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Med Spa Success Strategies
Google Reviews for Med Spas: Stop Losing Clients From a Few Bad Reviews!
00:35:00
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- [00:06]
A
Hey everyone and welcome. This is going to be a little bit of a teaser. We are doing our 2026 marketing series walkthrough right now. This is what we do. One of the things we do every year where we go through a start to finish plan on marketing your med spa as effectively and efficiently as possible. We share updated frameworks, strategies and we already have some new additions to the 2026 framework. And one of those things is what we call the validation phase. How do people make a purchase decision and what are they looking at when they're exploring alternatives? Right. They've got multiple med spas they could do business with. What is going to be the catalyst that gets them to choose your med spa over the others. But today we're going to dive into one specific component of that framework, which is your Google reviews. We talked about this on a team call internally last week and then we talked about it again on an all team call this morning and just dug and poked a little bit more at this issue. And so to kind of give you a teaser on the new EVA framework, it's basically the idea that people that are looking for a med spa, they've already mostly decided they're either interested in med spa services generally or they're going for a specific reason. Right. I wanted to get Botox for the first time or dysport, whatever that is. Microneedling, laser hair. Same thing applies. They've decided they already want the product or service that you offer. They're just trying to figure out where they're going to go. So the EVA framework touches on three different points of the purchase process. The E would be exposure. And this is basically, are people aware that we exist? Are we in their consideration pool? So if they're deciding, hey, I'm probably to the point where I'm considering visiting a med spa. Do we end up in their consideration pool? But step two is inevitably you're going to have multiple businesses that float into, onto your radar, into your consideration pool and you're going to schedule with the, the business that you think is the best option. So we call this the validation phase, phase two. And I think this is where we've talked about internally where we have a big disparity in client performance at times. Lauren and I talked about this this morning a little bit. We have certain clients where like their conversion rate, they're getting a bunch of leads. The cost to generate a lead is really, really effective. But they convert a much smaller percentage of their leads than our typical client. So you might have heard us talk about, you know, 10 to 15% as a general guideline, I guess. Lauren, if you had to say, what's the top end? And I'm using Facebook ads leads there. Cause that's where a lot of our clients spend the bulk of their ads budget. What is the top end on, like, conversion rate? I know it's as an aside, but.
- [02:30]
B
Yeah, I would say like the very, very top end I see usually is like 18 to 20%, and that is like the top 5% of performing clients. Um, and then the average, I would say, is probably between, like you said, 10 and 15, but usually I would say around like 13 is really like the standard top end kind of the board.
- [02:51]
A
Okay. And then on the bottom end, we've had clients that they've got these months where like, conversion rate is abysmal, like, I don't know, 1, 2, 3% in certain months. And a lot of times we're at a loss on that because the data that we have as marketers is we had a bunch of people that filled out a lead form that expressed interest in a service. We've done the research to know we have a competitive, attractive offer. And for whatever reason, people are choosing to move forward. And it's really hard to put a data point behind that. Right. It's not quantitative. Every single individual is making that decision on their own for different reasons. And we do not have an insight that's clear into why those people are making that decision. We've talked about this multiple times on recent episodes and again this morning. But if you fill out a lead form on Facebook or Instagram for a specific product or service, or even click a website for a specific product or service, you will go back to your feed and you will notice you're all of a sudden inundated with other ads for the same or similar types of services and similar businesses. Same thing happens with Med spots. You have to remember when you're running ads on Facebook and Instagram, or again, even if people find you on Google or they just know you exist because they drive by the office, ultimately people are going to have a consideration pool. And during that phase, they're going to research their options and they're going to pick the one that they think is best. So if we're not winning that analysis, that validation step, that's where you struggle with actual conversion rate. And that creates inefficiencies that show up in the form of you're paying too much to acquire a client, essentially, and it throws a wrench in your entire plan and your growth Projections. So that's what we're going to talk about today is one of those things we've talked about, the things that we think typically affect that. We'll go into that more in the 2026 series. But just baseline, website, your social media profiles, your reviews. Lauren, anything else I missed in there? Those are the three that we always kind of anchor too.
