The Q4 Aesthetic Marketing Sprint: What to Do in October to Make Q4 Your Highest-Revenue Quarter

The Q4 Aesthetic Marketing Sprint: What to Do in October to Make Q4 Your Highest-Revenue Quarter

DATE

15th September 2026

TIME

8:00 PM - 9:00 PM

CATEGORY

Marketing & Patient Acquisition

PANELISTSChristin Trujillo · Joshua Suchanek · Jennifer Church Kilkenny

Transcript

Lightly edited auto-generated transcript. Speaker turns, timestamps and wording are kept as recorded; only names, brand names and obvious transcription errors were corrected.

Angie (Host) 00:00:03

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to another Business of Aesthetics Expert Panel. I'm Angie, and I will be your host tonight. Our conversation is called the Q4 Aesthetic Marketing Sprint. What to do in October to make Q4 your highest revenue quarter.

And tonight is really about one question. If Q4 matters enormously to your practice, what needs to happen before the strongest buying period actually begins?

Now, the session is being recorded, and we also want this to be interactive as possible, so as we go, if you'd like, you can put your questions in the chat or in the Q&A box, so in the end of the session, we'll open the flow and bring as many of those questions into the conversation as time allows.

Before we get started, a quick thank you. to tonight's sponsor, Ekwa Marketing, and content, and, social strategy as well. Helping practices not only that visibility into industry leaders across the USA, Canada, and the UK for over 15 years. So thank you to Ekwa Marketing for helping make tonight's conversation possible.

Now, here's where we're going tonight. We're going to look at why Q4 represents… Such… Major…

I don't remember any… opportunity to be ready in October I already have. And importantly, Both.

So, let's meet the people who are going to help us unpack this.

First, I'm delighted to welcome Christin Trujillo, founder, partner, and senior consultant at Maven Financial. Christin is the best-selling author of Med Spa Profitability and works with aesthetic practice owners on financial planning, performance, staffing, investment, and long-term growth.

Christin Trujillo 00:02:33

Oh, I think we lost you for a second, Angie. I'm so happy to be here!

Angie (Host) 00:02:39

I apologize, I'm having a bit of…

Christin Trujillo 00:02:43

It's good. It happens.

Angie (Host) 00:02:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, let me see, like, a shared screen…

Once again, Christin, it's lovely to have you with us.

Alright.

Next, we have Joshua Suchanek, a marketing director. Am I saying that right, Joshua?

Joshua Suchanek 00:03:14

You are, thank you.

Angie (Host) 00:03:16

Marketing Director, Management Consulting at Skytail Group. Joshua brings more than a decade of experience developing growth strategies for elective healthcare organizations, with expertise panning patient acquisition, paid media, SEO, website strategy, and marketing analytics. Joshua, it's great to have you with us.

Joshua Suchanek 00:03:39

Thank you so much for having me.

Angie (Host) 00:03:42

And joining us is Jennifer Church Kilkenny, owner of Total Social Solutions.

Jennifer has spent more than a decade helping aesthetic practices grow through social media, SEO, web design, and broader digital strategy, working with plastic surgeons, dermatologists, medical spas, and surgical societies.

Jennifer, thank you for joining us.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:04:07

Thank you.

Angie (Host) 00:04:09

Alright, let's get into the main conversation. Let's start with…

Christin, let's start with you. Let's begin with the numbers. So, before an Aesthetic practice sets an ambitious Q4 revenue goal, which financial numbers should the owner review to determine what a realistic and actually profitable Q4 target looks like?

Christin Trujillo 00:04:33

All of them. So… Really, whenever we are working with practices. you know, thinking about what a profitable Q4 looks like, what did you do last year? So, if you had a practice, you know, I think that is a really good place to start, but realistically, you're looking at your numbers every single month. So what was revenue last year? What was your profitability? what are your goals and what's reasonable for this year? So this is kind of a loaded question, if you will, because there are financial metrics, and then there are also a million marketing metrics that I'm sure Josh can, weigh in on as well, but… what was your revenue, what profitability, and then what's kind of reasonable first place to start? So, by reasonable.

How many providers do you have? What's your capacity? Has things changed within the practice? Have you added providers? Have you added new services?

Then, from there, whenever you're thinking about marketing, so if these are my goals, and depending on what my trends are, am I gonna have to do something different with marketing spend?

So, there is a depth of things that you should be looking at, but we are so kind of entrenched in marketing, because it's not just a cost, but it's also a revenue driver. So, Josh, do you want to weigh in on some of the marketing KPIs and metrics that you look at, and then I can… add-on.

Joshua Suchanek 00:06:03

Yeah, it's, it's a… it's a complex list, because obviously, as you're measuring sort of long-term value versus quick win value for, like, a Q4 sprint, as we're kind of framing here, I would maybe be a little more hyper-focused on, like, a week-to-week basis of, like, certain KPIs versus others. it's easier to measure year over year, right? Christin? I can tell a kind of a more complete story. But some of those metrics, that really, like, I want to focus on.

If we're running, you know, quick win campaigns, whether it's via Meta or, you know, Google Ads, we do want to see what the click-through rate is from those ad campaigns, or even our emails. You know, the amount of people that are really trying to get to our landing pages from a marketing message, it tells us if that message is landing, right?

And really, then the most important thing is, do they contact you to schedule and book an appointment? Because that's our conversion rate from these individual campaigns. That tells you if the offers or the campaign framing is really doing its job.

A lot of people, you know, Jennifer probably can attest to this, it's such a small percentage of people that actually visit your website or your landing pages that will actually convert to inquire about booking a service or making a purchase. And so when we're looking at something where we're only going to expect to generate 5-8% of those visitors into, like, actual contact opportunities. It really starts to hone in on where our operational inefficiencies start to get highlighted, right? Our sales training, if you will.

