Med Spa vs Laser Clinic: Analyzing your medical spa competiton.

Get to know the laser clinic and med spa competition.

Contrary to what some may say, growing your clinic or medical spa isn't a single event.

Successful clinics and medspas look for 'incremental wins' that compound over time. The key to winning market share is to differentiate your company by providing products, services or solutions that your best prospects will find more desirable than what's offered by your competitors.

Experienced marketers know it's easier to fill an existing need than to create one. Someone who is already using the type of product or service you offer is a great prospect because he or she has a clearly defined need and is looking for a solution.

The job of convincing qualified prospects to buy from you instead of your competitors' is where the real work begins. One of the first steps is knowing what the other clinics, day spas, medical spas, and others who might be competing are up to in your market.

1. Do some detective work. Ok, this is a little spy like, but don't think all of your competitors aren't doing it to you and it's just good business sense. Start by gathering your competitors' marketing tools and advertising materials. Read their web site, print and broadcast advertising, and articles in which they've been featured. Request their brochures, price lists and any collateral materials. You may also be able to do some mystery shopping, which will allow you to experience what these medical spas are offering and how their positioning themselves. You'll want to send your staff rather than visiting yourself if you want to avoid embarrassing situations. (Surface has had more than 45 plastic surgeons, dermatologists and other physicians attend our seminars over the last five years in this type of sneaky capacity. They're not hard to spot and often they're 'outed' by women in the audience. They're the guys (mostly) who are sitting in the back scribbling furiously while their estheticians sit up front and ask telling questions like, "Now types of sutures do you use?".)

2. Evaluate your "slant" competitors. Chances are, you have a lot more competitors than you think. In addition to real competitors, evaluate the marketing tools and materials of any businesses your prospects perceive as offering a similar set of products or services. It's very common for day spas to attempt to compete with medical practices by offering a few medical services from a NP or PA. Microderm is often touted as some sort of medical type treatment. OBGYN's, FP's, pretty much whoever is in the market or wanting to get in. Know who's saying what about you.

3. Focus on the message. Once you've gathered the materials, the next step is to analyze what's being communicated and how. Identify the key promises made by your broad field of competitors. And don't be surprised if you see a lot of "me too" marketing. There's so much out there that's mediocre or worse, you may find the majority of your competitors have similar messaging, with only a few front-runners showing anything approaching real positioning. (This probably refers to you but we'll work on that.)

After assessing the most effective messaging, look at the actual tools and materials themselves. What formats seem to work best overall? At this point, your competitive analysis will reveal whether your company is lacking any standard tools that prospects expect everyone in your industry to offer.

4. Find a unique spin. So now comes the 'look in the mirror' moment. You've gathered all the materials and have learned the key message points of your real and perceived competitors. It all boils down to this: How does your clinic meet its patients' needs in a way that is both unique and compelling?

To find the answer, consider not only the products or services you sell, but also how you operate, including any company-specific characteristics, such as a higher level of customer service or uniquely specific positioning. If you can't find a selling point based on your current service offering that will help you stand out from your competitors, use what you've learned in this competitive analysis to retool what you sell and how you sell it.

If you can't see any difference between yourself and your competitors, why should you think any patient would choose you? 

Medspa Marketing: Mapping your patient populations.

I really like this idea via Top Lead Generators: Good Idea From My Local Jamba Juice

Up on the wall, there was a giant map of Bakersfield with hundreds of little pins scattered all over the map.  Below the map was the message, "Tell us where you live so that we can put a Jamba Juice in your neighborhood". 

That's smart, on a couple of fronts:

• It's fun, non-intrusive and interesting for patients.
  
• You get valuable feedback on where your patients are coming from. (I'd guess you'll see clusters develop.)
  
• It reinforces your value to the patient. They can see that (hopefully hundreds or thousands) of others have made the choice to come to your medspa.
• It can provide valuable info that could be used for direct mailings or PR stories.
  

Sales leads don't always have to come from a list.  Valuable information is yours for the taking if you give your customers a chance to have a little fun and take a second to provide you with information you can use to grow your business. 

The high price of creating your own laser clinic ads.

The High Price of Creating Free Ads

You're between something of a rock and a hard place. Just like Heinz

" But these companies have found that inviting consumers to create their advertising is often more stressful, costly and time-consuming than just rolling up their sleeves and doing the work themselves. Many entries are mediocre, if not downright bad, and sifting through them requires full-time attention."

