← Med Spa Success Strategies
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Foreign. Ricky Shockley with MedSpa Magic Marketing and today I'm continuing the conversation on brand with some additional thoughts, some additional depth and clarity and some tactical ideas to help you build brand that'll make your marketing and acquisition efforts more efficient in the future, not on a consistently declining path of results. I talked to so many practice owners who the realization with direct response marketing is that it works really well. It's very effective. This is why it's the first play that most of us are running for client acquisition. But there are some challenges with it and I was listening to an Alex Hormozi podcast and he had referenced this article by warc I think is the organization warc and it was this idea of the doom loop and why direct response advertising is a race to the bottom. And I want to talk about how we can avoid that long term and try to build what we call a market of one we're to going people are specifically seeking you out for the things that make you unique and uniquely attractive. This is really important and I know I've been talking about this kind of stuff a ton lately, but it's just where my mind is. It's really high up on my priority list and on the forefront of my radar here in terms of what we're doing for our business and what I ultimately want the people that we help via this content and our clients to be able to do at a more effective rate. So. So let's talk about the realities of the current landscape of marketing for med spas, most advertising, Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads is focused on direct response advertising. Right? I'm going to show someone an ad. I want them to take action on the ad right now. So we do things like we talk about our reputation and reviews and we put together a really good offer. It's a recipe for success. It really is. It's that simple in a sense. But it works. And so you see these offers and promotions, these new patient specials dominating the landscape and this works really well, especially early on. But let's really zoom out the next 24, 36 months, 5 years and let's talk about the hidden problem that's lurking here behind the scenes. And this is what work calls the doom loop. So what most businesses do that are entering the doom loop is they they see direct response ads working really well so they shift budget there. Great. Awesome. We see these short term efficiency gains in client acquisition, but we take our foot off the gas when it comes to building brand and we face continuously rising costs to acquire new clients and we're forced to continue to spend more to maintain the same result because inevitably these things become less efficient and more expensive over time. And so we go back to step one and repeat and this is what they call Doom loop. And so while these strategies work well, let's talk about some things that we can do. Let's go a little deeper on the concepts and let's talk about some action items. The reality is it's never going to be cheaper to acquire a client from direct response advertising than it is today. Why is that? The first is there's rising competition. There are just more med spas opening every year. I talked a couple weeks ago about one of our clients that said when they opened there were three med spas in their town. There's now 34. Less than a half decade later. Right. The platform costs increase as more advertisers entered the platform. So as more of these companies are putting ad dollars into digital, the price pressure increases. So it gets more expensive to advertise on these platforms. And then the reality is the increase in competition in most markets is outpacing the demand. So my client that went from three to 34 competitors in five years, I looked it up, their population had only grown 2%. So all things equal, we're competing for a smaller size slice of a not much bigger pie. So again, it will never be cheaper to acquire a client than it is today. So there's a performance plateau and inefficiency that continues to get worse over time with direct response advertising. And that's because these direct response offer based ads do not create demand. They're a demand capture mechanism. We've talked about this on our YouTube channel when we run Facebook and Instagram ads, you using the direct response play, we don't want to fit a square peg into the round hole and try to convince people to buy something they've never heard of and aren't familiar with. We're really treating these things as bottom of funnel demand capture. People that are already interested in the service and are just figuring out maybe where they want to go or they're shopping around for providers. These ads help you capture existing demand. But again, the price trap is this becomes a race to the bottom because the levers that impact the purchase decision, we keep having to push harder on those levers to make the thing work. So we've literally had conversations with clients that run an introductory new patient special for something like Botox at 20 units, 179. And again, we want to layer in reputation stuff, talk about why they're Great. But we know the offer dramatically impacts customer acquisition cost in the direct response landscape. So if we want to tip the scales in our favor and break the tie, if people have multiple reputable practices in their town and we want to make it easy for people to choose us, then having the best offer and a great reputation is the easiest way to do that. So since that's the easiest lever, we've literally had conversations with clients where we're like, well, let's go from 179 to 159 and in the short term usually works. But