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Lauren
Foreign.
Ricky
Hi, everybody. We wanted to talk today about lead quality. This is a topic that comes up all the time from our clients, prospective clients. Just see it in Facebook groups, people complaining about lead quality. Now we're going to talk about how to overcome lead quality issues, but we're also going to give you some information to understand the nuances related to lead quality and to understand that sometimes the issue is actually not lead quality and, and that it's okay to sift through some dirt to find the gold. So we're going to go through some examples here and hopefully change your thinking and your frameworks a little bit on this too. So lead quality doesn't necessarily matter. What mainly matters is cost of acquisition, initial visit revenue, and lifetime value. If those numbers are dialed in. We don't want to get hung up on lead quality. Now, if you're having a lead quality issue, that means when people get to the bottom of the funnel, the patients that are left over are actually bad quality patients. That's a different problem. But if we're just talking about lead quality, it's okay if 90% of your leads are bad, if you get really good clients from the 10% that do convert. So we're trying to illustrate that and then again give you some examples on how you can actually improve lead quality as well if you make that decision. But just to illustrate a point here, if we have a scenario one where the client is spending $10,000 a month on ads, they're generating a thousand leads a month, and they only have a 5% conversion rate, they that still means they have 50 converted clients. Right? 95% of the people the leads that came through did not convert. But of the 5% that did, if they're good quality clients left over, we only had a $200 customer acquisition cost to get those 50, right? Even with the 95% that were not qualified. Option two here is you spend $10,000 a month, you're pre screening for lead quality, so you have far fewer leads. That's a trade off that you make. So maybe you only have 250 leads now, but they convert at a better rate. So still you only have 25 people left over at the end of that funnel. And that means you have a customer acquisition cost of $400. You're paying twice as much to acquire a client. So this is why we say don't get caught up on lead quality. Assuming that the clients that we're acquiring are of similar quality. Scenario one is going to make a lot more sense, actually optimize for More leads at the top of the funnel, knowing you're going to have a larger absolute volume at the bottom of good quality clients left over. Now, again, if you actually have client quality issues with those $200 clients that you don't see with the $400 clients, there's a point where the scale tips and it makes more sense to pay more for customer acquisition. But more often than not, we see that scenario one is actually going to give us better performance and better roi. So that's kind of the illustration there. Not to get caught up on lead quality, we want to look at the actual bottom line numbers in terms of customer acquisition cost and then the client quality numbers, which are initial visit revenue and retention. Does that make sense? Lauren? I know we kind of walked through this before. We were having trouble making sure that we made that concise.
Lauren
Yeah, perfect.
Ricky
Okay, good. All right, so takeaway at number one here again is focus on the catch rate, not just lead cost. So we want to figure out how many people are we actually acquiring for our ad dollars and not get caught up on the people that don't convert. So you see here we've got two different examples. This is kind of a visualization of what we just showed on the last slide, which is on the left. You have a lot of people at the top of the funnel, a very low percentage of con that convert in terms of the percentage. But we still, at the bottom of this illustration, have four patients left over that we've acquired. In example two, we've got far fewer people at the top of the funnel because we've pre screened for lead quality. So this is what some of you do. You solve for lead quality and you get excited. Now your leads are better quality, you're paying more for the leads, you have fewer number of leads. And even if a larger percentage of them convert, you actually have a smaller number of absolute patients left over. In example two, you only have three instead of four. So that's just kind of a visual illustration. Again, the MA can be more complex than this. You want to understand not just cost of acquisition, but also client quality relative to initial visit revenue and retention. But more often than not, we see again the scenario one plays out to your financial advantage, especially over the long term. Takeaway two, this is one thing, Lauren. We talk about the trade off all the time. You just explain the trade off that we're talking about here with takeoff number takeaway number two.