- [04:36]
B
Yeah, I think that's good.
- [04:38]
A
So today we talked on our internal meeting about reviews and we did a little exercise with the team and we said, hey, what, what do you do when you're going to read reviews for a business? And Lauren, I guess you want to share just some of those takeaways and how that conversation went, just at least from memory here, what that looked like.
- [04:54]
B
Yeah, I think the first one that was the most common and the one that I do as well is the first thing I do is look up the business, go to the review section and then I always click the lowest reviews first because I want to know what are people complaining about or the bad things and are they things that are game losers or winners for me in that sense. And I think a lot of our team had kind of a similar consensus on that. So we'll go in a little deeper on that and kind of what that means. But that was one of the ways the next was the most relevant or the newest button. Those are actually two separate ones. But the newest button, that's the one that's obviously data or date time. So the most recent time something was left. So of our team members did say they like to see that one because that kind of impacts, you know, as of late, what are the trends looking like and what, how things are performing. And then there's the most relevant one as well, which is kind of a combination of date mixed with kind of what you search, what might match your search and things like that too. It was interesting though because nobody really said that. They just read through the five star reviews. I think we might have had one team member that does that sometimes. But, but nobody's first instinct was let me just go read through the good reviews because it's, it's too easy. You know, like anybody can leave a good review somewhere. They might have been a prompted good review. Was it fake? All those things that can kind of play into it was interesting from our end to here. Um, but the biggest takeaway, I think consensus was that people are reading the lowest reviews first.
- [06:21]
A
Yeah, across our team that was sort of the consensus. And again our team, yeah, there's, it's an anecdotal example, we have a certain age range and demo of our team. We're marketing people, so maybe we have a little bit different behavior. But I would say probably maps relatively closely what people were doing. And so there are a lot of you listening to this that are thinking, well, I don't have a review problem. I've got a 1948-star rating on Google. If you have 4.7 or lower, I would argue you do actually have a review issue. But there are a lot of you listening to this that maybe have a 4.8 or 4.9. It's not a perfect five star, but the vast majority of your reviews are good. But the reality is, like Lauren said, people have all sorts of reasons to discount the positive reviews. Were they friend, a family member, did they incentivize it? Did they give them a freebie? Like any business is going to have some good experiences. So you could, you could essentially cherry pick those different ways. We want to know risk aversion. If this is going to go bad, what does going bad look like? And so most of us want to go see, hey, like what is a bad experience here? And so yeah, like sorting by, like looking at the negative reviews. So some of you that have that 4,849go actually sort by your lowest reviews and go read your lowest reviews and then ask yourself, if I had a relationship, if I didn't have a relationship with this med spa and it wasn't a word of mouth referral and I'm seeing this and you have even a single competitor that doesn't have those types of negative reviews, where are you scheduling your appointment? Right, that's, that's, I think an inescapable reality here.
- [07:46]
B
I think the takeaway we came from those lowest reviews too, which I thought was interesting, is it doesn't even necessarily matter that it's a one star review. Like the people of us who do go look at the lowest reviews, if somebody just left the one and kind of went on about their day, didn't put a comment, anything like that, it's man, maybe we ignore that one and we're focused more on the five stars. If it's somebody that said, oh, I had to wait in the waiting room for 15 minutes. Again, kind of the same thing where I don't really care to wait, so that's fine. Maybe they still have great service, that means they're taking longer with their patients. Where we were more concerned was, okay, is their review something like, they totally botched my face, like my lips were swollen and bruised. For six months. Like all these things, you can always hear horror stories and it's, does that still happen? Is that the case? How recent was that incident? That scenario, if it was three years ago, that that might have happened and the owner left a really good response that explains like, hey, we don't have that injector anymore. That can be a separate conversation as well. But it was also interesting of not just that you have a couple one star reviews or two star reviews, but what are they and what's the meat of them?
