How To Grow Your Aesthetics Business – 4 Steps

Dr Tim’s Business Tips

Learning how to do safe injectable skin treatments with great results is one side of the story. Many clinicians worry just as much about how to build a business and make it profitable enough to be worthwhile. 

You might not even see yourself as a natural business person, but if you are offering aesthetic treatments in exchange for money, then it is essential to think about exactly where, who and how your income will be coming in.

Don’t worry, many have gone before you. Most businesses start small and build up over time. Even Dr Tim Pearce started aesthetics alongside his work as a GP. By making a success of it, he moved into aesthetics full time, founding SkinViva Ltd and subsequently expanding with a training school before then establishing his own eLearning company, which now provides support for thousands of aesthetic practitioners worldwide.

How to grow your aesthetics business

Dr Tim Pearce’s business advice is based on his own experience. He breaks down the concept of where to find a client into 4 easy steps:

1. Customer acquisition
2. Customer retention
3. Average spend
4. Frequency of appointment

Thinking through these 4 areas, Tim provides explanations and advice that is valuable and relevant to any practitioner, whether you’re just dipping a toe into the water with a part-time enterprise alongside the medical day job, or looking to move fully into aesthetics.

“How to grow your aesthetics business? Well, that is the million dollar question.

“There are lots of ways of growing your business. I find it useful to break it down into customer acquisition and customer retention.

“Obviously the best system would be that you had a really cheap way of getting as many clients as possible and then you retained 100% of them. Now that doesn’t happen. So we need to find affordable ways of getting clients, and then we need to find how to keep them coming back and spending with you.

“The third element is that you need to figure out how to increase the average spend in a way that benefits them, because we’re all healthcare professionals, not just pure business people, which means you need to be adding products and services that your patients want that actually enhance their lives.

“A fourth factor is frequency, which is how often do people come back.

“By looking at ways of adjusting those four variables, you will grow your business.”

Ethical business building

“We have to do it, as I’ve already said, in a way that’s ethical and that benefits our patients; but it’s the same as any business, that’s basically how all businesses work. We are just more guided by making it in their best interests.”

Getting started

“How do you actually do that? Well you could write a book on all 4 of those topics, but it will help you – I think all of us will know how to get a client. How do you get one. The question that follows is how do you get them on a more predictable basis and then how do you scale that? If you can answer those questions, you’re on your way.”

Ways to grow your aesthetics business

“There are many different ways to grow your aesthetics business.

“There’s social media, which is what everyone knows about and talks about the most.

“You can even do handwritten notes through letterboxes, which is how Dr. Esho got started… He did really well at this and got one really good client out of it that helped change his destiny, but these are simple things!

“So get clients, retain clients – well that’s easy as well. You just need to make them feel looked after and do what you say you will do, and do it for a price that feels fair to them. It doesn’t mean you have to be cheap. It just needs to feel like they’re getting what they pay for.

“But, I’d say the most important thing is the relationship that you build with them. That is what gets people coming back more than any procedure, because if you make it all about the procedure, you are essentially a commodity. So think about:

• How are you serving them
• How are you guiding them
• What are you telling them
• How are you informing them as you go through the process
• Are you delivering on what you say you’ll do

“Those things build trust and trust is ultimately the most important thing you can do with your clients to get them to come back.”

How to increase average spend

“Average spend is all about the consultation. You need to be able to dig deeper into what people really think and feel, and then solve the problems that you come across.

“If you’re just being what I call a ‘vending machine’, which means you just do what your clients ask, you never get to the bottom of why they’re really there; and why they’re really there often has multiple other reasons other than the treatment they ask for.”

Taking charge of the consultation

“I would say our clients quite often are trying to do our job for us. They’re doing the consultation in terms of why they’re there and they’re doing the treatment design, and they just expect you to hold the needle.

“You need to take them a couple of steps back and start to guide them as an expert and that will improve your clients’ average spend.

“It so happens that with some people you will get to the bottom of the reason to then discover they need no treatment at all. That’s okay. The average person can benefit more than they realise when they’re in front of an expert. And that’s why the consultation is never a downside.

“Even when a small percentage of your clients, you may decide don’t need any treatment at all, the overall business is better the more you talk to your patients.”

Free business resources

Dr Tim Pearce supplies a range of free resources to help aesthetics practitioners improve their knowledge and skills. Topics include key business concepts and documents, as well as resources that are related to practice.

• Body Dysmorphia & Modification Checklist
• Is It Safe To Treat? 5-Step Contraindication Check List
• Lip Design Blueprint – 4 Steps Experts Use To Plan The Perfect Lip Augmentation
• The Medical Model For Cosmetic Procedures: An Essential Guide

All free resources

New Marketing eLearning Course

Dream Customer Attraction Method

Coming soon – an innovative eLearning course to help aesthetics clinicians to produce the best possible marketing campaigns for their own aesthetics businesses.

Watch this space to find out more!

Dr Tim Pearce eLearning

Dr Tim Pearce MBChB BSc (Hons) MRCGP founded his eLearning concept in 2016 in order to provide readily accessible BOTOX® and dermal filler online courses for fellow Medical Aesthetics practitioners. His objective was to raise standards within the industry – a principle which remains just as relevant today.

Our exclusive video-led courses are designed to build confidence, knowledge and technique at every stage, working from foundation level to advanced treatments and management of complications.

Thousands of delegates have benefited from the courses and we’re highly rated on Trustpilot too. For more information or to discuss which course is right for you, please get in touch with our friendly team via email on support@drtimpearce.com or using the contact form below.