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Med Spa Success Strategies
STEAL Our 2026 Med Spa Growth Framework: Exact Ad Strategies, Offers & 7-Figure Growth
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Foreign. I'm really excited to kick off our 2026 series here. This is going to be an entire rework and revamp of the series. We're going to walk through everything top to bottom that we've found and discovered in terms of how to effectively and efficiently market a med spa best. And so today's episode one, we do this every year and there are always substantive, substantive changes every year to this and new additions to the fr, new bells and whistles and maybe a rethinking of old strategies that are going to put you in the best possible position here for 2026 to succeed with your med spa marketing. So in this series, here are some of the things we're going to cover in order. Part one. Today on this episode, we're going to really do a deep dive on how to get clients to choose your med spa when they have other options. Almost all of us are in competitive landscapes where we have, you know, several to a dozen competitors who are vying for the same clients that we're vying for in our local area. Going to talk about really what it means to differentiate and to win the business in a competitive landscape. Today, part number two, we're going to talk about understanding ROI in detail and how to effectively measure your marketing investment to consistently produce substantial ROI without negative cashflow impact. A lot of you are not realizing that that's something that's probably happening related to your marketing. I see so many mistakes when I talk to med spa owners where they're just making mistakes with the way that they've got their, their marketing investment blueprinted. They're spending money in the wrong places, they've got a big agency retainer, but a small ad spend. They've got good ROI on like initial visit, but it's not leading to retention. So there's no snowball effect or vice versa. So many issues with how we analyze the math around the marketing investment and ultimately what we're doing is we're trying to put money into a system that maximizes our growth and returns. So we're going to talk about that in detail. Part three will be how to attract clients consistently. So the specific framework and that's going to include our best performing ads and offers on Facebook and Instagram. So an up to date view of our top performing ads and offers. What we've done that has not worked and why. So hopefully we can steer you in the right direction for where you're putting those dollars on Facebook and Instagram via the ad space. A better way to solve the bad leads problem. And to maximize conversion rate of leads, we're going to go through our updated Best performing Google Ads framework. Some new additions to that, we're going to go over again our SEO checklist. So if you're paying an SEO company or not paying an SEO company even, what are the things that you can do to improve your rankings organically in search? And these are things that you can do on your own. It's going to give you specifics and a better idea to level up. I'm going to talk about how we got clients featured in gq, Forbes, Real Simple, Everyday Health. As part of that strategy, I'm going to give you the tools to do that and then ultimately how to achieve omnipresence so that prospects really see you everywhere. And then how to retain clients because retention in the med spa space will make or break your practice. So our best practices on retention. So jumping in today if you're, if you this is your first episode. I know some of you As a new 2026 listener, this will be maybe the first episode. Real quick. I've been working with med spas since before the category started. For over 12 years, I've been working with practices that have been doing Botox and medical spa services. Our agency is rated a perfect five stars on Google. As of filming this, I think we have close to 30 patient testimonials on there. In case studies, we have a proven track record of producing what I believe are best in industry results with measurable performance. I've had my tips featured in CIO.com search engine watch, bank of America, Small Business Forum and more. And I've helped and coached other agencies and other businesses of all sizes since 2011. Also the host of this series, which is Med Spa Success Strategies. A couple of our case studies here, I wanted to show this. So you know, hey, why should I listen to this person? Can they actually, are they actually getting results? These are not growth case studies where we've basically piggybacked onto an already successful practice. The case studies I'm showing on my screen are stats that are directly attributable to our efforts. One of the clients on the screen, we generated $1.89 million in revenue in 18 months, directly traceable to our ads that we brought in and 2561 patients. So these are the frameworks I'm going to be showing you that allowed us to achieve that result. And then a disclaimer here as we get started, I'm going to take a quick sip of my ginger ale, a quick Disclaimer David Ogilvy Quote Marketing Great, great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster. If a bunch of people know about your product or service and the product or service stinks, you are on the path to destruction. And that is true. So we need our businesses to be dialed in for any of this to matter. Mark Good marketing is fuel in the fire of a successfully operating business. It's like putting the band aid on a bullet hole of a business that's struggling. So let's go over some prerequisites and I want to get as detailed with this as possible in some of these upcoming slides. First, your Google reviews need to be impeccable. I'm just going to talk about the range of reviews. If you're a med spa and you have a 4.5 star rating on Google Maps, this might be a harsh reality for some of you