I've had my fill of looking at terrible medspa and plastic surgeon ads. It seems like a good idea at the time to let the magazine, newspaper, or whoever, create the ad for free. And it might be for some who are scrambling for every dollar.

But there's something to be learned from Donald Trump in this situation. He's not the first to have said it but he has said it and I'll repeat it here since it makes the point.

"Dress for the job you want, not the job you have."

Patients don't want their plastic surgeon pulling up to the clinic in a VW bug. They want to feel that they're not stupid for choosing you. Help them along. If you're claiming that you're the best, you're going to have to dress like it. That means that the image you're putting out had better not be something that an $8 an hour hack at the newspaper did for you in fifteen minutes.

Just so I don't insult anyone I know I won't list any of the names that I'm thinking of as I write this. But they're out there.

Want to attract cheap patients? Advertise that way and that's just who you'll get.

Seth Godin & Your Med Spa or Skin Clinic

In sitting down to write this post I was struck with the width of the topic. Not Seth Godin, but cosmetic medicine (laser clinics, med spas, skin clinics) and how successful medical practices are built and run. It's no easy task. Which brings up Seth Godin.

Seth has a job. He describes it as being Seth Godin, noticing things that don't have an existing vocabulary and giving words to people so that they can talk about concepts that didn't have words before. Seth's quite good at this as, since there's a scarcity of Seth Godin's in the world and he's the only one.

Scarcity. Superstars. Best in the world. Remarkability. Mantra.

All things I've blogged about but not really focused on in a coherent pattern.

In effect, I've missed the forest for the trees. I'm going to try to talk about a few of those trees. They're the ones you're using to build your business.

There are now many smart docs reading this site. Some comment, most do not. It's a statistical fact that only about 1% of any interaction you have (including blogging) elicits a response from the people you're interacting with. I'll guess that many come and scan the list of recent comments along the left side of the page rather than read what I'm writing about. That's good, fine, and by design. Decentralized but organized systems win every time.

Seth is used to talking about markets and retail. This site is for physicians in retail medicine (It say's so right at the top.) so I'm going to use some of Seth's words and some of my own. I think they're good ones.

Doctors in retail medicine have been operating at a disadvantage. Due to certain idiosyncrasies of the medical marketplace they've not had access to the resources that other retailers take for granted. The medical spa franchises are a first studdering step to bring systems to the marketplace. My own feelings are that the current crop are doomed to fail because they don't fulfill what is needed to succeed. Scarcity? Remarkability? Best in the world? No. If you've sat through any of the medspa franchise discovery days what you hear is this: Turn key operations. Low hanging fruit. Uniformity. Those are not the words that build successful businesses. These are the words that build commiditzed, mediocre, average, and struggling businesses.

The good news? There's also a scarcity of superstars. There's room at the top. Medicore's where the crowd is.

Tracking your medspa marketing dollars.

I've discussed my thoughts on the wasted money marketing through the Yellow Pages and medical spa advertising before and included these links about wasting money on advertising in phone directories.

There are a number of threads: What's the best way to increase volume in my medical spa. Do you track your medical spa marketing?

Prodocs seems to have come to the same conclusion in discussing how he's tracking his marketing:

First, yes, we track extensively. Every phone call, does it result in a consult, does the consult become a treatment, does the patient become repeat business. Because of our tracking we were big in the yellow pages with several ads, some in color, and about a $3,000 per month bill. But, according to our tracking we were getting about a third of our new business from the yellow pages so it was a great source for new business. I thought.

I created a new tracking form that required the receptionist to ask more detailed questions when the caller said they were "referred" by the yellow pages. The truth finally came out. Many callers just looked up our phone number in the phone book (the actual referral was something else) and other callers just said "yellow pages" without thinking.

I canceled all yellow pages ads except for the free listing that comes with your business phone service. The results? No noticeable decrease in business and the same percent of callers say they saw us in the yellow pages even though we have no ad there! Plus, we save $3,000 per month. If you track, did deep into those yellow page callers.

Having been in this business since the early days and having the added advantage of looking at this from the perspective of and advertising agency as well. It's a situation where you put your own money where your mouth is. I canceled all our yellow page ads almost two years ago and gritted my teeth while until the contracts ran out. We've continued to grow without any noticeable drop in new patient traffic.

Just to make my point perfectly clear: Yellow page advertising may bring in new patients but it's not as effective as spending those same dollars elsewhere. Not even close. The increasing reliance on the internet for information will increasingly work against the Yellow Pages until they fold. They will be unable to offer anything new on the web and Google, MSN, and Yahoo already do search. 

