Business of branding and rebranding

The rationale for branding

When marketing messages are unclear about what your brand stands for, you may fall into the trap of trying to become who or what the market wants you to be, rather than who you truly are. This strategy is certain to fail because it undermines the important elements of trust and transparency for your brand. Thus, branding and marketing may play equal roles in promoting your products and services to the market, but they come at it from slightly different angles.

The task of branding is to consistently support who you are and how you are perceived by all the stakeholders that matter. Everyone must be in lockstep with the core culture, mission, messaging and ‘raison d’être’ of your business.

A successful brand should be instantly meaningful to anyone who encounters it. It may be the most important deciding factor for consumers when they make a purchasing decision. It gives your practice an identity beyond just the products or services you offer that can be found in many or most aesthetic practices.This doesn’t happen overnight.

Can you have one without the other? The short answer is yes, but the wiser answer is no way!

Investing in marketing your practice without first nailing down what you want your brand to stand for is taking a shortcut that won’t serve you well over time. Branding your practice will give you the advantage you need to stand out in the ever-expanding crowd of aesthetic practices and clinics. It will also make you more relatable to the target audience of consumers that you want to attract.

Defining your brand

From the colour palette of your website, the tone of your Instagram posts, the look and feel of the products and services you offer, and the entire staff in the clinic, everything you do factors into how your brand is perceived by patients, colleagues and the media. A brand’s name is more than a label or a logo; it should evoke a feeling that translates to customer expectations.

What adjectives best describe who you are as a practitioner?

Think about how you want to be perceived. Then consider the key messages you want to convey to patients or clients.

For example, your brand may stand for ‘high-quality service’ and ‘cutting-edge treatments’. However, those terms tend to define what you do rather than who you are as a practitioner.

Do you want to be known as an expert who is well-trained, highly experienced and has superb technique? Or would you prefer to be thought of as approachable, having a good bedside manner and very caring? These choices are different, but not mutually exclusive.

Brand building vs brand breaking

One of the caveats of brand building is simplicity. This important component of developing a brand distills what you want to say down to a few words, an experience or a feeling. Some brands lose out by trying to be everything to everyone by drafting a complicated message that is neither ownable nor memorable. You should be able to explain your own brand in as few words as possible so it can be readily understood.

To build a brand that will serve you over time, choose a straightforward and clear message that can resonate with your target audience. Brands that aren’t memorable or sound too much like other brands so they are not distinguishable are destined to be ‘brand breakers’.

Your marketing should consistently help to create a familiar emotional experience which tends to keep patients coming back. They should be made to feel positive when they see your logo and marketing. Any change in tone is not on brand and sends a message to patients that they may not have the same experience every time they come in. To protect your brand, communicate its ethos clearly and reinforce it in everything you say and do.

Invest in your brand as early as possible in the evolution of your practice. Always aim to do better while maintaining the important pillars of your brand so patients and clients will know what to expect. Once you have created a strong message and image, it will naturally evolve over time as your brand continues to grow and expand.

Authenticity is an important component of effective brand building. Without that element, your brand will suffer from being unpredictable, which is the opposite of what you want to convey. Aesthetic patients don’t like surprises; they want to know what to expect every time they come to see you.

Protecting your brand

Branding will serve to support your marketing and advertising plan and help to boost promotional activities through added recognition and impact. Keep your brand strong by diligently maintaining every detail. This includes managing the basic elements of your brand (style guide, packaging, colour palette, treatment menu, service, etc), as well as how your brand is perceived by your audience and customer base.

Before you make any major decisions, ask yourself: ‘Is this on brand for us?’ If you have to think hard about your answer, it probably isn’t.

Strong branding builds trust with clients, patients and partners. If you let patients down by easing up on maintaining the principles protecting your brand, you may risk losing their trust which may be hard or impossible to get back.

Always think about how you can improve your brand. Building a high- quality evergreen brand doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years of due diligence to get there, but the rewards will be well worth it.

The process of rebranding

Brands – just like fashion, logos, colour palettes and fonts – tend to come and go out of style. Remember when peach was a popular paint palette for plastic surgery practices because it was deemed to be feminine, and silk flowers were fashionable in the waiting room? Unfortunately, I do.

Your brand is much more than just a logo. It reflects who you are as a professional and is both tangible and intangible. Just like your own identity, your brand is always evolving.

Rebranding is not just about a new logo or website with all the bells and whistles. It’s about the entire look and feel of your brand which is reflected to the world. To maintain continuity, the new image should be complementary rather than dramatically different or unrecognisable, which risks a loss of brand equity.

If you want to come across as innovative, forward-thinking and up on trends in modern aesthetics, your branding needs to reflect those traits. Rebranding provides an opportunity to strengthen your brand’s presence and image in the eyes of your clients while maintaining the elements that make you stand apart.

Price vs value

Price is simply what something costs, but value is more emotional. Value can be defined as the worth or importance people assign to
a product, thing, experience or person. It considers the usefulness and benefits that mean different things to different people.

Commoditisation is all about price comparison. Unfortunately, we see a lot of this tactic in medical aesthetics, especially as a major component of big chain business models. High traffic and low prices often translate to higher marketing spending to continually bring in new patients. This can be a losing battle because someone is always willing to do it or sell it for less. The most valuable patients you want to attract tend to have very little loyalty to practices that operate like this.

Consider there is a sunk cost to every treatment or procedure in an aesthetics practice. This may range from the cost of the device, any consumable required, staff time involved, typing up a treatment room, as well as the cost per acquisition of a customer. Practices that rely on a low price to get patients in the door rarely have high retention rates. The patients they attract are not sticky; they tend to always be looking for the next best deal. They rarely convert into loyal patients who will stick with you for the long term.

Instead of slashing your fees, try offering something extra to add value to the treatments you offer. Best practice is to introduce clients to something new that they have not experienced yet. Consider bundling or mix-and- match packages, try a ‘buy one, get one’ offer to move skincare products that are not selling well or of which you have a lot of inventory.

In this uber-competitive environment, once a client has made contact, or had a consultation or treatment, it’s crucial to nurture that relationship. Building trust helps clients to feel secure and safe in the knowledge that they have found the right clinic with experts at what they do.

Strive to always make your patients and clients feel valued and appreciated or, as we know, they will find a clinic that fulfills those needs. If they like your team and the treatment they receive in your practice, they are much more likely to come back. AMP