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Med Spa Success Strategies
Med Spa Growth Hacks for 2026: Memberships, Branding & Offers That Actually Work
00:36:55
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- [00:06]
A
All right, everybody, we decided to do something a little bit different on today's podcast. We're going to do some rapid fire on a few different topic areas that we just thought were relevant things that are going on in the conversations we're having with clients right now. So Lauren had a few things on the radar that she thought would be fun to talk about on today's episode. One of them is membership models. The second is attracting certain age demographics. Right. We have certain businesses that probably want a large or an older demo versus a younger demo. And. And the ads and the strategies and the branding that we implement might impact that. So we wanted to talk about that a little bit. Offers we see working best for existing patients going into the holiday season. So just a few rapid fire topics. Lauren, let's start with the membership conversation. What's on your mind? What are you seeing? What are the conversations we're having with clients when it comes to membership programs?
- [00:51]
B
Absolutely. I think we've seen, especially over the last year or so, membership models completely evolve into something I've actually seen working pretty well as of late. I think the challenge with it when it first started and people first started trying to do membership models was nobody really knew what was going to stick. And I think, Ricky, we always used to recommend it's not even worth doing the membership. Right. To some extent because it didn't work. We just never saw practices implementing it in a way that actually saw, at.
- [01:19]
A
Least anecdotally for us.
- [01:21]
B
Right.
- [01:22]
A
In large part the practices that we're working with. It seemed like a common theme.
- [01:25]
B
Yeah, Minimalism. And I think now we've seen a number of practices who are implementing certain models that have really, really good success. So I think we just wanted to kind of talk through a little bit of what we've seen that actually works just from our anecdotes, like Ricky said, versus what we've seen that hasn't worked. So I think just to start the conversation, the membership model that I have seen not work and not work well at all is essentially when you have a price point on the monthly fee, it's. And they get something free in return for that, rather than being able to use those dollars towards something. So I think the way that a lot of these membership models work is something like $149 a month. You get a free Diamond Glow facial that month, and then you get 10% off of your talks and 10% off lasers, things like that add ons. I think the challenge with that one is people don't care necessarily to get A free facial each month. Right. So it kind of feels like the value of what you're putting in isn't necessarily what you're getting back out. A lot of people would just say, well, I just buy the facial if I want the facial.
- [02:30]
A
Right? Yeah. And it's an obligation. Right. You have like a use it or lose it every single month that you have to deal with.
- [02:35]
B
Yeah. I think that's a huge point to add. The membership model I've seen work really, really well is every dollar you put in goes into your bank and you can use those dollars at a future service, a future appointment, towards absolutely anything in the practice that I have seen work incredibly well. One, it's really solid recurring revenue and two, it just gets people interested in other things as well because they get discounts on other services and they can use those banked dollars towards what treatments they're getting a lot of times too. I think it works well because it's easier to say I'm paying $99 a month rather than I'm dropping 450 or $500 every couple of months. Right, yeah. What's your thought on that, Ricky?
- [03:21]
A
Yeah, I still think from the people that I've talked to, you've talked to more for full transparency. Lauren's got more of a pulse on this than I will. But it still seems a little hit or miss. Like you have people that are really good about incorporating it. And even on the podcast episodes, when we've had guests, we've talked about the people that are really good about making it a mainstay. They said we are a membership based practice. I think one of the recent episodes, one of our guests said that we're a membership based practice. So it's a core part of our conversation that we have with clients during the consult, the treatment plan and everything. So you tend to get a good response rate when you do that. If it's like an afterthought and it's not consistently presented, it's. It doesn't work as well. But yeah, I think this is the best membership model that we've seen. And then Louis Frazine on the podcast, he talked about, in his experience, even having a preference for loyalty programs versus memberships because it's completely non committal. But if we are talking the membership route. Yeah, I think the basically don't make it any more complicated than your banking cash, essentially. Right, Lauren?
- [04:17]
B
Yeah, 100%. And I really like that point that you made about having to push it still. I've never heard somebody just say, oh, it just works because people see it and they want it. It's always, oh, I have this one provider that does such a good job of selling the membership or making it make sense to patients that we see her conversion rates being way better than others who aren't necessarily pushing it as much. So, so I think it still has to have a good sales angle as well as a good beneficial angle for the person doing it to see that outcome be successful.