What's the best medspa advertising? It's perhaps the most common question since most cosmetic medical practices put attracting new patients as their biggest problem.

I'll post some more on this but I'm interested in hearing what problems you guys have encountered with Yellow Pages or other marketing efforts. 

Update on 2007-05-24 01:20 by Medical Spa MD

I just had a converstation with a doc in FL who called me not knowing I'd just posted about this. He was asking my opinion on putting two full page, full color ads in a new directory that would cost him just over $20,000 a year. Hmmmm Two full page ads that might be seen... or send 6000 eight page full color newsletters to your exact demographic four times (22,500 newsletters) over that same year.

Nobrainer. 

Propaganda MD: It's getting closer...

The marketing arm of Medical Spa MD is almost ready to launch.

I've previously boasted that Medspa MD is going to print you money. It's almost ready and we may be able to launch the first iteration in ten days or so.

Since I first posted, we've made a number of improvements that should make this new marketing site the best solution for any cosmetic practice.

Here's some of the cool stuff:

• The cost for printing and mailing will be 30-40% less than even the deep discount online printers.
  
• You will be able to choose from a number of 'themes' or campaigns so that every piece you sent will have a consistent look and feel.
• Every postcard and mailer will be customizable.
• They'll all be designed by the creatives at Wild Blue Creative Partners who have done work for other clients you might recognize like Intel, Microsoft, Warner Brothers, and of course Surface Medical Spas.
  
• We're going to offer something we're calling a Patient Area Mailer that works like this:
  

1. Get permission from a patient to use a photo and quote in your advertising.
2. Upload that stuff and enter the patients home address. (This is for the list. It's not shown anywhere.)
3. Send it to the 100 closest mailing addresses that fit whatever criteria you want.

• The newsletter (perhaps the best marketing you can do) will have some cool features as well:
• The newsletter will be 8 page, full color and should be about $.89 printed and mailed. (If you can find anything like this I'll eat my left foot.)
• Insert your own articles, logos, pictures, services and anything else you want. (You can also run the existing articles if you want.)
• If you want, you can upload ads for other local businesses (Cosmetic dentists? Day Spas?) to help defray your costs.
• We're talking to some national advertisers who may want to be inserted to save you additional money: You will always have the choice of which ads run or are deleted so you can take the money offer or not.

Anyway, that's the direction we're headed. If you can think of anything that you'd like to see just email me or comment. There's more than a few tens of thousands of dollars riding on this so I'd like to make sure it's perfect.

Oh, and by the way, join Medical Spa MD, members will receive somewhere around $500 in free printing so make sure you're on that list.  

Thermage & Medspa MD: What's getting tightened now?

 Thermage actually likes Medical Spa MD enough to buy me a coffee.

Clint Carnell, The VP of Domestic Sales for Thermage and I met for coffee to talk about a number of things, some of which relate to this site. I'd had lunch with Clint previously. Evidently my Thermage rep Chris likes me more than my Botox rep. At least Chris sent me a big hunk of plastic.

Here's a list of parts of the discussion I feel I can divulge.

• Thermage had some internal discussions about whether it was a good idea to approach or contribute to what amounts to a public forum (this blog) but they've decided to give it a trial run at least. I got the feeling that Clint and others at Thermage were willing to try something that's new in the marketplace on their feeling that I would be fair to them. (With the hammering that Dermacare and the other medical spa franchises
  have taken on this site I give Thermage a great deal of credit for that.) I think that out there. If you're a company and don't have a blog you're doing yourself a disservice. There's no better form of constant contact with your target market as long as you're not just publishing the same old lame press releases. There's a paradigm shift in marketing that changes the traditional way that's taught in schools and I think more highly of Thermage that they're willing to engage in it. It speaks highly of the brains running the company.

Chris Anderson has some feeling on business blogs; "the natural voice of the boss is fundamentally incompatible with the voice of the blogger, at least as regards their own company affairs.". But wait, there's still hope. Chris goes on to say "The best business blogs come from the employees, not the bosses. They have more time, and are less prone to marketing gobbledygook and gnomic platitudes. And those kind of blogs are on the rise, not the decline."

• Clint told me that a large number of Thermage's reps now read Medspa MD. I thought there was something going on when the Does Thermage Work Poll received 200 positive votes without any negative votes after it had been neck and neck for weeks. Surprise. Good work guys, but now the Cutera reps (they're here too) will probably start dropping that positive percentage. I'm going to have to block ISP's from tallying more than one vote. Perhaps I'll post a Thermage vs. Titan poll and let them battle it out.
  
