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Med Spa Success Strategies
Insider Secrets: Marketing Strategies That Are CRUSHING It for Med Spas (Summer 2024 Edition)
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- [00:00]
Ricky Shockley
Hey there and welcome to MedSpa Success Strategies, the podcast where MedSpa and aesthetics practice owners come to discover strategies and tactics that help them better market and manage their practices so they can grow, improve profitability and have more financial freedom. I'm your host, Ricky shockley, owner of MedSpa Magic Marketing. Today I'm really excited to be joined by Lauren McAtee. Lauren is our lead digital marketing specialist at Med Spa Magic Marketing. She manages and guides online advertising strategies for med SPAs in over 16 different states. States overseeing roughly a million dollars in annual advertising expenditures. Today, Lauren and I are peeling back the curtain on the advertising strategies, services and offers that are generating the most significant and consistent results for our clients across the United States. If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to check out our YouTube channel, MedSpa Magic Marketing on YouTube, where I provide deep dive walkthroughs on the exact strategies and frameworks that Lauren and I are going to recap in today's conversation. So I'm confident you're going to learn some things about how to optimize your advertising expenditure and better guide your marketing programs for the remainder of 2024 in today's episode. All right, Lauren, I'm excited about this episode today to do a little bit of a deep dive on the strategies that are working best for us right now, really across the country. And we know that there are a lot of different things we can be doing from a marketing standpoint. A lot of things you could be doing as a Med spa. Sometimes it's a struggle to figure out where to spend your ad dollars, what's working best, what strategies to focus on, what, what services to promote. So we wanted to talk a little bit about that today. And the first thing I wanted to talk about, as per our YouTube series, we did a multi part YouTube series on marketing your MED spot in 2024 and we prioritized some of those things in terms of order. So where would we be spending our ad dollars first and foremost, and that is Facebook and Instagram ads, reason being lowest cost of customer acquisition across the board. And we'll get into that a little bit later, but Facebook and Instagram ads is obviously a wide open topic. So Lauren, one of the things I talk about first that we discussed were the services that we're finding the most success with from a Facebook and Instagram ad standpoint, why that is, and then maybe some services that are a little bit more of a struggle. So in your opinion, what are the ads across the country that we're running Right now where we get the most consistent top notch result from ads.
- [02:10]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, I would say overall, since we've started running Facebook Instagram ads for med spas, that number one performer has been a Botox campaign. So that that typically comes from their name recognition of the product. But even kind of expanding off of that a little bit, our top three, I would say right now are Botox, Dysport and filler.
- [02:28]
Ricky Shockley
I know one of the things we talked about so there's so that not only are those the types of campaigns, Botox, Dysport, filler, that generally get the lowest cost of customer acquisition, the largest volume of people through the door, but the other benefit, the other thing I really love about those services is once you get a Botox patient or like a filler patient, dysport patient through the door, that's a service where people now trust you to provide a service that is going to determine what their face looks like for the next three months. And so I think also it's like a double win here. So we're getting the lowest cost of customer acquisition. Those are the ads that generally work best because there's a broad awareness of those services, a lot of interest in those types of services. And then people are more likely to stay because now they know like and trust you based on experience. And, and that kind of goes into the next topic, which is some of the ads that we're finding to be a little bit more challenging. And I think one of the common threads we talked about were some of these services are a little bit of a race to the bottom. So you want to talk a little bit about what the services are that we feel like are a little bit of a struggle. And then if you want to advertise those and you're listening to this podcast, what we recommend in terms of strategies, we'll get into that. But what services would you say are a little bit more of a challenge for us right now?
- [03:38]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, so I would say the things that are a little bit harder to run in an ads environment would be the higher ticket services like some aglutide PAC packages or any of the weight loss related packages and then some of the higher ticket lasers or machine related ads. So coolsculpting M Sculpt all of those related machines to weight loss as well. I think mainly the reason that those are just more difficult to advertise is number one, the price point and number two, the competition in price around the area. And right now there's just too many big box competitors that are advertising these at such A low price point that isn't even a price that we would be comfortable promoting or providing to customers.
- [04:17]
Ricky Shockley
Yeah, and, and I think we talked about this yesterday. It's. It kind of has evolved quickly, especially with the weight loss. So if you're listening to this, most med spas we talk to when we first get on a call. One of the things that our clients want to talk about advertising are, you know, the semaglutide, tirzepatide and the weight loss programs. And I think it's changed so much in the last 12 months. You know, I might be a little off on my timeline but I'm just thinking roughly a year ago when we were running these ads, it was sort of the case where if you were running semaglutide ads you were maybe the only person in town that had it. Supplies were limited and people wanted to get their hands on it because it was the hottest thing in weight loss. Still is. But the challenge has become every single business has some of who tighter Zepatide and so it's become like a commodity race to the bottom in terms of price. So do you feel like there's anything. I know we're trying some more unique things here the last couple months and I know probably some of the data is early on that I was looking at one of our campaigns and I think there were a few things maybe that we were doing to try to help our clients stand apart and avoid that race to the bottom. So you want to speak a little to maybe those strategies and anything you think we can do in terms of an interesting tweak or angle to advertising a weight loss program that might give us a better chance of success.
