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Check out the first parts of this series Opening a Medical Spa Part 1 - What Comes After Nurse Injector Training and Opening a Medical Spa Part 2 - Marketing and Social Media Before and After Launch Day.
Welcome back to our third and final installment of Moxie’s guide to opening a med spa.
It’s no secret that the first years of launching a new business can be challenging. This is where your dedication to your dream career will be put to the test. While some fail in the early stages, the reality is that 75% of new businesses survive the first year. This means that the odds of succeeding are actually in your favor!
The first year after launching your med spa business should be thought of as a start-up phase. This is particularly true over the first six months. This is when you’ll be focused on building a clientele, designing an effective med spa digital marketing campaign, and driving early revenue.
While it can feel daunting, it’s also very rewarding to witness the growth of your business month over month.
In this post, we’ll consider what the first few years of opening a med spa should look like, explore med spa marketing must-haves, and look at how to create a strong foundation and optimize your first year for success.
Top Challenges Med Spas Face In the First Year
One of the best ways to ensure your business is a success? Learn from the mistakes of others.
After speaking with hundreds of med spa owners, we’ve compiled a list of common challenges to keep an eye out for as you navigate your new business. By understanding where others have gone wrong, you can avoid these same pitfalls.
- Failure to launch: Many prospective med spa owners end up hitting roadblock after roadblock, and feel it’s too daunting to push through on their own. That’s just one of the reasons why having a supportive partner by your side can make all the difference!
- Not investing in med spa marketing: Don’t underestimate the impact of med spa marketing. Once your business is up and running, your main priority should be marketing your med spa, particularly through the creation of a med spa social media marketing plan.
Check out our full guide and checklist to marketing your med spa launch.
- Getting in over your head: Taking on too many expenses from the get-go will bog down your business with debt and reduce your profit margins. Consider starting out in a smaller space with only the necessary equipment until you build up your clientele. Creating a budget for your med spa will help you plan more effectively and give you insights into profitability.
- Doing it all by yourself: When you dreamed of opening a med spa, your vision probably didn’t include spending hours poring over spreadsheets, managing finances, or booking clients. However, that is the unglamorous reality of being a small business owner. So, how do you avoid burnout and remind yourself why you started your business in the first place? As you scale, consider outsourcing tasks that are outside of your area of expertise. This will allow you to reclaim some of your time and focus your efforts on providing the best treatment for your patients.
Opening a new med spa business is a delicate balance of knowing when to spend money to make money, and learning when (and what) to delegate.
Growth Tactics for Your Med Spa’s First Year
While the initial stages of starting a new business are nerve-wracking, there are proven ways to grow your med spa. The following are some of our top tips for med spa marketing and building your client base month over month.
Invest in Med Spa Digital Marketing
As a new med spa owner, it’s likely that some of your first clients will be family and friends. With Moxie’s playbook in your back pocket, you can turn those initial clients into five-star reviews and begin building out your med spa digital marketing strategy. Customer reviews and before and after photos are integral content pieces for your digital marketing. Your social media channels, website, and paid channels (like Google or Tiktok) are the ideal distribution platforms for this content.
How customer reviews impact your med spa digital marketing strategy:
- Building trust with potential clients: Strong online reviews have been shown to boost a business’s credibility, making it five times more likely for a customer to select your services. This goes to show that glowing reviews will help to convert a quick Google search into a paying customer.
- There’s power in numbers: One of the first things that potential clients will see when they look up your spa is your overall rating based on reviews. Every good review will contribute to the overall reputation of your med spa.
- Improve your online visibility and local SEO: As a service provider, your ideal clientele is located close to you. Google cares about this as well, and ranks your profile according to what they call “prominence”. Prominence is determined by the content on your website as well online reviews. In short, the more positive reviews you have, the better you will rank on Google!
Once you’ve amassed enough reviews (five to ten), we can guide you through the process of enabling paid marketing strategies across your social media platforms. As a Moxie partner, we are focused on marketing ROI and helping to ensure that your investments are driving business. We’re in this together!
Focus on Growing Social Media
As we mentioned, social media is a key channel to distribute your best content (like reviews and before and after photos of clients).
According to a recent study by Oxford, potential patients look to online portfolios and testimonials to help them choose the right med spa. That’s why focusing on med spa social media marketing is key in helping you generate a steady stream of clientele who are ready to pay for your services!
Top Tips For Building Your Med Spa’s Social Media Presence:
- Choose your platforms wisely: Certain social media platforms will be more aligned with the type of content you produce and your business goals. For example, platforms like Instagram and TikTok are more suited for visual content, like client photos and videos.
- Prioritize value-driven content: Potential clients were particularly interested in seeing before and after photos as part of a practitioner’s med spa digital marketing content. Posts that include photos on social media get 53% more likes and 104% more comments on average than text-only posts. You don’t have to be a designer to create eye-catching posts! Tools like Canva are easy to use and help you to create visual assets that are branded and look super polished.
- Batch all of your social media posts: Set aside 2-3 hours each week to create content for social media. Not only is this the most efficient use of your time, it ensures that your posts are consistent in tone and cover a range of topics and services.