  
• Thermage has been trying to track down the producers of the refurbished Thermage tips for a while. I gathered that the refurbished tip guys know this since they're changing PO boxes every couple of weeks. Thermage is going to post to this site their position that the study on reactivating or refurbishing Thermage tips is bogus and that the physician who is credited with authoring the paper doesn't exist. I'll be posting Thermages position on this as soon as they send it to me.
  
  
• Thermage is sitting on a number of new thermage tips until they're sure that all their efficacy problems are behind them. I can see that they don't want a repeat of Thermage's previous problems that caused a backlash among physicians. If they can crack the cellulite conundrum they'll be set.
  
  
• I queried Clint about Thermage and the competition from Cutera's Titan and/or Palomar's fractional IR treatment heads. He was reticent to say anything bad about competitors but it was obvious to me that Thermage really thinks that they've got this modality nailed down. I didn't detect any sweating which is good. The companies that focus on what the competition's doing inevitably wind up fighting the wrong battles. I expect to get hard and fast specifics from Thermage and compare the technology providers side by side. Perhaps a Palomar or Cutera rep will pass this up the food chain and we can get some info from them as well. Different strokes for different folks.
  
  
• Clint's smart and I liked him tremendously. Now that Thermage is a public company they face challenges that they didn't when they were private. If Clint is representative of Thermage's leadership I'm impressed.
  

What's the best medspa advertising?

What do medical spas and cosmetic medical practices name as their primary concern? About 85% name increasing patient flow through advertising.

I've been around advertising and advertisers for a long time (Since 1989 or so.) and have seen my share of what works, and what doesn't.

There are any number of comments on this site by medspa owners along these lines: "I tried direct mail / radio / print / whatever... and it didn't work." To this I say... hmmm.

'Trying' could mean about anything. Most of the ads that I see produced by clincs are so bad that they're almost laughable and detract from exactly what the positioning of any cosmetic practice should be. (The 'Got Milk' rip offs for 'Got Hair?'are a prime example.)

Any form of advertising can work if it's done right. Sure, there are some that are better than others. I don't use yellow page ads for example, not because they don't work, but because they don't work well enough for the cost. But I'd still consider them if the price was right and the quaility improved.

Many advertisers will produce your ad for free. Seems like a deal but a guy making $9 an hour isn't really in the business of providing quality or really 'building your business'. So while you may have tried something in the past that didn't work, cowboy up and admit that you probably weren't doing it right.

Here's what some smart people have to say about building brands and advertising. 

Quotes on Branding:

"If you can, be first. If you can't be first, create a new category in which you can be first." - Al Ries & Jack Trout

"A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer." - Al Reis and Laura Reis

"A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something that is bought by the customer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless." - Stephen King, WPP Group, London

"Ordinary people can spread good and bad information about brands faster than marketers." - Ray Johnson

"The idea that business is just a numbers affair has always struck me as preposterous. For one thing, I've never been particularly good at numbers, but I think I've done a reasonable job with feelings. And I'm convinced that it is feelings - and feelings alone - that account for the success of the Virgin brand in all of its myriad forms." - Richard Branson

"We don't have a good language to talk about this kind of thing. In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer... But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation." - Steve Jobs

"I have a BMW. But only because BMW stands for Bob Marley and The Wailers, and not because I need an expensive car." - Bob Marley

"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well." - Jeff Bezos

"It is not slickness, polish, uniqueness, or cleverness that makes a brand a brand. It is truth." - Harry Beckwith

"Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business. - Warren Buffett

"A brand that captures your mind gains behavior. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment." - Scott Talgo

"Ordinary people can spread good and bad information about brands faster than marketers." - Ray Johnson

"It is a pretty recognizable brand name. Originally it was "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" but we settled on "Yahoo"." - Jerry Yang

“Customers must recognize that you stand for something.” – Howard Schultz

"A brand is a set of differentiating promises that link a product to its customers."- Stuart Agres

"Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand." - David Ogilvy

"I've always thought that a name says a lot about a person. So naturally, being named Howard, I always wanted to crawl into a hole." - Howard Stern

And this from Brandchannel.com which is dead on in dealing with the perceived return on investment (ROI) that is one of the most common questions I'm asked. It remindes me of my daughters former love of all things having to do with sharks. She'd often ask me, "Dad, what's the most dangerous shark?"

I'd always reply with the same answer, "The one biting you." 