- [05:25]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah. So part of the conversation that we always have with clients when we're going to launch these promos is number one, if you don't want to be the cheapest, what are you going to do that makes you stand apart and make people want to come to you for that product or that service? And a lot of times it's pretty hard to compete in that space, honest. Because a lot of the bigger brands are advertising. You know, for 129 bucks a month we'll send you some glue tied right to your door. You inject it yourself at home and you can have access to our providers 247 online for meetings and follow up appointments and things like that. So that's really where you have to find those angles where you're going to stand apart and how you're going to be different or better. So some of the things we're testing in the ad space right now are side by side comparisons between what's different between how you offer the semaglutide and how other people do. So some of those might be, you know, talking about the access they have to actual providers and coming in office to talk about maybe some side effects or things you're experiencing or how we have single use vials rather than a one vial product that has all of your injections in one. So a lot of our, you know, clients will get into the nitty gritty details of why they're unique in those aspects. But even advertising that in this, you know, in the space of Facebook, Instagram ads. The two things we like to say with our ads are we want our offers to be clear and concise. So people didn't wake up looking for semaglutide that day. They were scrolling through their feed and it popped through and they saw it and maybe it grabbed their attention. But somehow, quickly, we have to communicate that message to them that we are the different and better option, aside from just seeing that price point stickered on the ad. So those are the things we're kind of testing right now are just some side by side comparisons, leaving price out of the mix and showing why we might be the better option to go with for a weight loss program rather than one of the retailers online.
- [07:11]
Ricky Shockley
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- [09:38]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah. And it's all about understanding, like the trade off of these ads too, and what we're trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish. So, for example, if you just want as many new patients in the door as possible and you're trying to do that through the ad space, that would be our first recommendation to go with a Botox or Dysport ad where it's going to be cheap to get people through the door. It's not to say that running a semaglutide ad at a not discounted price isn't going to work. It's just going to be a lot more expensive to actually get that person through the door. So I know, for example, we have one client right now who understands the price comparison and they're doing a really, really steep promo for your first two months of the product. So they're getting tons of people in the door for like less than $100 cost of customer acquisition. But, but they've seen that those people end up staying with them for between 8 to 12 months. So in the end of it they're looking future ahead. You know, their return on ad spend there ends up being incredibly positive. Some people however though, if they don't want to discount the semaglutide, they're still getting people through the door for maybe every two to $300 they're spending on ads and they're staying with them again for that six to 12 or eight month timeframe and still making good money off of that. It's just, you know, for every thousand dollars you're spending in ads, if you bring in three semaglutide patients, you could have brought in maybe 10 or 11 Botox patients who you could have transferred into other services when they're in the office. So those are all the things that we're just managing the trade off with what we choose to run in the ad space.
- [11:03]
Ricky Shockley
Yeah, I think that's really important. And we try to get clients to understand aligning your ad strategies with your goals. So if you're a new business, like you need activity, you need bodies through the door. I call, I've been calling them at bats like right. You need more opportunities to serve clients, present information and make more people aware of the things, other things that you do. So for those people, if you're like, hey, I've got a lot of empty slots, I've got too many practitioners, I've got too much space, I need my appointment slots full, I need a lot of activity through the door, then you're really going to want to lean heavily on those Botox dysport filler ads like Lauren just mentioned with something like semaglutide. And I think the same applies to some of these other services like a CoolSculpting or Emsculpt or the laser product, you have to understand that you're going to generally have a higher customer acquisition cost. So if you're spending, for every thousand dollars you spend promoting semaglutide, if you only have three or three people actually come in and book and pay for services, let's say it's three people. So your customer cost of customer acquisition is $333 as you outlined Lauren. So let's say you're breaking Even, or maybe losing money on the first month. But then you start to build a significant return on investment after you get past month three or four with retention. It can still be really effective once you actually crunch the numbers. But your perception guaranteed is going to be that this is not working. Because if you spend $1,000, most people have this, I think, warped idea that they're going to just get dozens or hundreds of people through the door. You can get dozens of people through the door on Botox, Disport and Filler. When you're running these ads, not so much with the higher ticket services. There's just a harder, a bigger barrier to entry. You have a bigger hurdle to force people to jump over to decide to do business with you and pay that much money for service. So you're just creating more friction. And then those things, like we said, you do generally see that there's a little bit of a race to the bottom in terms of price. So listening to this, I know we talk to people all the time. Everybody wants more CoolSculpting MSculpt laser appointments. And one of the reasons that you struggle with that is there really is a supply and demand issue and a race to the bottom in terms of price. So one of the other things Lauren, we talk about, and I kind of jump a little bit here, is if you're, if you're wondering what services might resonate best with your target customers, you need to probably test those things out with your internal list. So, for example, if you're doing an mscope package and you've got a really attractive promo on your mScope package, and you run that promo to your existing database and you just don't seem to get any bites, that's probably an indication you're going to have a less significant result from an ad standpoint too. So you can kind of use that as your testing round. We've done that on and off. I think that can be a good strategy. Any thoughts on that?
- [13:36]
Lauren McAtee
No, I totally agree. That's exactly accurate.
