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Med Spa Success Strategies
Med Spa Client Retention Tips: 8 Must-Do Strategies to Keep Patients Coming Back
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Foreign. We are at the end of our 2026 marketing series. This is part eight of eight and today we're going to be talking about retention strategies. As a reminder, if you haven't watched the previous episodes, please go back and do that if this is the first one you're stumbling across on podcast or YouTube. Because we quite literally gave away everything. Our top performing ad strategies on Facebook, Instagram, how we create, offer frameworks, develop creative how you can brand and position your med spot to win in a competitive landscape, how to gain more confidence around ROI measurement and much more. But today talking about retention, honestly this, I probably have said this about another video, so I don't want to say this again. But really being honest like this, this might be the most important thing because I think the other things in our experience have been provably repeatable, effective and consistent. Generating at bats for your med spa, like giving getting butts in the seats and generating appointments is kind of easy. It really is. Like you're going to get traction if you do. If you run ads and you're effective with your follow up, you are going to get new clients and butts in the seats. Now the level at which you do that, how efficient that is, depends on a lot of things. We talked about the validation phase early in the series, making sure that when people research your med spa, they actually see you as the best option. Like that's critical, that's very important. But we kind of understand the things that go into that, that if we can dial those in and we feel like we have confidence in the attributes and the variables that lead to client acquisition, that happens with a high level of consistency. The biggest difference in our client performance across our roster between clients that are just killing it month after month, year after year for the clients that are to the clients that are struggling and not achieving their growth goals, it comes down to their ability to retain clients. And this is a hard thing to nail for some practices because it's hard to be critical and self reflective enough to see past your flaws. Most of us at a gut level think that we're doing a good job of serving our clients well and that retention should be a given. But it's not. We have to continuously earn the business of our clients so that they choose us for not only the first visit, but the second, third, fourth visit and beyond. So let's talk about what we found to be the most effective client retention strategies. First thing is putting the spa in med spa. As a med spa, we have a hybrid business essentially, right? It's in the name medical and spa. Those two things are kind of contradictory. If I think about a medical office and I think about a spa, it's a very different environment. So for those of you that are watching on YouTube, I've got this split screen of a cold, sterile personality list. Medical office on the left, like that's probably what you're going to walk into in any sort of primary care or urgent care. And on the right you've got designer furniture. It looks like an interior decorator made the place. There's books and magazines and plants and it's beautiful. Why does that make a difference? Because ultimately the our ability to create an experience that feels luxurious, calming and high end is a very, very important part of client retention and client satisfaction. So putting leaning into the spa part of the med spa category and is important in all things you do. So if you ever have a question about how you're operating your waiting room, how you treat your customers when they walk in, what you do in terms of like post appointment interactions, think about how a spa would treat a client and do more of that, do less of what your primary care doctor would do. Unless your primary care doctor is amazing at this, then fine. But really think about in all aspects of the business, how do we put the spa in med spa so that we're creating a luxurious experience that feels like they're going for a massage at a five star resort and not a medical appointment. So there's a whole bunch of things that go into that, but I think that's a good framing. The next thing is let's talk about provider loyalty and, and retention providers who are top notch in terms of results, service and patient satisfaction are going to naturally lend them, lend themselves to better retention. We see this all the time. We've run ads for clients that they send. Their ads leads to multiple different providers. So that's the same clients on the intake side. Right. There's no difference in client quality. It's all the same clients getting distributed evenly and one provider will have an astronomically higher retention rate than the other. That comes down to provider experience. Ultimately a large part of the loyalty in any business is based on the people that your clients interact with most and that's their provider. So in this case, good is not good enough. I've been on so many sales calls and calls with clients where I asked them how they feel that their injectors, their providers do and they're oh, they're okay, they're and you can tell they're waffling, like maybe at best, they think they're a B level talent. I would say if at all possible, you should be working toward recruiting and retaining true A level talent. A players, people who are excellent at their craft, excellent and engaging and communicating with clients. They're the kind of providers that when a client leaves they want they never. They couldn't imagine themselves going to see someone else to get that service done because the experience was that exceptional. So good is not good enough. Provider