 Brand Advertising

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. Now, if I only knew which half."

John Wannamaker spoke these words in the late 19th Century, little did he know that many an advertiser in the 21st could say the exact same thing and not be far off the mark.

We get questions all the time about brand advertising and return on investment, as marketing officers around the globe are continually called to task in justifying or accounting for their budgets. We've seen clients actually lose brand equity when they decided not to advertise because of the lack of tangible ROI. But brand advertising is not designed by nature to generate sales—it is a means by which to create awareness, differentiation and consideration.

Marketing in the 21st Century is not about ROI anymore. It's about the return on customer, maximizing the lifetime relationship with an individual. It's about getting that one person who purchases your product once to purchase it again. Purchase it more often. Purchase new things. Over and over and over again until they become something more than a customer. They become an advocate for your brand.

But how do you do that through traditional advertising? Well, you can't. Does this mean that traditional means of advertising—television, print, radio—are worthless? No we're not saying that. Again, the value in traditional media (and many new forms of media) is in creating brand awareness. Let's face it. We're all consumers. Advertising in an inherently intrusive marketing tool. But it's 100 percent necessary because how would we know which brand of spaghetti sauce to buy at the store? We consider the ones that you have heard of most often, or those that have brand attributes that we prefer. And that is a function of brand advertising...

Thermage sales guy vs. Botox sales guy.

I see a lot of sales guys. I refer to them sometimes as the charts and smiles crowd.

(I have two very hard rules in my clinics. One, that there has to be a ready supply of Diet Coke, and two, that no one can give out my cell number to sales guys.)

A good sales guy is great, a poor sales guy is a liability. Chris Oordt is my Thermage rep in UT and he's on the good side (Hi Chris). He makes himself available when needed and is generally fairly attuned to my wants. The Botox guy's not in the same league.

Chris came into my Park City Surface location about three weeks ago and presented the clinic with the only Thermage's Pinnacle Award account in Utah or Idaho. Of course it's a made up award that Thermage gives to their larger accounts (I think $500k or more but I'm not sure.) and is based on how many of those $650 tips you buy a year, but it's still a feel good way to show a little appreciation. Chris and I talk and I get the feeling that he'd at least piss on me if I were on fire. I like Chris and people do business with people they lilke. (I'm guessing that I won't have a lot of business with DermaCare, American Laser Clinics, Sona, or Radiance Medspas.)

Contrast that with my Botox guy. (I won't mention his name.) Botox guy made an appearance after a few months absence and proceeded to complain to my staff that I didn't like him and that's why he hadn't been around. He wen't on at some length evidently, (I wasn't there) about how I'd laughed him out of the clinic when he presented me with his ideas about how to grow our business. Certainly I don't remember being that negative but occasionally I can be.... sarcastic. I guess Botox guy thinks I have it in for him which I don't. What I'd like is for something besides an appearance and useless information, not to mention less bitching to my staff about how I've oppressed him. I had to laugh at that. Jeeze Alergan, give me an award or something. Just the Park City clinic does 15k worth of Botox a month. Where's the love? At least Thermage gave me a big plastic thing-a-ma-jig to wow patients with.

And it's all about feeling good. Currently I feel good about Thermage since they shipped me ten pounds of award, and Chris now feels good that I mentioned him by name in a positive post and he can print it out for his quarterly performance review. How many other Thermage reps have gotten such positive press for their company?

Of course Chris and I have discussed Thermage or other technology vendors posting to and taking questions from this site. I've yet to hear how that has gone.  If he gets it done, maybe I'll send him a statue.

Medspas: Publicity without a press release (or the press)

Long Tail PR: how to do publicity without a press release (or the press)

Here's something you can put your medspas office manager on.

Press is not difficult if you're willing to take the time to learn how to do it. Medspas and cosmetic medicine in general are competitive. To win, you have to be willing to compete. Learning how to do things yourself is probably the most cost effective way.

I've been following the debate started by Brian Solis about "social media press releases" and other forms of doing PR in a way that both works in a conversational medium and doesn't demean and insult the intelligence of everyone involved. As far as traditional media goes, I suspect none of this matters much--most journalists have long ago figured how to quickly decide if they have any interest in a press release and how best to extract whatever value is in it. The system is no more or less broken than it's always been.