- [04:47]
A
Do you find that the discount rate impacts, at least just observationally, does the discount rate impact? Like, if. So if you're doing like $1 off talks, it's like, oh, it's still another. Because there is a subscription friction. We've talked about this. You see like the rocket money or whatever these ads are on TV where people have subscription fatigue. Even if, like, I know for me, I'm like that I don't like my card being hooked up to too many things. I don't want to see a bunch stuff coming out that I have to remember like to keep an eye on. So I think there's a little bit of that. Like even if the math makes sense and people know they're going to be coming back, they still just, there's like an, a little bit of inversion to just having a subscription in general, even if the math makes sense. And then I think the other thing you have to keep in mind is anytime you're getting someone on a membership, there's still now is an obligation.
- [05:31]
B
Right.
- [05:31]
A
If I decide I don't like this place or I want to go somewhere else next month, I want the freedom to do that. And even if I'm banking money, it means now I've got to go back to this place again. So they are, you are locking them in. That's your intention, right? Is to, is to build the retention. Your intention is to build the retention. But that does introduce a point of friction. So I was, I was just wondering, Lauren, do you see like the discount has to be pretty aggressive for it to work or does it just work in general?
- [05:58]
B
Yeah, I don't think it necessarily has to be super aggressive, but I have seen where if it's similar to what your intro new patient offer was, that you have a better chance of selling, selling it especially to new patients coming in. So for example, I have one practice in Oklahoma who's doing $3 unit Dysport as their intro patient offer. And if you buy their membership, you get Dysport at $3.80 a unit. So it's really, really close to that intro price. And a lot of people lock it in on that first visit because it sounds really attractive of oh great, I get to lock basically that price in instead of paying full price on the next visit when especially you love the treatment and things like that. Two, it's already pretty much paid for, so you can feel better about when you come for the next one, you already paid for it, you got the discount, et cetera. So I think, I don't think it has to be super steep necessarily, but I think if it has some correlation or connection to that intro offer or what they're used to paying price wise, that works well. Like I've even seen another practice in South Carolina who they were going to increase their prices and they offered a membership model to lock in your current rate. That worked really well too to get people to be able to be used to what they're paying already instead of seeing jumps.
- [07:10]
A
Is there, are there any loopholes to this? So for example, like with if you're doing that deal, they say, well yeah, I do, I do want the discounted disport, but let me just think about it for a few months and then I'll sign up for the membership next time so I get the dysport deal. Like I guess that's always just an option. You're not forcing people to have like a certain month ramp up into it. Right? They can technically join or leave at any time. You ever find I don't just in conversations with clients, have you ever found that people like buy a member like we're talking about loopholes. Do people ever just buy a membership for the deal and then cancel it? So they don't really have to do the bank the buck portion, but they do get the discount rate. Have you heard that come up in conversation or not really.
- [07:51]
B
I haven't heard.
- [07:52]
A
Maybe not. Maybe not a major concern then if it doesn't come up in our conversations. Cool. Okay, so bottom line takeaway is we have to make it a consistent part of the presentation and the bank your buck model is the only one that we've seen pretty much work. Would that be the summary, Lauren?
- [08:05]
B
Definitely. And I think the other thing too is have different membership models for different types of people. If you offer a wide range of services, like I think a challenge with some of our practices who offer everything under one roof is the really expensive membership gets you a discount on everything. But not everybody wants everything. So break that down into smaller memberships too, like injectables membership, an esthetician membership, things like that to where it can be what they're only interested in rather than everything too.