listening, that is probably the equivalent of a restaurant having like two and a half stars on Google. In the med spa space, you generally have high customer satisfaction reflected in Google reviews and the range is what dictates your success level there. So if you've got med SPAs that have 4.9 and five star reviews and you have a 4.5, you're probably on the bottom rung of the ladder in terms of performance. So the real scale is almost from like 4 to 5 is what really matters. Like 4. If you're a 4.0 on Google, you're basically a one star rated med spot as far as people can tell. And that might not be a true representation, but as far as the data point people have from your Google reviews, that's the takeaway. So I can't understate how important this is. We'll talk about this a little bit later in this episode, but people that find you from whatever source, word of mouth, referral, they drive past the location, they see a Facebook ad, they find you on Google. One of the things the vast majority of people are going to do is they're going to investigate your Google reviews and if you leave them any reason to doubt your reputation, they will choose another practice. So I can't understate how important Google reviews are and having a proactive strategy to request reviews. So a couple tidbits on there always ask for reviews as a favor, so use favor based language. Hey, online reviews are really important to small businesses like ours. It would mean the world to us if you take a few minutes to leave a detailed review of your experience, right? That type of thing is going to get a better response rate than making it look like some sort of a marketing research survey. Responding to the bad reviews. I recommend not getting in an argument, but also being direct when something needs to be said so that you have your case made in a tasteful and tactful way. If you if somebody leaves a review and you think that they maybe just misunderstood something, it's okay to say, hey, I'm so apo. I so apologize. It appears there was maybe a misunderstanding. We'd love to connect with you. Please. If you could reach out, here's the number. We'd love to talk to you more about this issue. Just showing that you care and that you're paying attention gives people a reason to doubt the validity of the negative review. If you leave the negative review unaddressed, my 2 cents is people assume it's true. And if I don't have a counter argument and all there is is the one side of the story, I'm going to assume the one side of the story is true. So again, avoid the temptation to argue with people. That's not what I'm saying. You don't want to make a detailed case, just show you care and open the door to the possibility in the eyes of the person reading that review that there might be more to the story. Patient experience Truly Needs to be an A plus this is a retention game, especially if your med spa is heavy on injectables. There are some strategies I'm going to show you in the series that are going to make it as easy easy as it could possibly be to get butts in the seats. There are a lot of businesses that are hard to market. It's hard to acquire customers. The med spa space, it is not. It is pretty darn easy and predictable. Customer acquisition is not a challenge. I'll show you the frameworks we use, but it can happen pretty much on autopilot. The real challenge is if patient experience is anything less than an A plus, you are risking attrition at an unsatisfactory level. What do I mean by that? So most people, when I say this, they're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. They move past it. They feel like they've checked this box. But have you done secret shopping? Have you gone to other med spas? Have you been introspective to the point where you're willing to identify the things that you're just average at in your med spa that are creating gaps in in between where you are now and what it truly means to provide an A plus patient experience? Fix those gaps because people are going to stay with the provider they feel most safe, confident and comfortable with. And if you leave them any reason to doubt the quality of the service, the quality of the experience, the quality or the impacts of the result, they will explore other options. People are aggressively marketing to attain your clients, just like you're doing to other med spots. You're trying to get clients that are going to other med spas right now. They're doing the same to you. You have to anchor them with a truly exceptional patient experience, social media presence and your website. I think these things have to be engaging, personal and connect. So one of the things that will set you apart. We'll talk about the book Influence of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini, he talks about likability being a key component and in the med spa space to differentiate. We don't have really a uni value proposition that's clear for most of us, right? We're not product developers, we're not selling a product line or something that's fundamentally different than our competitors. We're selling the same services. We're just trying to do it at a more exceptional level for a more reasonable price, for the most part, or some matrix of those factors. And with that, the likability factor is key. If people have an affinity for you, they just like you, your providers, your practice and what you're about. The right people will choose you, you'll tip the scales in your favor and they'll stay. So show personality, have an opinion and connect. Do that on social media, do that on your website. Very, very important. I see so many people that have just, you know, update posts their static images on their social media feed and their websites are full of stock photos. That's leaving something to be desired. You're missing an opportunity to give people a compelling reason to choose your med spa over the others. 