When marketing your med spa, you naturally want to present the best possible impression to your audience and to attract the right high-value leads that are more likely to convert into patients. One way to do this is to hire a digital marketing agency to help you build your audience and attract the right kind of attention.
However, you do need to choose your agency wisely as there can be some limitations and outright frustrations if you find yourself working with the wrong agency for your business.
Read on for our list of ten med spa marketing agency frustrations that you might encounter, and then find out how there might just be a better way to get your name out there and bring in top-quality patients.
Ten Med Spa Marketing Agency Frustrations
1) Is Your Agency Paying Attention?
It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be your chosen agency’s only client. If they’re working with a range of different businesses that all require varying amounts of help and attention, they may have developed particular strategies and templates that they use to run their marketing campaigns. There’s nothing wrong with that to a certain extent. Having processes and templates can make things quicker and easier.
Where that falls down is if they don’t bother to tailor how they usually do things to fit your particular med spa. Even if all their clients are med spa owners, that still doesn’t mean that they can just go ahead as usual and assume what will work and what you need. They need to talk to you and get to know your business before they make a move.
Things can feel a little impersonal with a marketing agency, so if you’re going to go ahead, aim to find one that will really listen to you and understand your needs.
2) Do They Care?
You’d hope that every agency cares about its customers and wants to do an excellent job. However, there are agencies out there who think they know all there is to know and don’t like to take feedback from their clients. Or they may not have the best people working at their company. While, of course, you want a marketing agency that has the expertise you need, you also want them to listen when you have ideas of your own or feedback on what they’re doing for you.
You know your business better than anyone else, and you need a partnership with an agency that will take on board your feedback and incorporate your ideas. It should be a joint effort, where you work together to create a marketing plan and strategies that suit your individual business.
3) Where’s the transparency?
Do you know what your agency is doing for you and how they are spending your budget? Do you have facts and clear statistics from them to show what they are doing is working?
If not, you could well be working with the wrong agency for you. This is your business and you make the decisions. Put yourself in the hands of the marketing experts by all means, but do be sure you know what is happening and whether the campaigns your agency is running are having any effect.
As we said above, this should be a partnership. You should have access to all metrics and statistics and you should be able to see the outcome of every campaign your marketing agency is running. It’s also on them to educate you if there are things you aren’t familiar with and to tell you why they are making specific decisions.
4) Is Your Marketing Data-Driven?
We talked above about the importance of receiving clear statistics and information from your chosen agency. What you want to see is that they are making good decisions based on the data, not based on what they’ve always done for every other client. They need to be able to demonstrate clearly why they have made each decision and justify their results to you.
You shouldn’t be in any doubt about whether your digital agency is getting good results for you and driving the right types of leads to you. And you should feel comfortable speaking up and asking questions, secure in the knowledge that your agency can provide the answers, with justification.
5) High Fees
With a marketing agency, you’ll usually either pay a monthly retainer or pay per project. The fees for an agency can be high, but if they’re bringing you quantities of good leads regularly, you can do your own math on whether or not it’s worth the high price.
The problem comes when you can’t see what they’re doing for you or what results you’re getting because they aren’t communicating with you properly. Nor are they sharing clear reports to show you if they are getting acceptable results. At this point, it’s easy to feel that the fees are too much for what you’re getting and to look at changing agencies or finding alternatives.
6) Behind the Times
Some marketing agencies have been around for a long time. They’ve no doubt got the experience, but have they kept an eye on how marketing has changed over the years? Are they still up to date on the latest ideas and tactics? Are they making use of new technologies, such as AI?
Even businesses are increasingly buying online and dispensing with face-to-face sales meetings and it’s important that your agency realizes that and understands what that means when marketing your med spa.
Don’t get left behind because your marketing agency hasn’t kept up with new marketing trends and technologies.
7) Lack of Knowledge About Your Industry
Ideally, you need a marketing agency that is familiar with your industry. A professional team that understands what you do, the types of clients you provide services for, and the language and medical terms that go with running a med spa. While it’s possible for a good marketing agency to catch up and to learn what they need to know, you don’t want to leave your precious business in the hands of someone who doesn’t know the difference between microdermabrasion and dermaplaning.