- Use a free social media scheduler: Once you have a batch of posts ready to go, it’s time to decide when and how to post them. Consider your audience’s preferences and try to align your posting with the days and times they’re most likely to be online. Use a free (or low-cost) social media management platform like Combin or Buffer to automate your posts for the week
Tip: If social media isn’t your thing, let this be one of the first things you outsource once you’re bringing in revenue. Social media is important to get right, so if your heart isn’t in it, connect with someone who is passionate. Trading services for marketing could also be a win-win for you and your future marketer!
Check out our full guide to building your med spa’s social media presence.
Track Med Spa Metrics
According to the American Med Spa Association, the most successful medical spas are those that actively track the results of their med spa marketing efforts and other key metrics.
Understanding your numbers will allow you to make informed, data-based decisions.
Some of the most important metrics to track include:
- Dollars per hour per treatment per provider;
- Dollars per hour per provider;
- Margin per treatment per provider;
- Return on investment per provider;
- Return on investment per equipment;
- Return on investment on email campaigns, marketing campaigns, social media.
This information will give you a deeper understanding of your business and your clientele, and enable you to invest in ways that bring you closer to your goals.
Start Small, Then Scale
Some med spa entrepreneurs will tell you that you need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, invest in top-of-the-line equipment, and build a dream team in order to be successful.
At Moxie, we see things differently. After speaking with med spa owners from across the country, we found that abundant startup costs did not contribute to a med spa’s chance of success.
This is why we recommend starting small and building up your practice steadily over time.
Lower overhead gives you flexibility as you grow your business and will help you become profitable more quickly. As things progress, you can reinvest your profits into your business, adding or upgrading equipment, expanding your office space, outsourcing time-consuming business tasks, and growing your team.
How to Calculate the Operating Capital of Your Med Spa:
The term “operating capital” refers to the funds required for the day-to-day operations of your business. Since there will likely be a gap between when you first open your med spa and when you become profitable, it’s important to monitor your financial health.
You can calculate your business’s operating capital using the following 3-step formula:
- Determine current assets: Cash and cash equivalents + accounts receivable + inventory + securities + prepaid business expenses + any other additional liquid assets = current assets
- Determine current liabilities: Notes payable + accounts payable + accrued expenses + unearned revenue + current portion of long-term debt + other short-term debt = current liabilities
- Determine operating capital: Current assets - current liabilities = operating capital
Operating capital is the minimum amount you need to have in reserve in order to manage the daily operations of your med spa. This will guide you toward setting a suitable budget, and determining a healthy asset to liability ratio for your business.
Upsell to Existing Med Spa Clients
While we encourage our clients to explore a wide array of med spa marketing ideas, it’s no secret that “warm” leads are easier to sell to. This refers to clients who have already shown interest in your services or have booked consultations or appointments.
The key to successfully upselling to your client base is to personalize your services. Connect with each client one-on-one and gain a deeper understanding of their fears, insecurities, and desired outcomes.
If you can, offer complimentary add-ons or discount the first treatment you’ve recommended that is outside of what they came in for. This builds trust and loyalty, showing that you’ll go above and beyond to deliver a custom treatment plan with dream results. It also sets the stage for future procedures and treatments.
Implement a Med Spa Membership Program
While we don’t encourage setting up a membership program straight away, it’s something to layer on once you’re gaining momentum. There is logistical overhead in running a membership program, so you need to make sure you have the bandwidth. But once you’re ready, implementing a membership program, like your favorite meal kits and streaming services, is great for recurring revenue, loyalty, and referrals.
Practitioners that offered a subscription-based service model saw the average number of patient visits per year go from 1.44 to 2.9, with a 35% increase in spending.
Med Spa Membership Models
The two main types of med spa membership models are static and dynamic.
- Static med spa membership models: The client pays a monthly fee which includes a set amount of treatments per month or access to treatments at a slightly reduced rate.
- Dynamic med spa membership models: This model involves a more complex cost calculation based on the patient’s usage patterns.
Whichever model you choose, membership programs help you go from selling one-off services to developing a long-term relationship with your clientele.This provides clients with more incentive to come back again and again, and offers more predictable income for your business.
Optimize Your Back Office
The key to growing your med spa towards success in the first year is an efficient back office.
When we say back office, we mean the technology systems that keep your business running behind the scenes. This is what enables you to generate leads, track your patients and services, collect payments, manage bookings, and even automate marketing or referral programs.
These tech-supported efficiencies are the inner workings of your business. Getting this part right will put hours back onto your schedule every week and set you up for long-term success!
If this seems like a major roadblock, don’t fret. As a Moxie partner, we’ll work with you to ensure the success of your business. We help you get your back office in order with the ideal tech suite for your med spa. We also host regular check-ins to assess the performance of your business and to make sure that you’re financially on-track. During these calls, we also identify opportunities for improvement to help you exceed your first year goals.
$100k goal for your med spa’s first year; TL;DR
Without a doubt, the first year of opening your med spa will be a challenge. As a med spa owner you’ll have to find the right space, acquire insurance for your med spa, determine which services to offer, and potentially hire a medical director – and that’s not even the half of it!
At Moxie, we’re dedicated to supporting our clients through all of the ups and downs of opening a medical spa. We’ve designed our partnership program to anticipate these challenges and help our clients avoid the potential pitfalls of starting a small business, making the entire process of opening your med spa that much more enjoyable.
We work with you to help you grow your business; from landing your first clients to building out your med spa marketing plan to securing a regular clientele. We’re here to help you hit your revenue goals.
Get in touch with a team member at Moxie today.