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? It'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 magicmarketing.com all right, so let's get into the meat of today's episode as we start the series. Number one here is we're going to talk about how to get clients to choose your med spa. That's the main focus of today's conversation. And there's an old marketing acronym, if you've heard it, ada Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. And I use this to talk about the importance of standing out and really like having things pop and grabbing users attention. So the ada, the attention element is very true still in advertising, our ads need to quickly grab the user's attention for anything else to matter. But I think as a general framework for describing how customers end up at a purchase decision, ADA is a little bit out of date. Right. So I, with the help of Gemini, Google's AI tool, as part of this presentation we came up with the new acronym. I don't know if it'll stick, but we've come up with it for, for this year's series. And the new acronym we're going to roll with is eva. Eva. It's about creating desire and winning the selection process. So the reality is as a med spa, we are not trying to stimulate demand for an unknown product line. That's kind of what the old ADA acronym was about. What we're really trying to do is, is make sure that people that have already decided they want these services find and ultimately choose our med spa. Right. We are not going to be convincing people who have never thought about Botox to get Botox. That's not really the game with marketing. For a med spa or most local service based businesses the game is really people are going to do their own research, they're going to come to their own conclusion about what services they're interested in or just that they want to get something done and they're going to decide on their own they want to visit a med spa before we have any interaction with them for the most part. So the first thing that we need to pay attention to is the exposure element. When they've made that decision, we need to be in the consideration Pool. Right. They're going to ultimately weigh several different, they're going to look at several different med spas in their area most of the time to try to figure out where they actually want to schedule that appointment. Unless it's a word of mouth referral, which irrelevant. Okay, great. Take them when you get them when you don't. It's not on, on the table anyways. But for anything else, the exposure element is critical. So what do I mean by exposure? What are people going to do when they're deciding they want to visit a med spa for the first time or they're new to town and need to find a new provider? They're going to find the med spas that are in their area and they're going to find people via Google search, via social media ads, sometimes just driving by the physical location. So like ambient awareness, Google organic search. So there are all sorts of ways that people might stumble across your med spa that you would end up in their consideration pool. But that's the first thing we have to do. People have to know we're here when they're thinking about visiting a med spa. We have to be in the consideration pool and all forms of advertising and exposure help us accomplish that. Now there's a rank order to doing those that I think is factoring in opportunity costs. We want to put our dollars and our time and our energy into things that create the best bang for our buck. But exposure is checkbox one. Right. Checkbox two here in the EVA model is validation. Now people are investigating the options and they're trying to figure out where, who's going to win this competition. Right. And then number three is affirmation. This is trying to make it as frictionless as possible. Once people have decided that we're the go to provider, let's make it as easy as possible for them to actually take the next step and to get on the schedule. So the first thing here, exposure. Let's dig into this a little bit on the exposure side. Back to that slide. Okay. We have to control the controllable to ensure our chances are being our chances of being in the consideration pool are maximized. So yes, some people in your town will just drive by the office. So there is an inherent advantage to having an office that has, you know, not necessarily foot traffic, but even just drive by visibility traffic. Most people when they're performing a search, so if they, if they haven't had a word of mouth referral, they're going to look at multiple options. I would say one of the first places People are going to look is Google and the Google reviews of different businesses. So getting your SEO in order at a, at a base level, you don't want to spend a lot in an ongoing SEO investment earlier. But at a base level, setting the foundation up, making sure you have your service list filled out on your Google business listing, being proactive about reviews, those things are going to allow you to show up there more frequently. Google Ads can allow you to show up there, you know, via a paid mechanism immediately for targeted searches. Again, you got to do it right. There's a bunch of ways to do it wrong. People might stumble across a social media ad. So if they've decided, hey, I've been thinking about visiting a Med spa or getting Botox and now they stumble across an ad in their social media feed that might grab their attention and put you in the consideration pool. So all of those different things allow you to be in the consideration pool. But I would say the main things are, you know, ambient awareness, so people driving by or knowing that you're in town, being in the consideration pool that way, people finding you on Google search via the ad space or organic or the maps results and seeing your reviews, people seeing you via a social media ad, I would say those are the primary ways beyond a word of mouth referral that people are going to find your med spot obviously have a chat, GPT and AI