yourself into the ground to do so, then you should consider Consider applying to join us inside of the MedSpa Advantage. It's the only program designed to help you grow your revenue and profits while gaining back more time so that you don't feel scattered and drained while running and growing your business each month. To learn more about whether or not you're a fit for joining us, you can head over to heatherturveen.com apply to apply to get on a call with us to learn more. That's heatherturveen.com apply to learn more.