this is kind of a never ending path that gets us to this doom loop because we lower the price, we get more leads, competitors respond, we drop prices further, and we're just in an inevitable race that we all have to give away free service. And maybe that's a strategy that can work. To be honest, I've got a client right now that they've pushed this lever so hard. They're doing 20 units, 120. But there are all sorts of issues that come with continuing to push on this lever. The relative percentage of clients that are coming in that are going to stick around goes down. So we risk additional provider frustration. We're increasing the likelihood at least percentage wise, that even if we're seeing more good clients overall, we're having to see more bad clients to find the good ones. So there are downsides to continuing to push on that lever with no other options. So the end result to this is lowering our initial visit margins even further. We risking the lowering of the perception of value of our service offering and accepting commoditization that we really are indistinguishable from every other med spa in town. And this is the only way to win business, not that it's not effective. So again, this strategy is not wrong. It's not wrong, it's just incomplete. Direct response still matters a ton. It drives immediate cash flow. It's an easy, effective play to consistently get new patients in the door. And it generates quick, fast ROI and momentum. Those things are all true. So it's not that that is wrong, it's just how do we do more and how do we go beyond that. So I think the right way to think about this is direct response, demand capture strategies reaching people that are already in market and then also working to build brand and to create demand specifically for our business so that people in the future are ready to buy at a lower cost. It's going to cost us less to convert those people because we've built built momentum and we're going to build loyalty and preference ahead of time. So the gym analogy, right? Simple one. But just to kind of explain this, we're so focused with immediate results so much of the time that we keep leaning and especially if you work with an agency like us, we want to prove our worth, so we want to generate a result. Now speed of results is something that matters. It does. So we end up really allocating heavily into the direct response bucket. But we're not doing the things that are going to put us in the best position two years from now. Me spending my time going to the gym today is not going to make me look any better today. In fact, I could go to the gym for the next two months and my friends and family probably won't even notice a difference. But if I do the right things in the gym for two straight years, I'm going to have a fundamental transformation in the way that I look, in the way that I feel. But I need to train today to do that. The challenge is that doesn't create immediate roi, but it does create a massive long term payoff. 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 to improve and level up your digital marketing efforts. So we're rated five stars on Google, we're HIPAA verified by Compliancy Group and we have a track record 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. So the shift in strategy here in the launch and early growth stages of your business, you have to be extremely heavy in direct response and so cash flow is the priority. We need to build momentum. Offers and promos are the surefire way to do that. Prove, prove the concept, fill the schedule fast, spend 90% of your budget on those strategies. But as you start to build to scale and maturity, you're at 4 or 5 million dollars per location in your med spa. I would argue that you want to start to shift your percentage allocation to be more toward a 5050 allocation at some point where you've got 50% of your ads budget going into brand building initiatives and 50% going into direct response. So I wouldn't take the same budget and trim it. I'm saying you're adding on to it. But as you move to scale and maturity, increasing brand investment, so going from this 9010 split to something like a 5050 split over time and calibrating based on the growth phase of your business, I think makes a lot of sense. It'll reduce dependency on discounts and offer based ads and it'll create magnetism. Well, I'll show you on the end slide here at the end of the presentation why this matters so much in the math too. So here's a quick example of kind of like early stage, mid stage and late stage working from that 90% allocation toward the 5050 brand investment over time. So here's what building brand actually does for you. It's not magic, right? It's not a psychological shortcut or. Sorry, it is a psychological shortcut. And it happens before any of your ads even run. So stage one of building brand is exposure. Your content, your presence, your voice, reach your ideal patient repeatedly before they're even necessarily in the market for your service. Stage two of building brand is familiarity. So they start to actually recognize you. They've heard your perspective, they've seen your success stories. They feel like they know you. And then the last stage is preference. When they're finally ready to book, they're thinking about doing this. They're actually interested in, in going to a med spa. Now, the goal is they're not going to Google or scrolling around different Facebook ads to find the best med spa near them. They're coming straight to us. We've built enough rapport with that prospect that we are the default option. It's going to have them choose us before they even start looking. And that's the power of building brand over time. So the idea of creating a