Lauren
Yeah, absolutely. So as we optimize then for patient quality, we're generally going to accept a higher customer Acquisition cost as a trade, trade off. So Ricky and I always say not everything is black and white, but things are more of a trade off. The direction that you go in, you're accepting a trade off in one place or another. So as you optimize for a better quality patient, maybe that's by having higher ticket offers, less discounting type strategies on your ads, you're genuinely generally accepting a higher customer acquisition cost and fewer patients because of that, and paying more to get those fewer patients in the door.
Ricky
Yeah, absolutely. So I think this is where sometimes we talk about consultants and I think sometimes they're saying what you want to hear, which is don't discount. You want to attract good quality patients. And yes, you can do that, but understand you're making a trade off, you're not, you're not getting everything that you want here. You're making a trade off and that's the trade off that you're making. So just again, an illustration. If you're paying more in customer acquisition cost, you have fewer clients, even if 80% of those people are retained. That means for every five, you have four left over. I'd rather have eight upfront more often than not with five left over. So again, just not getting caught up necessarily on patient quality on the upfront screening, but looking really at the bottom of the funnel, how many good quality clients do we have left over at the end of this initiative? All right, takeaway number three. From what we just illustrated, the discount based strategies usually perform better in terms of the catch rate of acquiring good patience. Right. I think that's more often than not. 90% of the time we see that these discount based strategies because they give us more at bats and more opportunities to develop client relationships. We're in a better financial situation because we have a larger, larger number of absolute clients left over. And that means more clients 12 and 24 and 36 months from now that are coming back for recurring service. So that's the other thing is as you pay more for customer acquisition costs, like Lauren said, you have higher, you pay more in customer acquisition cost, you have fewer clients. And that means as you forecast, two to three years down the road, even though your initial visit margin might be better, right? If you pay $400 in acquisition cost, but your initial visit revenue is a thousand, you're more profitable on the initial visit than you are for to get a $200 client that spends $450 on the initial visit. But you have far fewer people in your recurring revenue model. And as a med spa, most of the services we're talking about, especially like you want people sell people microneedling packages, facials, tox filler. Those things rely on retention and recurring revenue. So you're going to have fewer people in that cycle long term. Anything to add to that, Lauren?
Lauren
I think a big thing too to add with the discount based strategy because I know a lot of people, your first thought when you think of discounting is, I don't care what you're saying, I'm going to get terrible quality people. And I think across the board that just generally is not true, especially depending on the practice and the provider that you have at hand. We have certain clients who might be in the exact same area basically getting the exact same leads, and one has a 75% retention rate where one might only have a 50% retention rate. A lot of that really is dependent on the in office experience, the provider, how they do it, cross selling, upselling and educating. So we're going to talk about those things a little bit later here. But I think that's just really important to kind of remember up front is you might think, oh, there's too much dirt, I don't want to find the gold. But if you really have a good team on hand, you're going to find a lot more gold in said dirt than you might not.
Ricky
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And the other thing here is like being upfront and being clear, like if you're educating your patients properly, you're doing a good consult, you're sticking to your, your treatment plan and your service and you're not rubber stamping offers that that generally works out in your favor. And yeah, it does. Getting a lot of at bats is not as helpful if you're not really dialed in and the people that you're seeing are not thrilled with the service. Like Lauren said. The other thing I would add here is don't get caught up on anecdotal perception. We have this even with like we'll have a client that we talk to and one week we're talking to them and they feel like the lead quality and the next week you talk to them, they feel like the lead quality is good. And what's happening there is anecdotal experiences, right? They've had one or two bad clients that week and they all of a sudden have this explosion that oh my gosh, these are, these are terrible ads. I'm getting all the wrong type of clients and then they have a good week and they're like, yeah, these clients are great. I saw these two people that spent 1200 bucks, both of them are awesome, super friendly and they think the strategy is working. You're going to have ebbs and flows with it. So don't try to, don't get caught up in what you feel like happened that day or that week and do understand like we'll get to in a second. You are sifting through some dirt though generally to find the gold. It depends on how much. How much of that gold are you able to extract? Definitely depends on providers. We've even seen, Lauren, if I'm right, practices that you talked about, two different practices in the same area, running ads with similar acquisition numbers but way different trailing data points. I think we've even seen this within a practice like internally where you've got people that are sending certain leads to one provider and half the leads to another provider and half of them are really working out really well and half of them aren't. But that's actually a provider dependent issue, not necessarily an ads issue.