But what about the Long Tail of media--all those new influentials, from the micromedia of Techcrunch and Gizmodo to individual bloggers? And the social news aggregators like Digg and our own Reddit? They're where the most powerful sort of marketing--word of mouth--starts, but most of them don't want to hear from a PR person at all. Blogging is all about authenticity and the individual voice, not paid spin. Many bloggers seem just impedance mismatched with the preternaturally positive PR professionals, and woe to the flack who's busted trying to game Digg without revealing that they're paid to do so.

So now imagine that you're one of those PR professionals. What do you do? Stick with the world you know, and continue calling and emailing releases to the traditional press (trying not to notice that their ranks are shrinking and influence waning)?  Start spamming bloggers, too, and hope for the best? Or just treat alpha bloggers like traditional press and shower them with love, while ignoring the rest?

I've seen all three of those paths taken, some of them even with modest success. Despite the culture mismatch, there certainly are plenty of bloggers who actually don't mind hearing from a PR person, as long as it's in the form of a personal email or comment that reflects that the flack actually reads the blog and gets what it's about. And companies such as Microsoft and Sun are now shifting their PR strategy to give special attention to influential bloggers, inviting them to private briefings and giving them early looks at new products.

But fundamentally social media is a peer-to-peer medium; bloggers would rather hear from someone doing something cool than from the paid promotional representative for that person. The problem is that the people doing that cool stuff are busy, which is why they pay PR people to do the outreach for them in the first place.

Medspa Advertising: White space & upscale.

Advertising is a common concern for cosmetic physicians and medispas. (Medspa Advertising & Marketing Discussions l Advertising & PR Category)

One of my businesses is an advertising agency and I understate the situation to the extreme when I say that the discussion of what constitutes good design and what clients think is effective is something of a joke in the industry. Clients see white space and instantly want to put something in it which aggravates designers to no end. First, because it really does look ugly, and second, because it makes it look cheap (and more than anything else, creatives hate cheap).

You can see that the Surface print ads we run have a fair amount of white space. Some of them are almost completely free of copy. We do this because it's effective and it speaks to our target audience.

I acknowledge of course that this site is not a blazing example of the use of white space or fantastic design skills. Why? Information is a tricky thing on line. I've opted to use the 'find it now' strategy of keeping the most used links readily available.

A list Aparts post on white space is spot on. The excerpt below is discussing a direct mail piece.

Take the following example.

Figure 3. Examples of direct mail vs. luxury brand design

The content is the same on both designs, as are the other elements, such as photography. Yet the two designs stand at opposite ends of the brand spectrum. Less whitespace = cheap; more whitespace = luxury.

A lot more goes into brand positioning than just whitespace, but as a brief lands on your desk for a luxury brand, it’s very likely that the client—and their target audience—expects whitespace and plenty of it to align the product with its competitors.

If your ads look like the first example, you're shooting yourself in the foot. There has never been a woman (and our patients are 93% female) that has ever wanted to have any medical treatment on her face performed by a medspa because it was the cheapest.

If you're in need of better advertising, you can contact Wild Blue Creative here. 

Inside Sona Medspas Part 5: Opening a laser clinc.

Medical Spa MD - Inside Sona Medspa series Part 5: Opening a Sona Clinic

These posts are written by former Sona Medspa owner Ron Berglund to provide an inside view of the way medical spa franchises recruit, train, and support their owners as well as detailing some of the problems with medspa franchises.

Read Part 1: Why I bought a Sona Franchise l Part 2: Sona Promises l Part 3: The Franchise Pitch l Part 4: Legal Structure & Revenue Sharing

Opening a Sona Laser Clinic

 

How did you hire? 

My partner and I hired our first employee several months before our build out was completed, so she had to be very patient. She was a "friend of a friend" and after a couple interviews we decided she would be an excellent choice for the key position of lead sales consultant. She had an extensive operational background based on her experience running a vererinary clinic for her former husband. She had also recently completed cosmetology/estheiology school, and she had an oputstanding personality. The only thing she lacked was actual sales experience, which concerned me a great deal. I hoped that her other qualities would make up for lack of actual sales background.

 

Shortly after hiring her we hired another "friend of a friend" for the extremely important "front desk" position. Once I had a good idea about our projected opening date based on the progress of our 2850 sq. ft.build out I was able to schedule our staff training visit to corporate headquarters in Virginia Beach which took place over a 10 day period in February, 2003. I ran several newspaper "help wanted" ads but was unable to hire a nurse to operate the laser in time for the nurse to accompany the rest of us to Virginia Beach. We had to hire a full time and part time nurse as soom as we got back and arrange for Sona to send a training nurse to Minnesota in late February to train them. We ran several ads in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and were successful in filling the positions but did not give ourselves adequate time to screen a sufficient number of candidates to allow us to find stellar employes for these extremely critical positions. 