- [08:33]
A
Yeah. And I, I still think like most of the people that I've talked to, at least on in podcast interviews, you're not going to have a hundred percent of your practice on memberships, right? Probably not even 50% for most of us. So like accepting that this is a good model, it's a good addition to your practice, but it doesn't necessarily have to be like the end all, be all. Like if this doesn't work, we don't have a business you can build retention without a membership. It's just a good extra little piece to build an additional retention. And I'm assuming just like anything that we else we talk about with offers and ads, the more you sweeten the pot, the better the membership deal. So if you have like exclusive parties, add ons, gifts, anything else that you can do to make that feel more valuable, you get more people on the membership program. So as you sweeten the deal, the response rate increases. Hey there. Wanted to briefly interrupt the episode to make a quick ask. If you're a podcast listener, it would mean the world to us if you leave a review for the podcast, whether that's on itunes or Spotify. It's something I hadn't really remembered or thought of asking for, but it does help us show up more frequently so that we can reach more people with the information that we're providing. So it mean the world to us if you'd leave a review on itunes or Spotify if you're listening on audio, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the subscribe button so you're in the loop for future videos and you don't miss any of the content that we're putting out. Okay, topic number two was conversations around attracting a certain age demo. What was the thought behind putting that on the radar for today's conversation?
- [09:56]
B
Lauren so where that kind of sparked for us client wise is we had a Botox promotion running last month during October and we used some really fun pop graphics that were colorful and kind of had more of a graphic Y vibe that was more fun rather than strict and brand kit type related to each of the ads and to each of our clients. And from that there were a lot of conversations with our clients that sparked hey, we saw a much younger demographic coming in from the Botox ad and that kind of was the correlation that we saw a little bit was okay. Now let's dive into a little bit more of our clients brandings in general and see is there a certain type of client or type of brand that brings in a younger demographic versus a certain brand and type that brings in an older demographic. And it was crazy. Once we looked at like the breakdown down of certain colors, even certain schemes, they do bring in younger versus older, regardless of what image we put on. The ad was very interesting to me too. So to kind of step it back first, what brought the conversation up was Botox with these like, fun, creative graphics.
- [11:06]
A
Yeah. Like, it had like Halloween colors. And what we noticed is when we use those fun Halloween colors that weren't on brand for our clients, I don't think it was just the offer because we. I think what you're saying is we had different. A couple different clients that tested the, like a little bit more of a plain framework. Their results statistically weren't as good, but the clients that they got tended to be older. Right. That's the. That's what we saw.
- [11:27]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's hit or miss for each practice. Right. Like, a lot of practices were fine with having the younger demo. They were excited, actually, because it was just bringing in different types of people that they could attract different services to. And then other types of clients didn't necessarily want the younger demo because they don't spend as much or they want more lip fillers and things like that rather than the lasers and the big devices. So I think that goes back to the conversation of what does your practice want? What's your goal? And then how can you structure your branding to fit that goal too? With that too. I think something we notice then from that is certain colors and certain schemes of ads do attract a different type of person and a different age range of a person. For example, when we see colors that are more neon and pink and light pink, even things like that, that attracts a younger type person. When we use more like a blue or an electric blue or gray black, those attract a little bit more of an older demo. From our experience. Now there's, you know, I'm sure there's color theories to support other things.
- [12:37]
A
Yeah.
- [12:37]
B
But at least from a couple anecdotes we've seen in general, that's kind of the way that it goes.
- [12:42]
A
So kind of to summarize that maybe it's like if you're branding in your color schemes, either for your business, in your ads, in your office, and if they're more on the fun, playful side, those tend to attract a younger demo. If they're more on the polished, professional side, they tend to attract an older demo.
- [12:58]
B
Yeah, I like that. And even with the colors within those too. So I think the cool takeaway from that is we can kind of play around with it. Especially for people who are willing to go a little bit outside of your brand. You can still use your primary color and your logo and things to make it match who you are. Um, but let's say you want to test getting more lip filler patients. Change up your graphic a little bit, change up your ad a little bit and see, you know, how can you attract that type of person. Um, and then a big thing that I have talked about and seen with a lot of my practices, especially who have said to me we're getting an older demo. Your Google business profile and your website have a lot to do with that too. What pictures you're showcasing and what your practice looks like in general, I think has a huge thing to do with who's coming into it. Um, for example, we did a little search and a little game with one of my clients of, okay, let's see if I'm the young person, who am I going to pick? And it's usually the ones who have the neon sign that pops on the wall and says something cute and has fun colors and fun injectors doing things on their page. And the practices that look more like maybe a doctor's office or something like that, that's just white, clean, professional, that's going to attract a little bit more of an older person. So it's even in how you set up your office too and what photos of your office you use. That brings in a different type of person too.