retention is going to help your med spa with client retention because there's a large part of loyalty that is dependent on provider, whether we want to admit that or not. But how do we at least diversify risk? With some custom treatment protocols, a framework that can be consistent from provider to provider so that when we inevitably do have drop off, we don't have a massive exodus of clients. I had Dominique, can't remember her last name on the podcast, but we had a really good discussion around this and she said that they seem to be really top tier in patient retention. Even with providers changing to the point that their customers trust the business and the brand so much that they will just book with different providers every visit. They don't even necessarily care as much about which provider they're booking with. But to achieve that, you have to create a consistency in your treatment protocol and the experience that makes it feel like you're going to get the same experience and the same results no matter who you see. So I'm going to give a shout out to our clients, Stephen and Renata Roddy from Roddy Med Spa in Danvers, Massachusetts on this concept. They talked about this on our podcast as well. So come up with a custom treatment protocol and here are some ways that you can go about doing this. So this is your overarching plan for how you treat clients. This should have a branded name like the Radiance Method, right? The Roddy Lift and balance, whatever you want to call it, give it a branded name, identify a clear philosophical outline that guides this. What is the outcome? Right, natural, balanced look. What are we trying to achieve for our clients? Make the assessment standard. So what is the intake process in the consoles? Do we do a face mapping, photos goal, a goal outline, a tiered plan, a I good, better, best, but make it sound better than that. In this case, I have on the screen, glow, refresh, revive. But you want some version of a good, better, best presentation to all of your clients. So the good should be, hey, this is the bare minimum. This is the thing that's going to at least let you achieve the baseline result. And if you want to take it to the next level and the next level, here's what those packages look like. Alex Hormozi, in a recent episode of his marketing podcast, talked about framing your good in the good, better, best as the minimum because the minimum defaults as almost as if the purchase is inevitable. And it also has a connotation of like I'm getting less than the gold standard of what I could be achieving and it feels like the client has to downsell themselves to really go with the minimum option. So I thought that was kind of interesting. As an aside, Injector sops the way that they dose the zones, the scripts, the follow up. I want that process from provider to provider, injector to injector to be as consistent as possible. That comes down to training and systems roleplay, visuals, training. Are you have it? Do you have some sort of pulse and QA to ensure that your providers are all living up to a certain standard and that you're bringing everybody along the same path on the same timeline ideally. So those are some ideas for how to create a custom treatment protocol and a process in your med spa that makes results more consistent from provider to provider. Because if you can, if you can get to the point where your clients trust you no matter who they're going to do business with, they trust that you've put them in a with someone who's going to do the job at the same high level, then you do get the benefit of the doubt where people aren't necessarily as reliant on the provider themselves. Hey practice owners and marketing directors interrupting this episode to invite you to schedule a one on one strategy call with me to discuss how we might be able to improve and level up your digital marketing efforts. So we're rated for five stars on Google were HIPAA verified by Compliancy Group and we have a track record of taking clients from 30,000amonth to $120,000 a month and adding multi millions of dollars in additional revenue for some of our bigger multi location med spas from more effective marketing strategies. So on the free strategy call it's really educational. I basically spend an hour going through detailed reviews of all of our best performing plays that we run for our clients. You have it to take and run with it if that's what you want to do and if you think it might be a fit to work together then we're excited about the possibility to partner with you. But if you're interested in better more effective digital marketing solutions for your Med Spa visit Medspamagicmarketing.com that's Medspamagicmarketing.Com to schedule your one on one strategy. Call with me. Next, let's talk about providing a white glove experience in your med spa. Another retention hack. Call your leads after they book an appointment, welcome them touch base. Get time on the phone with them. This is why I don't recommend if you can avoid it outsourcing your leads Management the Customer Service Experience Danielle White from Deluxe Aesthetics in Fort Lauderdale said this. It really stuck with me. The customer service experience starts at the lead engagement phase before someone ever comes in your office. Not once they're actually in the chair. So think about the ways that you can add some warmth to your patient intake process with white glove experiences. Automate additional touch points to get them excited about their visit. When they get into the office, welcome them with a smile. If you've if any of you have read Unreasonable Hospitality, they talk about a chapter in that book in the restaurant world where they researched all of the people that were that had dinner reservations that night and they tried to make sure they could match the name in the face so that when you walked in they've obviously never met you before, but they