- [08:50]
A
Yeah. And everybody has different sensitivity. So is that the thing, like you said, Lauren, that that turns me off, or is that not really a concern? We all do this. Like, I do this with restaurants all the time. If you have low star ratings and you're like, I was a little overpriced. But I know that everybody else said it's a great experience and the food's phenomenal. I'm not going to care if you said, I saw a cockroach climbing up the back wall. But everything seemed great on the like. Other than that, I'm the kind of person that's not going there no matter what. So the context of the negative reviews, there's a ton. And so yes, there's a weighting to this, but people are not judging you for the most part by your positive reviews. In large part, they want to know what the, the baseline worst result is. And they're going to judge that based on the negative reviews. And if the negative reviews you have sound like the person was unreasonable or irrational, there might have been a misunderstanding, or it's not something that's super impactful to whatever I'm considering booking for, maybe that doesn't carry much weight, but if it directly correlates the experience I fear most, it's going to deter me from scheduling an appointment with you. One of the other things we noticed too is if you want to say that, like, people will, I think, read the good reviews too. Right. We want to see what the good reviews are. But I would say it's secondary when people read the good reviews. Are those the things I care about? Right. Are these the things that are going to get me excited? Yes, that's what I'm looking for in a practice. And this is repeated over and over again. Right. You're, you're looking for themes in the reviews to make a determination on both the good experiences and the bad experiences. And then one of the other things that came up was on our conversation, if you have a bunch of good reviews, but the reviews aren't for a service that I'm looking for that might not align. Like, the client that we were referencing today is they have a 4.8 star rating, I think, on Google. But the vast majority are laser hair reviews. So if I'm scheduling for a Botox appointment and I don't really see anything about Botox or injectables, might feel like this probably isn't the place to go to get Botox or Injectables. This is a place that specializes in laser hair removal. So that I think can matter too. And I think people, you can search the reviews for keywords. I don't know how often people do this, but you can go search for the specific thing that you're looking for. I believe you could do that. You can, like, type in the word in the search bar of the reviews. And so if you're looking for, like micro needling and you want to see what other people's experiences were with micro needling, they might be searching or scanning for those types of reviews. So, yeah, that'll. I think that'll be like a shock for some of you. Like a, like a look in the mirror type of moment, where you think you have a good overall star rating, but you're not actually digging in to understand the granular context of what the story is, the story that's actually being told by your reviews. Anything to add to that kind of analysis in the conversation this morning, Lauren.
- [11:17]
B
I would just say, like, take a step back and think about what you do when you're going to pick somewhere. Like, we just had this conversation too, Ricky and I, about, because I went to get a new hair stylist and I did a completely different process than what I might suggest to somebody else to do on the podcast. And so I was like, what am I actually doing when I go to look for something for myself? And that those were the few steps was the lowest. Check their Instagram, look at their posts, things like that. So really take a step back and think, like, if you're looking for your next, I don't know, dentist, hairstylist, anything, what are you looking for and what are you doing in that process to get to that next decision point?