- [14:22]
A
Yeah, I think that's something like for me, I've mentioned this before, but I always want the big idea, the big impact thing. And so I tend to look over if I'm like, okay, yeah, maybe whatever. That makes a 1 or 2% difference. My personalities. I ignore that and wanted to move on to the next thing. But I think again, in this space it's, it's finding out those 2, 3% things that pile on top of each other to create impact and to understand the nuances of like, hey, that's one of the things we talked about at our team retreat is we, we didn't really identify that as early on with like some of the stuff we talked about on ads, but probably a lot of people going to your Google business listing and actually clicking through the photos and getting a feel for the office and actually making a judgment on your practice based on that. Not that that's totally fair, but again, people are looking for their new med spa home they have plenty of other options. There are. It's a multi factor analysis and there are tons of different variables that influence that. And people want to go to a place that feels right for them. And so speaking to a specific group of people with your branding, your office, the ads, all of those things help tell a more compelling story to a specific group of people to hopefully make that resonate more or less. And I think you can do this at certain times with certain services. Right. There might be certain things, like if you're running like a mini lip flip or like a lip filler, that might be fun to run some ads that skew younger. If you're running something that skews on the older end of your age range based on what you see in office, maybe make sure that you have that reflect as well.
- [15:43]
B
Yeah. And I think too, a lot of it goes back to remembering where you're located and what your average demo is around you too. Like a lot of times it could be, well, we're doing all the things to get young people, we're getting older people, but you're located in Naples, Florida or something along those lines. Right.
- [15:58]
A
So.
- [15:58]
B
So I think knowing your demo too is important. Knowing what you want is important. Kind of structuring to those.
- [16:03]
A
Yeah. And if you haven't listened to some of the previous episodes, scroll through the podcast feed. We have, we have one recently on MedSpa websites. I think we did one on branding and some of the other stuff that we talked about so that we go into some more detail on some of those things. Cool. Next thing we wanted to talk about was this is going to be somewhat time sensitive for this season, but hopefully let's try to make this, I guess, as universal. So if people are stumbling across this, Lauren, four or five months from now, that this still makes sense. But wanted to talk about things that we see working best for existing patients. Let's talk, I guess about the holiday specifically, but maybe just generally. What do you think? How do you think in terms of strategy for running promos and offers to existing patient lists?
- [16:42]
B
Yeah, I think we can structure it kind of both in general and seasonally, but I think a big thing to keep in mind when you're structuring your monthly specials and your offers. One, and this is kind of contrary, but Instead of having 25 specials each month, I like to really narrow that down to somewhere between 3 to 5 to 7. Like in that range. Don't make it like analysis paralysis of like, oh, there's so much here. What do I need to decide Have a couple things that are clear of what you want to give that month and why, too. A lot of practices structure it based on what they need to sell more of or what they need to push at certain times. But I think a big thing to remember too is what season is it? What's the weather like, what's going on in your town? Because I have a lot of times, for example, somebody will try to push an M sculpt promo in June when people aren't necessarily buying emsculpt in the summer, they're buying that maybe in January, February leading up to the summer. Or laser devices. People aren't buying lasers in the summer as much because you can't be in the sunshine. But in September, lasers are really hot because you can give a great promo to clean up your summer skin and the dark spots to push that at that time. So I think it's knowing too, the time of the year that things work well and then structuring towards that time as well.