Lauren
Absolutely.
Ricky
This episode is brought to you by Med Spa 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 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 medspa magicmarketing.com so again, doing this though requires sifting through some dirt to find the gold. I'll acknowledge that there is at least going to be some of it. So you can make the decision that that's a trade off you don't want to make, which we'll get to in a second. But that is a reality. All right. So if you don't want to accept that or you just want to figure out, hey, how do I at least tilt my ads a little bit further in the direction of Optim for lead and patient quality upfront so that I'm not seeing as much dirt to find the gold? Or you feel like this is, this is an issue that's really prevalent to the point is kind of wearing on your providers, right? There's a financial analysis to this, but there's also like a lifestyle analysis. Are your providers getting frustrated? Are you dealing with the risk of negative reviews? Like if you feel like that stuff's flaring up? I think like Lauren said, look internally first. Make sure that you're dialed in. We just talked to somebody that had an issue with one of our Disport campaigns. So we've learned like through running these campaigns for a long time now is we want to be really ahead of patient education on something like a Dysport campaign. Especially the way that we structure the framing. We need to educate people on the price difference between Dysport and Botox. If you don't do a really good job of that upfront and your provider doesn't do that when they're in the office chair, yes, you're going to have problems. You're going to think the lead quality stings, that you've confused people and you're risking bad reviews. But that's again an issue of being on top of that in terms of conversation and communication. Communication again though, if you decide to calibrate in this direction of hey, I, I get what you're saying, but I want to optimize further for lead quality and patient quality, what can I do? We're going to tell you what to do, but understand the trade off you're making is higher acquisition costs. So number one, Lauren, we've been trying to do a lot more of this even with the discount based framing. But can you just go over this first item here?
Lauren
Yeah. So with discount framing or non, we always want to be focusing on reputational framing too. Make it super clear to your patients why they should excited about doing business with your practice. So if you are running a really attractive Botox new patient special, also build in why they should do Botox with your practice. Not just because of the price point. So certain things that we do on ads or we add fun badges to each that kind of embed all of that information, like your star rating, your best reviews and maybe even a couple reviews after the lead comes in, they start seeing some really good before and after pictures. Then also Having some campaigns running in the background of your ads too, just to kind of reinforce those are going to be really important. Making sure that your reputation is front and center in front of absolutely everybody, not just the promotion.
Ricky
Yeah, I think it's funny too how many times that we've talked to a practice where they're like, I don't want to run discounts, I want people to choose me for me. And then we look at their ads and their ads are discount based ads and all they talk about that is discount. It's a stock photo with a promo and then a call to action. There's not even information about the practice. You have to remember, I think that we really believe to our core that the bulk of the purchase decision comes down to reputation. And even with a discount, the discount is the thing that can tip the scales in your favor. But people ultimately want to go somewhere, especially the clients that you're going to retain. They want to go somewhere that's going to be their new bed, spa home, the place that they can trust for months and years to come. And if they don't see that in your practice, the discount is going to pretty much ensure they're only coming for the deal and they're going to leave. So you got to front load this trying to get people excited about doing business with you and your practice specifically. So like Lauren said, embedded in your ads, your copy, your automations, start telling a story that gets people excited about doing business with your providers in your practice.
