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Med Spa Success Strategies
Wednesday Thoughts: What Does "Branding" for Med Spas Really Entail?
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Hey, MedSpa owners. Today I wanted to talk about branding and how you can incorporate branding elements into your marketing and advertising initiatives to make what you're doing even more effective. First, what does that term even mean? It can really be fluffy in a lot of senses. So we're going to make this tangible and give you some actionable tips to incorporate brand to help you differentiate from the competitors in your market. So I was listening to a podcast this morning from a couple marketing executives and they were talking about branding. They were also talking about the concept of perfect competition. Perfect competition being the idea that you're in a market where everything is commoditized and it's a race to the bottom in terms of price. And they were, they were tying that into some of the developments around AI. But I think as med spa owners, you can, you can resonate with this concept of being in something that's close to a perfect competition based market where the products and services that we offer are very commoditized and it can be a challenge to truly differentiate, to stand out in the crowd and to consistently generate and attract business and loyalty. So we've always said when it comes to loyalty and branding, typically the way that we've thought about this is we're going to use direct response offer based promos to reduce friction, to create an interaction, right? And we know that once people come in and do business with us that those interactions and experiences are the best way to create brand perception. But you're doing that really on a one to one basis as you're serving clients, right? So through the engagement of an interaction of doing business with you, if you're doing a really good job, those people now prefer you. They have a relationship, an emotional connection. And I think the challenge becomes how do we develop a relationship and an emotional connection that really puts us in a position to brand our med spa more via our website, our marketing messages and our advertisements. And that's what we're going to talk about a little bit today. So a few things to kind of note when it, when it comes to being in an industry where we're close to this, this scenario of perfect competition, first thing we have to understand about brand and how to incorporate it into our marketing mix is brand in large part is an emotional appeal based on shared identity or values. So you think about the early Apple ads that did not talk at all about product or service benefit. They simply attempted to, to connect with a audience on an emotional level by saying, we're just like you. If, if this, if this is you we're your brand, right? And they did that with creatives early on. So you see a lot of the early, most famous Apple ads don't talk about the product or service at all. Now that's an extreme example. So I don't want to, I don't want to say that that's the strategy, but there's a lesson to be learned there. And the lesson is how do we create an emotional appeal on shared identity or values that can help us connect with our audience. So we want to be thinking about ways to do that in our marketing messaging. And I think from my perspective, there's a very nuanced approach to probably accomplishing that goal on a micro level as a local business. This episode is brought to you by MedSpa Magic Marketing, my agency. We help med spas and aesthetics practices grow with more effective marketing strategies. And I know that's a vague phrase, right? That's a vague claim. So I have an offer for you. I offer this to any new prospects. If you're interested in exploring any of another marketing option, another 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, 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 the risk that you have as a med spa or a local service based business is trying to identify with an audience that's too specific and doing so at the exclusion of other markets and segments that would probably still do business with you. And so here's my takeaway. Instead of saying something like, hey, we're the med spa for busy moms in their 30s who just want to look and feel a little bit better. Right? Like you can, you can think of a business going a little bit too hyper specific with a target Persona that aligns with that type of strategy. And I think when you talk specifically like that To a defined audience, you do so at the exclusion of maybe some, some other people that would be doing business with you. So I'm not sure that's an effective approach as a local service based business. But a nuanced approach to doing that, in my opinion would be that you tell your story and you connect on, on a personal level with your prospects, telling them about who you are, what's going on in your life, the things that you struggle with, your challenges, your insecurities, the services that you offer and how those things have helped you feel better. I think that helps connect with that specific audience that really aligns with you in terms of lifestyle values and just feeling an alignment, maybe in terms of a shared identity to some extent, while not doing it at the exclusion of maybe some other people who would also like to do business with you, but maybe don't resonate with that specific part of your story, but it makes them like you a little bit more. So I think that's the nuanced approach there. Instead of saying we are the Med Spa 4, just tell your story and allow that to speak for itself. So again, step one of building brand into your marketing is develop emotional connections based on shared identity, our values or life experiences. The second layer to this is you have to be cool among the tastemakers. Nike, great example of this. You see branding ads from Nike that do not talk at all about the feature benefit of Nike joggers or Nike athletic pants. Right? They're not talking about the fabric, the durability, the stretchiness. Like none of that is included in most Nike ads. It's more of an emotional appeal ending with the slogan just do it. And what they're attempting to do with that is they're attempting to connect to say, hey, if you're, if you're someone who's ambitious about whether it's your personal fitness goals or athletic achievement, the Nike is the brand for you. But that is supported. That brand message is supported by being cool among the tastemakers. So Nike has built a brand on shoes and athletic gear and sponsorships of famous athletes. So you feel like, hey, if, if I want to be elite, this is what the people that are elite wear and that's what I want to wear. So being popular among the tastemakers is, I think, a critical component to brand. So as a local business, what are some of the takeaways here? Develop work on proactive. Develop proactively developing relationships with the influencers and tastemakers in your local market. Who are the people that have sway and how can we build them, how can we bring them into our orbit so that they're advocates for our brand? And there are a lot of creative ways to do that with like, influencer marketing, micro micro influencer outreach and engagement. But again, step two, be cool among the tastemakers. And then step three, none of those other two, neither of those other two things matter if your product or service isn't truly great. If you're on people's radar and you're attempting to promote this. This vision of what your business is or this perception of what your business is. But then when people go digging or they actually decide to do business with you, in Nike's case, the joggers stink and they rip after two days and they don't fit, right? And they're uncomfortable, the entire strategy falls apart. Same thing with an Apple iPhone, right? We can connect to creatives all day, but if we've got a junkie phone on the back end, it's not going to do us any good. So the major caveat here is you still have to have the goods. Like, you have to be great at what you do. You have to provide exceptional experience, exceptional service, and you got to have the goods. So the other two things don't matter. But I think those are some ideas to incorporate branding into your marketing message. Tell your story, connect with people on a personal level that can help you differentiate and build emotional connection based on shared identity or values. Figure out ways to be preferred among the tastemakers in your community, or at least a subset of those people, and make sure you have the goods. I think those are some good ways to incorporate branding into your website, your marketing messages, your ads, to kind of supplement the brand perception that's created through in office experience.