I don't want to bore people too much with the laundry list, but those are kind of the two… two of the main core things that I would look on from a metrics perspective.

Christin Trujillo 00:07:40

Yeah, I think you gave me some building blocks, but, you know, just kind of thinking about your goals and then thinking about the marketing metrics, like, we constantly track new patients.

Well, that's a little bit of a lagging indicator, if you will, or a lagging measure, because I want to understand what my leads are by channel.

So if I'm looking at that trend, and if I look at how I performed last year, a lot of people will just kind of throw money at the wall at marketing. Like, I'm very reactive in terms of my decision making. I feel it's summer, and it's kind of going into back to school right now, so always feel people be a little reactive in terms of, I'm just gonna do a promo. And my schedule is looking really light, so I'm gonna throw money at this.

But whenever you're thinking about Q4 and being very, very intentional, there is competition, there's a lot of things going on, but look at how you performed, what channels are performing the best in terms of lead generation, visits, engagement, impressions, all of these things, and really double down on that.

So, if you look at your revenue, understand your goals, have targets for profitability, efficiency, all of these things, what marketing channel is actually giving me an ROI? Is it that magazine that I…

I don't know, spent 10 grand on to be on the cover in that billboard and that radio show, or is it the meta ads? Is it the Google ads? Is it the SEO? Is it the… the AEO? Is it… what… what is it? Because I'm indexing And I'm ensuring that I'm not de-indexing and all of these different things. So, I think, you know, this is, once again, loaded question, but there's lots of complex facets to this.

You just need to look at everything.

What am I spending? Where's it coming from? What's driving the ROI?

Angie (Host) 00:09:30

Thank you, Christin, for that, and thank you, Joshua, as well. Joshua, let's get back to you. Now, once the financial goal is clear, the next issue is whether the marketing engine can actually support it.

So, if October is the month when a practice needs to prepare for Q4, what should already be in place across campaigns, landing pages, tracking, follow-up, and conversion before additional marketing dollars are spent?

Joshua Suchanek 00:09:57

Great question. So, the way I'd like to think about this is…

The short answer of it is that anything that turns a click or a call into a booked appointment, and most importantly, a kept appointment, something that someone shows up to.

Is something that needs to be tracked and measured, because to be honest, more ad spend will really amplify any parts of our system that may be broken, right? Like, we could run an ad that drives hundreds of calls.

But if we don't call those people back. it's really not going to showcase in the financials, right? And when the spreadsheet looks bad, that's when I get calls from Christin saying, like, hey, this is concerning. There's money going out, not a lot of money coming back in.

And so, as I look at that, if I'm going to be more specific, I think something Christin had mentioned, and something that I'm a huge advocate for, is tracking and attribution. You know, really proper marketing attribution, I think, is the number one inefficiency that I see in any practice where I evaluate marketing. Practices have no problem spending money on marketing, but they have a humongous problem telling us what's working and not working.

We've got a lot of, in this industry, unfortunately, a lot of metrics that I consider to be directional of success, but not necessarily able to, like, properly attribute revenue to that marketing channel.

This ad gets lots of impressions, it gets lots of clicks, we've seen lots of activity on your website since we launched the campaign. Directionally would indicate that that campaign has value, but a lot of times, especially when we're looking especially at sort of our decreasing profit margins, which is always a problem. it's difficult to discern what is, like, of high value to run advertising for, and where those high-impact patients can come from. So, I think that, really, if you're not confident that if you can tell me where I put a marketing dollar into our system, what that produces in terms of an actual executable outcome that's not directional. then I… I would be hesitant to deploy any additional dollars, so generally tracking first. That is, like, where I put my number one… my number one bucket.

The second thing I would say is really making sure that if we're going to be running offers, right, like, it's a… it's a shopping-oriented season, right? My wife was talking to me about buying Christmas gifts yesterday, and I'm like, gosh, it's September, but I guess we do that, right? And I wanted to kind of point out that I think that if we're going to put out an offer, we need to make sure that we're not just, like, discussing that offer with our marketing team and then throwing it up online. we're communicating… that information needs to be communicated down to our patient… down to our team, so they can communicate that to our patients, because that's who the end user is, the patient that's going to activate. And so, I give a shining example. I work with…

The med spa, they felt like their CoolSculpting business had really not been successful after, you know, the rise in GLP-1s. I can see it statistically in terms of search volume, and I think that that's directionally accurate.

And so they said, we want to run a, you know, we'll call it, Sculptember to remember, right? We're gonna push CoolSculpting until everybody's sick of it. And as a team, we came up with great branded graphics, we came up with very competitive pricing. We felt like if people were gonna activate on CoolSculpting, now was the time.

I went through the calls, and the amount of people that called, not from a landing page, but just was browsing on our website and were interested in CoolSculpting. we had a humongous percentage, meaning upwards of 90% of our front desk staff not even mentioning the offer or the event. And we're like… and so these people called in, and they were interested, and it was like, wow, here would have been, like, a really key activation point to get them over the hump to actually book that consultation. And so lots of leakage, I think, from not just marketing positioning, but if we're not making sure that that messaging is clearly communicated to every one that patient faces, then really success will always be limited in that way. So I think making sure your communication is in order when you're kind of getting ready to launch.

The last few things that I have in here…

I think that, obviously, it kind of is tangential from marketing attribution. It's looking at our lead effectiveness in terms of response time. If we are going to be putting gasoline on a fire, and we're expecting that fire to spread, then theoretically, more inbound inquiries would follow. we need to make sure that that's coming, and we're getting back to those people in a timely fashion. You know, it's not an hour, it's not a day or two, right? We're working… the highest performing practices we work with can get back to their leads in 5 minutes or less.