- [18:00]
A
Yeah, and we just had Gina Graziano, the podcast she talked about too, trying to see if you can pre sell some things going into like a, a slow season. So as you enter the holidays, see if you can come up with some packages and some creative concepts to get people to almost like pre purchase some sort of set or sequence of treatment options as part of a treatment plan that get them coming back in February maybe when things are typically slower. So you're not just having to worry about new patient acquisition in those slower months, but you're maximizing and giving the people an incentive to do business with you in those slower months too. And again, you can map this out based on business need. Right. Like. Like for us as an agency, we really have to this point have never discounted or run promotions for our services. But that's based on supply and demand. We're on a wait list as an agency. So if, if we get to a slow period, like looking back at last year, Lauren, like, we had like a weird period where we had a boom in the late spring and early summer of like new client additions. We had a really weird lull in late winter. It's like, what is going on? Like, we. It normally was more consistent, but that was a major ebb and flow. If you've got periods where you know things are slower, be strategic about the levers that you can press to generate some more business. And think ahead, plan ahead. I think we've talked about that. We try to get our clients in a good habit of planning ahead. It doesn't mean that you can't change your mind. I just talked to Kate and Kylie from Seaside Lauren on this topic. Like they said, they're really good about planning ahead and if they change their mind last minute because something pops up, we can change our mind. But the default is there's a plan in place. We shouldn't be making decisions really in anything in our business, but especially on our marketing. We know the seasons, we know the seasonality in our business. We know the things that are hot and cold in certain months. We know what we're trying to do in terms of growth goals. So thinking ahead, being strategic, like right now, we should be planning out a calendar for next year. Right. What is 2026 look like in terms of our promotion calendar? And if something weird pops up, like, hey, we got an overage of this. Let's run a flash sale on that that we didn't plan on doing, or this seems to be slower than normal, let's run a promo on this to get an uptick in whatever laser sales at this specific time. Fine. But have a default plan going into place going into the next year.
- [20:02]
B
Yeah, I agree. And I think another thing too that goes with it is knowing buying patterns of certain times of year, too. Like, I think at the end of the year, Friday, people expect to spend a lot of money because they know there's going to be a lot of deals out. They're buying Christmas presents. They're sort of used to that. Maybe that's the time you push bigger packages and bigger things that you're going to sell around Valentine's Day and Christmas or the New Year's. Things like that, where people really aren't spending a lot of money. That's maybe the time you push some smaller things that are easier to make purchases. We've seen those do well too. Like an end of the year bundle sale. Those usually work really well before the end of the year is over. Um, so just kind of knowing that too. And then also knowing what maps to certain seasons, like Valentine's Day. Lip filler. Super cute and fun. And everybody makes sense of the two. Right. Or like a blushing ad. Things like that.
- [20:52]
A
And then natural tie in for Halloween.
- [20:55]
B
Right.
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A
Fun playing words make sense. It fits.
- [20:58]
B
Yeah, exactly. And then with it too, though, don't make everything so it's the same every single year. Or else you're going to start training your shoppers to buy at certain times. Right. Like, I have a couple practices who do like a giant Botox sale every June every year. And I don't love that model just because then you traditionally change or train people to wait for June then to buy their big sale of Botox, to buy that sale price. So you kind of have that structure be a little bit weird. Do you agree with that, Ricky?
- [21:26]
A
Yeah. Unless I guess, you know that that's a slow period and like, that's like your way of supplementing. But again, you have to understand, we talked to one of our clients about this. There's a trade off with all this stuff. Like, we all act like these things happen in isolation, but there's an equal and opposite reaction happening in other places. And some of that is stuff that we can't really see. I remember I talked to one of our clients a few months ago and they were talking about like their recurring revenue was really slow in a specific time period. When we looked at their recent promotions, they had been blasting their existing list aggressively with promotions. So they were making their numbers look good, but all they were doing is front loading the demand. People that might have waited are now getting service, but that means they're now not getting service two months from now. So when you run this, this promo in June, you have to understand like, hey, if it overall, do the pros outweigh the cons? That's with all of this, that's the judgment call we're trying to make. Is it, do the pros outweigh the cons? And if doing that in June every year means that we're going to get enough extra business that yeah, we understand some of the people that would have just come in May bump their things to June. And with some of the people that would have waited till July, front load. So June always looks better. And it might be coming a little bit at the expense of May and July. Overall, we're still confident that overall we're still making more. We have more revenue, more patients, more people coming through the door. So it's a little bit of a judgment call because you can never see the unseeable. Right. There's not an alternative universe where you can see the alternative scenario play out. So that's a little bit of a challenge. So do your best, use your judgment. But yeah, in general, if you have something that's seasonal specifically for a reason, fine. Don't run things very consistently, very regularly. If it's once a year, great. You know that quarter, you're going to front load and backload your demand. So the people that would have done it in May, not do it in June and July are doing it in June. Right. People maybe move their timelines a little bit. I think the real danger is when we see clients like it's just, oh, my main thing is laser hair removal. So let's run a laser hair special this month and next month. Well, I still need the. I got to run a laser hair special this month again. And they're just running the same thing on repeat all year or multiple times.