- [13:40]
Ricky Shockley
Okay, so we've gone through the types of services that we think are probably best most effective from an advertising standpoint. The things that you have to understand the math with and that are going to be a little bit more of a challenge with the core services that we're finding that are working best to create activity. The Botox, Dysport and Filler promos. We have a specific framework that we use and right now we're acquiring customers. So for every thousand dollars our clients spend on ads, they're seeing 15, 20, 25 actual booked appointments through the door. So those numbers are significant because we're seeing cost of customer acquisition as low as, you know, 30, 40, $50 on a lot of these campaigns. But you have to follow a specific framework to do that. So a lot of you that are listening to this podcast have listened to me interview other guests, outside contributors, but a lot of you don't necessarily listen to our YouTube channel. We go a lot more in depth on some of these marketing Things on the YouTube channel. So if you haven't checked out the YouTube page, MedSpa Magic Marketing on YouTube recommend that you do that. So I want to give kind of this precursor information. It's our contention that people are making purchase decisions based on three buckets of factors. Factors of know like, and trust. So this could be your Google reviews, Yelp reviews, what they see on your Instagram page, the look and feel of your website, anything that builds on factors of know like, and trust, factors related to price and factors related to convenience. Where are you located relative to where they work or live? So understanding that we're not going to change our location can't do anything about our office. It is what it is. Um, and our reputation is not going to evolve overnight. That sort of is what it is, too. So when people are doing that mental scorecard, trying to decide where they're going to go for that first visit, the easiest thing to manipulate to get people in for the first visit when they haven't gone somewhere for Botox yet or they're new to town, or they haven't been somewhere in a while and they're looking to dip their toe back into the service pool. Here is price. So, Lauren, can you talk a little bit about the pricing strategies that we generally use that we find that we're finding the best results with, maybe specifically on Botox and Dysport. And then we'll go to filler, because filler, I think, has a little bit more nuance. But Botox and Dysport, let's go over maybe some standard pricing strategies that we're finding that are working best.
- [15:45]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, absolutely. So on a Botox ad, for example, of course this is going to be dependent on where you're located in the country, what other competitors around you are running, what their per unit pricing is, you know, what your cost of Disport is, etc. All of those kind of things that play into how we're going to make this decision on the discount of it. But the strategy we really like to use is a 20 units for X amount promo. So anywhere between 20 units for 179 to 20 units for 199. And I know a lot of times when we say those promos, the first initial thought that you're going to have is like, whoa, that's really cheap for 20 units. Why are we going to do that? But again, like we've discussed getting somebody in your door and in your chair for a reasonable price, or even the low prices like we're getting on cost, customer acquisition right now is worth it so much in the long run. So typically, even though these promos that we're running are usually 20 units 179 or 20 units 189, the people that come in for that appointment end up spending anywhere between 450 and $600. We even have some people spending upwards of $1,000 plus because they end up getting filler or a facial or some other services when they're actually in your chair. So our number one goal here with these promos again is just to get people in the chair to get FaceTime with your provider and the people in your office. So I know Ricky's talked about this on a lot of other podcasts and episodes as well. But this also all plays into how you do in your office and how your staff does and what that experience is like when they come in. So for example, you know, if you run this promo, 20 units, 1 79, you get somebody through your door for $60 cost of customer acquisition. You might not be making a lot off of that initial visit, but once they come back for their follow up visit, then they come back for their three month follow up appointment, then they continue to return throughout the course of months and years. That's where the lifetime value of these campaigns really makes it a successful return on our ad spend. So in order to get that though, we have to give this person a fantastic experience. Especially if they've had Botox before. We need them to be confident in our injectors, confident in our team, and really enjoy the experience and the environment when they come in. So that's crucial really to the performance of these campaigns too. It starts with the promo for people to see it, our graphics to make it attractive enough to want to fill out the form, our automations to make it successful, to get them to book, and then you all to have a great experience with the patient once they're actually in, to get them to come back and continue returning with you forever. So typically on Botox, that's where I'm going to say, like the promo range works Best. The reason we really like that strategy is because $179 or $189 is a really digestible cost for people to want to pay to get the result that they want. So Maybe they'll get one area with those 20 units, but people are okay with spending that amount. It's not a hard amount to swallow for most consumers in the area. Our other contention is if we're running a discount on Botox based on the per unit pricing, that's probably going to attract the people that we're going to call discount shoppers or the people who you think are going to go, you know, and be like a Groupon patient. So the people who are going to come in from a promo because of a per unit price probably already know a lot about Botox or have had it before if they're recognizing your per unit price over a per unit price that they've had before. So when you're doing the 20 unit promo, though, they're just seeing that as like, oh, maybe I'll get an area for $189. Perfect. I can totally swallow that. Let's go. So those are the kind of things to factor in. Do you have anything to add to that, Ricky?