- [11:54]
A
Yep, for sure. And we're focusing this conversation a lot on Google reviews. I think that's the vast majority of where people are still referencing for reviews. Yeah, maybe people are looking at Facebook recommendations in Yelp because Yelp shows up in the Google search results a little harder to control. So the majority of this conversation is focused on Google reviews. Hey, there wanted to briefly interrupt the episode to make a quick ask if you're a podcast listener, it would mean the world to us if you leave a review for the podcast, whether that's on itunes or Spotify. It's something I hadn't really remembered or thought of asking for, but it does help us show up more frequently so that we can reach more people with the information that we're providing. So it mean the world to us if you'd leave a review on itunes or Spotify if you're listening on audio. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the subscribe button so you're in the loop for future videos and you don't miss any of the content that we're putting out. But with that, we have four takeaways, exercises, things to keep in mind here to make sure that you're putting yourself in the best position to win the validation phase. You're in the consideration pool, you've gained exposure. People know that you're there, they know you exist. But they also know that your top three competitors exist and they're going to try to find the right med spa for them. And that's where they're ultimately going to schedule the appointment. We always talk about offer impacting your results from a marketing standpoint, and that's true. But I wanted to talk about a couple other things related to the offer tie in here. So the first thing is we talk about this as offer being the cherry on top. It is not the primary thing that makes the purchase decision. It's not the primary determinant. When we rank these things in order, we always say reputation is first by far and away, and convenience is probably number two. Because if I have two reputable med spas, but one's a mile and one's 30 miles. Unless I have a clear reason to drive the 30 miles, I'm going to go to the one that's a mile away or 15 miles. The third thing is price. So price manipulation and offers can dramatically improve your marketing results, but it's harder to make that work in spite of the other things. It's better as an addition to the other things being calibrated properly. And the other thing we talked about here is you have to keep in mind one of the things we've this may be a step. You know, every action has an equal and opposite reaction happening somewhere else. And there's a butterfly effect to a lot of this. And sometimes we're just talking about a layer or two layers deep. I think we're talking a layer deep than anybody else is talking, and that's still probably enough. And I think that was illuminated in this conversation this morning, which is, think about this. If when we're doing our competitive research, we realize our reputation is not quite as good as the other competitors in town, we have a four, eight, and we've got multiple competitors with four nines and fives. So we go to, hey, okay, I need an even more attractive offer to stand out, to give people a reason to choose me. That's true. I think you do need a more compelling and a more attractive offer on the surface with that combination of factors to get people to choose you because you're not going to win on the reputation points. But if you do that, you have to understand that you've put yourself in a position where you're more likely, at least on average. Like, the percentage of people that you're seeing that did choose you because of price is going to be higher, which means a greater percentage of your clients that are coming in are not the clients that you want to see. They're less likely to retain. It's going to be harder to make them happy and to retain them and, and to get higher initial visit revenues and higher ticket sales out of those prospects. So it's sort of this chicken or the egg catch 22 thing. And I know that can be really, really challenging for some of you. So we want to talk about the solutions, right? How do we make sure that that's just not a problem and that moving forward, we put ourselves in the best position to win. I think some of it is branding, but specifically with Google reviews, let's talk about four takeaways. So the first one is a proactive mindset to getting the good reviews. The overall star rating definitely still matters. It is the. There's a book that we just talked about. I think it's called Think Slow, Think Fast Marketing psychology book. Daniel Bergman. I can't remember the author. I don't want to speak out of turn on it, but it was the idea that there's like this two different versions of decision making. One of them, the frame one, is that we're doing things impulsively based on kind of like emotional response. And the second one is that we're very deliberate and we're researching to make the best possible decision. But sometimes at phase two, we're still hijacked by our phase one response. And I think that can happen with reviews. So people are going to have an initial impression just based on the star rating. And this matters. And we talked about we do want a bunch of good stories being told about our business rate. The percentages matter. If you've got a thousand incredible detailed stories of patients who love you and a couple that are bad and that puts you at a 4, 9, people are going to put more stock into the good reviews. So the ratios still do matter in the context of the good reviews matter. So be proactive about getting good reviews. We've talked about this before, but I think to boil this down, texting your clients or giving them like eliminate friction, right? Don't send them an email, don't filter them if you can avoid it, don't make them jump through hoops. So be direct as possible. I say if you have a link in a text message that goes straight to the Google review profile, you can literally on your Google Business listing. If you go to Google my business or google.com business or if you're logged into the right Gmail account, you just google your business name. It'll pop up and there'll be a button when you're managing your Google listing that says get more reviews. That button will literally take people right to a pop up where it prompts them to leave the review. They don't have to click, they don't have to go to the Google Business listing and then even click the review button. It takes them right to the review field. So make sure that you've got that in the review requests. And one of the things we always say is use favor based language. So don't make it look like this is market research or like just be clear that this is important to you and it would mean the world to you if they would do this. So I saw somebody do this on a YouTube video actually last week where they asked for people to subscribe and his request was, hey, please make sure that you subscribe. It helps me, it helps me book more of the top quality guests that I'm excited to talk to. I was like, ooh, that's not a tie in. I don't like that because that's not a tie in. That's that it's not really asking for a favor that's beneficial to the audience or that there's as much of a tie into. And it's not a favor. It's like there's an outcome that they're not associated with in this case. It's just the favor. So I like the, hey, it would just mean the world to me if you would leave a review. Because online reviews are really important to businesses like ours. I butchered that example so bad. Let me restart that.
