The medical spa industry is booming. It is a $3.97 billion market and is projected to increase revenues by 8% annually through 2022. Differentiating your business in this highly competitive sector makes first-rate marketing a must. Here are five medical spa marketing tips from Crystal Clear Digital Marketing that can help you make that happen.
1. Your Brand is Your Bond
Brand reputation is a key consideration for any business, but for few is it as crucial to success as in the medical spa industry. When clients seek procedures to change their appearance, they are searching for something far more personal than the usual slate of conveniences and goods offered by the rest of the businesses they frequent.
They are seeking to reconnect with their own sense of identity, the version of themselves they think of as real and true. When they look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person they see, the effect is deeper than temporary disappointment. It’s an emotional dissonance–not just “That’s not what I look like,” but “That’s not who I am.”
To seek the counsel and assistance of medical spa is to seek to trust one enough to say “I believe you can help restore the external ‘me’ to the version that exists inside.” In essence, the spa is helping their client become the version of themselves they feel they really are.
Part and parcel of this reality is that honesty and straightforwardness can make or break a medical spa. In addition to being the foundation of a long-term relationship with individuals, setting realistic expectations around desired results, procedure experience, recovery time and similar treatment variables will allow your clients to confidently recommend you going forward for the rest of their lives. While overly rosy projections may sell a few procedures over the shorter term, they cost incalculably more over the medium and long terms and can end up costing you your business altogether.
Crystal Clear has over 20 years of experience driving proactive, positive, and sustainable marketing. Infusing a sense of confidence, comfort, and reliability; highlighting the unique strengths and capabilities of your business. This is what we do best.
Preserving and curating your integrity is more important now than it has ever been for one simple reason: the Internet.
2. Your Digital Identity IS Your Identity
Long gone are the days when word of mouth was an elusive, difficult-to-quantify marketing metric. From social media platforms to customer-review-driven websites, clients are used to making their opinions known early and often. Those who treat them fairly and well are rewarded, and those who do not pay an ever-more-predictable price over time.
More importantly, you have complete control over your medical spa’s digital presence online. And it is difficult to overstate both the opportunity this provides and the simple truth it represents: To prospective clients, your digital identity is your identity.
Before an important face-to-face client meeting, everyone knows the drill. Significant research and preparation, impeccable professional appearance, confident and welcoming demeanor. You put your best self out there and get immediate, moment-by-moment feedback on how well things are going.
Understand that a version of this very interaction is taking place every moment of every day online. If your website is overly simplistic, outdated, or appears to be an afterthought, you are driving away most of your would-be customers. The level of attention and detail, the consistency of voice, the ease of navigation…each of these factors contributes to not just a visitor’s beliefs about your website, but their beliefs about you.
How proud are you of your business? How much care do you take when conducting yourself in the public eye (and how does this reflect on how much care you likely take when conducting yourself behind closed doors in the privacy of your practice)? How well do you understand what clients want, what drives their decision making? What hours are you open? How do I get to your office?
Your website is your proxy, answering these questions 24/7/365 for your average client, who will visit your website before they ever contact you directly. Do you have a blog with fresh content, demonstrating your ability and willingness to directly engage, to keep your client base current with your thoughts on news and developments that might be helpful to them?
While the transactional nature of in-person meetings and even phone calls provides valuable feedback that allows for improvement in best practices, your online presence needs to anticipate client questions and to avoid common pitfalls well ahead of time. A client not finding the information they want, or finding an overall presentation that falls short of what they expected, is unlikely to tell you that. They will simply move on to your competition.
3. The Bridge Between: Social Media
Existing in the space between your website and your offline practice is social media, the living, breathing, back-and-forth conversation that gives your medical spa a sense a chance to play an active day-to-day role in the lives of clients and potential clients.
Different platforms call for different approaches:
Instagram’s heavy reliance on images makes it an organic fit for aesthetically focused businesses. No amount of text will deliver the impact of pictures of happy clients showing off your excellent work.
Twitter’s rapid-fire nature and character limit make it ideal for posting quick thoughts, informative links, or quick client notifications.
Facebook’s longer-form structure make it a natural home for introductions to the lengthier information on your blog, or for advertising events or promotions.
The connectivity between your social media accounts is powerful as well; a picture leading to a video leading to a blog post can easily lead to a first consultation. Exactly what content you provide, however, is contingent upon understanding who you are attempting to reach.
4. Know Your Clientele
In addition to these wider medical spa marketing guidelines, it’s important to have a comprehensive understanding of the medical spa industry, in specific. Crystal Clear knows who your prospects are, what they want, and how you should communicate your value to them clearly.
In an age when many businesses obsess over Millennials, medical spas are wise to set their sites, and targeted age ranges, higher:
“Even though more Americans are over the age of 65 than ever before, many younger Americans have now begun to consistently visit medical spas for treatments such as Botox, facials, and other types of anti-aging skin care. In fact, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
(ASAPS), people ages 35-50 had the most procedures performed in 2016—more than 5.3 million, accounting for 39.3% of the total; people ages 51-64 came in second with 30%.”
present a specific generational opportunity. Nearly all of the most attractive client age range of 35-50 is so-called Generation X, a group that primarily came of age in the 1980s and the first to be able to seamlessly keep in touch with (and compare themselves to) friends dating back to high school and before. And did you know that it’s not Millennials, but users 35-50 who spend the most time on Facebook and Instagram according to Pew Research?
Crystal Clear understands the striking sweet spot this generational intersection presents to the medical spa industry in particular. Maximizing exposure to and establishing ongoing relationships with an affluent, socially aware client base who view both aesthetics and the spa experience as part of their identity is a smart strategy that will continue to bear fruit over time.
5. They Are Already Searching; Let Them Find You
Knowing who you are marketing to is the first step toward building your current and future business; knowing what products and services they wish to purchase comes next.
“According to the ASAPS’ annual survey, 4,597,886 botulinum toxin type A treatments were conducted in 2016—a 75.5% increase over 2011. This represents over a third of the total number of procedures conducted by plastic surgeons and aesthetics professionals in 2016. Additionally, the
number of hyaluronic acid injections has increased by 106.9% over the same period, and at 2,494,814 treatments administered in 2016, it is now the second-most-commonly administered aesthetic treatment in the country.”
The staggering growth in injectable treatment to treat lines and wrinkles has largely defined the sales landscape of the past decade. The idea of getting such treatments has made a definitive move from the fringe of the wider cultural view to being nearly as commonplace and unremarkable as getting a manicure or facial.
Along with this surge have come a crush of products and brand names. Each of these terms, though essentially representing the same thing, represent a marketing opportunity. They are all discrete search terms, and while they may not know it, clients searching for one are searching for the others as well. If three different potential clients ask friends who have achieved great skin rejuvenation results how they got them, one might hear “Euflexxa”, the next “Hyalgan”, and the third “Supartz.”
Sifting through the linguistic static and figuring out what terms to focus on, both in search engine optimization and elsewhere, often makes the difference between your newest client finding you before they find your competition.
Medical spa marketing has evolved at an unprecedented pace over the past 20 years, and Crystal Clear Digital Marketing has led the way in customer-focused content, digital delivery innovation and powerful, synergistic strategies that deliver real results. Contact us today to find out how we can help you.