- [19:19]
Ricky Shockley
No, that. I love that. That makes so much sense. And then just to elaborate on a couple things that Lauren said, I use it on the YouTube channel all the time. I don't remember how often I've used this on the podcast, but one of my favorite quotes on marketing is action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action. And it's from a book called the Advertising Effect. It's the idea that the best way to shape the perception of the user is through an actual experience with our business. So if we want people to believe that we're the best med spot in the area, and like Lauren said, we're confident we're going to give them a good experience. When they come in, they're going to feel comfortable. And the best way to do that is to get them to come in and have an experience and do business with us. I always like to use this example. The reason that the local Mexican restaurant puts a flyer in your mailbox for buy one get one free entrees is not because they plan on making a killing of selling you one entree and giving you one for free. It's because that they understand that they can shape your perception based on experience. So if you come in and you have a good experience at the restaurant, you like the food, you like the staff, you like the margaritas, you're likely to come back maybe every week, every month for birthdays, bring family and friends. And that's where you start to see lifetime value and significant return on investment. So that's why the strategy is so critical. And I love that nuance of why we don't like the unit price because we know that's going to really stand out to someone who's our kind of a trained Botox customer. They're really attuned to the unit price as opposed to the total dollar amount. Because if people have been thinking about, well, I've just got this problem, these wrinkles and this, I just feel like I'm getting a little older and I would like to do something about it. Like you said, it's really digestible to see like 20 units, 179, 189 makes it a really attractive initial offer. Yeah, so what? Sarah Schickman, real quick. So some of you I know have an aversion to discounting. We have a whole video on the YouTube page about why discounting strategies work. It kind of, I kind of just recapped that a little bit here. Sarah Schickman, on an earlier podcast episode, she mentioned that she grew multimillion dollar multi location practice that she eventually sold on the back of Groupon at the time. So a top 20% of her patients, 80% of those people had originally come from Groupon. So she talked about the idea that everybody loves a discount, even your affluent customers, especially when they've got other options. They've got other reputable options generally in the area. So if we can give them a promo to get them in for the first visit and then get them to stay and pay our normal prices because they know like and trust us, that's the recipe for success. Okay, so Lauren, what about the, the Discord? Cause I think that's becoming more popular. We're having even more success with Discord ads. Some of those are even outperforming the Botox ads, I believe. So do you want to talk a little bit about promos?
- [21:42]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Dysport really, like Ricky said, has been not newer, but a little bit newer to us in the ad space just because it's becoming more recognized in the name now. So, you know, even when we started running Botox ads, some of our customers who want to run ZMN or Daxify or things that are similar but aren't exactly Botox had a little bit of a harder time actually making the numbers work and making those as successful just because the name recognition wasn't there. But now with Dysport, it's a lot more popular and the name recognition is there now. And the nice thing about about Dysport is so Disport and Botox are, you know, like the three to one ratio in the unit pricing. So a lot of spas will offer Dysport at what Botox per unit pricing would be. So they'll call their Dysport $12 a unit, when really it's $4 a unit per Dysport. But they're making the comparison so that the average consumer can understand it. So that makes sense maybe from a website standpoint where you can have, you know, paragraphs to expand, explain that comparison and how that works. However, in the ad space, where we're kind of a little bit lucky, honestly, is that that per unit price is so, so low. So we can run Discord ads for a promo price of like $3 a unit. And in the ad space, I think it's something in the Facebook algorithm where they just understand that lower price point things are going to give you a cheaper cost per lead and a cheaper cost to customer acquisition. That's really just the case. So with our Discord ads, a lot of our cost per leads right now are between three and five dollars, which is crazy cheap to get somebody's contact information that's interested in that service that you're offering. For Botox, we're still getting those incredibly cheap, but they're between like seven and $15. Because again, that price point in the ad is just a little bit higher looking. When they actually come in and spend with you, the Disport clients are ending up spending the same amount that they would have spent if they did Botox, if that makes sense. But in the ad space, it just looks so much cheaper. So we're able to get cost per leads for really, really cheap there, and then we're able to convert them for a cheaper price, too, because of how digestible $3 a unit sounds to the average consumer. So we did have a little bit of problems when we first started running Dysport ads, where a lot of people would understand that Botox and Dysport are different. And some people did not understand that at all. So we did have some frustration with clients coming in thinking that they're going to get the equivalent of one unit of Botox for only $3, so that we had to work over that hurdle and kind of finding a way to communicate to people how that works. So a lot of times we ask that our clients actually record a video of the provider that's going to be doing the service, just talking about what Dysport is, why it's different than Botox. You know, it's faster acting, it spreads faster, those kind of things. And we put that in our automation drips. So not only does it play into that one bucket of know like and trust, because they actually hear the provider that's going to be doing the service talking to them and like, you know, sharing their opinions in a video of what their appointment is going to look like. But it also gives them that little bit of knowledge to understand the pricing difference, how many units they're going to need all of those things before they actually come through the door. So right now, really, if, if you asked me three months ago what I would suggest you running on Facebook, Instagram and spending most of your budget on, I would have said Botox. But now with how cheap Dysport cost of customer acquisition is, that's my first go to for every new client we get right now is do you offer Dysport? Let's definitely run a Dysport promo. Our cost customer acquisition really across the board right now is between like 30 to $45 on these campaigns. We have one client's getting like $13 cost of customer acquisition on their Dysport campaign. So that promo is just absolutely fantastic to get people through the door for a cheap price.
- [25:28]
Ricky Shockley
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 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 medspa, Magic marketing dot com. So with that said, that's how the ads platform works. Let's jump back into the ad offers. We talked about Botox and Dysport. So filler, I think is a little bit more complicated. Lauren, what are the promos and the angles that we're using right now for clients across the country that we're getting the best results for? For filler? Lip filler?