- [17:47]
B
No, I just kind of liked the example, to be honest, because I was like, oh, there was a recent listener and you're going to get me better people to listen to. I want that. So I will leave you a review.
- [17:57]
A
I remember, I remember thinking of it in the moment. I was, I was, if you like interviews like this. In his case it was different. This wasn't a good example. In this case it was, if you like interviews like this and you want me to get even more interesting guess, please hit the subscribe. It would mean the world to me. But there was something in his phrasing at the end that didn't ask for it as a favor. He didn't use favor based language, which I would have preferred. Okay, so back to that. So I would say remember to use favor based language if you just let people know that they're doing you a favor. Online reviews are important for businesses like yours, and if they had a good experience, it would mean the world to you. If they went and took a minute to leave a detailed review, I think that's the gist of how you want to ask for those reviews. Simple favor based language. And I would add the nuanced detail in there of ask them to leave as detailed a review as a review of a review as they're comfortable leaving. So maybe not just leave us a review because people's natural instinct is going to be like, great experience, love this place. But if you say it would mean the world to us if you'd leave a detailed review of your experience, they're more likely to add an extra line or some extra context to the experience. And that means if people are searching for a review that mentions the service that they got or a provider, it's going to give a little bit more context to the review. So I think that's a good way to ask for reviews. Lauren, any thoughts on asking for reviews?
- [19:11]
B
Yeah, I think we've talked about this on another podcast somewhere, I think. But for me, when I have like had the experiences where I really want to leave a review, it has helped when the person who I had the experience with is the one asking me for the review. So not just if I get like an automated text from the business after, but if I'm still sitting in their chair and they give me a card to scan or QR code to leave a review about my experience with them. And there are some providers I've absolutely loved where I'm like, yeah, I'll do that. And I'm still Sitting in the chair, it's not a waste of my time. It's not like something I have to remember to do later. And I think that is where I have actually left the majority of reviews is like, oh yeah, I loved you and you just asked me directly for it. I'll do it while I'm still here. So I would keep something like that in mind as well.
- [19:57]
A
Yeah. And I do think timing matters for different services. There's probably a different place and a different time to ask for the reviews. So maybe be a little strategic there. Like if someone hasn't seen the result, if someone came in for one microneedling session and they're unsure about the actual results, don't send them the review request at that point. Make sure you have a, like, in that case, like, make sure it makes sense for the service so that people had time to actually see the results and they're not just commenting on the experience. As a marketing provider, I had a client email us. They love, they love us and they, they really trusted us and they liked how honest we were and it's hard to find that. But at the end of the day, that's not why people choose us as a marketing provider. It's like them, a result. And for your practice, it's going to be both too, and the result matter. So make sure that those are timed appropriately. But a proactive offense makes a ton of sense. I think. We just had a client today with this conversation that had really bad reviews when we signed them and we were hesitant about bringing them on because the reviews, but they just hadn't been proactive. And now just from a couple months of being proactive, they've got their star ratings way, way up from like low mid fours up into the upper range, 4, 8, 4, 9 and 5. So that makes a big difference. Being proactive. This episode is brought to you by MedSpa Magic Marketing, my agency. We help med spas and aesthetics practices grow with more effective marketing strategies. And I know that's a vague phrase, right? That's a vague claim. So I have an offer for you. I offer this to any new prospects if you're interested in exploring any of them. Another marketing option, a new agency, or just getting into Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads for the first time. I'd love to show you why we're different, what we're doing for clients. And we can do that via a one and a half hour planning session where I'll outline a specific marketing plan and I'll give you all of the blueprints that we would implement if we were to do business together. Now, you can take that, use that on your own, hire someone else to help you execute it or work with us. We really don't hold anything back on that strategy call. And I think you'll have a lot of confidence in how you manage your marketing investment moving forward, understanding some of the nuances that can help you implement more effective marketing strategies for your business. So if you want to do that, you can go to medspamagicmarketing.com takeaway number two. Kaylee Krasnow from High Finch talked about this on the podcast and I just cannot agree with this anymore. I hear a lot of our clients, they really are hesitant to, quote, make it right to just get the review to go away because they don't want to admit wrongdoing. If the person was kind of unreasonable, they feel like it's not justified that they go out of their way to make it right. I don't know if you've experienced that too, Lauren. That seems to be the natural pushback we get from clients.