Lauren
And on top of that too, it's really important make sure your Google reviews are in the place that they should be. Like if you're running right now like a 454647, start working on getting that review volume really built up, getting some positive reviews in the mix. We do see when practices start getting one star reviews that kind of start trickling in at certain times conversion rates do drop off and patients end up dropping off at that time too because they are doing their research ahead of time. Everybody's technology savvy now. They know to go look up practices and see what their reviews for those of you that have lower star reviews definitely start to get that in check too and ensure that everywhere your digital footprint is that people are excited to do business with you.
Ricky
Yeah. And as an aside, there's a correlation there. If you don't have the goods, you're going to have to be more aggressive with with other things like your offer framing. Because when people go research your practice, if they find other practices that are noticeably more reputable it's going to be hard for you to give them a compelling reason to choose you. So try to at least embed some emotional storytelling, develop a connection, show some personality, tell your backstory. You're going to have to rely a little bit more on emotional connection when you can't rely on the third party data that is something like Google reviews. And then the last thing I'll add to that too, Lauren, is I feel like we do talk a lot about, like, hey, let's be more proactive about getting good Google reviews. Let's stay on top of the bad. This is another one of those things, places where I think practices really need to look internally. We've got clients that have over 400 reviews without a single negative one star review. And that does not happen by accident. So generally people have excuses, right? Like that patient was. And sometimes that's true, it just is. Like that patient was ridiculous or they weren't being fair or like this one provider maybe said the wrong thing. But really look internally and take those reviews to heart if there's any legitimacy to them. Try to figure out what you can do in your processes, your systems, your team, your training so that those issues don't flare up again. Because usually these are recurring issues. They're not one offs. Especially for practices that have more than just one or two negative reviews, they've got a handful. Like you said, if you're at a 4-546-rating. But to be honest, in the med spa space, you might as well be a one star, right? That's the restaurant nobody's eating at. We'd all either have a restaurant that had four and a half stars in the med spa space, you're really on the low end of the totem pole in terms of your review profile. So instead of just worrying about review profile optimization and management, also look internally so you just don't have those things flare up. We had Kaylee Krasno on the podcast probably almost two years ago now. She talked about, you want to avoid these reviews, these negative reviews at all cost. And if you have to eat it and go above and beyond to make somebody happy, even when they're being unreasonable and you didn't do anything wrong, I recommend probably leaning into that. Obviously there's a line with all that stuff, but yeah, if you don't have the goods, it's going to be a problem. But embed that social proof into every element of your ads that will help you with lead quality, whether you're running a discount ad or not. Number two, focus on Mid to higher ticket promos. So if you're running really cheap facials or really low cost, like 1020, you didn't injectable ads. There's going to be some sifting through the dirt to find the gold. If you shift that a little bit into mid tier, higher ticket tier services, you're going to pay more in acquisition costs. Don't forget that part. But Lauren, can you give some examples of where we find clients have had success if the issue is patient quality, and that's the issue they're trying to solve. For a couple of quick examples of mid to higher ticket offers that have worked?
Lauren
Yeah, absolutely. We have a couple clients who are just very set on stone that they do not want to do lower discount strategies and that's okay. Like Ricky said, the trade off is just managing the higher customer acquisition costs and the least lower amount of patients coming in the door. So some of those promos are things like Botox first 40 units for 400 or for 3.99. Another really good route to go that if it's not Botox is Sculptra. So that is a very high ticket service, but it also brings in a very, very high quality of a patient. So usually we can see promos on that of buy two vials, get one free, or do 200 off your first vial. Things like that to where it's still high ticket and a service that they're going to spend a lot of money on. But we're going to pay higher customer acquisition costs to kind of go for the quality of the patient in that sense.