and things that are evolving, but as of now, that's not super, super prominent. And if it is, it overlaps a lot into the SEO side. Okay, step number two. Now that we're in the consideration pool and people are thinking about us, they're looking at us relative to our competitors. How do we get them to actually choose our Med spa? We need to win the validation process. So here are the things that I think impact the research phase that'll tip the scales in your favor and increase the chances that people actually choose your practice over the other options they have available. Number one is going to be reviews. I think in lieu of a word of mouth referral, the best data point new prospects have who don't already know like and trust your business. The best proxy data point they have on your reputation is your Google reviews. Now they might look at Yelp too, but Google reviews first. Other online reviews are extremely important. This is like the, like one of the core foundational elements to successful marketing. In most local service based businesses and especially in the med spa space, reviews have to be stellar. The second thing would be social media. When I go to your Instagram feed or your Facebook feed. Are you just posting a monthly specials graphic? Is there just like a picture or like an update? Or do you have videos of your providers and owners talking to the camera, explaining service offerings, sharing a unique opinion, a treatment philosophy, a case study, a before and after a client experience? Those types of things create no like and trust deposits that build on the build the likelihood that you're going to win this validation step, right? So the likability factor goes into play there too. So really be strategic with your social media presence. And again, I like to think of social media as organically the stuff you post on your feed, not ads, but the stuff you just post on your on your regular feed. On social media. It's not there to help you acquire new clients. It's there to deepen relationships with your existing clients and to keep building those no like and trust deposits. And it's there to serve as a brochure for new prospective clients that are thinking about visiting your med spot. We want to get them as comfortable and confident as possible. The next thing is your website. I see way too many people that have the boilerplate website with stock photos and then I go to a service page and the entire service page if I get to your Botox page. And all it is is like a manufacturer recap of what Botox does that's not super helpful in convincing and converting a prospect. So have a video of the provider, have before and afters where you're actually having the provider talk over the before and after and do a voiceover explaining what they did and why they did it and this person's experience and explaining the case study in some detail. Talk about your reputation, why clients choose you. And the more of that you do, the more compelling your marketing message becomes. So your website content is another place I see people really missing. And that also contains right branding and personality. What are we doing to differentiate ourselves and stand apart? Go as detailed as possible in the way that you talk about what you do because those nuances allow you to stand apart and develop a rapport that's unparalleled. So demonstrating expertise really, really important as well. And then the last thing is price, right? When people are looking at this validation phase, they're also going to look at price considerations. If I find two reputable med spas that are kind of apples to apples that are in close proximity to each other, so convenience is also a factor, but you're not going to control that. So that's why I don't have that on here. Here specifically in your advertising, that's A consideration. But if somebody's a mile away from you and they're 10 miles away from another med spa and everything else looks relatively equal, they're probably by default going to choose the closer location. Same thing with price. If I find two med spas that are equally reputable, that I find to be like both really valid options with exceptional reviews and like good looking offices and energetic staff members, then price might be the tiebreaker. So price is also part of this validation period. If I've got a new patient special, then that invites people in to my first to a first visit that's pretty frictionless and gives them a deal. And then the competitor down the street is charging $150 just for a consult, hey, I've added a point of friction that's probably going to cause me to lose the tiebreaker. So understand that as well. So the validation hierarchy, I rework this kind of every year. But if I had to think about how do clients weigh these different factors? First of all, I'm going to put the factors that influence the purchase decision into three buckets. This has not changed from last year, the year before. The three buckets that influence the purchase decision are reputation and trust elements, convenience considerations and price. Those are the three buckets of factors that influence the purchase decision. And if I had to put a weight to those, I would say 60% roughly. This is just kind of ballparking it, but 60% or more, it's almost a prerequisite, non negotiable that the reputation and trust component has to be there. Convenience would be the second thing. So again it's the tiebreaker. If you're a mile away from a prospect and you're competing competitors 10 miles away by default they'll probably choose you, all other things equal. And then price. If you've got a good deal or an incentive to get people to choose you over the other options, that might be the tiebreaker as well. I would say it's the least important factor but can serve as a really effective tiebreaker. So the way that I like to think of this is as a subconscious scorecard. If those are the weights, 60, 20, 20 roughly, then I like to think of