154 – A client sells $67,543 in gift cards over this Black Friday holiday for his med spa. Find out how its done, NOW!

We all know Black Friday and Cyber Monday lead to some of the biggest sales of the year for any business. Knowing how to use the right profit-boosting strategies for this can help your medical practice get record breaking sales, on top of acquiring leads for the holiday season.

Your medical practice could be getting JUST ENOUGH sales, but if you don’t take advantage of the tried-and-tested strategies that have been proven to increase sales every time, you won’t be optimizing your business to reach its full potential for big annual sales. In this podcast episode, you’ll hear about how to acquire more leads for the same price, record-breaking sales, and four important points on how Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing strategies can contribute on some of the biggest sales your medical practice will ever have.

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December 29, 2020

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MATT COFFY: Okay. So Erica, this is our review of, I think the current situation in the market. So we usually do a mid month, but I found it necessary to talk about something that really important, which is necessity during this, let’s say climate– it’s the best way I can describe it– where the opportunity is unique for those who want to take advantage of it. So let’s talk about the meat on the table here, which is what happened during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And let’s start with one of our examples. Why don’t you talk about the success that we found with one of our practitioners and let’s go through why it happened and what happened so that people who are watching this or listening to this can understand that the greater extent of the human condition still exist under any conditions that we have for climate. And I’m gonna use the word climate as opposed to using the current terminology.

ERICA BREINING: So, Matt, I think that the clients that we saw that were most successful, one in particular, did a gift card offer for Black Friday. It was a 15% off offer and the purchaser was able to buy the gift card online and check out extremely smoothly. So they could do it from the comfort of their own home or over the phone. You know, we texted this message, we put it on social media, we emailed it. We made it very simple for people to buy online from home. And that one particular client did close to $70,000 in gift card sales over one weekend alone, which was nearly double what they did last year. I think combination of two things. Number one, the demand is extremely high. We have not seen a dip. People still want to look amazing. Number two, they need to give presents, number three, a gift card allows them to use that service at any time. So even if they may not want to use it now, it will be good for when they’re ready.

MATT COFFY: Yeah. And I think that is what I was trying to get across, in the initial sort of salvo this discussion, which is, I don’t think–I may might be a little bit off here– but I don’t think people understand the demand curves in the market in general. We talked to a lot of med spas across the country. We talked a lot of, let’s just say aesthetics practice. Maybe there’s a better way to put it because it’s a mix. People have specialties in plastic surgeons and, and we, we, we started doing… But the demand curve for beauty, for like ability, it’s actually enhanced now because now everybody has to get on a Zoom call.

MATT COFFY: So now, now you’re really upfront. It’s not like, you know, you go meet, maybe these people once in a while, but now everybody’s on a call. And, you know, I noticed that people try and to sort of build up their nest around them. You know, you might have a area of your house where you have some flowers in the background and some good lighting from the window. And, you know, in my case, I like to put up a green screen, so our team can put stuff behind me as I’m talking. But I think, you know, what’s happening is that, you know, especially, fillers, Botox, you know, facial stuff is hot right now, for sure. And dermaplaning and all these things that are related to, you know, looking good, especially cause we have a lot of FaceTime now.

MATT COFFY: Lot of people all across the world are now, you know, plus the other thing is, is that, and maybe you could talk a little bit about this, the expandable ability for people to spend money in places like that. They have limited capacity for restaurants. They’ve got limited things for, some of the stores. There’s limitations, but in the aesthetics world, it’s sort of like, this is our retreat, you know, this is… you go… It’s like a social communication at this point. So let’s talk a little bit about that, so people understand that we’re trying to maybe look at this and say, you know, “What does this all mean for me?”

ERICA BREINING: So I think, you know, with all of the stresses that you mentioned in the current environment, people are feeling aged. People are feeling tired and a bit stressed where this retreat, where you can get out in a safe environment to a physician’s office has been, you know, a really great way for people to feel good about themselves.

MATT COFFY: Well, I just wanted to see from, from your perspective, meaning that from a person who has kids and has a very hectic life, you know, this is something that I would consider, and although, males do go to med spas, but a lot of females more adaptively are really coming into the market as, not only new potential clients, but I think as the world sort of spins what I was trying to get at was the human condition. As you started to talk about where there is a sense of community, of when people start to go to a medical practice that they’re not just– I mean, the salon is a big thing for females. It is a huge thing. It is a social construct, but I think from a med spa perspective, it’s like, you’re, you’re also going to be thinking about that social construct.