Ricky
Yep, for sure. Expect to pay more for leads, probably a little bit lower conversion rate. The leads you will get will be better, but you'll pay more to get them. Number three, level up on your leads management. This is another one of those things. Whether you're running a discount promo or not do it. But especially if you're trying to attract high quality leads upfront, you need to treat them a certain way. And I think that that means providing white glove customer experience at every step. We had Danielle White with Deluxe Aesthetics in Fort Lauderdale on the podcast last year she talked about the customer service experience doesn't start when you're in the office. It starts with your leads management. So many of us and so many of you are looking for ways to automate outsource and AI your leads management right now. I think it's a way to differentiate upfront is to be personable, be proactive with your customer service experience at the lead stage. I think that's a good way to start leveling up and creating the perception that hey, I want high quality clients, I'm a high quality practice and we're going to treat our patients accordingly. Anything to add to that, Lauren?
Lauren
No, I totally agree.
Ricky
Hey there. Wanted to briefly interrupt the episode to make a quick ask. If you're a podcast listener 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, that we're putting out. Number four, Lawrence. I know. Got a few good ones on here. Instead of going with discount based promos, you can get creative with your offer framing. So we've got some examples of things that we've done that kind of lean more in the direction of creative offer framing. That's combo or add on offers instead of just discounting a service. There's some merit to this in terms of attracting better quality patients. But again, we sound like a broken record. But I just want to reinforce that when you make these decisions, there is the downside almost all the time when we lean away from like a 20 unit, 179 Botox offer into one of the strategies Lauren's going to share. We're paying more to acquire the customer to make to shift that burden there. So go ahead Lauren. A couple examples there.
Lauren
Absolutely. So a couple options here still involve some form of discounting. It just might not be as steep as what we would generally say if we're going to optimize for customer acquisition cost. So one option is one that we've talked about a whole lot. It's the Botox plus Facial combo or Botox plus custom facial. That is a really solid combo offer where we're essentially framing that the facial has an impact on your Botox results and it's this great combo experience. Basically when people come in for that, they end up getting to see two providers rather than just one, building practice love and awareness rather than just one provider reputation. So with that we usually see much higher retention rates and really, really good quality of client High spenders on that visit. Another thing that I've been doing with some of my clients as of late, there are some people entering the space right now who are big brand, big box kind of franchise opportunities or options that are running their Botox cost per unit super cheap, like $758 a unit in certain areas. And a lot of my practices just don't want to be that cheap. So with that we're doing more combo offer framing of hey, why don't we still do Botox for a little bit of a discount, maybe 20 units for 199, putting your Botox at like $10 a unit and then adding something on top of it that's cost to you but high value and high attractiveness to the patient. So one of my practices in South Carolina specifically, we're doing that Botox 20 units for 199 promo, adding on a free dermaplane, which for them is typically $100 service. So what we're seeing there actually is interesting. It's lower lead cost and lower customer acquisition cost, but way higher quality of patient. And I think a couple things on that are one, it just is a higher price point for that Botox. They know they're paying $10 where the place down the street might be offering it for $8, but they're getting a hundred dollars free which to the practice is really $5 for a derma bleeding tip. But it's that value add that makes people really excited about doing business with them and going in for that offer. So what we've seen on that one so far is we've had zero no shows, which is actually phenomenal. And their average initial visit revenue has increased by 250 doll. So phenomenal. So definitely just some ways that you can get creative with how you frame the offers. It doesn't just have to be the very cheapest discount in town. Likely more than not you're going to increase customer acquisition costs a little bit, but you might also increase that patient quality with it too.
Ricky
And Lauren, tell me if you agree with this. Like I would say your add ons, they need to be complementary and have broad appeal. So like a dermaplate. Absolutely. Anybody that's getting Botox, they're like oh, I'll also do that. It's a no brainer. It's going to be something that has a nearly 100% overlap. So you can't sell Botox and then your add on is something that only 20% of your Botox people want. It's got to be nearly 100% overlap that the thing they're buying. Almost 100% of the people buying that thing will also be like, oh, yeah, I might as well do the add on. Is that right, Lauren?
