Beyond the Logo: How Elite Aesthetic Practices Build Brands Patients Love and Trust

Erica Crawford

And we're going to go ahead and get started. So first off, my name is Erica. I'm the president here at Influx Marketing. Thank you so much for joining me, everybody.

I am here with my really dear friend, Tami. Tami is the CEO and founder of Pinpoint Creative. Pinpoint honestly does a lot of things, but without a doubt, undeniably — and I'm saying this, but I am not biased here, because I've worked with a lot of branding agencies — Pinpoint is the best branding agency in this space. Also loyalty programs, email marketing, everything that's needed to attract your patients by having a proper brand, attracting the patients that fit you and fit your practice, and retaining them.

And Tami and I have done, I want to say — I think we've worked on upwards... We used to keep count, but I think we stopped counting a few years ago, around 75 or so. Yeah, I think we're well over. We've worked together with well over 100 practices together. So we have a lot of familiarity, and I'm really excited to have her here.

So here's how this is going to work. I am going to go ahead and let Tami take over and share her slides. And then at the end of this, we're going to do my absolute favorite portion, which is also the Q&A. You get the chance to ask Tami and I whatever you want. I don't care how specific it is — if it's right to you about your practice, if it's about your geographic location, about a certain patient you're trying to attract, whatever you want.

So feel free throughout her presentation, as you have a question, you can put it in the chat, you can put it in the Q&A. And at the end of her presentation, we're going to go ahead and answer all of your questions. But for now, for the next 40 minutes or so, she's going to go ahead and give her presentation, and then we'll do the Q&A right after. So over to you, Tami.

Tami Vileta

All right. You all can see my screen, right?

Erica Crawford

We're good to go.

Tami Vileta

Okay. Well, first of all, thank you for that introduction, Erica, and also for inviting us to be here today. I love this topic: Beyond the Logo — How Elite Aesthetic Practices Build Brand and Patient Love and Trust. This is so near and dear to our hearts.

And if you don't know who Pinpoint is, I'm just going to go ahead and touch on a couple of things. So Pinpoint exists to help aesthetic practices, number one, do something really incredible, which is articulate distinctive positioning to create preference for your brand and to also support premium pricing. We also are here to align your patient journey so that you can strengthen retention, referrals, and lifetime value. And then we also really do work on integrating your brand systems to build consistency and scalability and long-term practice equity.

And again, my name is Tami Vileta. I'm the founder and the creative director, and I have been in this industry since the turn of the century, which is kind of scary.

Okay. So I'm going to start out this presentation by saying that your brand really is so much more than your logo. And to test that fact, I have a pop quiz for Erica. So on the next four slides —

Erica Crawford

Okay.

Tami Vileta

— I'm going to put up four brands out there in the universe. And Erica, I'm going to ask you to identify them —

Erica Crawford

Oh.

Tami Vileta

— without seeing their logo.

Erica Crawford

Okay.

Tami Vileta

Are you ready? Do you want to go ahead and do that?

Erica Crawford

You know, I'm on the spot here. I'm ready.

Tami Vileta

All right. So here we go. Here's the first one.

Erica Crawford

Louboutin.

Tami Vileta

Instant, right?

Erica Crawford

Of course.

Tami Vileta

So Louboutin actually has trademarked this color red, and they own this for shoes. How about this one?

Erica Crawford

Burberry.

Tami Vileta

Yep, exactly. So Burberry owns this texture, right? And we're all going to be wearing this pretty soon. Can't believe summer's almost over, right? How about this? Who owns this?

Erica Crawford

Geico.

Tami Vileta

Yep. They own the lizard, and the lizard is actually there to help make insurance a lot more accessible, a lot more friendly, a lot easier. How about this one?

Erica Crawford

Tiffany's.

Tami Vileta

Uh-huh. They own the unboxing experience that is associated with becoming engaged. So Erica got 100%.

Erica Crawford

You just knew I was going to make it, right? You just picked some of my brands.

Tami Vileta

I mean, they're strong, right?

Erica Crawford

Yeah, I love it. Anyway, continue.

Tami Vileta

Yep. But you weren't identifying logos, right? She was retrieving associations that her brain has stored, and she processed that so much faster than words or reading a logo.