know your name. Imagine how cool that would be in your med spa that you know, Sarah Jones walks in and your receptionist, instead of just saying hi, how can I help you? They say hey Sarah, we're so excited to hear, so excited to see you here. They're leaving behind the counter, they're welcoming her, they've got something to hand her. They're walking her to snacks and refreshments. That white glove experience will set you apart. These are the wrinkles that make the most successful med spas. The most successful med spas post appointment. Are you checking on people making sure that you they know you actually care about them? With Jenny Hartley on the podcast she talked about writing handwritten cards to all of her new patients. Are you doing that in your med spa? If not, all of these things are leaving money on the table. By not taking the white glove experience seriously, let's talk about the consult process. How do we make this consistent and how do we make this exceptional? We want to be welcoming. We want friendly practitioners and providers. We want to stick to a consistent script or framework. So this should follow a standard process in our med spa. We don't want in my opinion, our providers all freewheeling it and winging it. I want my intake process to be consistent. We want to ask open ended questions to expose desired outcomes. Don't Poke a pain point. Don't point out something in someone that they didn't point out themselves, but let people talk, see what bothers them and what they're hoping to accomplish. And this is going to open you up to what what we normally call cross sells and upsell opportunities because people will tell you what they're looking for and you have a product, service or treatment that can help them achieve that result. Present holistic solutions and treatment plans without being salesy. So again, good, better, best. If somebody is describing certain things they're looking for in terms of an outcome, we don't want to rubber stamp 25 units of Botox and call it a day. For some people, they're going to self select and self sort. That's what they're going to want. For others, we want to make sure that we're educating them on the options. So another great podcast reference here. I'm going to make sure that we include all of the podcasts I'm talking about in this episode because there are several in the show notes. So I'll make sure that all of the other episodes are linked to in the show notes. Whether you're listening to the podcast here on YouTube, we'll have those linked. But Raquel Merlini, she talked about building a five star med spa patient loyalty and retention and the importance of educating and not selling. And this is something that I follow in our business and I couldn't recommend this enough. And I know this can be a gray area in the med spa space because we're all obsessed with sales and average ticket and upsells and cross sells. But I don't think sales at the end of the day is an effective framework. I think patient education and alignment with outcomes is a much better way to think about how we quote unquote sell. If we can educate people and give them a realistic perspective of what options they have and what outcome those options are going to allow them to achieve. People will self sort and it will naturally lend itself to cross sells and upsells. So back to the good, better, best framework. Somebody's responding to a new patient offer about Botox and they've got, you know, just some wrinkles they want to take care of, but they've got some other things like sunspots and we can educate them that if you want to take care of the wrinkles today, here's the thing that's going to do that. If you want to get an even better result and take care of a couple of these other things or get the last 15% then you might want to explore this solution. And this solution, letting people self sort with proper education is a much better way to position the sales process than really selling for the sake of selling. We had a sales coach in our marketing group just recently. I was watched a clip of him and he said sales is just educating people on what they need, what how you can help them achieve their outcome. Something along those lines. I think that's what we're trying to do in the med spa space. Raquel on our episode she also mentioned saying no when appropriate. Some people will push for things that you don't believe in. You don't think they need, you don't think it's going to give them the result. You think that, you know, the juice isn't worth the squeeze or it's not aligned with, you know, their skin. Whatever it is, say no when appropriate. It earns you the respect and trust of your clients. Fire patience. If you don't align, you got to do that nicely. Be careful. But if you just don't feel like you're a fit. I just had a sales call last week where I had a whole long conversation with the guy. He was eager, he wanted to sign a contract that day and I just didn't think it was a good fit. I didn't think we were aligned. I could see that there was potentially some, some trouble down the road and I just nicely said I don't think we're a fit and it's okay for you to do that too in a tactful, tasteful way. So again, to wrap that, do what's best for the patient. It will pay off in terms of loyalty, referrals and even sales long term. Sometimes there's short term gain, short term pain for long term gain in the sales process. Play the long game, do what's right by your clients. The rest will kind of work itself out in my opinion. Hey there. Wanted to briefly interrupt the episode to make a quick ask. If you're a podcast listener, it would mean the world to us if you you'd leave a review for the podcast, whether that's on itunes or Spotify. It's something I hadn't really remembered or thought of asking for, but it does help us show up more frequently so that we can reach more people with the information that we're