And now, when they do that, there's a substantial increase in the conversion rate into booked appointment, and now I think that gets into how many people show up to these appointments, and what do they spend when they get here, right? We can all measure those things. But I think if we… I can't tell you the amount of practices that I've worked with where they don't even know how long it takes them to get back to people. Their assumption is, like, well, they're on the phone all the time, right? And so, with that, I think that actually sitting down and measuring the lead response time, if you don't have a system in place to do that, it might be a manual exercise at first, but getting that sense of clarity, I think, would be massively valuable.

And I would say that, really, the two other things were, one, making sure that you know, the offer that we've approved, not only once it's communicated, that we're all clear on what that offer is, and what the, like, the intended outcome of putting that package together is really valuable, because I think a lot of people just throw a blind 20% off on every service and expect it to work, and I think that we could pair packages together more thoughtfully in order to really get that in line, and so I think putting your creative hats on is important. And the last thing, most… probably one of the most important things. if we're running an offer, do we have capacity to accommodate those inbound leads with that offer? Working with a practice right now, a multi-location medical spa, they've been hammering us for a few months. Granted, it was summer, there's a sense of seasonality about no new patients, there's not enough new patients, not enough new patients.

And when we went back and actually analyzed their inbound phone calls over the last 2 months, 60% of their leads were lost due to not having availability to accommodate appointments for them. And so… you start to kind of ask yourself, like, hey, are we putting the advertising dollars in the right spot, or am I simply causing the phone to ring and creating more frustration for my practice?

Angie (Host) 00:16:13

Those are some great points, Joshua. Jennifer.

Let's get to you. Now, this brings us perfectly into patient behavior. So, by the time someone books a holiday Aesthetic treatment, they may have been watching that practice online for weeks.

What content should practices start publishing in October to build trust and demand for the strongest buying period begins?

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:16:42

Well, establishing trust is year-round.

And waiting until October is probably not the best idea. But, since we're trying to help everyone set themselves up for success in Q4, One of the biggest things that I don't see enough of Is credentialing the practice.

There's a lot of content out there about, like. all about BBL, all about Halo, all about, you know, this treatment, that treatment, and it's not actually talking to the needs of the person watching.

I don't care about the features of your laser, I don't care that It's, you know, you're just trying to sell me laser instead of telling me what's going to work for my skin laxity, my hyperpigmentation.

So making sure that you're positioning all of your content that puts the patient first. I see a lot of content, too, that seems like it's more… and this… these two things overlap. Seems like it's more for other providers than it is for actual patients. And so, making sure that you're talking to the right audience is a really good way to establish trust. You need, like, you already know how to talk to them when they're in front of you.

You need to post social media content as if you're talking directly to a patient.

And then credentialing. Credentialing the practice, credentialing the providers.

Differentiating yourself, making sure you have that unique value proposition in all of your content, so that… because they're not just looking at you. they're not just looking at you, they're not just deciding if you're the practice to trust, they're deciding if you're one of several practices to trust. And if you don't establish that UVP, You could lose out on that business to another practice entirely.

Angie (Host) 00:18:45

All right. Now, Christin, we get into something that becomes very tempting in Q4, that is promotions.

So, Q4 promotions can generate significant revenue, but they can also quietly erode margins. How should practice owners know how aggressive an offer can be before the promotion stops making financial sense?

Christin Trujillo 00:19:07

Math. So… that… this kind of goes in tandem with all of the points that we talked about. I think, to Joshua's point, people are… are willing to spend on marketing. People are willing to do something reactive, and we're gonna discount things. And we have this hyperfixation, I don't know what it is, but we are so concerned about that practice up the street that has $7 a unit Botox. I don't know why.

We don't even want that patient, but we are just obsessed with it, and infatuated, and just… all the things, but do your math. You don't know what they're paying for their supplies. They have a totally different cost structure in terms of their vendors. They might have a contract. that you don't have. So, you really need to do the math with, you know, one, what are your highest profit margin procedures? to Joshua's point, the bundling and being very, very thoughtful about the packages and the things, the comprehensive treatments, if you will, but you're gonna have to do the math.

And just because somebody is doing that up the street, that, to Jennifer's point, that might not be your archetype. Like, that's not the patient that you are trying to target. And the patient that shops around for the cheapest thing that they can get the most of. they're not loyal to your practice, and they don't really care about your brand, and they don't really care about what you stand for and what you encompass. And…

I feel like there were so many great points. They were loaded points between Joshua and Jennifer, but, you know, if a practice has a good month, it's because of them, but if they have a bad month, it's Joshua's fault and Jennifer's fault, it's marketing.

And a lot of times, it's just, like, you have all of the data and all of the numbers right there. You might have to do some math, you might have to do some tracking, but there's so much of it that is in the behaviors within the practice.

And we're just making these reactive decisions, we're not doing the math for profitability whenever we're running promotions. We're not telling the team that we're running them, they're not picking up the phone, they're not following up with leads. And so there's just… it's very comprehensive whenever you think about marketing. And I'll tell you, if you really want to hurt your own feelings, look at your total patients of record in your practice management software, that's a really easy one to pull, but how many total patients have you had? Look how many of those patients have been in the last 2 years. How many that have been in the last 1 year?

And you are just gonna be floored.

Because there is going to be a huge variance of who has been in your practice in the last 12 months, and you're worried about the new patients.

So…

Angie (Host) 00:21:54

Jennifer, I'd love your perspective on this as well. What would you add from the brand side? Can an offer be financially viable, but still be the wrong offer?

