Thinking about how to ramp up your medical spa marketing? You may be leaning toward keeping your marketing in-house rather than hiring a company. While most business owners choose this route to keep costs lower, it might actually cost you more in the long run and not get you results that you’ll be happy with. Keep reading to learn why…
1. A Marketing Company Has Specialized Experience
Medspas often have an employee (like a receptionist) double up and work their job while also taking on marketing like posting on social media. This is great and much better than doing nothing at all but there are different layers to digital marketing. We don’t recommend relying on just one piece to land new clients and help you reach your goals. Social media posting alone, for example, is much more of a long term game. There are other (more technical) things that should be done to make sure you’re showing up for people who would purchase your services.
For someone in-house taking over your medical spa marketing, it’s common for there to be a steep learning curve if they don’t have prior education or experience. We aren’t saying that your current employees can’t get the job done, but will they get it done correctly? Will they produce the results that you’re looking for that will make it worth your while? The bottom line is marketing is not typically an add-on that can be done effectively part-time by your receptionist. It’s a full-time job if you’re wanting to capture new leads and new clients.
Another common solution we see is owners taking on their medical spa marketing by themselves. As an entrepreneur, it can be impossible to find the time to learn and build out your marketing strategy. Or maybe you feel like nobody can get the job done like you can.
This could be a one-way ticket to burn out from having too much on your plate. It could also leave your marketing as the very last thing you tackle after a busy day; resulting in scrambling to throw a post or blog together just to have something up.
The issue with this is that marketing is more than just going through the motions. If you’re not consistent and intentional about producing high-quality content that speaks directly to your dream clients then your marketing will be a flop.
With a medical spa marketing partner, you have experts for your industry with results and examples of what they can do. They do this full-time, so they stay up-to-date with changes, trends, and the different technologies involved in marketing. Unlike hiring an employee to handle marketing, there’s no training required and you don’t have to take time away from running your business in order to market your products and services.
2. A Medspa Marketing Company Can Save You Money
Keeping costs low might be the number one reason you’re wanting to keep marketing in-house. The truth is hiring a marketing company is a tax deduction while hiring an employee is a tax liability. With an employee, you have to pay taxes, pensions, employee benefits, training, 401K, and more. With a marketing company/outside professional, you’re only responsible for paying for retainers, ad spend, and any necessary tools.
Now, let’s do a breakdown of the actual costs. Here’s the average salary you’d pay for various marketing specialists:
Marketing manager: $105,000
Marketing coordinator: $56,000
Social media strategist: $51,000
Marketing director: $145,000
Every medspa is different, but the U.S. Small Business Administration recommends small businesses making under $5 million in revenue to spend 7-8% on marketing. Medspas in the United States make an average of $1.5 million in revenue, but let’s be conservative and say they make $500,000 a year. If marketing spend is 7%, that would mean their marketing budget is $35,000 annually or just under $3000 per month.
In other words, you can get an entire specialized marketing team for less than the price of hiring one marketing employee.
You can hire interns or an entry-level employee to handle marketing, but they typically don’t have tons of experience so they require nurturing from the companies that they’re working for. It’s important to consider whether they will be able to deliver the results you’re looking for. Who will mentor them? What happens when they leave or go on vacation?
3. It’s Easier to See Your Medical Spa’s ROI
A good marketing partner will send you regular reports so you know how the marketing efforts are performing. It’s not uncommon for small business owners to not know how to track results past vanity metrics like the number of likes and followers. Without analytics, it’s impossible to know what kind of return they’re getting for the time and effort being put in.
Marketing companies can not only track valuable analytics but also interpret them for you. Every month, we send our clients reports that are easy to understand with action items for the next month. It’s a simple breakdown that doesn’t get too technical. Anyone in or outside of marketing can understand what’s being worked on and what kind of results are being achieved.
Marketing is all about experimentation and analytics help you tweak your strategy. You scale what’s working and change what isn’t. This is more efficient than throwing a shot in the dark and just hoping that it sticks.
The bottom line is if you’re putting time, money, and consistency into marketing, you should be getting returns from it.
4. Anyone Can Write, But Not Everyone Is a Writer
A huge part of marketing is writing: blogs, emails, ad campaigns, website content, and social media posts. It’s easy to think your employees or interns can take care of the copy but the truth is that they have other things to do and they just might not be an amazing writer. It’s different from the writing we did in school for essays and research papers and it’s more than reaching a word count.
Your content needs to get people to stop scrolling and engage. It should be captivating and razor-sharp, speaking directly to the pain points of your customers. Your copy needs to be easy to read, speak your target audience’s language, and use SEO best practices.
Again, we aren’t saying that it’s impossible to have someone in-house be responsible for marketing and writing. Most people don’t naturally have these skills especially if they have no prior education or experience. It’s vital for companies to have a plan in place for training them.