- [23:21]
B
You.
- [23:21]
A
That's your. Now that's not a promo. That's your default price. Like, that's your Express. Like, I don't know, Express still does this. But I remember like when I used to shop there back in like post college years, for me, every single thing was always discounted. There was. You would never buy whatever their sticker price was on the clothes. That was never the actual price as far as I remember, ever. So that's what you've done to your other product lines too. This episode is brought to you by Med Spa Magic Marketing, my agency. We help Med spas and esthetics practices grow with more effective marketing strategies. And I know that's a vague phrase, right? That's a vague claim. So I have an offer for you. I offer this to any new prospects if you're interested in exploring any of them. Another marketing option, a new agency, or just getting into Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads for the first time. I'd love to show you why we're different, what we're doing for clients. And we can do that via a one and a half hour planning session where I'll outline a specific marketing plan and I'll give you all of the blueprints that we would implement if we were to do business together. Now you can take that, use that on your own, hire someone else to help you execute it or work with us. We really don't hold anything back on that strategy call. And I think you'll have a lot of confidence in how you manage your marketing investment moving forward. Understanding some of the nuances that can help you implement more effective marketing strategies for your business. So if you want to do that, you can go to medspamagicmarketing.com a couple other things that have come up in conversations recently. One that's been on my mind is sometimes I feel like we can come across as singularly focused in the, in the stuff that we recommend and it's not by choice. So we talk a lot about injectable promotion and I had a conversation with a client this week that's running microneedling ads and it just brought this conversation back to the forefront of my mind. It's not that we are inept or that we don't like other services in the med spa space. Like, right. We don't have a lot of videos on, like, here's what to run for, like microneedling ads or how to sell more of your like $2,500 laser no one's ever heard of. The reason we don't run that stuff is because the math doesn't work. So one little reminder I wanted to throw on our radar in the podcast today was for some of these services, even like a laser hair removal service. I wanted to talk about the challenge around the math for running promotions for those types of services. So if you're doing something like laser hair removal where there's not recurring revenue, typically right, people are buying whatever they're going to buy in terms of a package and then they're not typically coming back. It's a real challenge when you market those services. At times, because you squeeze your margin from two sides, you're dropping your price point to be competitive. Anytime you advertise to a cold audience, these are people that don't already know, like and trust you. You have to be price competitive because it's part of the buying equation. Most of the time you're going to have to be price competitive to attract the new clients. And when you're advertising, you're spending money to reach people, so you have acquisition cost. So you've squeezed your profit margin on something like laser hair. We've gone through this exercise with clients. I specifically remember one client, the bread and butter of their business was laser hair removal. And we looked at the math. It's not that you don't get results, you're going to get leads, you're going to close some deals. So if you don't look carefully at the math, some of these things can seem okay at a surface level. But sometimes when you start to look in detail at the math, you've realized by discounting, I've reduced my profit margin and by advertising I've added customer acquisition costs. And now my margin on this service that might not even lead to recurring revenue is almost non existent. It doesn't even make sense. So I want to take this to like another angle here, which is something like a microneedling package because we, we don't run a lot of microneedling ads for our clients. Lauren, correct me if I'm wrong on that, right? We don't do a ton of it. And the reason is not because it's not a good service to have in your med spa. The reason we don't use it with our advertising dollars is because if we're going to do that, what I just explained with laser hair removal successfully, we're going to have to discount dramatically. And this is why it's a problem on these services. And I'll explain in a second. We're going to have to discount dramatically and pay customer acquisition cost. So we've squeezed our margin down to almost nothing or very little again, and we're seeing fewer clients because the acquisition cost for those types of services is higher. So if we're going to break even on the first visit, I'd rather do it at scale with something like injectables than breaking even on expensive micro needling sessions. So I just wanted to talk about that because it came up again last week. When we really look at the math, like we're not saying no to this stuff just because we feel like it's. And I'm sure there's an angle and there's a way to do it and maybe we haven't figured out, you know, the perfect formula for some of these services, but over and over again, the reason we love putting our ad dollars behind injectables. It's the most cost effective gateway drug to your med spa space. It's something that has relatively low customer acquisition costs. You can break even or better on the initial visit and you can do so in large volumes. And the reality is now when you sell your micro needling package to your Botox client, you could do it to someone who know, like and knows, likes and trust you based on personal experience at a normal price point with no additional customer acquisition cost. And those upsells add massive profitability to your med spa. So there's a reason we're not saying when we talk in our conversations with clients that those are not good services. It's that they might not be good services to lead with in terms of your advertising dollars. Same thing, I think, with IV therapy. Another good example. Anything to add to that conversation, Lauren? That was something that was on my mind, so I wanted to talk about that. Then I had one more.
