By Alex R. Thiersch, JD, Founder/Director of the American Med Spa Association (AmSpa)

Success in the medical aesthetics business depends on a number of factors, from effective marketing to efficient employees to reliable equipment. However, if a medical spa is not properly tracking everything that is going on at the practice, it is impossible for its owners and operators to truly understand what is going on there.

Good medical spas track everything. Simply put, if you can't track, you can't measure; if you can't measure, you don't know what's working and what's not; and if you don't know what's working and what's not, you can't make informed decisions when it comes time to determine what to do next.

Essentially, if you don't understand how and why something is working, it's not really working for you. There's no way its success can inform your future decisions, because you don't have enough information to tell you what's actually going on.

For example, say an aesthetician is earning significantly more money than other employees, despite the fact that he or she is providing exactly the same services as everybody else in the practice. Is it something he or she is doing differently than everybody else in the practice? Is it related to the hours he or she works? Is it just plain old dumb luck? If you're not tracking everything that happens at your practice, you have no way of knowing, and that puts your business at an enormous disadvantage.

Some of the factors tracked by top medical spas include:

• Dollars per hour per treatment per provider;
• Dollars per hour per provider;
• Margin per treatment per provider;
• Return on investment per provider;
• Return on investment per equipment;
• Conversion rates; and
• Return on investment on email campaigns, marketing campaigns, social media.
  
  

This might seem like micromanagement, but I promise you that no effective business, medical spa or otherwise, leaves these aspects of their enterprise up to chance. For example, if you find that the laser equipment you purchased isn't providing the return on investment you'd expected, you won't be tempted to spend more money in that area of your practice because you'e discovered that it probably isn't worth it.

Likewise, if you find that a direct mail campaign is significantly more effective than a Facebook campaign despite the former costing much more to conduct, you can allocate your marketing resources in a way that brings your practice the maximum possible return on its investment.

At the American Medical Spa Association's Medical Spa & Aesthetic Boot Camps, we spend virtually the entire two days showing attendees different ways to track and measure all aspects of their businesses, including retail sales, medical treatment, and marketing. Join us at our next Boot Camp, which takes place at the Marina del Rey Marriott in Marina del Rey, California, on April 7 and 8, 2018. If you can't make it to L.A., consider joining us at one of our other Boot Camps this year—we'll be in Denver in May, Dallas in July, Boston in September, Nashville in October, and Orlando in December.

Click here to learn more and register now.

Your business can't improve if you don't know what's working and what's not. You have to track, measure, review, change, and repeat. AmSpa can help, so we hope to see you soon.