MATT COFFY: Plus you’re actually getting, to look better like it physically going to look better. And so the, the psychology of a safe environment with a community of people socially that are going to be there, and that might be the aesthetician. It might be the doctor, it might be the PA, it might be somebody in the business, but you’re creating sort of a… Remember there’s very limited social connection, right. And it’s just because that’s where we are. So what I was trying to say is I think that these things combined are really important for people to understand that this market has got a really good space where you can develop relationships with clients, like never before, because you have the opportunity to really have them and their attention where they may not have had the attention before, because they had some other social environments going on.

MATT COFFY: Now, people are just like, they want to have someone to talk to. They want to go somewhere safe, where they feel like they’re going to be pampered. And they want to have a better experience from a psychology layer after that, because they’re looking better. So that’s what I meant to sort of, from your perspective, do you see this, because obviously I see it from the male side is that’s what I would consider what’s happening, why we’re seeing such high demand and why we’ve actually seen some of these pre- COVID levels come back. Like literally a lot of our clients are doing better than they were pre- COVID, which is amazing.

ERICA BREINING: Exactly. So I think, like you said, the socialization is huge. There’s not many outlets that we have today, other than, you know, the kids at home with homeschool, you know, going to the grocery store, other medical appointments that might not be so fun. So this is a way where we have a bonus at the end. Not only do we get to socialize and get out in a safe environment, but we are getting those treatments that make us feel good. you know, we’re on Zoom. How many times are we on Zoom And we’re not even looking at the other person we’re staring at our face and, you know, noticing a new line or you know, Oh, I need Botox. Or moving our forehead. And you know, everybody wants it. You want to feel good. Another thing that is important for business owners to realize is that this demographic, you know, this is like 32 to 55, this demographic, you know, in general is not necessarily afraid to go out. You know, so long as there are safe conditions. So you definitely want to, you know, target all of these people are on social media, we’re home, we have more time than ever to, you know, scroll and look at things online. So I think that’s another reason why, you know, demand is up.

MATT COFFY: Well, I was also thinking about the fact that in normal times we do have tire kickers. Like this is an industry filled with people who would love to go do stuff, but maybe they’ll take the offer, but won’t show up or they’ll take the offer and then think about it. I think we see less tire kickers. Right. And I think that’s one of the things I’ve noticed is that people are serious. Like they’re going to take the offer there. They’re like, this is actually something I want to do. Like, it’s, it’s not like, like, what else was I going to go do And that’s like, I’m saying, this is that, you know, you’re limited to what your activities are. You can’t just, you know, run down to the bowling alley or, you know, in our case, maybe some other States it’s a little bit different, but you know, they’re limited participation.

MATT COFFY: Now, obviously we know that’s not the only reason. But I do believe that why we’re seeing a resurgence, is that the income that’s being spent is so dwindled, meaning that what else are people spending money on? Like there… People are not going on vacations. They’re not going on trips, and not jumping on an airplane and going across the country, they’re not doing anything. So, why not support their local community and, you know, go out to the places where they feel safe. And I think that’s the key is that I think it’s, as I mentioned is there’s an expandable income in this bracket right now. And that’s why there’s a lot of home, you know, related projects that are going on. People are doing their kitchens and they’re doing their, the bathrooms or re doing… So I wanted to say, you know, what do you see in general that– cause we’re coming down to the end of the year now and you know, we’ll do our last numbers, in the next week or so. We’ll do another podcast to talk about or show, to talk about really the pure nuts and bolts of this. W hat’s the general trends that you see maybe across a couple of different sectors and or countries– parts of the country, I should say.

ERICA BREINING: And so, you know, you touched on something and that is the seriousness of the leads that we’re seeing right now. You know, no- show rates are at an all time low. Generally, you know, we’re seeing people that are responding to ads right now, are serious. They’re ready to go. They’re showing up. There’s not many obstacles getting in the way for them to miss their appointments. Like you mentioned, you know, you don’t have a vacation that’s going on. You don’t have a social gathering that, you know, maybe you can’t have downtime for. Even, you know, going into the workplace is much less. Everyone is on Zoom. So generally the people who are responding right now to ads, they’re very qualified leads, and it’s making it much more seamless to, you know, the business owners. They have to do less work to convert these people and get them into their door. So it’s been, you know, a very pleasant experience for those who are out there right now, advertising.