- [28:27]
B
Yeah, I love that. Totally agree.
- [28:30]
A
The last one I wanted to wrap with today was the conversion rate conversation. We've talked about this quite a bit. I think we just did a recent episode on the conversion rate conversation because there's a disparity among our clients where we run the same ads, the same offers, and somebody's just killing it with conversion rate and somebody's really struggling. And we talked about some of the reasons it might not even be leads management. It might be that when they research your reputation, it's less than ideal. I talked about in a recent episode where when I just clicked on a Med Spa ad the other day that was downstairs in my house, clicked on one and literally go back to my feed and it's riddled with Med Spot ads. So the idea that once you fill out a form, now you're seeing ads for seven or eight other competitors, you really need to give people a compelling reason to choose your Med Spot beyond the discount. But Lauren, you mentioned something with one of our clients recently that you all were like auditing some of the conversations they were having with clients. And I think I had talked to Amber about this, somebody else on the team, but we were auditing some of these conversations and we realized like, okay, yeah, the conversion rate's kind of suffering and they were managing the conversations really sloppily that just that specific anecdote since it was recent. Can you share kind of what that, what that client was doing wrong with some of the leads management of the conversations?
- [29:40]
B
Yeah, a couple things that I think are really important with that is one, following up again after the initial conversation. I think where a lot of people fail is you'll send, or we'll send an automated text that says, hey, so and so, thanks for claiming our offer. Do you want to schedule an appointment? And the response will be, yes, can I do it on Monday? And the answer is, sure, I have 3 o' clock and 5 o', clock, which works for you. And then the person doesn't answer. And so we think, oh well, they're not interested anymore. We're just going to leave it and we're done with it. That I think is a huge mistake. I think people get distracted. People have so much in their phone, in their feed, in their day, sometimes they might have literally just forgotten to answer you or forgotten to take that next step. Step. So following up aggressively after the conversation has started is still just as important as the initial follow up and outreach to get that response back. So excuse me, continue that conversation going push until you get a yes or a no. That's where I think people lose constantly. The next thing I think where people lose is when you answer a question and close it, you don't have another question back to their question, if that makes sense.
- [30:44]
A
Yeah, you're not trying to keep the conversation going. It's like dating. Like, it's like if you were having a conversation dating somebody and you just were like super blunt in your replies.
- [30:52]
B
Yeah. Like for example the text that I read of somebody, this client last week was the response said, do you think 20 units will work for my forehead? And the person responded, maybe that was it, just maybe. No, no, nothing with it, nothing else. And that was just like, whoa. Really? That's all you said. So I think that goes into team training. One, but two, that response can be way better to one, build the factors of know, like and trust. Start educating. We always say that first interaction with a practice automatically sets the way that people are going to think about you. And if somebody responded maybe they're probably not going to come see you. But if you took the time to really explain. Right, exactly. If you took the time to explain how we treat the forehead and offer a free consultation to see how many units it'll take and go down that path, leaving it with an open ended question like do you want to schedule a free consultation? You're probably going to have a much better conversation with that from the next steps. So I think it's have that conversation. Take the time in each of the messages, don't just make them sound AI chatgpt, quickly response and be done with it. Take the time to make them worth it and follow up, follow up, follow up until you get a yes or no.