market of one. Alex Hormozi talked about this in that recent episode where he, where he referenced this doom loop. And it's the idea that, hey, how do we get to a point where our clients don't see us as an apples to apples comparison with our competition? Right? There is something fundamentally different about us. And it doesn't necessarily have to be in the specific services that we offer. We don't need to have something fundamentally different in our service portfolio to differentiate and to create a market of one. But when we're a fully, when we're just accepting full commoditization, we say things on our websites like we do Botox, we do filler, laser hair removal facials. Book your consultation today. Limited spots available. And this is stuck on competing on price and availability. You're interchangeable with all the other med spas in town. Patients are going to shop around before booking first appointments and you're going to have to rely on the promo to convert. When you create a market of one, you create a situation where people do not confuse you with any of your competition. So a simple way to do that. This just as one example is to niche down and say what are you proud of, what is the outcome that you accomplish and who do you serve? If you can create a marketing message that is all focused on supporting that vision, you stand apart a little bit more than just saying we do XYZ services so it helps you compete on identity and trust. Patients or friends refer by name, not by service. They come, the prospects are coming pre sold before you even get on a call. And price isn't even an objection because they're so excited to specifically work with you as you build brand and create a market of one. So again, two paths here, path A, B. In the endless cycle of commoditization, we're going to have to run direct response offers. We're gonna have to lower price to win leads. Competitors are going to match our price margins on initial visit shrink. We have to keep going back and doing the same thing over and over again as costs rise and we get into that doom loop. Path two is to work toward competing on identity where each step of what we're doing compounds and that we actually get more effective results that are easier to generate over time. So with that, the steps look a little different. We're going to build a clear and specific point of view to attract the right patients who are going to resonate with our marketing message and truly understand us and get us we're for them. We're going to be consistent with creating content and putting it in front of the right people. That builds trust and rapport. So patients arrive pre sold and word of mouth and brand accelerate. So our ads, even our direct response ads, ads start to work harder for less. It's going to actually lower our lead costs and create better efficiency in our direct response ads. So Path A, it's hard to leave. The reality though is path B is available to you right now and I think it's worth pursuing, especially in the long term. I was thinking about this as I was driving. Think about your brand and your business right now. If you're extremely reliant on direct response ads and offer based ads to attract new business, let me know how you think, how you feel about this. If the Internet were to go dark tomorrow and ad stopped, do people in your ideal target market know who you are and trust you and when they know where to find you? For a lot of you, that answer is probably no. If you're not converting with a direct response ad, you have no other way to attract clients. You're reliant on the direct response doom loop. So if that's you, you don't have a brand yet. I think the goal is if whatever. There's so many abstract definitions of brand, everybody's got a different definition of what the heck is brand. It feels so abstract, it's hard to pin down. But I would say this is a good litmus test that if the Internet went dark tomorrow, would patients know you, trust you, like you, and would they still seek you out and know who you are and what you do? That's what I think it means in a. In a sense to build brand as a local business in general. 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 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. Out. All right, so a 90 day momentum plan to start working toward brand building. We've talked a lot about the validation phase, but double down on the foundational elements. Just this is something so many people skip over. They think they're going to run ads, start generating business. The reality is the reason as an agency we see such a discrepancy in ads performance from one account to another, I think comes down to the foundational elements. People do their research. And so we need to be attractive to patients when they do their research. And so here are a few things that you can do to build the foundation. Define your ideal patient avatar and be specific with it. Who do we serve? Why? What is the outcome that we generate? Don't be afraid to niche down a little bit in your marketing message. At the very least, articulate a unique perspective and point of view. What are the things that you say or think that are unique that your competitors don't say or think? Those are things that are going to allow you to stand out in the market, especially if you get that message in front of the right people. Establish and stick to visual identity that you feel like is compelling and consistent. So I do think in this industry more than others, colors, fonts, styling, photos. If I go to your Instagram feed and it's informative, educational and attractive and I go to your competitors and it's sloppy and incoherent, it looks like somebody put it together, didn't know