Lauren
Absolutely. I have another client who's testing something similar right now, but their add on is one free laser hair removal session. Not everybody wants laser hair removal, especially on that certain area. And that offer is not working nearly as well as the dermaplaning offer. So it's definitely a really good point to bring in, Ricky, is it has to be something everybody wants. I have another client who's getting really, really attractive with it and doing a free diamond glow facial, which is a why not? Why would I not want that as a free option? So definitely something that has to have broad appeal.
Ricky
Yeah, broad appeal. 100% overlap. And they have to be excited about it. And low cost of goods is a good one. I think Lauren too, like, one of the benefits of this is marketing is an ever evolving space. Gary Vaynerchuk says marketers ruin everything because once we figure out what's working, everybody does it until it's like, like beaten like a dead horse and then you got to move on to the next thing. So some of this is as you see competitors running similar or the same types of offers, your ads that you used to run that were successful are now less attractive, they're less noticeable, they don't stand out in the market. So just doing something different creates like the Seth Godin purple cow effect and that, that offer example. Lauren, probably none of their other competitors are running that exact same type of offer. So there's not an apples to apples comparison like there is when you're just running straight Botox at a unit price, a bundled price. Yeah, yeah. Good examples, though. So. So like Lauren said, sometimes this even works where we get the benefit of lower cost per lead. But get creative with your offer framing. I will. Word of caution. There is. I think you're probably going to test a couple things that are just not going to work if you go this route. Right. We've done that before. Like some of them hit, some of them miss. So just don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and don't get discouraged if you try something and it doesn't work. And hopefully those little tidbits of looking for something that's broad appeal, 100% overlap and low consumable cost gives you some direction. Number five, check your targeting. This is something Lauren brought up we were looking at the first couple slides is if you actually have a Lead quality issue. That's here's the problem with this. If you have a lead quality issue and even though your customer acquisition cost can be satisfactory, if people are coming only for the deal and they're coming from far away, you can pretty much bank on the fact they're only becoming coming for the deal. And that's going to show it show up in terms of your retention numbers especially. So check your targeting, make sure your ad spend is focused on high end affluent areas very close by your practice. Lauren, anything else to add to targeting that you feel like are lessons learned as of the last 12 months?
Lauren
I think what I have learned actually with a couple of my practices is that certain offers, even though you run them in the same exact area, are gonna attract a certain type of person too. Or they might be a little bit more popular in one area versus another. So those can be like let's say I'm running a Botox ad and usually we get really great quality clients, no issues with that. Then we try to introduce something like a 25 facial ad. Then we start having a lead quality issue. I think that is where that scale can kind of come in of where your offer is sitting and where you're kind of playing into also. But I think mostly making sure that you're hitting high end affluent areas is going to be super important.
Ricky
Yeah. And I think we try to get a little cute with this. I don't know how well it works with Facebook's current targeting criteria, but you might as well try. Some people just draw a giant circle around their practice. Most of you, if you're advertising you're doing like 15, 20 mile out bubble, actually go in there and use the 1 mile bubble pin drop feature and try to map out the places that are actually the affluent areas. You might have people that drive 20 miles east of you consistently. I live in a suburb east of Nashville. People will drive from 20 minutes east of here because there are far fewer options. People are not going to drive from the west side of Nashville to here even though it's 20 miles. So drawing a giant circle at 20 miles doesn't really make sense.
Lauren
Sense.