- [32:08]
A
Now, yeah, you've spent the time and the money building these creatives, putting ad dollars behind them all in the hopes that somebody would reach out to you. When they do, don't sabotage the interaction. I think that's another good point that you just brought up Lauren, which, which is like the AI, the AI and the automation. A lot of people that right now are like pushing, they want to automate everything, they want to outsource all of this stuff. There are plenty of businesses that, that offer like leads management as part of their service. Maybe some of them are doing it well. But again, anecdotally what we've run into over and over again and I just had, I've got a guest actually at the end of November coming on the podcast. So I just had a preliminary conversation. We haven't filmed that yet, but it was the idea that, hey, the personalized approach to client communication is a key point of differentiation. Why not establish that from the get go?
- [32:53]
B
Right?
- [32:53]
A
I don't think the ideal methodology for booking appointments is outsourcing to a call center or a third party. Unless that person's really plugged in with the day to day the practice, they really know you and you feel like they're a good representative specifically of your business. If at any point people feel like they're part of like a leads management farm that's just sitting there with a booking quota. You leave something to be desired. Again, it's not going to be measurable because I agree you I would rather go that route than not manage my leads properly at all. I'd rather have somebody be on top of it. But I don't think it's the ideal. I think this is a customer service based business. We want to automate what can be automated. That's why we typically say, you know, 80, 20, 80% of it is like the automation drips in the workflows. But once someone shows they're serious and they want to have a conversation, I just don't love the idea of outsourcing that it's not a huge time burden. I think Lauren we've done it for a client the leads management on a typical like if you're running ads it's probably something like 15 hours a month in terms of lead management work workflow when we audited ourselves because we did it internally once so you're talking three or four hours a week and your reception desk, it's a perfect thing to fill the gaps in their schedule as they're dealing with clients, calling people back, scheduling appointments, welcoming and greeting. That should be able to fill the gap. Leave the margin for that so you can give people a really, really good hands on white glove experience even before they become a patient.
- [34:09]
B
I think a big thing that we see with it too where this fails is the person doing it doesn't have the same level of care of the outcome as maybe the owner or somebody who has like a stake in what's going on. When I have the people who is the owner managing all the conversations of a really small practice, those people are following up with every single lead. They're getting them booked because it matters to them and to their money in the end of the day. So there's a fine balance like we talked about in one of the previous episodes of how to not be salesy but still reach quotas and have goals. And I think this is one of those places where they have to understand whoever is doing this task that it really is important to the business at the end of the day and it changes your numbers dramatically if you follow up with three extra people a month and get them converted too. So I think having that conversation with who's doing it, of course this is really important. This isn't just something I do for having it for fun. And the conversations are going to be really different than they are with existing patients. If you send a monthly specialist text and one of your patients for the last 10 years responds, yeah, let me schedule for Friday. That's an easy conversation. It's done, it's closed in two minutes and we're on the next. These are different. Fostering, nurturing conversations. Like Ricky said, that is really important to have that person care with the utmost level.
- [35:26]
A
Yeah. And I know we talked about not. Not necessarily incentivizing like upsells and cross sells, because I think that can start to get into a gray area again. That was just an opinion we kind of talked about in the last episode. I know that can be controversial, but this, I think is perfectly fine to incentivize because you're not actually incentivizing the sale, you're incentivizing the visit. Right. Hey, and that's going to be all about just diligence and follow up. There's nothing you're going to be able to say because they're not giving any sort of fake promise that I'd be like, oh, I got an incentive for a 15% conversion rate. So. So come in and I'll, like, slip you some free Botox. That's not what's going to be happening in this conversation. So there's really no counter incentive. The only incentive you're going to create by. By man, by whoever manages your leads having some sort of bonus structure for reaching like a certain threshold of close rate or response rate that's going to be directly aligned with the business goals and you're not going to sacrifice patient quality, treatment quality at all. So I think that's totally fine. To have like a competition to incentivize, like speed to lead, speed to reply, conversion rate, close rate in your tracking dashboards. Totally fair and fine.
- [36:25]
B
Yeah, I love that. Good point. Cool.
- [36:27]
A
Well, this. This was a fun episode. A little different today. Doing a little bit of a round robin on a few different topics that were just top of mind from conversations we're having with our clients. We hope you enjoyed that. Lauren, any last things to add to the conversation?
- [36:38]
B
No, I think that's it.
- [36:39]
A
Awesome. Well, thank you all. We'll see you on the next episod. Sat.