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:22:05

Oh, gosh, yes.

Yeah, it can definitely be the wrong offer, and it can also be because you're promoting that offer on the wrong platform.

One of the big mistakes I see a lot is, practices trying to promote very expensive packages on treatments that require a lot of education on Meta.

And it's too much, and what we say in marketing is a confused mind says no.

And so they don't, you know, even though it's a screaming deal, and it's going to give them great results, they don't know enough about the procedure, you interrupt their scrolling, and… and trying to jam all of this education into one thing, and then expect them to act right now? - no. For something like that, it's more Google Ads.

Because they're searching specifically for that treatment.

And so they're… they're lower down… they're farther down in the funnel.

So, yeah. So, yes, it can absolutely be the wrong thing. It could also be the wrong thing just from the practice perspective. It can be a great deal for the patient.

And that… but the people who decided to do the deal didn't look at how much it's cutting into their ROI.

I do see that happen a lot. We'll have all of the specials ready to go, and we're putting it all together, and then suddenly I get a phone call, like, okay, no, we just crunched the numbers, and we can't do that. And I'm like, we already did all this work, what do you mean? You know? But yeah, it can absolutely be, absolutely be the wrong thing.

And also, if you're not familiar with your demographic and what they're looking for.

That's the other thing, too. Just because you offer a procedure doesn't mean it's the one that you should go hard on with, generating leads for it. You gotta do some background research and look at what people in your area are actually looking for.

Christin Trujillo 00:24:09

And it's really helpful that you have these data points before you get in and you are testing the market in Q4.

So, you know, just actively, what is working? Like, do I know my brand? Do I know what… what performs better in terms of channels? What offers… perform better? What patients I want to attract, and am I measuring it? Do I have reasonable data to go in to make these decisions? And sometimes it's a little trial and error. Like, every single time like, somebody runs anything, I want to look at what happened. So, was it what I expected? And that allows me to make data-driven decisions on my marketing going forward.

So…

Joshua Suchanek 00:24:55

Yeah, and I… not to linger on too long, but I think, you know, one of my favorite, like, testing environments for, like, offers, right, rather than blanket discounting, would be to… would come up with, like, certain bundles that can be tested. So. really the anchor for this would be pairing something that can be high margin, so, like, a laser energy device that, like, has a package opportunity, so think Morpheus, Cyton, right? Any of, like, these kind of higher ticket items.

But then, pair in what I would say, like, a lower-end margin ad that really, you know, can be protected with sort of a flat percentage off, and we know that it's not going to be profitable, but it adds perceived value to that patient.

I think that this is a really good time of year to do it, right? Laser energy can really spike as we get into fall and winter. We see our lasers sit dormant during a lot of the summer months, right? We're needing sun avoidance. kind of difficult, depending on where you live. Here in Los Angeles, it's difficult, at least. And what I will say, that is if we can take, you know.

Help reframe the fact that they're going to get this higher ticket item and then get a lot of, like, a value, whether it's in something like facials or peels or things of that nature that feed the esthetician portions of our practices.

I find that those can work really, really well, and it's fair to test two of those different bundles at the same time, and see what your patients are interested in, use that data to put harder in those directions.

Angie (Host) 00:26:20

Joshua, we'll stay with you for another moment. Now, let's talk about where the marketing dollars actually go. For a practice with a limited Q4 marketing budget, how would you decide how much effort should go towards acquiring completely new patients versus reactivating people already familiar with the practice?

Joshua Suchanek 00:26:39

It's a great question, limited budget being the key factor. I won't even say this is exclusive for people with a limited budget. I can tell you that in my time as a fractional CMO, I can tell you that people drastically underestimate the importance of, like, even the cross-pollination and reactivation of their current patient database. Like, it is…

A significantly lower customer acquisition cost to nurture those patients. and sometimes introduce them to new capabilities that have come into the practice, and we see it a lot with wellness, right? Like, we have patients who have come in consistently for talks, or facials, or even, you know, maybe they've been participating in medical weight loss, but maybe they don't know about that great hormone capability that we've added, or the peptide capability that we've added. And we can really increase the average ticket value of patients by working in remarketing efforts and touching on those patients. I do think that, really, if I was going to break it down into percentages, I would put 70-80% of the effort into reactivation. and 20-30% into new customer acquisition, if I was breaking down my budget, within math, Christin, that might make you happy. And I would use those numbers. And I think that really what we see is it's not just the cost of getting the new patient in terms of ad spend, it's also the latency within a learning phase of launching a new ad group. You know, we see these ads take roughly 60 to 90 days to mature and optimize. when we're talking about launching a Q4 optimization plan. it's a bad plan, right? It's a bad plan because it's going to have a difficulty kind of filling that bottom line. The caveat to that, though, is if we do have real open capacity.

Like, if we are really struggling to fill those books. sometimes, like, it's an element of both. Those may tier up to 50-50 splits between reactivation and new customer acquisition. So I would have to say you'd have to take a really profound look at your practice, but what I would say is testing those bundle models that I kind of just talked about a little bit ago with that high ticket item and the lower yield item as a value add. test that within your current patient base before adding it to an ad campaign to new patients. Like, let's take the learnings from the patients that have an OS by reputation, and then apply those to help accelerate our growth opportunity with paid advertising.

Angie (Host) 00:28:58

Jennifer, I'd like to get back to you. Now, this is especially important for premium practices.

So, aesthetic practices often warrant urgency during Q4 without making their brand feel, overly promotional or discount-driven. How can they create compelling campaigns while still protecting a premium brand position?