providing. So it mean the world to us if you'd leave a review on itunes or Spotify. If you're listening on audio, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the subscribe button so you're in the loop for future videos, and you don't miss any of the content that we're putting out. One other tip that some of you aren't doing that we think is a major miss, is if you ever go to your dentist office, they always rebook you in the treatment room. When I'm at my dentist, every dentist I've ever been to, they. They must just learn this in dental school or something. But when you're at your dentist and you're done getting your teeth cleaned and the dentist comes in, the hygienist doesn't ever walk me to the counter where I go to check out and make sure my bill's all taken care of to rebook. She rebooks me in the treatment room, then walks me to the counter to take care of billing. Right. As soon as my treatment's done, she's got the computer up and we're looking at available dates. And by default, we are booking in the treatment room for the next appointment, even if that's, in my case of the dentist, six months in advance. So there's an episode on our podcast again here with Jake Laban, who's a former executive at Allergan, and he talked about asking when, if not if, so the practitioner provider themselves, setting up the rebooking, not handing that off and. And positioning it as a win, not an if. So that might sound something like this. Hey, Sarah, you know, we want to make sure we keep you on a good schedule to maintain results. Typically, that means I'm going to want to see you again in three months. So I'm looking at the second week of June. What do you have available in the second week of June? And one of two things are going to happen. They're going to oblige, and they're going to go along and book for the second week of June. Or they'll say something like, well, I don't know. I'm not sure yet. Let me look at my calendar. Easy way to overcome that objection. Oh, I totally understand. Go home and do that. But why don't we just get something on the book so you have it, and if you need to cancel or reschedule for any reason, you let us know. But let's just get it locked in now so we have it on the schedule on the calendar, and you don't have to think about it. Nine times out of 10, you're going to allow yourself to leave with someone rebooked as the default. And the default puts the onus on the client, the point of friction on the client to cancel the default is now that there's an appointment booked. If they leave without that, the default inaction means no appointment. If the appointment is booked in action from there means there's still an appointment on the books. So we want to make that the default. Some outside of office tips how do we increase our retention and rebooking rates outside of office? The first thing is make sure you've got due for service reminders. So if someone's coming in for Botox and you know that we need to see them again in three months, do you have a good system in place for reminding those people they're due for service? Very, very, very important if you don't have that in place to do that re engagement campaigns. Are you doing something with text or email to make sure those people are re engaged and invited back for additional promotions or services? Do you have membership? Are you promoting membership? Is the membership incentive aligned to actually incentivize action so you get people on your membership program? Are you using your social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok even to make sure that you're front top of mind for your existing clients on a consistent basis? And then that last one, handwritten cards, birthdays, new patients, holidays. Those little extra touches make all the difference and can really juice your retention stats. The last thing is make sure your reputation is a if you ever watch the movie Shallow Hal, he talks about dating a girl and like he's got, you know, the warped vision and he's basically saying something along the lines of well, if I think this person's attractive then who cares what anyone else thinks and and the person that giving advice says third party perspective and third party perspective matters when it comes to reviews. If I'm going to a med spa that's got a lackluster reputation, but I had a good experience, yes, I'm going to put more weight in my firsthand experience than I will the reviews. But I start to doubt if I start to see other people having bad experiences that I'm making the right decision. You almost start. You almost sort of start to doubt yourself and your own analysis of the experience and go, well maybe this place isn't that nice, maybe this place isn't that good. So keep your reputation dialed in. It's going to lead to better word of mouth referral, close rates, organic traffic comes in, you're getting more business from organic search, more people are finding you, more people are choosing you, makes your ads leads convert at a higher rate and it continues to instill trust in your existing clients. So again, as always, if you need help with implementing any of this, you can visit medspamagicmarketing.com first step with us is a no obligation, one hour deep dive strategy call. This whole 2026 presentation is basically condensed and customed, customized to your practice. You can take it and run with it, or we can implement for you, but I think that'll be super valuable for you nonetheless. So if you're interested in talking to me, go to Medspamagicmarketing.com and you can schedule that call today. Thanks and we'll see you as we get back to regularly scheduled programming here. Now that we're wrapping up our 2026 series, I think that's one of the most valuable things we do all year. So again, if you haven't watched the previous episodes, strongly encourage go back, catch up, and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.