Aesthetics Marketing: Treatment Menu Planning

Continuing our series of 10 Tips for Marketing Your Aesthetics Practice, designed to help new injectors feel confident about starting their business journey, here’s our third tip…

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3. Start small when planning your treatment menu

Don’t feel the need to start doing all the treatments, all at once! Taking on too much is a common mistakes new injectors make. Let’s look at why building up slowly is a great approach to treatment menu planning.

Building confidence and becoming an aesthetics specialist

There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting small and building up to more complex treatments. In fact, this approach is likely to make you a better, more confident injector. Plus, if there’s one thing aesthetics patients respond to, it’s their injector having confidence in their work.

“As an enthusiastic new injector you may want to offer all the key treatments people are asking for straight away. It’s better to start with the cheeks, for instance, rather than targeting the more difficult areas of the face, such as the lips, which are less forgiving,” says Dr Kalpna Pindolia, director of education at Harley Academy and practising aesthetics specialist.

“Build up your confidence and develop your techniques by starting with dermal fillers and botulinum toxin for roughly the first 30 patients. Once you’re seeing a steady stream of results that both you and the patients are really pleased with, you’ll feel more confident. That’s when you can move on to tackling trickier treatments such as lip fillers.”

She also makes a great point about starting out as a solo aesthetics practitioner for the first time after graduating with your Level 7 Diploma in Botox and Dermal Fillers: “As a new injector, you’ll quickly find that working on your own can be a totally different experience to seeing patients as part of one-to-one mentoring sessions. This is another reason to start slowly then gradually build up your confidence and treatment repertoire.”

Follow your passion when planning your treatment menu

Award-winning aesthetics expert, Dr Sophie Shotter and top aesthetic medicine marketing consultant, Vanessa Bird are both in agreement here.

Dr Shotter told us during her guest spot on The Aesthetics Show, that she was “naive” in some of her decisions when first starting out. If she was doing it again now, she would start with a topline injectables and skin offering, concentrating on treatments she loves doing.

She also notes, “I do think there are some areas that, when you’re pretty new, it’s good to have someone to refer on to – noses, tear troughs…”

Vanessa Bird, echoes this and explains why following your passion can help you. She explains, “…when you’re first starting out, it’s important to do what you’re passionate about because then you’re going to put the hours in. Then you’re going to look at alternative ways of connecting with people, introducing new things to your practice, putting the extra hours in on your social media to attract new patients – that kind of thing. And it comes across.”

She gives the example of a “practitioner who is super passionate about Profhilo or anything like that… all about the glow of the skin, then they can really make a name for themselves specialising initially in that, because the passion comes through.” This applies to any treatment, however.

“The results are going to reflect on you. It’s your reputation. The one thing you cannot replace is your reputation once it’s gone, once it’s damaged.”

Turning treatment menu planning into marketing opportunities

Becoming a true specialist in certain areas doesn’t preclude you from branching out into other treatments once you’re ready. In fact, it presents you with fantastic marketing opportunities. Starting small and building your treatment menu up as you progress can be a shrewd business move.

Launching new treatments can help you widen your reach in terms of attracting new clients. It is also something existing clients may be interested in, or want to tell their friends about. By the time you are known for your work and have built up a decent client base, each time you introduce new treatments, you have a ready-made audience to announce them to!

Making a gradual approach your growth roadmap

We recommend this approach to newly qualified injectors starting out not just because it allows you time to gain experience and confidence. It also gives you time to really talk to your patients and people in your area to find out what type of treatments they are looking for.

Tailoring your menu as you go in this way also means you’re less likely to offer services, especially any which may involve expensive devices, that don’t bring you much business.

As you can see, starting with a small treatment menu and building up gradually, or in stages, gives you something to aim for. Working to a plan in this way provides a roadmap and goals for developing your aesthetics practice in a holistic way right from the outset.

We hope you enjoyed this advice on aesthetics marketing and would love to hear how you get on if you put any of these tips into practice