In order for your practice to succeed, you’ll need a med spa marketing plan that utilizes all your marketing channels to engage and continually expand your patient base.

However, it may feel overwhelming knowing where to begin. The list of marketing channels may feel endless: email, social media, text campaigns, website/blog content, SEO, etc. You may wonder: how much of the budget should be allocated to each channel? Which areas are lacking and need the most attention?

The answer is not to “wing it”. A lot of money can go down the drain if thrown into different marketing channels without an overall plan. A haphazard approach may work for a little while, but it will likely not hold as you grow and you want to scale your practice.

This is where a med spa marketing plan comes in.

Simply put, a med spa marketing plan is a master plan that coordinates all your marketing campaigns/efforts. It helps you realistically create tactics that will help you reach your goals.

We’ve encountered many medical spas that have opened without investing in a plan which has caused major headaches and frustration. Don’t make that mistake.

Your marketing plan should clearly outline your marketing strategies over a period of time (year, month, quarter, etc) in an easily understood format. It should include:

• Executive Summary: general overview of your marketing goals
• User Personas: descriptions of your “ideal patients”
• Achievable Goals:  measurable tasks with performance indicators (bookings and revenue)
• ‍Competitive Research: strategies learned from other successful med spas
• Tracking Guidelines: monitoring of your goals performance

An effective marketing plan helps cut through all the noise. It simplifies all the factors by giving you measurable and attainable goals that work towards your practice’s overarching objectives.

Before you share specific assignments with your team, you need to present the executive summary: your vision of where your practice currently is and where you aim to be within a specific timeframe. 

This section is not about details or numbers. In down-to-earth language or even a narrative style, you should overview your goals for the next time period without all the specific details of how each goal will be accomplished and tracked. 

Only a few paragraphs long, this beginning summary should tie all your marketing campaigns together into a united effort. 

Instead of throwing out the broadest net to anyone your marketing can reach, take the time to identify the niche you want to target. Do the research to understand what types of people are likely to become loyal return patients to your practice. 

During this section of your marketing plan, you should present “User Personas”. A user persona shows a sample “ideal” patient. It should briefly outline who they are and list their interests and treatment preferences. 

You may have multiple different user personas you want to target.  For example, you may highlight a patient in her early 60s who is looking for BOTOX treatments to counter aging effects such as wrinkles and sagging skin. You might also highlight a 30-year-old who has just finished having kids who may be interested in a “mommy makeover” package.

Identify your patient demographics, and create user personas, by sending out surveys to your current patients. Ask questions to learn about their health goals, struggles, and motivations.

Learn their ages, ethnicities, etc. The more details you gain about your target patients, the better you will be able to segment your marketing to give them the content that is most engaging and applicable to them.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The same goes for accomplishing your overarching marketing goals for your practice. Coming up with smaller focused goals is KEY to accomplishing your bigger objectives. 

Set goals that can be tracked with real numbers and percentages. Increases in traffic, revenue, and booking rates can be some effective markers to track. We suggest following the SMART goal method (first coined by George Doran) to write effective goals: create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

SMART goals help you avoid vague goals. For example, a goal to “write more website articles” is not results-focused or specific enough. Instead, you can rework it into a SMART goal: “see 15% increase in traffic to the practice’s website by writing 4 blog articles per month for the next 3 months.” You could also rework a vague “get more TikTok followers” goal to instead state: “increase your practice’s social media traffic by 20% in a 2-month time frame by creating four high-quality posts each week on all social media accounts.” 

Wondering where to focus your goals? Below is our list of primary and secondary goal objectives. Your practice should set goals in all of these med spa marketing categories (as they are applicable to your strategy or goals). These goals need a specific timeline. For example, by the month or in the first 12 months of operation. 

Primary
‍Bookings
Revenue

‍Secondary
‍Email Subscribers
Text Subscribers
Instagram Followers
TikTok Followers
Yelp Reviews
Google Reviews
Facebook Reviews
Web Visits

Your goals need to be strategically written with specific outcomes in mind during a designated time frame. Your budget should be clearly allocated to support your goals in order of most importance. Don't hesitate to try out different goals and new ways to grow your med spa.
Your practice’s ability to write effective goals is key to seeing RESULTS. 

It's not easy to carve your way into an increasingly saturated medical aesthetics market. So take the time to learn from the best! Pay attention to what is working for successful medical spas in your market. 

If you can highlight other practices’ strengths and weaknesses you can find opportunities to improve your own marketing and performance. Pay attention to which posts and content are generating the most responses. Learn what promotions are popular. Observe effective branding decisions. etc.

Competitive analysis can be as simple as listing a few major med spas in your area with a few strengths. Or you can dive deeper into their specific practices with a detailed overview of their data (patients, followers, campaigns, etc).  

Your research may highlight some areas where you can improve or identify a niche that isn’t being targeted that may be an opportunity for your practice. 

It doesn’t matter how great your goals are in theory if they are not carried out effectively. Putting in place systems to track and monitor your goals is crucial for seeing your desired growth. 

In order to monitor your results, you will need to know the baselines you are starting with. Your goals should center around achieving from these baselines. For example, social media marketing goals should look at current followers, shares, and like counts (in a recent month) and make goals to grow from there. ‍
Once you know your baselines, identify how you will track your goals. At the minimum, make sure to define WHAT is being tracked, HOW you plan on tracking it, and HOW OFTEN you will monitor your goals.

Accountability is essential in reaching goals. This is where a dashboard would be highly effective. At Med Aesthetics Group, we help practices track against goals and create dashboards that make it easy to digest the data and stay on track!

A med spa marketing plan is key to steering your practice toward growth.

 Marketing plans help you break down your growth vision into attainable goals, be intentional with your valuable budget, segment and target your base, and ultimately see results from your different marketing efforts.

Enjoy new levels of growth by consistently utilizing a marketing plan for your practice.