- [26:40]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, I would say when it comes to a filler promotion, the first thing I talk about with all my clients is what their age range is like in the current clients that they have and around their area. So of course there are just certain areas where the demographic is younger. You know, it's maybe between like a mid-20s to early late-30s and then other demos where it's an older demo. So Maybe there are 50 plus people who are coming through the door on a consistent basis. So that's the first thing that we want to consider. And the reason for that being is we have really good success when it comes to doing lip filler promotions. However, if you have an older demographic, the lip filler related offers aren't going to resonate as well necessarily with that audience as a facial lifting filler ad would, per se. So that's the first thing that we talk about is what demo we're trying to reach here with those offers. Even in some areas where you have both, you know, ends of the spectrum and ends of the ages, we can run ad sets specifically to age ranges. So we can do like a younger age related ad for a lip filler ad and an older age range ad for a facial lifting filler ad. So those are all the things that we can consider when we're deciding the promo. The next steps when it comes to that is okay. If we're doing a lip promo, we want to make sure still that we're doing a younger demo, that we're not doing too young of a demo where they're definitely price shopping. They're not necessarily going to be the best spenders or the best, you know, when it comes to a lifetime value calculation that we're looking at. So if we're deciding on doing a lip filler promo, we have really, really good success with those. Sort of across the board reason being price point is typically lower and we can frame the offer really well too and use really cool before and after pictures. So when it comes to the ad space, we hate to admit this, but they aren't very clear about what you're allowed to do. So some accounts we can't run before and afters. We get banned for other accounts. We run before and afters. They look great and they work great. So those are the things that we kind of consider when we launch the ads. However, that's probably one of the main reasons why a lip filler campaign works. Everybody knows what it is, they know what it's going to do for them, and they know what result they're going to achieve. It's pretty simple. And then we also title the ads very specifically to, let's say, an outcome that everybody wants. Everybody who wants lip filler for the majority doesn't want it to look fake and huge and, you know, too out there, they want that natural pout or that perfect pout lip. So that's typically what we title those ads and then we pick a price range that's pretty digestible for everybody. So that's pretty much our strategy when it comes to the lip filler ads. Those typically work really, really successfully. And we have a really low cost of customer acquisition that clients are happy with.
- [29:29]
Ricky Shockley
Any gauge on price points? Is there like a range? Generally we're doing price points on the lip filler ads that you find are most effective.
- [29:35]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, I would say a lot of clients are doing like a half a syringe promo. So it's anywhere between like 250 on the really low end to like 499 for a lot of those ads. Again, cost customer acquis comes with how deep, how steeply you're discounting your promos. So the more steeply we're going to discount, if we're picking that 250 price point, everybody can get a lip filler for 250 when they're interested in it. Most people are going to have a harder time swallowing a 499 price point. Your cost of customer acquisition on a 499 price point is still going to be something that you're going to be pleased with, but it's just something that we keep an eye on when it comes to where we're discounting.
- [30:12]
Ricky Shockley
So that kind of goes back to your goals. If you're a practice that's pretty established and you just need to know that you've got a consistent, consistent flow of a handful of new filler clients every month. And you want those people paying a higher price point and just choosing you only initially because of reputation, your trade off is higher customer acquisition costs. So just understand that if you want to be less aggressive with the promo, you're just going to get less, less customers per ad spend, basically for as A ratio to your ad spend. You want to be more aggressive, you're going to get more customers. So that kind of goes into the idea of budgeting. A lot of people ask us, what, what should I spend? What do you guys recommend I spend on ads? And we've really changed our tune on this the last few, few months. So I used to always tell people, and I think you also, Lauren, we said, okay, let's start lean, let's test, and then we'll ramp up once we're confident. But over the last few years, we've become so confident in these types of campaigns that we really know what to expect coming out of the gate. In terms of a range, we know how much we're going to pay for leads generally, we know how many of those leads are going to book and pay for appointments. So we can be confident in a range of our customer acquisition cost. So really, one of the things you have to understand from an ad standpoint is the more money you put into the system, the more volume. Like we just gave that example. And this is up to a point. But to simplify the example, if for every thousand dollars you spend on ads, you get 20 new patients through the door, then if you spend $3,000 a month on these ads, you're going to see 60 new patients. If you spend $1,000 a month, you're going to see 20. Right? That's, that's what you're managing here in terms of understanding the trade off on different budget allocations. So I think that's really important to understand. One other thing that I think goes into that is the idea of watering down your ad spend. So some people come in, they want to spend a couple thousand dollars on ads, but they want to run nine different offers. You're spending such a small amount when you start splitting that across campaigns that when you look at each campaign in isolation, you're not going to have that as much activity. Obviously, on the Botox, there are less Botox customers, less Dysport customers, less mscope customers, because you're spreading that so thin. So just really be cognizant of your numbers. The advantage you have with these ad platforms is you will be able to understand your return on ad spend and your cost of customer acquisition. So backpedaling a little bit again. I wanted to give people, and we've got a free training on YouTube. So on our YouTube channel, if you go to Medspot Magic Marketing on YouTube, you can actually look through our recent Facebook ads training. But to give people an overview of how we actually build these campaigns out. Do we want to just kind of go through, like, the basic gist of how we build these campaigns?
- [32:42]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, absolutely. Just graphics are from the whole process of getting a lead to getting them through the door.