- [22:20]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [22:22]
A
But you all know that listen to this podcast and our YouTube series that we're really big on ROI financials and measurables. Let's talk a minute about the ROI of a negative review or the or the impact on ROI of a negative review and what getting one of those things to go away can do. If people go read a negative review and it even causes five people in the next 12 months to not do business with your med spa. If the average lifetime value of one of these clients is $5,000. And I, you know, we don't talk about lifetime value a ton for other reasons, but let's just say these clients might be spend $5 with you at your med spa in the coming years. And we had five people in the course of a year, you lost $25,000 in revenue. And this is a very real scenario that's probably playing out for many of you every single week, every single month. If that only happens five times a year, you might be losing $25,000 in revenue from those five patients, all because you didn't want to refund $400 to just make a problem client kind of go away. I think that's a mistake. I think your first line of defense is make it right, smooth it over. Even when you're not wrong, it's in your benefit to make sure that that is not reflected online because that one client's negative experience is going to negatively impact your med spa, at least in an incremental degree for years to come. As long as future clients and prospects can read that review, it's going to be one little chink in your armor in terms of your ability to generate new clients. So I would say just if you've got to go refund somebody $500, even though they were being unreasonable, you didn't do anything wrong, they're not going to be a client. It's not going to be a repeated problem with that same person. For the most part. Tell them, hey, you know, obviously we're not a good fit for you. I'm sorry it didn't go well. We'd love to refund your money. Ask them to take the review down if they're open for it. Most people, they're doing that because they feel like their issue was not remedied properly. And if you give them their money back and they feel like the issue is remedied properly, most people will just take that review down. Lauren, do you have any thoughts on that or is that the simple takeaway there?
- [24:14]
B
Yeah, I think that's the simple takeaway. I've seen it work many, many times. I think it's definitely the way to go.
- [24:19]
A
Yeah. Think about the roi. Yeah. Like you might be. We don't want to be stubborn like, yeah, we don't want to let 2, 3, 4, or $500 go to make somebody happy who we think we didn't wrong in the first place. It feels unjust and I agree. But just think about the business benefit of making that review go away and the potential impacts financially. I think it makes it a little bit clearer and easier to make that your first line of defense. So for all of you, that's your first line of defense. And I would go back to clients that are even had problems six, eight, nine months ago, and I would say, hey, listen, we're doing some research. We're looking internally. We're trying to make sure that we do a good job improving. I saw that this came up and I checked where it left off. We wanted to make it right by you. If you feel like you weren't satisfied, it's clear we're probably not a fit to service you. And these reviews mean a lot to us. You can be authentic, transparent about this. Hey, these reviews mean a lot to us. It really hurt our business. Really hurts our business when people have bad experiences. We want to make it right from you. If you're willing to leave that review down, take that review down, we'd be happy to refund your money and go check with A lawyer. I haven't checked the legal ramifications of, like, are we allowed to, like, make it a tit for tat? But I, I think there's probably at least a gray area in a line you can walk where you can do this. So find it. Find your own version. Make sure you're comfortable with the, the process and the framework. So that's takeaway number two, the ROI of making it right. Takeaway number three is the response. I think people go, Lauren, I'll hand it off to you, but I would say the mistake I see people make is they go one of two directions. They either want to argue point by point and they look defensive, or they don't want to engage at all, so they don't respond. I think both of those are mistakes. So your advice for handling a negative review and why it's important to even have a response.