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:29:20

Well, obviously this is going to vary even among the premium practices. One of the, one of the ways that I like to Increase that sense of urgency is to… Communicate the limited availability.

So reminding your patients, you know, if we're focusing really heavily on, retention, the current patient base, like, like Joshua was, mentioning.

Reminding them that Appointment slots fill up really fast this time of year. You need to book as soon as possible. That's a really big one.

And I have seen some practices do this, and it's quite effective for them. So that is a really good way to just get people to call in immediately and make an appointment, even without a deal.

You know, there doesn't have to necessarily be a discount or a deal attached to a campaign that you're running.

And so… and that also…

It… it's not so, you know, in your face, it's just…

Hey guys, remember, you know, appointment slots fill up fast this time of year, so you're going to want to give us a call really soon.

But, as far as running promotions and campaigns go, I like packages.

And I know Joshua was bringing up packages a lot, too.

And I really prefer packages when it comes to deals.

Even with new lead acquisition.

I like packages, because what happens there is the people have to come in usually more than once, which gives them, a… different opportunities, multiple opportunities to get to know you, get to know your staff, get to know all of the other services that you offer. So I really like bundled packages of, you know, purchasing several treatments, and then getting one for free, for example.

And that's a really good way to get people through the door without, you know, heavily discounting your stuff just to get them in one and done.

Because those one-and-dones…

Christin brought it up, she's absolutely right. Those one… they don't ever come back. If all they're doing is, like, price hopping, you know, like with Botox, and they're just calling, how much do you charge per unit? They're calling everybody.

And if you're just discounting it like it's Groupon. those people aren't loyal. So, I like the packages, those are the ones that are going to get the people in who are more likely to be loyal.

Angie (Host) 00:32:08

All right, thank you so much, Jennifer, for that one. Now, before we continue, I want to take a moment to share something valuable.

With, our attendees tonight, and for everyone, joining us tonight. Throughout this conversation, we've talked about creating a stronger Q4, having the right offers, reaching the right patients, improving inversion, and making sure your practice is ready when demand increases.

But every practice is starting from a different place.

Some practices may be investing in marketing, but not getting enough visibility. Others may have opportunities to get inside their website, Google presence, patient, follow-up process that they simply haven't identified yet.

Now, the challenge is, when you're inside your own practice every single day, it is very difficult to see those gaps clearly. why Ekwa Marketing is offering every attendee, every practice owner joining today a Complementary crowd strategy meeting.

It's a one-on-one review where the team will look at areas such as how your practice is being found online, how you compare against competitors in your market, and where they need the opportunity to strengthen your patient position journey.

You'll walk away with a clearer picture of what is working, what may be limiting growth, and what opportunities you should prioritize moving forward. There is no cost and no obligation, it is simply an opportunity to get an outside perspective on your practice's growth potential before the most important revenue period of You can scan the QR code that is on screen, or use the link that is placed in the chat to reserve your session.

Let's take a moment, book your review, and then we'll continue our conversation with the panel.

Alright.

Christin, I'd like to get back to you. Now, we've talked about creating demand. Now, let's ask whether the practice is actually rental for it.

If a practice expects a meaningful increase in Q4 demand, how should the owner think about staffing, provider capacity, inventory, equipment, and other expenses before committing more money to marketing?

Christin Trujillo 00:34:46

Okay, there's a lot of facets to this question, but in terms of we'll say capacity, something that we measure is utilization. And we'll also forecast what the utilization is going to be in the future based on seasonality, certain trends, like, we always run an event at this period, but how many provider hours available do I have? and how many appointments per hour are they averaging? So, I can… I don't have a crystal ball, but we can meaningfully forecast and project what it's gonna look like based on how we've been performing, and how we performed the same time last year. So that gives me some keen insight to what my capacity is.

So, if I had 6 providers last year, and I just have 4 providers this year that do X, Y, and Z in terms of services.

I've got different capacity targets that I'm hitting. So, it might be a little bit challenging for me to hit those numbers that I hit last year, unless I just had a lot of open space, a lot of unfilled time on the schedule. in terms of how I think about, what was it, purchases and equipment and all of the other things?

You're gonna have to help me in…

Remind me, I really got on this tangent.

Another note right now, and I think this goes back to something that Jennifer was saying, because I wrote this down, but it is September right now, so if you have TOX patients coming in.

If you are not rebooking them.

Or if you are, guess when they're coming in.

So we're talking about all of these marketing things. I have been talking so much about rebooking.

So, rebook them in December, that's when they're due. And then you're creating this limited… I have limited availability urgency whenever people are coming in in October and November. People are flying home, and they have New Year's Eve parties, and they're seeing family members that they haven't seen for years. So, it is not just a time for, I'm feeling spendy, like.

Josh's wife is out there thinking about everybody's…

Christmas presents, but people like to spend on themselves as well. So, if somebody gets a gift, I also get a gift. And I want to look my best while giving this gift. So, people are, you know, thinking about themselves as well. So, what travel do you have coming up? What about all these things?

You know, depending on your capacity and your utilization and all of these different things, if things have changed, you might need to think about staffing now.

So, I had 6 providers, I have 4, I need to staff. So, if I'm gonna get anywhere near where I was performing last year, in terms of inventory, equipment, things like that.

This is kind of not marketing-related, it is, but your vendors are also marketing as well. So I would be super mindful about, that… super galactic… sunshine Presidential Tier… I don't know, they just have the most crafty names, and it's the most confusing things with the, you get this many free vials, and you get these rebates.

Be mindful about your inventory. Like, what inventory do you need? Buy what you need. And if you truly need a bulk order, great, do that. Your equipment, make sure it's in working order, make sure you have what you need.