MATT COFFY: Yeah. And I think we learned that as we’ve kind of shuffled our offers around, is that you need to sort of be a little more unique with your offers to get people’s attention because that’s the one thing that yes, they are in social media, but they’re also being bombarded by everybody else. And so we’ve noticed that we’ve come up with some really cool ideas to get things flowing and maybe, maybe talk a couple of offer strategies that worked really well. because you know, we certainly can show numbers and that’s not what this podcast is for, but just like the thinking person’s strategy, where something wasn’t working and we turned it around, because there’s a couple of clients I have in mind that maybe you could talk about.

ERICA BREINING: Yeah. So, a lot of times a client, they want to give a total number. Like for example, they want to say Botox full treatment $499. So, you know, they’re giving that $500 value to the client. Whereas, if we actually broke it down by unit price, maybe it’s $10 a unit, $9 a unit, that number resonates. It’s a cycle buyer’s psychology thing. It resonates to them that it’s cheaper, although it may not necessarily be, but anyway, what that leads to is more leads for the same amount of money. And now you have the opportunity to engage with that person and explain to them the full price and explain to them the value and try to get them to come in. So offer strategy in wording is so important. We can literally see lead volume, double or triple if we were to offer correctly, even if the patient or the client is paying the same amount of money at the end of the day.

MATT COFFY: Yeah. And I think that’s a critical component about what we do is help clients, especially with offers that when they don’t go right. So let’s say you run a bunch of offers in an area and you’re not getting the conversion rates you want. Now, how do you think through the journey for the customer? And I think we’ve had so many different cycles with so many different environments. Like literally, like I think every part of the country we’ve run multiple cycles and multiple strategies with multiple different variations, that we can swap them out. And it’s about making that adaptive change, to the clients, portfolios, on the fly so that we can make those adjustments. And it’s often difficult for us to convince sometimes the practitioners because they think what they know is what the market wants. And at the end of the day, it’s when it doesn’t work, they think it’s the customer’s problem.

MATT COFFY`: Like they can’t figure it out and where you’re like, well, they sure aren’t figuring it out, but you know what? You have to variable up your offer sets to find the right one. It’s much like, you know, when people go fishing, they use different lures and they use different setups, to catch the right type of fish. And I think with this type of offer, what happens is the market gets, and this is especially true for Facebook and Instagram and where they see the offer over and over again, there’s a level of fatigue that happens with offers. And then you have to… It doesn’t, it could be very simple. It could be a very subtle change, but, you know, when someone keeps seeing the same thing, they don’t feel like there’s any impulse to go and make a change.

MATT COFFY: And we try and cross thread some of the offers so that they they’re crossing up against, the ad sets that are out there. And I think to most of our clients, they don’t really necessarily know these things and it’s… And I think you’ve done a great job in convincing people to look at things from different angles. Was there anybody else who just recently had another change in how we did the offer so that we could talk a little bit more about maybe outside of the realm of just the traditional sort of Botox strategy?

ERICA BREINING: Sure. So a lot of times when practices are trying to sell packages, they make the challe– the package a little too difficult. For example, they, the offer might be buy 3, get 1 free, or buy 4 and get the 5th free. And it’s a bit overwhelming for a new lead who may have never even walked through your door. So, you know, we’re trying to get them to commit to coming back, you know, 4 or 5 times when they don’t even know you yet. So I try to encourage them to start with, you know, something a little easier, like buy 1, get 1 free, or buy 2, get 1 free, in order to, you know, introduce the patient to your practice in a way where they can build trust. You know, you can sell additional services, you know, but, but we work together and we think about how you don’t lose money by doing that. So we try to pick a service that doesn’t necessarily have a lot of costs or overhead for you to do that kind of hook with, in order to get somebody in. So, keep the offers simple and not overwhelming.

MATT COFFY: Yeah. You see that all the time when offers become way too much verbiage landing pages out of whack, because there’s so much on it that people are trying to sell everything that they have in one page or on the website. They’re trying to force people to see everything where your customer needs to be driven to a very simple answer for their sauce.