Ricky
Make sure that you're targeting the areas where people are actually realistically going to drive. Follow the 8020 rule. Where are our customers going to come from? They're going to be coming back to us on an ongoing basis. And then there might be an overlap where there's a really nice area next to a bad area. Now as people drive through these areas they get cookied. This is not perfect, but you might as well at least try to narrow it down by being a little bit more granular and specific with your targeting bubbles too. This is something we've talked about. Lauren hinted on it earlier in the episode here, but I think trying to develop the know, like and trust element before the ask or in conjunction with your offer based ads is a good strategy, right? Most of our clients come to us because They've watched our YouTube videos and listened to our podcasts like this. So if you can get people excited preemptively about doing business with you, you're going to see better results. You're going to create a snowball effect. So putting out educational materials that get people excited that, that build on those elements of know like and trust, putting some boosted ad dollars behind those things so that hopefully everybody, every time somebody logs on Facebook, Instagram and for this strategy, maybe even TikTok. Lauren, like, if the play is just no like and trust, I want my Target demo every time they log on to the Internet and social media to be scrolling and to have some sort of attention grabbing information that builds on the know like and trust element from our practice. Because that'll build the snowball effect where people are all of a sudden seeking you out, not just responding to your ads. A couple caveats to there that we've been paying more attention to is if you do this, if people aren't already associated with your practice, they're not going to sit there and watch a video of you talking about the difference between Botox and Dysport. So if you start off your videos like today I wanted to talk about the difference between Botox and Dysport, you're probably going to get a lot of people that tune out. But if you can create effective catchy hooks and you can do that on a repeat basis and then introduce the concept, you're probably going to have better success. So try to find ways to quickly throw a hook in there that gets people excited. Like, like not many people know that this is. Not many people know this one fact about dysport, like whatever that is that gets people interested enough to watch the next 15 or 20 seconds of the video. Focus on that. Incorporate that into some of your ads and your social materials. Put some dollars behind that if it's boosted posts. So that's supplementing your offer based ads. Our clients that have built up demand for their services and are known in the community get significantly better results in terms of the direct response ads that we run. So you can build that on your own through some of those no like and trust boosts. Any Any additional words on that, Lauren?
Lauren
Nope, I think that's perfect.
Ricky
Okay. Well, that was it for today. Hopefully that was valuable and helpful. Again, this is the lead quality issue that comes up a lot. Hopefully this gave you some nuanced understanding of hey, is lead quality actually an issue? What are the trade offs that we manage with different ad strategies? And how do I accept that sometimes we're sifting through the dirt to find the gold? And also, let's not focus on the things that don't convert. Let's look at our numbers based on the clients that do convert. Hopefully that gives you some better direction and better alignment in terms of expectations on your advertising initiatives. We'll see you on the next one.
Episode Title: How Med Spas Can Improve Lead Quality
Host: Ricky Shockley
Guest/Co-host: Lauren
Date: September 22, 2025
This episode tackles the all-too-common issue med spa owners face: "lead quality"—specifically, why med spas obsess over it, what actually matters more to profitability, and practical strategies to improve both quantity and quality of leads. Ricky and Lauren break down the tradeoffs inherent in different advertising strategies, challenge misconceptions, and offer actionable tips to refine your lead acquisition and lead management processes.
If you decide your practice should focus more on qualifying leads upfront, Ricky and Lauren offer these steps:
| Timestamp | Topic / Segment | |:-------------:|:------------------------------------------------------| | 00:06 | Framing the lead quality debate | | 01:01 | Why bottom-line metrics matter more than lead quality | | 04:03 | Tradeoff: lead quality vs. customer acquisition cost | | 05:06 | Discount strategies and long-term value | | 06:48 | Importance of in-office experience and retention | | 08:05 | Avoiding anecdotal reasoning and provider impact | | 11:37 | Embedding reputation into ad copy and campaigns | | 14:03 | Managing Google reviews & reputation’s impact | | 16:36 | Examples of higher-ticket promotions | | 19:32 | Creative "combo" and add-on offers | | 22:06 | Offer add-ons: achieving broad appeal | | 25:23 | Fine-tuning audience targeting | | 27:27 | Building “know, like, trust” through content |
The episode is practical and direct, a little contrarian to standard advice (“just get better leads!”), and leans heavily on data and real-world med spa lessons. Ricky and Lauren’s tone is grounded, collaborative, encouraging ongoing testing, realistic about tradeoffs, and insistent on quality follow-through in operations and branding.
Summary prepared for: Med Spa Success Strategies Podcast, Episode released September 22, 2025