But there's a lot of operational things That come into play as well. And then, if you need to hire, you might need to market for that, and plan to spend for a recruiter.

And then there's gonna be a ramp-up for training. They might not be as skilled as you like. So, just kind of comprehensively, a lot of things that you can do in tandem with how you're thinking about marketing, retargeting, reactivating, rebooking, being intentional, measuring all of these things, but get your ducks in a row now.

Like, if you're not tracking anything, track it. If you're not meaningfully assessing your marketing, do that.

If you had these providers last year, and don't, better think about hiring, too.

You keep on asking me these loaded questions, but I'd.

Angie (Host) 00:39:11

get your perspective.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:39:16

You want to get my perspective on what part?

Joshua Suchanek 00:39:25

Is there anything…

Angie (Host) 00:39:26

I'd like to add, Jennifer?

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:39:30

She said a lot, I don't know.

She brought up a lot. Yeah, no, one… one thing, yeah, the one thing that she brought up that I… I want to reiterate, because it's really important.

Is that rebooking before they leave?

It… it's a lot less likely that they're not going to come in for an already scheduled appointment.

It is far more likely that they're going to forget to schedule and put it off to the last minute.

Or you lose them entirely because somebody down the street, you know, gets in front of them with their marketing, and then that's it, you know? So, rebook them so that… and it helps with that loyalty, absolutely.

Christin Trujillo 00:40:23

It helps with the retention. I… I'm on such a pedestal and a tangent, and I'm on a hyperfixation about this. But you need to be thinking about… comprehensively assessing the pain points of the patient, all of the things that you offer. It drives me crazy. when… like, I'll go into your practice, and you can sell me anything if I think that I need it, but I'm like, you had this laser here the whole entire time, and like, maybe, I don't know, I'm not working with them, and I don't… I don't see it for some reason. But I'm like, no, I went down the street, and I got, like, a peel. I didn't know you had…

I didn't know you did peels. Like, everyone needs to… we need to be addressing what's going on with the patient. And in terms of the marketing dollars, if you retain your patients, plus your marketing and bringing on new patients and retaining those, you've got a full schedule.

There are practices out there that are crushing it right now, and it's because of retention and rebooking.

Plus, they're intentionally marketing. Like, these things married, they are so operationally aligned, and they're making data-driven decisions, they are doing really well.

And then the people that are crying that the sky is falling on the Facebook owner's groups, like, they're… they have the data right here, and they are just throwing Stuff at the wall.

So, they really all work together.

Angie (Host) 00:41:53

Yeah, definitely. Joshua, is there anything that you would like to add as well?

Joshua Suchanek 00:41:59

Both of them covered it so completely. I will echo, again, the sentiments on rebooking and how much value that adds to any practice. You know, often rebooking protocols just fall right through the cracks, and I think that really, systematizing that operationally can just have such a higher impact. I mean, it really builds into LTV, right? Like, which is, like, something that we need, desperately need. Someone has already come in. they've transacted with us, they've shown interest in what we have to offer, and a lot of times, the sales you don't get are just the ones you don't ask for. And so, I know that with my own med spa, you know, I'm asked to rebook before I ever walk out the door, right? Like, and even if I can cancel that appointment or reschedule it at any time, that appointment's in the calendar. And a lot of times, I'll forget about it. I'll get a text message, like, a week before, and I'm like, oh yeah. coming up, right? Like, and I'm incentivized because, like, I do know that I need it, and I've wanted to go back, and so I think that, like, just the sheer percentage of people that come Because it's already on their calendar is so meaningful, and so I do think that that was a great call-out, Christin and Jennifer.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:43:03

And maintaining that communication between appointments.

The post-appointment check-ins. are really important. The pre-appointment reminders that Joshua just brought up, absolutely, but making sure that they're You know, with their consent, because that's required, that they're on your email list.

You know, so that they're getting those emails, so that they're getting the reminders. We exist, you know? You like us, and don't forget to keep coming, you know?

And encouraging them that if they're not already following you on social media, making sure it's really easy in the office. for them to connect with you on social media, simple sign, during check-in, during checkout, with QR codes, so they can just click, and now they're following you on Instagram, following you on Facebook, wherever they want to follow you.

Making it super simple to do that. Because the best audience that you can start with on your social media are your current patients.

Because they're your raving fans. Like, we love to talk about word-of-mouth referrals. Well, word-of-mouth referrals, on social media, that's on steroids, is what I say.

You know, because the more patients who love you are engaging with you on your social media, the more their circle starts to see your content over and over and over again. And then eventually, you know, a friend considers that a referral.

You know, it's like, Christin sees that Jennifer is always liking and commenting and re-sharing XYZ Med Spa's stuff. Christin… Jennifer really likes this place, and I really trust Jennifer's judgment, so I'm gonna check this place out, you know? So, you know, making sure that you're engaging your current patients. It's not just about new leads and a brand new audience on social media, either.

Christin Trujillo 00:45:00

I had a question for Joshua and Jennifer. So, I know… enough to kind of pontificate about what I don't know enough about whenever it comes to marketing. But there's this… there's such a shift right now where we're talking about SEO and we're talking about AEO.

And in terms of how these things react, and my new favorite phrase, I'm, like, saying it all the time, I'm like, I just… I don't know, I just pick up these things, but AI slop.

And, like, I'm letting AI write all my content, and I'm using it, I'm working so much smarter. But whenever we're thinking about… because so many people are going to ChatGPT, and they're asking.

Like, what are some things that you're advising? And then also, like, Instagram… I can't even remember this, what's happening right there, but Instagram is, like, showing up in Google, like, there's, like, some SEO components. So, like, if somebody is not doing some of these things, like, there's been some material changes in consumer behavior for how… you know, what I need to be doing on my website to show up in ChatGPT and to show up in these places.