how to design, that says something about your business. So be consistent with your brand styling and then audit your current content. Does it reflect your position or just your services? What are the things that make you unique? Just talking about your services on your website and social media doesn't distinguish you from any other med spa in town. So get the foundation right. Dial in social media. We've talked about this on other episodes. Scroll back to the feed here on the podcast or YouTube channel. We've got other stuff on this recently. Dial in social media. Dial in your website, Dial in your Google reviews. Dial in your success stories and your transformations. Make sure the library the proof is there to support the pitch. So after you do that, spend a month on that, put it on the calendar in months, two next 30 days. Let's start generating a content engine that's really meaningful. So being intentional about getting on video and creating organic content and patient stories and behind the scenes educational information that helps you stand apart and develop depth and rapport. Systematize patient testimonials. Make sure you've got an ongoing system to get written, video transfer, whatever transformation information or stories that you can capture. Have a system in place to consistently get that from your clients. Show your process, your philosophy, your results, not just your menu. I have a client that does injections and I love that her pricing menu is not one syringe of filler X amount of X price, half syringe of filler X price, one syringe of this other brand of filler X price. Her entire pricing Menu is Russian lip, the Savon lip. It's all her cool little unique things and the outcome based pricing on those I think is really cool and unique. Love that. Also engage your community, respond, ask questions, have a real presence, build connection. So start working on that content engine in month two and then month three. Be intentional about putting paid ad dollars behind these things so that you can develop brand at scale with your local audience. That's really important. Without paid ad dollars, those messages probably don't get in front of the right people if left to the algorithm, for example. So let's say what does this look like in a rep from a revenue perspective we build brand. What is the difference here? So we talked about rising costs in the doom loop when you're constantly just competing on price and offers. You might be paying $30 for a lead right now and then all of a sudden it's $40 and then it's $50 and you're just having this increasing cost of customer acquisition while simultaneously your average transaction value is going down and you're 100% dependent on ads. If you build a brand, this creates extra efficiency in your advertising. Instead of paying $30 right now, you in 12 to 18 months you could be paying $22. Despite rising ad costs and increasing competition because of the value of brand, you've increased your referral rate. People that are coming in are primed and ready to buy at a premium. So your average initial ticket is going up simultaneously. And all of these things work together to create a compounding effect. So again, the practices that win are not necessarily the ones with the biggest ads budgets. They're the ones that patients already want before the ads run. And that's what brand is all about. So direct response gets you in the game. It's important. But brand is what's going to keep you in a winning position for months and years to come without needing to add outspend every one of your competitors and consistently drive prices on new patient promos down. Little bonus segment here. Right after I finished filming this video, I was scrolling YouTube shorts at night with my son and there's this, these food channels that we watch people cooking. And one of these that I've seen a bunch of is this crispy pizza in New York. And if you look at their YouTube channel, they've got hundreds of thousands of views on all of these videos of people just watching them make pizza. 610,000 subscribers. And what's interesting about this to me is again, they're not necessarily doing anything substantially different than their competitors. Just like the situation we're in as med spa owners. They're making pizza. They're literally talking about sauce, dough, mozzarella cheese. He's talking a little bit about his method and how he does it. But they're doing such a good job of creating content that builds the elements of know like and trust, builds depth of connection with their audience, that this is probably, I'm assuming had a massive impact on how many people are actually buying pizza from them. Even though the product or service is not different, they were able to differentiate and to stand out from the crowd and create in a sense a market of one just based on personality and connection via the content they create and think that's what's available to you as med spa owners, as the low hanging fruit here. If you go to New York and you've been watching these channels, there's a much greater chance or if you're in the area that you're going to pop into crispy pizza. Aside from looking at Google reviews and looking for the best places in town, you have a connection here that draws you to crispy pizza. The Internet shuts out tomorrow and I go to New York. I, I know, I know of crispy pizza. I might seek them out. That's the thing that you want to achieve for your med spa. So you can do it with content that helps you develop depth of connection by demonstrating the elements of no like and trust or developing the elements of no like and trust with your audience. So if you're not doing that call to action, start doing this at the very least.