- [25:57]
B
Yeah, I think a million different angles to this one. But first of all, I think it is of utmost importance that you at least have a response to every review. Even your positive reviews, I think need a thanks so much. We loved getting to meet you. Something unique that, you know, shows that you actually replied to them, not just like an AI generated response on the negative ones. I think those times are when you need to step back and it's almost like the refund mentality of, we're not going to be combative about this, but we're just going to explain it. Explain it nicely with education involved as well. Not too long, but a good enough length and get your point across but without fighting. Like, there's no, no reason to be argumentative in a review space and let it keep going back and forth. The reality is, if somebody is reading your negative reviews, what you say back to the bad review is going to make them make their next decision, whether it's, hey, we actually ended up cutting ties with that provider because we just discovered X, Y and Z and now we're working on this. Or, hey, we really appreciate your feedback that you felt like the wait was too long. Here are a couple things that we're doing in office to improve that, or here's why might have happened if it was, hey, my left brow sunk, or whatever that is. You can explain, hey, we gave you a phone call to follow up on this. We would really love to see you back in office. We've tried to reach out a handful of times. We haven't been able to get a hold of you. Explain the situation and explain what you're doing proactively too, to fix it. I think this is the biggest thing is being nice. So nice, almost too nice. Talking about what you've done to remedy the situation, acknowledging that somebody might feel a certain way about whatever happened and then next steps for how it's going to be made better or what's going to change in the future for people reading it, for sure. And I think having a response there shows, hey, we really do care about each patient. We care about the experience you're having, we care about what that response is and we're taking it to heart. And we're going to make improvements based on every review that we get. For example. I think those are some of the biggest things for sure.
- [27:58]
A
Yeah, A response shows that you care and just sometimes letting people know, even if you don't want to get into specifics, just like showing that you've tried to address the issue. Hey, I just want to note that we had tried multiple times to address this issue with you. I'm so sorry we weren't able to make you happy. Even if you don't get to a good conclusion and there's nothing you did wrong and there's, this is not an opportunity for internal reflection. Just showing that you took the concern seriously and you attempted to remedy the situation or at least to communicate with the prospect or with the client, that will give people a little bit of a sense of ease. So that's really important. And then remember who your audience is. When you're leaving a review reply, you are not trying to win an argument with the reviewer who left a bad review. All you're doing is trying to posture yourself the best you possibly can for all of the potential prospects in the future that are going to read that review. That's your audience. So that review response has an audience of every future prospect, not the person that left the review. So being strategic and following a response blueprint that was outlined there by Lauren, I think is really important. And then our takeaway number four is reflection. And again, based on experience, most of the people I've talked to who have bad reviews, it's never their fault, ever. So if you're listening to this, you could probably resonate with that. It's every single client that left a bad review, they were a lunatic. And sometimes it's true. But I think that the default, the impulse should not be to dismiss the negative reviews. I think the impulse first and foremost should be to be reflective and say, hey, did we drop the ball here? Is there something we could have done better? Is that provider not doing a good job? Like, is this is, this happened multiple times. Am I not doing a good job? Good enough job of training or quality assurance? Hey, is there something we could be doing better in the office or with wait times or how we're greeting the person or following up or if someone does have an issue, it's our process for handling the issue. So the first thing is to reflect and to make sure that you're using it as an opportunity for improvements. Like if there is any legitimacy to the review, make sure that it's not an issue again. And then even if there's not, it might have been a communication issue. Right. Somebody misunderstood something and they thought the price was going to be XYZ and it turns out to be ABC and so they're mad that there was a misunderstanding. Well, maybe we have to get better with our communication. We need a better blueprint for our patient intake and how the consult is provided. And maybe it goes back to our marketing. Maybe we're doing something misleading in our marketing or advertising or we're not curating our automation workflows in a way that gets people to like over the hump of really understanding what it is they're about to buy before they get into the office. And now we're putting the point of friction in the office instead of put taking care of the point of friction before they get into the office with communication. So be, be introspective and take time to reflect. Like the impulse from most med spot owners that I've talked to and most business owners in general that I've worked with over the years is it's never your fault. And that might be the case but don't make that the first reflex. Yeah, thought any thoughts on that, Lauren?