- [32:46]
Ricky Shockley
So, like the kind of graphics copy and automate, really, graphics copy and automations and the different components, and then talk about the Magic Hat Pro or high level and kind of how that works, right?
- [32:55]
Lauren McAtee
Absolutely, yeah. So when it comes to ad graphics, really, like we talked about before, we want to be extremely clear and concise with our offer. And we want it to be something that really stands out in the newsfeed to the person scrolling on their feed. So like we said earlier, again, people didn't wake up searching for a Botox promo or Dysport promo who saw our ad. They came across it in their feed when they're scrolling, looking at photos of their friends, et cetera. So we want our ad graphics to be something that pops in the feed and makes people stop scrolling long enough to look at it and read it and digest the promo that we're offering. So we're actually really, really picky when it comes to our graphic design. There's a lot of times we sit on calls, you know, five of us on the team, and we pick apart. Well, that should be left, that should be right. I think that should be the darker gray, that should be the lighter. So I think that's somewhere that we really, really stand out is with our graphics and getting people to understand our promos, to claim the offer and then to convert from that. Another thing that we like to really utilize in our graphics is a staff image or an actual headshot of somebody at the practice. Again, we talk about those three buckets of, you know, purchase decisions and how people decide. And one of those is know, like and trust. And we've actually seen, and I've pulled some of the numbers on it, that ads that use actual images of people in your practice have more people online booking automatically after seeing the promo rather than going through the automations, talking to somebody first and learning about the business. And I really think a lot of that is related to because they feel like they already know you and maybe they like you and trust you just from seeing somebody at the practice. It makes that personal connection that establishes you as a local small business rather than a big retailer who might just be offering a random promotion. So again, with graphics, we're super, super nitpicky about all the things that go into it and how we, you know, communicate the offer with the Copy of the ad, it's very similar process there. We want it to stand out. So the main headline that we use on all of our ads is going to explain the promo, what the price point is that they're getting, and even what that normal price is. So, you know, if they're getting Dysport for $3 a unit and maybe your typical price is 450 a unit, we like to make that very clear too, so they understand what they're really getting. Then we also take that time in the ad copy to really build on those aspects of know, like and trust. So we'll talk about your Google reviews, your actual physical location, where the practice is, and then we even add like a little paragraph about whoever is in that image or about the practice. So explaining your title, you know, what the injector's title is, all of those things. So again, we're kind of building on all three buckets using that ad copy price, know, like and trust aspects and then your physical location. So again, we're really, really specific with how we do that graphic and copy. The next step from that is lead form capture. So capturing people's contact information when they're interested in our promotions. So when they go to click the get offer button that's attached to our ad, that's basically the call to action there. We use really specific language in the lead forms. And I remember in Ricky and I first started talking about this and we were writing it out, I thought, dang, this is so wordy. I don't know if we should do all of this, but it really does make a difference in the lead forms, what language we're communicating to the prospect. So with that language in our lead forms, we like to be really, really clear about what's going to happen after they fill out this form and what next steps they need to take or that we're going to take on our end within the practice. So it could say something like, hey, please fill out the following information to claim the offer. Then someone from our office will reach out to you to answer any questions you have or get you booked for an appointment. Again, that sounds so simple. But even the nuances in language like that on lead forms make a huge difference.
- [36:43]
Ricky Shockley
So once there's so much vagary, there's so much vagary if you just say get offer, like, what am I? What is actually happening? What does get offer mean? So I think spelling it out, it makes people feel more comfortable with the expectation of what's going to happen next.
- [36:56]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, absolutely. No, I Totally agree. The next step then after people fill out that lead form is they get dripped into our automation sequence within our Magic App Pro or high level dashboard. When it comes to building out our automations, we are really, really specific, again with the language in those automations. So we used to, when we first started doing marketing a couple years back, at least for me, we would give contacts just a list of leads and say, here you go, follow up with these people, reach out to them and let us know how many ended up booking. And then we quickly realized that's not easy because if we're talking conversion rates and you're at a successful conversion rate of between 15 and 20% of your Facebook Instagram leads into booked appointments, that's 80% of leads that never ended up converting and maybe didn't even respond to you at any point. So giving you a list of a hundred people that fifteen only booked and you ended up talking to, you know, 75 or 80 people that didn't even reply or didn't call you back, that can be a lot of time on your staff and just a lot of frustration. And we would sit on calls and the leads audit would go, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes. And that's just how it works. I mean, really. And that's still a successful campaign even when the vast majority are nosy. So using automations essentially takes care of all of that for your staff. So we have a really in depth automation drips built out to where we're manually following up with leads for every couple days for the next like three to four weeks after they actually claimed the promo. And then they're still on our list for any reactivation or any, you know, SMS blast that we're going to send out in the future. So in those automations we like them to be really, really sound like they're personal and coming from somebody rather than a robot. So we've seen as soon as we use marketing type language, people turn off and they say stop and they don't want to hear from us anymore. When we talk like we're somebody coming directly from the practice or asking them questions, we have a really, really good response rate and then booking rate from that. So the questions might be something like, hey, this is Sarah from xyz. Are you interested in booking an appointment? Would you like to schedule an appointment? Thanks for claiming our offer. Do you want to come in this week for an appointment? So things like that make a huge difference in actually getting somebody to respond. A lot of our clients will say this looks like a lot of text. Don't you think that's kind of annoying? But really the answer here is we're looking for a yes or no from these leads. So we want to keep texting them until we get an answer. A lot of times it's not till the 8th, 9th or even 10th touch point that somebody says yes. Actually I do want to schedule, can I come in this Friday? So that's why we continue nurturing these people, continue following up with them, putting a face and a name to the practice and asking them questions to try to get them through the door until we get that. Yes or no.
