As the beauty and wellness industry evolves, trends that were prevalent in 2019 have shifted to better align with consumer preferences. For medical spas, this means a focus on more personalized treatments, a greater demand for non-invasive procedures, a more holistic approach to care, and a more efficient use of technology.

According to a new benchmark report by Zenoti, leading medspas are using additional operational strategies to connect with patients, grow their business, and thrive.

In early 2023, Zenoti analyzed 2022 performance data across its technology platform, covering six business segments – including full-service medical spas and medical spas with fewer options and a single-service focus.

Among the data related to 12 key performance indicators (KPIs) are these 4 notable medpsa business trends.

1. Increased medical spa bookings

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‍In 2022, every major beauty and wellness business category booked more appointments than in 2021. But full-service medical spas experienced a 22.5% increase in bookings year over year – the second highest one-year growth category in guest visits after barbershops.

What’s behind this increase?

While many factors can lead to a surge in medspa bookings, it’s also likely that top-performing medical spas are responding to current realities:

• A general increased interest in medical spa services, including minimally invasive procedures.
• Multi-channel booking opportunities (e.g., phone calls, webstore, mobile app, social media, booking by Google) are crucial to increased bookings overall.
• High rates of online booking result in fewer no-shows (including rates of 0%).
• Sophisticated technology can now combine related procedures, prioritize provider-specific requests, customize booking intervals, and create parallel bookings for one customer.
• Improvements in data collection and analysis also help personalize the patient journey from initial booking to follow-up.
• Busy staff members can improve booking efficiency with virtual-assistant (AI chatbot) technology that responds to calls when the front desk is busy.

As illustrated in the points above, it’s important for businesses to understand their rate of online booking – the percentage of appointments booked online – via website, mobile app, or other option such as Reserve with Google. Online booking has become a consumer expectation, offering customers convenient, 24/7 access to schedule a service.

Benchmark data shows that the top 10^th percentile of full-service medspas experienced an online booking rate 4 times greater than the industry average. Medspas with a single-service focus saw equally impressive booking numbers compared to their peers’ average.

By using benchmark data as a barometer, medical spas can better analyze their own booking needs and make more well-informed decisions.

2. Staff utilization at medical spas

At the end of each day, medical spa owners and managers want to see an optimized appointment book, minimal unused slots, and high spends for every patient that walked in the door. Utilization is a critical step in making that happen.

Data shows that top-performing full-service medspas are seeing more than 3 times the staff utilization compared to the industry average, while high achievers at medspas with a single-service focus are more than 2.5 times the average.

If your medspa utilization rate isn’t as high as you’d like, try these tips:

• Choose an appointment book structure that makes the most of every available hour and minimizes unnecessary gaps.
• Look for a mobile app for your employees that uses intelligent scheduling for increased transparency about operations that impact them.
• Set up automated rebooking for ongoing treatments.
• Segment and automatically send marketing campaigns to specific patients via text.
• Send text messages to regular patients to alert them of any same-day availability.  

3. The state of revenue for medical spas

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‍Unsurprisingly, top-performing medical spas also show 4.5 times the industry average for revenue in 2022.

A few factors may be responsible for this difference.

Top performers and high achievers in both medspa categories are businesses that are more likely to optimize their operations, sell more services and retail products, and take advantage of upselling and add-on opportunities.

With the integration of technology, medspas can further streamline their processes in ways that drive revenue. For example, with Zenoti, medical spas can enable:

• Customized booking intervals that close scheduling gaps and generate revenue
• Automated marketing offers specific to patients’ needs and preferences
• Abandoned cart notifications that remind patients to finish booking or purchasing products
• Premium pricing for providers with higher skills/experience levels
• Demand-based pricing that kicks in during busiest days or time periods
• Payment links that make checkouts easier and faster

Top-performing medical spas also rely on the power of add-ons, as shown below.

4. Medical spa packages and add-ons

According to Zenoti analysis, top performers at medical spas with a single-service focus excel at integrating add-ons into their medspa services. Specifically, these providers are adding retail products to more than 43% of their invoices. That’s 3.5 times more than the industry average.‍

The difference in provider-led retail sales between top-performing and average medical spas reflects more than the bottom line. It may also signal a difference in culture.

At medspa brands where clinicians and other providers are at the highest sales echelon, providers likely integrate add-ons into the personal conversation. Similarly, they may have established a regular need with clients, encouraging a take-home product as part of follow-up care.

Others in the beauty and wellness industry – such as stylists at beauty salons – employ a similar strategy. However, the gap between high performance and the average is greater across medical spa businesses.

For today’s medical spas, having benchmark data at hand is critical to understanding their place in the market. By benchmarking against the best performing businesses, medspa owners and managers can compare their current progress against similar businesses – and set a higher bar for future growth.

‍Get the full picture: Download The 2023 Beauty and Wellness Benchmark Report now.