- [30:52]
B
I think an interesting thing to add and I it's take it with a grain of salt is there have been a lot of times where I have heard clients have feedback with me of oh, if I get a patient in my chair that I know isn't going to be a good fit from the start I'm telling them that and I'm basically asking them to leave and just telling them we're not going to do service together in a very nice way. Every client that I've had that discussion with has a perfect five star review kind of across the board. So it's almost like they're taking care of that offer up of instead of well I'm going to know I'm going to be combative or defensive based on what they say about pricing and X, Y and Z. So I'm just Not even going to get into that. I'm going to tell them nicely that hey, this probably isn't the best fit. I recommend you go X, Y and Z and take care of that early enough. And like I said, those people really do have perfect five star reviews. Like I, I've never seen an issue with that, especially when the conversation is handled the right. Um, so keep that in mind too that like, maybe not every client that comes in is going to be the best patient ever and you're going to win everybody over. You might, but keep that in mind that like maybe early on we might want to cut ties before we get too deep into the service.
- [31:59]
A
Yeah. And definitely be careful about how you do that too because if you don't do that the right way, then you're going to get a negative review because someone's going to be mad that you'd shun them from your chair. But yeah, that's really important. And again, this is all like contextual and it's based on competition. Right. We are ultimately in a competitive landscape here. As a med spa, you have multiple other practices in your area that are offering the same or similar services. And if people are going and they're finding Google reviews from other practices, you probably have competitors. If you're one of these four, eight four nine practices and you've got somebody in your town that's got a five star, it's possible. Right. And in lieu of any other data point, people are going to choose that other practice if you don't give them a compelling reason. So I think our challenge here though is to go through these steps, make sure that you've got a good process from these four takeaways for how you're not only soliciting reviews, managing responses, but also a system for being reflective and introspective so that you're making the changes you need. And your first impulse isn't to blame the prospect. So a fun little exercise I would say is what we said that kind of started this conversation on our team call today is go to your Google reviews today or sometime this week and sort by lowest and go read those reviews and go read your most recent reviews and then go find your competitor that has the best reviews in your area and ask yourself, if you were a stranger, which one of those businesses would you choose? And I think that'll give you some clarity on how important this is and what you can do to improve your standing in the Google review ratings. And then the last thing I'll add here is keep in mind Google reviews are a third party data point. Right. We're looking at what other people have said about their experience and if we're losing in that battle even incrementally, you're going to have to make up for it somewhere else. So we've been talking more on the podcast about brand and personality and I really think this idea of creating content in the ad space or boosted post boosting some of your social media content and being intentional with your social media content, instead of having people rely on the third party data point, you can create a one to one perception that's first person that over that outweighs third person. Right. We all have a friend that everybody else hates, but we love them and if you were just taking the word of everybody else, you would not, you would think that person's a scumbag. But since you know them and your experience is different, you like them and that's kind of the goal and what you have to do as a med spa. If you're in a suboptimal position from a Google review standpoint and again when I say suboptimal, if you're a four nine and your two competitors and down the street are five stars, you are in a suboptimal position in the competitive landscape. So be intentional about building the one to one interactions that can set you apart and can supplant the third party data point with first party interactions that are direct so that you build those know like and trust deposits with your ideal clients and that can almost overshadow and outweigh anything that causes them doubt in your Google review. So I think those are some things as we're thinking here in 2026. Hopefully that was a helpful exercise for you all. I think we've talked a lot about Google reviews, but I don't know if we've ever done an in depth episode like this. So I hope that was helpful and we'll see you on the next one as we kick off the 2026 series next.