- [39:51]
Ricky Shockley
Yeah. So once you're generating leads, the next game, I mean this is just basic marketing language. You have leads and then now that you have leads, it becomes a sales game.
- [39:59]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah.
- [40:00]
Ricky Shockley
So like Lauren said, what we learned is when we just dump these off on our clients, it's way too much of a burden on your staff to follow up with all these leads. So the system she's talking about, you can do this a lot of different ways. We have our own version. And again in the I'll make sure the links in the show notes actually point to some of these deep dive tutorials because it's probably harder to explain via audio in this format as opposed to when I'm doing the screen share on some of those things. But basically in Facebook and Instagram, when you're running those ads and you use the lead form option, those lead forms, we want them to automatically port into a system like the one that Lauren talked about where we're have a, we have a consistent automated follow up process. So the people are receiving texts, you know, it waits a day or two and texts them again, sends them an email. You can even do pre recorded voicemails. And we want to keep following up with those prospects for weeks really, until they tell us yes or no. And if we don't get a response, then like Lauren said, they sit on your, your list in your database for future re engagement. So that's kind of the, the basics of the blueprint, but again, I'll include it in the show notes so you can walk through that in, in more detail. So to kind of wrap things up, why we're talking so much about Facebook and Instagram ads again is because we're getting the lowest cost of customer acquisition. This is the best place to spend your ad dollars right now. In 2024. Nothing comes close in our experience, even Google Ads. For the vast majority of the 12 plus years that I've been A marketing professional, I would have recommended Google Ads as the first place to spend ad dollars because there's no waste. You're only spending money on people that are actively searching for your services. But the arbitrage opportunity, specifically in the med spa space right now for these offers on Facebook and Instagram is just so substantial that that's where we want to spend those ad dollars. Lauren, you mentioned an example with Google Ads and, and I like to use this example real quick as a, as a preliminary piece of information. I like to think of it as you have these, these machines on your desk. Facebook ads. Let's say for every $1 you put into the Facebook ads machine, it prints 10. And Google maybe for every dollar you put in, it prints 5. Well, I only have a stack of so many $1 bills, so I want to put as many dollars as I can into that Facebook and ads machine before I start pumping them into Google. So a 1 to 5 return is still phenomenal, but not if that dollar could have gone into the 1 in 10. So we like to maximize the ad spend on Facebook and Instagram and then introduce Google Google Ads really as a secondary step. Lauren, you mentioned you were looking at a campaign this week and you were looking at cost to cost, cost per click numbers on Google and you said it was 8 to 10. What, what were we looking at there?
- [42:18]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah, so we typically do, you know, when it first comes to onboarding a client with Google Ads, there's a lot of restrictions in the ad space on what type of ads you can actually run for the Med spots. So you can't run ads like Botox or PRP or related keywords like that until you get that Botox approval or that Allergan approval to be able to run those ads, which can take upwards of 8, 9, 10 months, etc. So our strategy kind of in that interim step is to run a virtual coupon book offer, which is what we typically do. So it kind of takes care of some of the main overarching keywords that people might be searching for. So like best Med spa near me, best Med spa in my city, fillers near me, facials near me, some of the things that we can easily capture with searches through Google. From there we send clients or leads and prospects, a virtual coupon book. So whatever offers our spa is running at that time and then we give them access to that again through the automation drips, we'll kind of share some of those promos. So that was one of the campaigns that I was looking at, was our Med Spa virtual coupon book campaign, which is broken out into specific ad sets based on filler med, spa keywords and facials for this one specifically. So when I looked at even the filler one, for example, we were getting cost per click numbers of between 8 to $12 on that one ad group. So that's just a click to the landing page, meaning they clicked our ad, they didn't necessarily fill out the form, which means we didn't get their contact information, which means we couldn't drip them into any automation. So we kind of expect that maybe 10% of the clicks will turn into actual leads. So by the time we spend $8 just to get a click to the site, we could have had a lead and actual contact information for that. Or even cheaper on Facebook and Instagram, which is actual direct contact information where we can reach out to that prospect and try to get them to convert across the line.
- [44:11]
Ricky Shockley
Yeah. So to understand the difference, we generally say your Google Ads, your Facebook ads, leads. If you're using the marketing automation strategies that we outlined, you can up to 20, maybe even 25% conversion rate, which is really, really high. Like Lauren said, that still means 75%, 80% of those leads aren't converting on Google. You can push closer to 30, 40% conversion rates because the intent was there, but you're paying 10 times more per lead. So the differential still doesn't make sense. Like your cost of customer acquisition is still so much higher from Google Ads in most cases that that's why we focus so much of this conversation in terms of our marketing planning. What's the most important thing you need to be doing to get new, new people through the door? And then the other thing that I wanted to touch on here, Lauren, to kind of wrap up another quick, easy win today, was just the idea of database re engagement and kind of first of all what that means and then the simple strategies that we use to achieve some pretty substantial results. And how, if you're listening to this, you can implement some of these strategies even on your own.