Bear in mind that even if you choose an agency that specializes in med spas, you do still have every right to give feedback, ask for strategy changes, and control your own marketing.
8) Lack of Transparency on Pricing
Not only do you need clear statistics and reports on what your agency is doing for you, you also need to know what you’re paying for. Any good agency should be able to give you clear reports detailing what they are spending your budget on, including breakdowns by campaign, ad spend, content spend, and more.
It should also be obvious who is working on your marketing for you. Are you getting the top-level executive you were promised in the sales pitch or is your marketing being passed on to junior associates without the level of experience you should be able to expect?
9) Poor Customer Service
If you can’t get your agency on the phone for days or it takes them a week or more to answer even a simple email, there’s a problem. Some agencies are notoriously slow at responding to their clients.
Just like any other business, you deserve a company that will think of you as a priority, no matter what the size of your business. You need an agency that genuinely cares about its customers and prides itself on paying attention and responding quickly.
10) Lack of Control Over Your Own Marketing
While you don’t want to have to do every last bit of your marketing yourself, you do want to have control over what happens and why. As we said before, it’s your business and you are the one who is ultimately responsible for its success.
A good agency will give you all the information you need to make good decisions and to stop any campaigns that simply aren’t producing good results. They’ll get to know your business and listen and respond positively when you offer feedback and ideas.
The Surefire Way to Growing Your Business Profitably
We’re not saying that all marketing agencies are bad. There are certainly elements of a marketing agency that are perfect for small businesses. But, if hiring an agency can be such a minefield, what can you do instead? Well, we did promise at the beginning of this article that we’d give you an alternative way of doing things, and here it is:
We like to refer to Surefire Local as the agency antidote. A perfect blend of the two (software and services) that eliminate the major frustrations we’ve discussed so far. If you join us, you’ll get the best of both worlds. You can have full control over your marketing with our all-in-one marketing software that’s built to give you every possible report and statistic you could dream of. You’ll be able to log in once and see everything related to your marketing in one place, and you’ll be able to manage it all from your dashboard too.
However, if you need a little help, if you want to work with a reputable and experienced marketer, you can do that too. We can help you learn how best to market your med spa and you can have as much control over what happens as you like. And even if we’re managing everything for you, you’ll still be able to log into your dashboard at any time, day or night, and see exactly what’s happening. That puts you in the driving seat for your business, no matter whether you manage the whole thing yourself, or we do it for you.
With Surefire’s all-in-one marketing platform, you can:
- Get a single sign-on platform that’s data-driven, giving you an up-to-date picture of what’s going on with your marketing. You can manage everything from our central dashboard and get reports on every aspect of your marketing whenever you like. We think of it as your marketing ‘operating system.’
- Keep your eyes firmly on the bottom line at all times and clearly see your ROI, whether you’re managing your marketing yourself, you’ve hired an agency, or you’re letting us take the lead. Get transparency and detailed metrics from day one so you can make the right decisions that are backed by the data. Set your goals, measure how you’re doing, increase your spend on campaigns that are bringing great results or close down campaigns that aren’t working for you all from one dashboard. You’re in control every step of the way.
- Reduce time wasted on arguing over which campaigns to go for and what decisions to make. You have the data at your fingertips to make the right decisions, every time. Don’t delay and let your competition get ahead. Decide quickly and with confidence, then get yourself ahead of your nearest competitors.
- Connect with commonly used tools and apps, such as WordPress, Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Facebook, and more, and manage everything without leaving your dashboard. Create and publish your content, manage your email and text marketing, ask for reviews, update your online presence on over 80 directories, and so much more.
- Get help and education when you need it from our team of expert digital marketing strategists, and either work on your marketing yourself, bring us in whenever you need a hand, or relax and let us take care of everything. It really is all up to you.
Why not book a demo with our professional team and see what a difference having a specially tailored all-in-one marketing platform can make to your med spa.