But there… it's just… there's a… there's changes and things like that, so… talk about that.

Joshua Suchanek 00:46:17

Yeah, I guess I'll start, and Jennifer, I'd love for you to kind of opine on it and add to it as well, because I think that, you know, one of the largest difficulties that I've seen, like, in my career is just how… much things advance and change, right? And, like, right now, it's AI, but, like, if I go back to the course of my career, we went from flash on websites to video backgrounds to mobile websites, to responsive designs, to, like, you know what I mean, to headless content management systems versus moving to WordPress. And, like, so we're always evolving, right? Like, and, like, tactically to evolve with technology. And I always like to kind of simplify this for people, they just announced iPhone 18? 19? I don't know, it's one of… it's one of the…

Christin Trujillo 00:46:59

When that folds, I don't know.

Joshua Suchanek 00:47:00

The one that folds in half, and I'm still trying to figure out why I need it. Seems like I'll work. But the truth is, like, you know, my iPhone 17 works very much like, you know, my co-worker's iPhone 15. I can check emails, I can access Instagram, I can send text messages, and I can make phone calls. Like, the core competencies work.

But you'll notice that every two years, your iPhone just sort of, like, poops out. You're just like, why doesn't my battery charge, or why don't these apps open anymore? And, like, why do And the truth is, like, even though it looks and feels the same, the truth is that as technology evolves, it interacts with older technology less efficiently.

Right? And so, that same sort of mentality for the way we do marketing, like, every two years, you need to reinvent, like, sort of the strategy at which you're attacking it. It's why things start to feel stale and stagnant. You know, I had a meeting with a med spa owner yesterday.

And they were like, well, why do I even need SEO if everyone's searching on ChatGPT? Like, why would I need to, like, pay to do SEO if ChatGPT is the new way to be found?

And it's a valid point, because what I think a lot of business owners do, and this isn't just aesthetic-specific, but what a lot of business owners and just people do in general is they apply their personal experience to human behavior and activity. Like, oh, because I do this, then that means everybody does that. I don't click on sponsored posts, so no one must click on sponsored posts, and running Google Ads doesn't work.

It's a very, like, short-sighted, siloed view.

Of, like, the way marketing works, like, just statistically speaking, right? And so, I think that the lion's share of your leads can still come from SEO, while catering to AEO, while catering to social media-oriented, like, you know, support. Social media, you know, in my time, like, I feel like a dinosaur now. Like, when I started and I was a social media coordinator 12 years ago.

Facebook business pages were, like, new, like, right? You used to just create a Facebook page as a business and add your friends, right, and tell them to like it and follow it, and, like, those days are gone. But the way that I look at it is. your website and your social media channels are engines to, like, perpetuate content, right? Like, to move content forward. And I think that there's a… what gets lost is they think, well, I don't do TikTok because it's a place where, like, I'm supposed to dance on camera. Again, personal experience that gets associated with, like. skewed reality. And I think that overall, what we see a tremendous amount of value in is really taking, like, okay, it's a platform for short-form learning, right? Like, we're all sitting on this webinar, and we're intaking a ton of information from a ton of different specialists.

But there are gonna be people out there who goes, okay, I have this transcript, download this into, like, the 30 seconds worth of bullet points that I need to read to understand my directions, right? You're gonna get those people with short attention spans, and I'm one of them.

I've been on podcasts, I've never listened to a podcast episode in my life. Like, I don't know why, I just can't bring myself to do it. I want the 30-second hit pieces. And I want to tell you that I will say that, like, really the coolest thing about, like, what we're seeing with the amount of change that's happening is that people, like, your patients have the opportunity to tell you what they're interested in, right? Like, SEO and what Google likes and algorithm updates for a long time, it's kind of like the Wizard of Oz. It's like shroud in secrecy, like, I'm gonna make these changes and wait for the indications that my website ranks and this works.

But with social media specifically, like, if you, like, decide, I'm gonna come up with a series of questions about different laser technologies because people don't have clear understanding of what they can do and the capabilities of our practice. as people engage more on those specific posts, you can be like, wow, people seem very interested in this platform, I'm gonna create other questions related to that platform. And once it's live.

I can then apply it to email marketing, right? And I can get in front of reactivation sequences, and I can write longer-form blog articles on those in order to help perpetuate and grow my SEO. So, I hope I… I know I dumped down a lot of rat holes, because this is an area, Christin, that I get, like, personally really excited about and I deal a lot with.

And the truth is, is that, you know, marketing, like, your business is like the hub of a wheel, and these marketing channels are the different spokes that keep things balanced. And the truth is, is that testing all of these environments, whether they're with offers or content strategies or stylistic editing choices. really being diligent to try to figure out what works for your audience, and then using those key performance indicators to drive your future decision-making, I think is just untapped… untapped potential for everyone involved.

Christin Trujillo 00:51:15

It's truly… it's an ecosystem. Like, I was on ChatGPT the other day, and it was quoting Instagram, and by the way, I call it the educational platform Instagram, anytime I refer to it, because I love those short forms, and all the things, but just the comprehensiveness.

I feel like you were gonna say something, Jennifer.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:51:34

I, yeah, I'm… I'm… I got a lot to say, too. Yeah, AI is pulling from Facebook, it's pulling from Instagram, it's pulling from LinkedIn. Google AI overviews… it was pulling from Reddit until Redditors decided to… feed it inaccurate information. That was a lot of fun. Testing AI for us.

But, and, you know, that's changing all the time, too. And so it's really important to be on all of these platforms, because that's where… these, these LLMs, these large language models, are pulling from. It's not just your website. The other thing that I like to stress to people is that AI optimization, is really just good SEO.