ERICA BREINING: Black Friday specials, you know, top 10 or top mistake is listing like your entire service catalog in this specialty. And you just overwhelm everyone. You’ll keep it simple one or two offers. And, you know, at the end of the day, you’re going to do way more sales.

MATT COFFY: Yeah. So here we are in December. It’s 2020, we’ve seen some of the highest numbers ever for gift certificate sales. And obviously there’s, as we explained, there’s certainly reasons around that, and there’s still opportunity by the way. And I, that’s what I always say to people’s like, you know, you really have to think about e-com right now. Any med spa or any plastic surgery or aesthetics that has product. And product could be gifted, product could be, you know, additional services that you have as a side project with maybe some compound manufacturer who’s providing you with a bunch of different retail products. It could be nutrition, it could be anything. There’s so many products, but to have your e-com store up and running, and to be a local environment that you know, your customers can support. Think about that really as another percentage point to your gain that won’t go to Amazon, that won’t go to, you know, the big box retail stores, because they’re going to get the business.

MATT COFFY: If you don’t talk about it and build it. And we noticed that a lot of the companies that we’ve worked with, practices that have decided to add on a store to their site. and mainly, I think we’ve been focusing in this discussion on just the gift certificate strategy, but there’s also the whole other followup strategy with providing people with offers that would go along with potentially when they leave the store. “Hey, here’s this offer,” You know, “Here’s a, you know, 25% off use the coupon code when you get back to your house or if you want to order a gift,” but there’s literally like this trail of revenue that can follow each customer around and they’re going to buy this stuff anyway. And they’re looking for ideas. And part of the challenge that we’ve done with a lot of our clients is to say, imagine if you had an e-com shop and you had your products. You know, what this could mean for just simple things.

MATT COFFY: Like, if someone was to ask you, “Hey, do you have an idea for X?” You know, and they may be looking for gift certificates, but you could actually say, you know what, you could also give them a bundle. And that’s when a bundle comes in to be important, which is that, yes, you get a gift certificate , and you also get this particular product, or percentage off or some other thing that’s related, into a bundle. Now you’re giving them something that has real value and is also adding to the revenue trail. And I think that’s where you’ve probably seen this with a lot of our clients, where we’re just bombarded with the positive feedback from the clients who started e-commerce sites as part of their business. And it doesn’t need to be super duper complicated. It just needs to be something simply connected to their site, and it can give them another percentage of revenue that they didn’t have before.

ERICA BREINING: I think, you know, the being able to buy those products online right now, and to have like live support, like someone within the spa to help you like customize those consultations, is also another way to actually drive procedural sales. So, you know, you can drive people by e-commerce, but it’s also giving you an opportunity to connect with them and have further consultations. That ‘s one thing that’s kind of cool. The other thing is that with people not, you know, going out to stores as much, I think a lot of people are at a loss, you know, for some gifts. So the more options that we can give people to buy online and make it very easy for them, you know, is key. And people do want to support, you know, small business, even, you know, me, I’m shopping on Amazon the other day. And a lot of the things I wanted to buy weren’t even guaranteed for Christmas. I mean, it’s only December 8th. So, you know, that’s another benefit of buying from your local small business.

MATT COFFY: Yeah, very true. So let’s just skip ahead. One, we’ve talked about gift certificate strategy. We’ve talked about the general population from what we see in the market, how their needs are today and how it’s changed a bit. Now we’ve talked about, you know, making sure that you consider beyond gift certificate sales, and e-com last thing I want to talk about and maybe take it over to the male side of the world and talk about the opportunities on not just the female world, but some of the things that we’re seeing in the market. You know, we have a very high success rate with testosterone strategies and, there’s a lot coming into the market, you know, on the male side, there are opportunities to also market even Botox. And, and I think what we’re starting to see is, the derivatives happening, you know, the business itself is shifting, into the male population.