 

What support did Sona provide? 

Sona provided support for our opening by providing fairly decent operations manuals and clinical manuals, providing OK staff training during our visit to Virginia Beach, and sending an experienced laser nurse to Minnesota to train our full time and part time nurses. Sona also sent several people to St. Paul to assist us with set up and installation of our equipment, furnishings and decor, as well as to participate in and "assist" with our "grand opening" which was held in early March, 2003. 

 

What was Sona good at?  

Once again, hind sight is 20/20. Therefore, as I reflect back on the content and delivery of the training and support Sona provided I am able to evaluate whether or not Sona actually delivered what they promised they would, as well as whether or not the guidance and training provided was beneficial or detrimental to the success of the operation. Perhaps more significant than any misleading claim or breached promise Sona made was the fact that it touted having a "proven business model" and a "formula for success" when this in fact proved NOT to be the case. Aesthetic lasers and the services available today have been cleared in the U.S. for these popular indications for less than a decade.  The medical spa pioneers of the early 2000s have barely had time to truly figure out how to properly market, sell, and deliver these services properly. Many entrepreneurs had the idea that opening a medspa would be similar to opening a Kinkos-- and as many of us have discovered nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Sona actually did a fairly decent job of helping to train my original staff on the critical components of laser hair removal sales and delivery in accordance with the Sona business model in effect in early 2003. That model has changed significantly since that time as the Sona management team has tried to react to a host of franchisee failures, complaints and litigation. Their help with set up-- even including hanging pictures on the walls and showing our nurses how to properly arrange storage cabinets-- was excellent. Their assistance with our "grand opening" was, however, worthless. And based on four years of experience trying to profitably operate a med spa I can certainly say that their promised guidance and support along the way was pathetic.

 

What did they say they would do that they did not do? 

Sona's extensive list of breached promises was previously detailed in an earlier section. 

 

Did I have a business plan? 

My partner had financials and an operating budget from his Minneapolis operation which we used as the basis for a "rough" business plan for the new St. Paul center. I was able to easily peg our monthly expenses for the critical elements of the operation including rent, Sona's "laser placement (revenue share) fee", insurance, postage, printing, utilities, credit card fees, etc.  Payroll expenses would be based on the number of employees needed to run the operation (which would-- of course-- increase as the number of clients needing treatments increased), and the amount spent each month for advertising was based on Sona's recommendation of a minimum of $15,000 per month up to $100,000 gross revenues and 15% of revenues thereafter. No matter how "scientific" you try to be with a business plan, however, you really have no idea how many of your advertising dollars are going to result in lead calls, for example. Estimated costs are pretty easy to come up with, but you need a crystal ball to determine what your anticipated income might be.  Three very significant things that impacted my operation long-term were the extremely SEASONAL nature of aesthetic services (in Minnesota, June through December can be hell), the low-margins actually experienced when all expenses are accounted for, and the tendency of advertising sources to diminish after a period of time.  For example, for our first year of operation the St. Paul Pioneer Press was a very effective and consistent advertising medium for us. However, after about 18 months the costs of leads and sales generated in our primary newspaper vs. the costs of the ads made it a questionable source to continue with. After a period of time, it seems that every resident of the St. Paul metro area  who actually reads the paper (and the younger market in increasingly NOT reading newspapers) had seen our ads multiple times. After a while, the ads seem to wear out their effectiveness. Radio ads-- on the other hand-- almost NEVER cost justified. Direct mail and quarterly newsletters would have probably been our best place to spend money. Unfortunately, Sona never emphasized these avenues so by the time we thought about it it was already to late!

 

Patients Unlimited: Mottos, methods, & mystery.

I thought this graphic was a curious when I first saw it but these guys are serious. Patients Unlimited is a training company where you send your staff so that they know what to say to your patients. The PUMC Motto is: “An investment in your staff benefits your practice”

For $395 Patients Unlimited will teach you how to:

• Get a patient ready for a class reunion.
  
• Use cosmetic surgery sales vocabulary.
  
• Stop shoppers in their tracks!
• Convert a consultation before the doctor is met!

Yowser! I'll be stopping shoppers in their tracks? Where do I sign up.

To be honest, I've never heard about Patients Unlimited before but I have seen better execution of training programs and higher standards of advertising. If they seem good to you, great, at least they're cheap. 