And I keep saying this because all of the people who are like, we do AI optimization, and I watch their webinars, and their events, and I listen to their podcasts, they are describing content optimization that I've been doing for more than a decade for SEO.

So, when you're listening to these things, it's like, if you haven't been doing those things.

You're actually kind of already behind.

So, yeah, so that's important to note as well. But you also brought up the AI slop, and I don't feel like we talked about that.

Christin Trujillo 00:53:04

We didn't.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:53:06

And, I… I need to say… I will say just this. when you're using ChatGPT and you don't know how to instruct it, you're just saying, create me a graphic that has this. and it covers all these things, and then you just send it to them. Send it to ChatGPT, and it spits something out, and it looks just like everybody else's.

That's a problem, because now no one can differentiate. You look like everyone else. Why do you want to look like everyone else? you don't want to look like everybody else. So, branding is out the window. I'm seeing it everywhere, and it all looks like the exact same poster, the exact same graphic, with text that's too small to read, and it's crowded and overwhelming, and that doesn't work on social media at all.

Even if it doesn't look like everyone else's, but the design, it's like, I can't differentiate you from anyone else, and that's a problem, because now you're not memorable.

Angie (Host) 00:54:14

Alright, let's, open the flow for our…

To ask their questions from our panelists.

Aggression, you can simply put it into the chat. chat or Q&A box, and to help our panelists give you the most useful answers possible. Include your role and specification you're dealing with, because that helps us a lot. We do have a question from one of our, registers earlier.

This one is from Ted Lawyer.

Ekwa, where should I focus, is the question. I'm sure maybe you could answer that one?

Joshua Suchanek 00:55:03

Repeat the question once more, is where should I focus?

Angie (Host) 00:55:08

I'm a first-time med spa owner. Where should I focus?

Joshua Suchanek 00:55:13

Gosh, okay, welcome to the Wild West. So I think that overall, I think where… where should we, like, start and focus? I think, honestly.

Thank you.

I'm a big proponent of brand first. Like, what are the value propositions that I'm attempting to elevate and amplify to the audience that I'm going into?

I think, you know, we talk about… you have this slide up about growth strategy, and understanding what it's going to take to be truly competitive in a marketplace is probably another component, like, understand… like, having real tangible data on what your competitive landscape looks like and the costs associated with getting ramped up.

I would… I mean, the short answer of it, and probably unsophisticated answer, would be to start with things like meta advertising, because they're the cheapest car acquisition and the cheapest clicks available, like, you know, in most cases. But truthfully, I think, as a first-time med spa owner. and really getting into a new market. I think there's a lot more sweat equity that gets involved, too, in really growing your practice, developing of strategic partnerships and aligning with local businesses that have comparable patient demographics or, you know, customer demographics, I should say, to try to figure out where you can strategically align to get more buzz around the brand that you've built.

Those are the four things that run top of mind, but Jennifer, I'd welcome your opinion on that, too.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 00:56:32

Yeah, I, I wanna, I wanna emphasize, branding, and it's not just your… when we're not talking about your logo and your colors and the name of your business, you know, we're talking about your positioning. And that positioning, like I brought up earlier, credentialing is super important.

People need to know who the providers are, what their credentials are.

Why they're gonna come to you.

Instead of another practice that's been there forever. So that's an important detail I wanted to throw in there. I agree with Joshua about the meta ads. I will add in, though, that before you start running meta ads, you need to have an organic social media foundation in place.

Because a lot of people will see your ads. and instead of responding to the ad immediately, they go do their homework on you. If they've never heard of you before, if they've never seen anything from you before, they go do their homework on you. If they go to your… if they see an ad, and they go to your Facebook, they go to your Instagram, and it's empty. you might lose them. You could very well lose them at that moment.

So, that was the only other thing that I wanted to add to the meta ads, but I really… I…

I strongly recommend meta ads to startup practices, because it is a very cost-effective way to get new leads through the door, and as long as you or your team, or you have some technology that helps you respond to those leads immediately.

You could have a really amazing conversion rate from those ads.

Angie (Host) 00:58:15

And thank you, Joshua, for that.

Alright, now before we close, one quick reminder, the complimentary practice growth strategy meeting from Ekwa Marketing is still available for everyone who joined us tonight. If this conversation has you thinking about where your practice may have opportunity for visibility, patient acquisition, or growth, this session is a great next step to get an outside perspective. You can simply scan the QR code on screen, or use the links in the chat to reserve your session.

We'll keep that available as we wrap up tonight. So, yeah, Christin, Christin, Joshua, and Jennifer, so much.

What I appreciated is that we didn't treat Q4 as simply a marketing campaign. It's really the combination of the right financial target, the right operational capacity, the right, marketing the right information. And to everyone who joined us, thank you for investing this hour in your practice. As you exit the webinar, please take a moment to complete the short feedback survey that will pop up on your screen. And once again, if you'd like the outside perspective we mentioned tonight, the Practice Growth Strategy Meeting is available. through the link that is shared in the chat. Christin, Joshua, and Jennifer, if you could please stay with us for just a couple of minutes after we close.

That would be great. Angie, and on behalf of Business of Aesthetics, thank you for joining us. Have a wonderful evening.

Alright.

That was absolutely great.

That was a great conversation. We got some great, insights. Thanks to all three of you.

Christin Trujillo 01:00:10

Thank you, Angie!

Joshua Suchanek 01:00:12

Yeah, thank you for having us.

Jennifer Church Kilkenny 01:00:13

Yeah, that was really good.

Business of Aesthetics | Expert Panel Replay Transcript