- [45:07]
Lauren McAtee
Yeah. So database reactivation is essentially a big fancy word for just texting your list of clients that you already have or contacts that you have, it's really a simple strategy when you talk about it. But when it comes down to the nuances of how we actually write the text and the language that we use in them, that's where it becomes a little more complex. So essentially, for a lot of our clients, there is such a vast majority of ways that you can use database reactivation. It's Crazy. It could be if you just have a provider on the next Thursday that doesn't have a lot of appointment bookings that needs some new appointments. Send out a text blast to your list. Not necessarily offering a promo, but maybe you could offer a 10% off for that day and see who you could get through the door. For example, we just had a client last week who said, hey, we just hired a new provider. Their first day is next Thursday. Can we send out a text blast just simply offering the fact that they're available? We sent that text blast out and they booked him fully for that day with 10 appointments. So that was a client down in Florida. Absolutely. Fantastic use of the list there. I had a client earlier this week, they're up in Massachusetts, and she wanted to send out a blast because their estheticians weren't as busy as they wanted for their classic facial at $125 price point. We sent out text blasts to their list. They booked 38 appointments just from that text blast, which is going to fill multiple days of schedules for their estheticians. So using the text list seems like such a simple thing, but it's something that not a lot of people are using or doing. Essentially, again, with that language, we like to make it sound like it's coming directly from somebody at the practice. So, hey, this is Ricky at Medspa Magic. We have three openings next Thursday with our new provider. Would you like to schedule an appointment before they're gone? And quickly. We even have some clients who say, when you're sending out a text blast, I block off a couple hours of my schedule because I have so many people responding and people interested that I need to communicate with to get them through the door. So again, there's just so many uses of that. It could be to send your monthly specials. It could be to send out, you know, just a day that you want to be more booked. It could be to test trial a new service or a new promo that we want to use. So that is such a successful strategy because it's so cheap to get people through the door on the tool that we use, sending one text is like 0.008 cents. So maybe you spent $15 to blast your list or $30 to blast your list, and you booked 38 appointments from that. You're in a really, really good position to be able to continue to use that strategy, essentially.
- [47:37]
Ricky Shockley
Yeah, absolutely. And two things there. One, I like this example. We had another client that. So the language, like Lauren said, personalized question based text works so much better. We Had a client, this is a small sample size, but they sent out a text to their list that sounded very much like a marketing message. It looked like something that was mass texted. It was just basically stating information about the promo. It just came from the business name, not a specific person. And they had one person book the new service that they were promoting. When we restructured it and followed that basic framework that Lauren just outlined, we had eight people book on the next text. So that's the nuance that can make a difference in terms of the strategy when you use those tools. So definitely send text. The other thing I wanted to talk about with text is a lot of you were sending email newsletters, but the reality is people are just used to tuning that stuff out. If you look at your open rates, 30, 40% open rate is phenomenal. That means 60% of your list isn't even seeing that. The people that do see it scan it quickly and delete it because it's usually full of like 10 to 15 promos. It's just too much to look at. So when we isolate one specific request and we use text message re engagement, you're going to get a much, much better response rate. Podium, today's podcast sponsor, they incorporate that feature into their tool set. Really like Podium. So that might be a really good place to go if you're looking to engage in text message marketing if you don't have that capability in your emr. Okay. So with that said, we talked about Facebook and Instagram ads, database reactivation. We did not talk about SEO today, but there's a reason I love SEO. We. We were primarily an SEO agency by trade 12 years ago when we opened. I still did SEO consulting for other agencies with Lauren's help just as recently as last year. But we incorporate that as the third tier in terms of priority because it's really unpredictable. I always like to say it's like going to the gym. If you don't start going to the gym today, you're not going to be in a better position a year from now. But your friends probably aren't going to see a dramatic difference three weeks from now with the ads platforms. We launch ads and we had a client just had to pause their ad after a month because they ran ad and they got their books full. So that's not, that's not going to happen for everybody. They were kind of already close to that threshold. But that's the potential and the power that the ad side has. And that's why we really didn't get much into SEO. So again, all of the stuff we talked about today, I've got deep dive YouTube training tutorials on. We talk about free marketing tips for your med spa. The deep dive on how we actually build the ad graphics that Lauren talked about, set up the marketing automation drips, some strategies that you can use to implement better Google Ads and even refine your SEO as kind of a supplementary part of your marketing initiative. Lauren, anything else you wanted to share that you feel like is worth mentioning of what we find working best for our clients right now across the country?
- [50:07]
Lauren McAtee
No, I think that pretty much covered it all.
- [50:09]
Ricky Shockley
All right. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you all on the next episode of the Med Spa Success Strategies Podcast.
- [50:16]
Lauren McAtee
Thanks for having me.
- [50:17]
Ricky Shockley
Thanks everyone for tuning in. This podcast is a production of Med Spa Magic Marketing. If your med spa or aesthetic practice practice is in need of digital marketing services, help with advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Google lead generation and booking more appointments, please visit Medspamagicmarketing.com.