At some point, after your initial foundation fillers and toxin training, if you’ve decided aesthetics is a career you want to stick with, you start to think about adding additional treatments and modalities to your aesthetic clinic.

• But how do you know when it’s the right time to invest in a new treatment to offer?

• How do you figure out which is the best one to add?

• And how do you choose a course or device that is going to delight your patients and deliver a great ROI for your clinic?

MARKET RESEARCH

You need to determine whether there will be demand for any new treatment and your existing patient base is the best indicator.

Don’t have an existing patient base? Will adding in a new treatment/device really attract them in?

Remember that 80% of all treatments booked are injectables - with 3 areas being the most popular treatment. If you’re struggling to get bookings for the treatments you already offer, resist the urge to try to fix this with a new treatment.

The problem isn’t your treatment offering, it’s something else - your branding, positioning, visibility, marketing messages, pricing, location…it’s not that you don’t offer a treatment that people want! If, on reflection, you realise you’re thinking of adding a new treatment to attract new patients, you will likely be better off investing in your persona research, your branding, website or marketing.

If you do have an existing base of patients, this is the first place to do your market research. You have a ready-made audience to sample. So speak to them!

When they’re in clinic, float the idea of adding in a new treatment that addresses concerns you know they have. Offer free review consultations to get to the nub of what your patients needs are. Mentally segment your patient base into those who might benefit, and those who wouldn’t be interested. This will give you an idea of which modalities are best to invest in.

Also consider their budgets and preferences. If your patient-base has never expressed the love of facials, a HydroFacial is unlikely to be top of their list. If they love skinboosters, maybe polynucleotides are worth training in?

FOMO, social media trends, the treatments YOU want and time-limited offers with device manufacturers/training providers are not good reasons to invest in additional training or devices.

SEE THROUGH THE PR & MARKETING

The role of marketing and PR machines is to tap into your psyche and tempt you into buying what they’re selling….that’s their job.

When deciding on which course to go on, or which device to buy, train yourself to sift through the marketing and PR BS!

This is more difficult if you don’t have a good network of practitioner colleagues to draw on. That’s where memberships like The Happy Injectors membership are amazing because they give you access to the lived experience of tons of injectors!

ASK - Practitioners will tell you honestly what’s been a waste of money for them…especially those who have been seduced by the promise of new patients/new bookings if they brought the fancy new machine into clinic. You will be able to figure out whether their experience is relevant to you and your patients. With no brand loyalties or kick-backs, you will get the information straight from the horses mouth.

EXPERIENCE - book in for the treatments and pay for them! It’s far too easy for aesthetic practitioners to get the results from treatments but not have had to part with any cash. This gives you an inaccurate picture of the actual value of the treatment you’re considering adding. It’s not just about whether you’re happy to have the treatment, or whether the results are good…it’s whether it’s value for money. If you’re actually happy to pay for it yourself, with your own hard earned cash, then the chances are, your patients will be too.

TECH SPEC CHECK - Do a like-for-like comparison. Whether this is relating to a course or a device. Ignore the brand name. Look at the technical details. Find out what ongoing support you get. Find out what the ongoing servicing costs are. Whether there are any consumables. Whether there are discounts available. Set up a spreadsheet and compare accurately.

FIGURE OUT THE FINANCIALS

Before you even spend a penny, you need to figure out if the financials of investing in the training or device work. You need to know the realistic payback period.

A product representative will tell you all sorts. They will make it seem easy to sell the treatment/service, they will use their best performing clinics and customers to validate their sales pitch. They will tell you you only need to sell one treatment per day/week/month to turn a profit.

But you know your demographic. You know how many bookings you get. You know how much your patient base are happy to spend. You know the things your patients value and are happy to pay for, and the things they just aren’t.

Calculating the payback period - how long it will take for you to pay back the cost of the device/training - whilst you’re in the research phase will save you a ton of headache!

Work out the payback period when you’re doing your product research.

• How much will you need to invest?

• How much does it cost to deliver a treatment?

• How much will you charge for a treatment?

• How many bookings will you need to payback the initial investment?

It will become apparent very quickly that some treatments and devices are far more profitable for your business than others.

PLAN YOUR GO-TO-MARKET

This part is often overlooked by practitioners. They buy the device or do the training, pop a few posts out about the training and an introductory offer, and expect that the bookings will flow in. And they don’t. They then panic!

Your go-to-market plan is important.

• How are you going to let people know that you offer a new service?

• How are you going to ensure that they realise the service can solve an issue or concern they have?

• How are you going to get the initial group of people booked in, so you can cover the cost of the investment as quickly as possible?

This is where you need to leverage all your marketing channels, in a coordinated way. You need to plan to record content. Collate testimonials and before and afters. Get your educational marketing materials produced and then launch.

Email marketing, blogs, posts, reels, stories, a launch event, video and written testimonials, photos….you need all of this planned and scheduled so that the bookings will come in BEFORE you’ve even paid the first payment on your device.

Here’s an example of a treatment launch plan:

REVIEW THE ROI

At regular intervals, review your numbers.

• Have you paid back the initial investment?

• If not, do you need to adjust your pricing ?

• Are people continuing to book in for the treatment? If not, your marketing messages may need tweaking?

• Have you bought a device that isn’t ever going to wipe its face? If so, you may need to sell it on.

Unless you regularly review your return on investment, you won’t know whether your device is a dud or a money-marking machine!!

So, there it is. If you’re looking to expand your treatment offering in clinic, ensure that you carry out detailed market research, do your own product research, figure out if the financials stack up, plan your launch and then check your ROI.