MATT COFFY: We’re starting to get, that we’re starting to see our clients look at this as alternatives. And obviously it depends on where you are, what are the country, you know, what time of year it is, you know, and those features come, but, you know, we know doing testosterone, shots and pellets, you know, is a big growing field. There is a lot of demand because it’s a low impact, easy to produce revenue. But I think at the end of the day, what’s also happening is that we’re finding that this is a recurring revenue stream for a lot of doctors, because, you don’t do testosterone once, you do it continually. And this becomes a process where people start to become cycled in. And we have now doctors who are doing 10,000, $20,000 a month, just in recurring testosterone sales. So maybe talk just a little bit about that. Obviously the cost per lead’s a little higher, and we’ll get into more specifics in the next podcast, but just what you experienced, you’ve seen with this.

ERICA BREINING: So we have seen a lot of a good experience, especially on Google ad words. There are a lot of men, and women too, searching for hormone therapy, testosterone therapy, the pellet. They are looking for solutions, you know, a lot of people, even in their thirties. And as you get into forties and fifties, it gets, you know, even more so, you know, they’re losing energy, they’re depressed, low sex drive. There’s so many benefits and the people who are starting, these treatments are literally hooked. They feel like they can’t live without it. They… one patient testimonial you know, quoted that he felt like he was back in his 20s, you know… and he’s now in his 40s. So this has been such a great treatment. You know, we run it on Google for people who are searching because it is a more specialized, type of thing.

ERICA BREINING: And then we like to run a remarketing on social media so that they see the ad again when they open their social. And they can… they have to learn more about it as well. So, by getting that second ad on social media, it’s another way to connect with the lead, give them some education and encourage them to come in to learn more how this can help. Another thing I want to touch on too, Matt, about men and recurring treatments, PRP hair restoration has been an awesome thing. You know, most patients, they need four treatments monthly upfront, and then they need maintenance twice a year. So offering the hair restoration, Brotox, hormone therapy, laser hair removal is also a big one; there’s so many things now for men you know, to help expand your med spa and really tap that demographic. This is not just for women anymore.

MATT COFFY: That’s right. And the reason why I was bringing this up is that obviously in this environment where we have people staying at home a lot more and don’t have the same dynamics where they would be exercising as much, or, you know, maybe they’re stuck. This is a great time to consider some of the male pieces of the business where you can get people out. And there’s a lot of people who have gotten, let’s just say the winter blues, because they’re stuck. And especially in the Northeast where you know, you really don’t have the luxury of going to an office or maybe having the ability to go to a gym because it might be shut down. But at the end of the day, it’s just one of many services that are, again, expandable income right now, where are people putting their money.

MATT COFFY: Well, just like, the Zoom calls, it’s the same thing. It’s just, obviously people are showing up. And another thing is the downtime. You know, the piece of the puzzle, that’s sort of missing that we don’t necessarily see all the time, which is that a lot of the procedures that can, now that you know, people are not going to an office can be done. And then you can literally, the downtime does, there isn’t any downtime because you’re at home. So there’s other opportunities as well to take advantage of timeframes.

ERICA BREINING: And with the work at home schedule, I think, people have a lot more flexibility, you know, for appointments during the day, they don’t necessarily have to, you know, try to squeeze it into their nights and weekends. And, you know, that’s another reason why we’re seeing no show rates are decreasing.

MATT COFFY: Right, all positive aspects. I’m glad that we got through this. So the next time we’ll meet up will be for our mid month review of numbers. And we’re going to go through all these, in fact, everything we talked about today, we’re going to show those numbers. So this is sort of a precursor to let people you know, see what’s going to happen, which is that we’re going to show some amazing numbers that are going on in this industry at this point in time, when you would think, you know, people be hiding under rocks and stones, and actually the worst thing that you could possibly think of. It’s, very rampant, high demand, high demand curve, and continuing to grow, great place to be. So all the people that are going to hopefully go through this podcast and watch this will be now looking at the transition, which in about a week or so, we’re going to reveal the numbers.

MATT COFFY: And I think it’d be exciting for you and I, to also sort of circle back with this discussion that I have today and take each one of these four points that we talked about, which is the gift certificates, the general environment, and the way that people are buying. And then e-commerce, and also the male side of the business, and we’ll show those numbers so that we can see, again, the results that are being driven from what we’re doing in the market. So thanks again, Erika and glad to have our now pre- discussion or beginning of the month discussion. I hope we can do another one of these to show the clients and customers and potential people that are interested in this business, that there’s a lot to do with a lot of things that we do that are going to help them grow their revenue and be brought.

ERICA BREINING: Absolutely. Thanks, Matt.