my prospects as doing a subconscious scorecard on 1 to 100 of my business versus my competitors. And, and let's say I've got a hundred, I've got 500 five star reviews and everything that they see on my website, my social media accounts really positions me as like a trustworthy, credible, personable, likable source for the services. I might rank 60 out of 60 on the reputation and trust bucket. And let's say I'm one mile away from this person, so I'm going to be 20 out of 20 on the convenience bucket. And then let's just say price. We don't have any sort of promo or anything, we're just inviting people in for a consultation. Maybe by default I'm a 10 out of 20, right. So I'm rating there a 90 out of 100. You can look at those factors relative to your competitors. You can figure out who's more likely to get the business. If you have a competitor down the street that is also a 10 out of 10, 60 out of 60 on reputation and trust and a 20 out of 20 on the convenience. They're in the same location but they've got a really attractive new patient special offer, just generally better pricing. More often than not they're going to break the tie. If you've got a competitor that has a worse reputation than you, then you might be able to get away with not being as price competitive and people might drive a little bit further. But you have to understand where you stack up relative to your top competitors on that validation hierarchy using that purchase matrix. So that's a fun little exercise. Just kind of sit down and be really fair and reasonable and objective of. If you didn't have any sort of relationship with your med spa and you were going through the process we just outlined in terms of validation, which practice would you choose based on the data that you have available? Go through that exercise. You might find there are some gaps in there that you really need to fix in terms of your pricing, your new patient offers, your website content, how personal and educational you're being on social media, your Google reviews, etc. Okay, the last thing is affirmation and this is basically just trying to make this as seamless as possible. So once they've gotten to the point where it's a psychological yes, I want to do this, we need to make this a no brainer and make it as frictionless as possible for people to take the next step. So we need to reduce risk and we need to make it seamless. So having online booking, not charging for consults, giving people an attractive new patient special offer, having hours that are flexible and available, you know, after hours before work on, on Saturday, those types of things. And then in terms of the online mechanism, making that clear and easy too. If I get to the website and I've got nine options and I have to pick a service, but I'm still at the phase where like I just want to talk to somebody and don't know what to do. That's that lack of clarity is going to create friction that forces them to go back again to the validation phase and you risk losing the person that already made the decision to move forward. So reduce friction. Make this as easy, seamless and as much of a no brainer as possible for people to actually pull the trigger Doing business with your med Spa so do that exercise. Ask yourself, are you giving people a compelling reason to choose your med spa? Okay, now for some action items related to today's exercise. In today's episode I'm going to read through these action items. But if you want to download a free cheat sheet and guide that you can run through to audit this for your practice and actually do the exercise, I'm going to start putting all of these resources on Medspamagicmarketing.com 2026Medspamagicmarketing.com 20206 I'll include the link to the exercise in the show notes so you can go through this on your own. But to wrap today, the action items that I'd recommend here is Dial in efficiency and client satisfaction. It's a prerequisite for growth. Really look at what it takes to be excellent in all capacities of the business from your consultation to your office waiting room to your providers to to your post appointment. Follow up all the things that lead to better patient satisfaction. And remember here, people matter. It's really hard to replace great people in your business. I have an emphasis on making sure your team is excellent. Audit your visibility plan. Make sure you're in the consideration pool on some of the platforms we talked about. Google reviews, Facebook and Instagram ads. All the things that you can do to make sure that you're in that consideration pool. For people that are considering visiting a med spa in your area, make sure you have an optimized and automated Google review collection process. We've got some tips and tricks on that. Make sure your website leads with unique personality opinion that sets you apart. Don't just use generic content about the services. Talk about your unique perspective and be authentic. Talk about your reputation. Make sure you've got before and afters with voiceover explaining the how and why behind the treatments. Make sure your social social channels are not just filled with like posts and updates, but educational content that builds deposits in the know like and trust bucket. Know exactly where you sit versus your competitors. Do the exercise. We talked about the scorecard exercise. Where do you stand versus your competitors objectively on reputation versus price map and then the last stop being generic. Tell your story. Have a unique perspective on how you do what you do and why. On the next episode we're going to talk about discounting and pricing strategies and the influence this has on new patient acquisition. There's a lot of debate and a lot of controversy and different opinions on this. I'm going to share the hard data on the trade offs that you're managing when we talk about discounting as a leverage point to acquire new clients for your med spa. So thanks and see you on episode two. Sam.