They do post a few items that cause me to furrow my brow. In the graphic above I notice that they show that the source of 31% of consultations is the yellow pages.

Ahem... no.

If you're relying on the yellow pages to drive a third of your patient flow you're getting run over. In my own opinion,  yellow pages aren't worth the money. But what do I know?

Neuroeconomics & Cosmetic Medicine: Branding your medical spa.

Popular brands may brand the brain.

Researchers think they've now found out why people like expensive (and advertising saturated) brands better.

Researchers at University Hospital in Munich Germany used Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology to scan people’s brains while they were shown different brand logos. The more popular logos “lit up areas of the brain associated with warm emotions, reward and self-identity while less-recognized brands triggered more activity in brain regions associated with working memory and negative emotions — suggesting these products were less easy to process and accept.”

I've discussed the potential problems this poses for individual cosmetic medical practices before. The ability to build a brand is the domain of large businesses with large budgets. Small practices will face increasing pressure. Even the current batch of medspa franchises are being pressured out of existence. But perhaps this explains my wife's love for all things Apple.

In its study, the Munich team hooked up 20 healthy, well-educated young men and women to fMRI. Then the researchers presented them with the logos of either well-known or more obscure automakers and insurance companies. Born did not disclose the actual brand names, calling such disclosure "not useful at present."

Watching the participants' real-time neurological activity, it became clear to the researchers that the better-known brands acted on the brain in a way that was quite different from that of less-familiar logos.

Better-known brands stirred up areas of the brain's cortex and elsewhere that are "involved in positive emotional processing and associated with self-identification," Born said. This activity was specific to the better-known brands and occurred independently of the category of product -- cars or insurance plans.

Besides demonstrating that strong branding does matter, neurologically speaking, the fMRI results "suggest that a benchmark test for strong vs. weaker brands is possible," Born said. That could open the way to further research into what makes great brands great. "Further investigations are necessary to define in detail the conditions for optimal branding," she said.

via Beauty Brains 

Plastic Surgery Advertising: Winner by a nose.

Rhinoplasty with your morning cup of joe?

 
This coffee cup nose job is an ad for a plastic surgeon. While there's no denying that this type of promotion is clever and eye catching, you have to ask yourself if the expense is worth the benefit. In this case, with caveats, I would think that it might have been. In many other cases I would say no.

It's clever. It's funny. It's unexpected. These are exactly the attributes you look for in any type of guerilla campaign. Unfortunately, this type of ad also has some drawbacks.

The cost of this type of campaign is high. It was suggested and executed by an advertising agency. Ad agency's love, love, love, plastic surgery and other accounts that are 'fun' for the creative teams. In fact, this ad has appeared in a number of advertising magazines. Ad agencies use these types of campaigns to collect accolades for themselves.

For some business, this is exactly the type of quirky marketing that works. But, as far as I know, this plastic surgeon is a single location. A small business is probably in a situation where the opportunity cost for producing a campaign like this makes it a poor use of available funds. 

While the ad is cleaver it's also: high cost, limited distribution, and has a low probability of being utilized by the target market. My guess is that number of patients brought in was dwarfed by the cost of this campaign. If this campaign worked, it was from the secondary benefits that this campaign received.

Retail Medicine: Don't nickle & dime your patients.

Little added fees = pissed off patients.

If you're adding small fees to your service to cover your costs, you're pissing off your patients. If you didn't guess, pissed patients don't speak kindly of you. Actually, I'm a proponent of the flat fee. I hate the little charges.

From Ronda Abrams 

When I went into business, I sat down with a lawyer to review my legal and tax responsibilities. When we finished, he gave me some wise advice.

"Rhonda," he said, "don't nickel-and-dime your clients. Clients willingly pay thousands of dollars in hourly fees without complaint, but if I bill them $2 in long-distance calls, they'll get upset. It's small items that alienate clients."

We all react negatively to what we see as petty little fees that should be part of what we've paid for. A patient might be willing to spend $3000 for liposuction but she doesn't want to be charged for the laundry service or the support hose. The tiny fees at the end mark you as a cheapskate. It's better to charge an extra $100 for the service and give the hose away for free.

Make the most of the fact that you're not charging for these extra services. After all, you're a physician angel and friend to all your patients, right? Have your front desk go through the bill detailing the little suff as "Complimentary" or "Fee Waived." That lets the patient know you could charge them but haven't, increasing customer loyalty. Make the last interaction the most pleasant; go ahead and give the wheelchair ride for free.