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Gentlemax Pro Plus® laser hair removal device for medspa business
How the GentleMax Pro Plus® laser hair removal machine helped an executive grow his medspa business to over one million USD per month
Medical aesthetics is a multi-billion-dollar industry, with laser hair removal being one of the most sought-after treatments. And while the Candela GentleMax Pro Plus system is known as the gold standard in laser hair removal, its efficacy goes far beyond; it’s a medspa ROI powerhouse.
Why? Because once a patient enjoys superior hair removal results, you can tell them there’s more aesthetic laser excellence where that came from. This makes hair removal with the GentleMax Pro Plus system a gateway treatment to other aesthetic treatments (as our guest medspa marketing expert is going to expand on).
The dual wavelengths of this premium laser provide unrivaled versatility, creating outstanding treatment results for all skin types. While the GentleMax Pro Plus laser is most well known for its ability to remove hair, it can also be used to treat many other common skin concerns like wrinkles, benign pigmented (brown spots/age spots) and vascular lesions, spider and leg veins, facial vessels, rosacea and more.
So, you know what the right tool can do – now how do you get new clients?
Meet John Wheeler
John is currently CEO of Alpha Aesthetics Partners, but we met him when he was CEO of Esthetics Center (now part of Alpha Aesthetics Partners). Esthetics Center is a medical spa and surgical center with multiple locations based in California, and it was John’s marketing acumen that made these medspas profitable to the tune of over one million dollars per month. His enthusiasm for the GentleMax Pro Plus device made our webinar with him an engaging watch, and we’ve captured key points of his presentation below to help you unlock the potential of this powerful tool, grow your client base, increase your ROI, and build a thriving business.
First things first
According to John, marketing isn’t just about logos, promotions, and the obvious things people see; it’s more like an iceberg, with two major success factors under the surface.
- Culture is everything
A healthy medspa business starts with a healthy work culture and core values. Influenced by a book called The Ideal Team Player, by Patrick Lencioni, John’s core values for running a medspa are humble, hungry and honor, adapted from the book’s values of humble, hungry and smart. He emphasizes honor and calls it “brave communication”; team members should talk to and with each other, not about each other. “If you have a culture or gossip problem,” he says, “I promise you, if you just really lean into this idea of a culture of honor, brave communication, praise in public, correct in private – I’m a firm believer that 90 percent of your cultural problems will dry up.” - Overdeliver: the Raving Fan Experience
The second major success factor for John is what he calls the “Raving Fan” experience, a concept introduced by bestselling authors Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles for how to turn your customers into raving fans by delivering beyond their expectations. In their book Raving Fans, John paraphrases their message as “You deliver X plus 1. X is their expectation. How do we deliver just a little bit better than their expectation?”
These two “under the iceberg” factors—a strong work culture and the raving fan experience—are what John believes are the heartbeat of a successful medspa business.
Bringing in new patients via the “gateway” treatment
A pillar of John’s success in bringing in new patients is what he calls “gateway” treatments, which have a low first-time sticker price as opposed to “destination” treatments, “which require a lot more education and have a higher sticker price” he explains. In fact, every treatment that the Esthetics Center offers falls under one of these two categories – gateway or destination.
“We believe in strategic discounting with gateway treatments,” he explains. “They’re something that doesn’t require a lot of education because they’re already a household name in the industry. Laser hair removal is a really good example of a gateway treatment.”
It is this “gateway” strategy of a discounted treatment that brings crucial new patients through the door. Once they’re through the door, the treatment providers invite the new customers to discuss their skin concerns, which is an opportunity to not only offer them full-priced destination and facial treatments that are so important to repeat business."
Influencers, Instagram and giveaways: the strategy for promoting a medspa and attracting new patients
John believes that using influencers pays off, as long as you spell out what you want and provide structure. Perhaps his biggest breakthrough for Instagram was learning not to just re-post influencer content, and instead focus on getting the influencers into the med spa to film the exact branded content that creates more expert credibility.
He does stress that it’s important to work with the right influencers, however, which means choosing them according to their follower engagement, not their follower count.
John’s third effective digital marketing trick? Giveaways! Only one person wins but hundreds enter, and those people are served a bounce-back communication that has either a ‘buy five get the sixth free’ offer or a ‘buy a series, get X (facial or whatever you want X to be) free’. The giveaways have allowed him to build an email and SMS list of over 50,000 people who are interested in aesthetics.
And finally ... invest in the right technology
Leveraging the right partners, like online booking services, can make scheduling a flawless process, including the use of text appointment reminders to add personalization and cut down on cancellations.
When it all comes together
“We were one of the first beta users of the GentleMax Pro Plus system in the world,” says John, “so we’ve got a ton of experience with it. We love it. It’s a bigger spot size, shorter pulse width. There’s just so much more you can do with it – so much more functionality. It’s more of a power tool for power users, but it’s also great for beginners. For people that have really mastered the Pro or are looking for just a device they can learn and maximize, the [GentleMax Pro Plus] is a great device.”
Have questions for the Gentle laser machine?
To sum up, GentleMax Pro Plus system is a remarkable aesthetic tool that works beautifully in combination with John’s key success strategies:
- A healthy work culture and the “raving fan experience”
- Using gateway treatments for new customer acquisition and upselling to destination treatments for repeat business
- Working with the right influencers to make the right content and giveaways
- Leveraging the best technology
We hope you found John Wheeler as interesting and inspirational as we did, because at Candela, we believe your success and our success are one in the same.
View the on-demand webinar and hear even more great tips.
Learn more about the Gentle laser legacy.