And through repeated experiences, things like color and pattern and character, scent, even sound, they can become mentally linked to a brand, and almost instantly, right? It happened pretty quick. These associations are reinforced every single time that consumers encounter the same cues, and recognition becomes automatic. And eventually, things like a teal box or a checkered pattern or red-sole shoes trigger immediate brand recognition and love without seeing a name or a logo.

So I'm going to actually give you an extra credit test today as well.

Erica Crawford

Okay, here we go.

Tami Vileta

So I'm going to show you actually three brands in the universe that are pretty darn strong.

Erica Crawford

Okay.

Tami Vileta

And there is one actual ad that is legit. It has actually been run.

Erica Crawford

Okay.

Tami Vileta

And then one that is an imposter.

Erica Crawford

Okay.

Tami Vileta

All right? Are you ready for this one? You're going to identify the imposter.

Erica Crawford

Okay.

Tami Vileta

Okay. This one's for Apple.

Erica Crawford

I wish it was buy one, get one free, but I'm pretty sure that's impossible.

Tami Vileta

Right. Would you be in line the night before, right?

Erica Crawford

No. Yeah, I've been there.

Tami Vileta

This is inconsistent price positioning.

Erica Crawford

Yeah.

Tami Vileta

And they do not discount. When they do, it's infinitesimal. But they're built on that, right? We expect that.

Erica Crawford

Mm-hmm.

Tami Vileta

What about this one?

Erica Crawford

Oh, Porsche. Definitely not the family one — the one on the right. I wish. The Cayenne's big, but it's not that big. Anyways.

Tami Vileta

Exactly. So Porsche — we expect precise engineering. We expect speed. We expect sexy design. We expect history and lore, and they've been around for decades. We don't associate it with protecting a family. That's actually owned by somebody else. So that's an off-brand promise. How about this one for e.l.f.?

Erica Crawford

Oh, the one with the younger lady is the correct one. e.l.f. is definitely for the younger generation.

Tami Vileta

Yeah. So e.l.f., they position straight to the younger, multicultural audience. So the 60-year-old white woman is definitely an off-brand audience that they're going ahead and marketing to.

So you got 100% here as well, right? And you're spotting the imposters because what strong brands do is they actually teach us what to expect. They shape our perception. And you weren't just comparing ads, you were actually detecting the broken brand promises, whether that be an offer or a value prop or an audience that did not fit.

And what brands need to realize is that every communication choice you make either reinforces the brand promise or it's going to tend to weaken it. And what I want to say here is that consistency doesn't mean sameness, right? It doesn't mean that everything has to be bland. It just needs to be in alignment with who you are, why it matters, and whom you're built to serve. And when expectations are consistently reinforced and perception is shaped, there's so much payoff. Familiarity becomes trust. Trust leads to loyalty, then belonging, then advocacy — and all of those things are exactly what we want.

Okay, so that was the brand warm-up for this presentation. And now I want to segue into four questions that Influx has asked Pinpoint to come here today to answer. And first of all, I have to say these questions were awesome. Exploring these has been so much fun for our team.

And the first one is: how do the top 1% of aesthetic practices actually shape patient perception before the phone call is ever even made? And I'm going to answer that first and foremost by saying that the top 1% do not leave perception to chance. Just like Apple, just like Louboutin, just like any of the past experiences I just showed you, elite brands define a very specific, very tight set of ideas that they can credibly own, and then they articulate with crystal clarity: Who are we? How do we do it differently? Why does it matter? And who the heck is going to care about that mattering?

And then every single touchpoint, from team members to external partners, exists to reinforce those owned distinctions, which go on to eventually shape perception. And so the message I'm trying to get across here is that perception is engineered. It is intentional. It's not left to accident.

And oh, by the way, in today's market in aesthetics, things like "I'm a luxury brand," or "I'm a high-end brand," or "I'm a safe brand" — these are category expectations. They're not truly meaningful distinctions anymore. You have got to dig deeper than that.

And so I have two case studies here today. We're a case study agency. I think people learn so much through seeing it in play. I have two case studies to show you how practices are shaping perception to build their brands and to build identity, and they are at two diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum, right? So one practice is 40 years into their career, and another practice is four months — but they do share one elite, top 1% brand mentality.

And the first one is brought to you by Dr. Barry DiBernardo. And many of us know him, right? He's a KOL in the industry. He's been around forever, globally known. Influx and Pinpoint have had the honor and the pleasure of working with Dr. D for, I don't know, probably the past decade maybe?

And about five years ago, I'm going to say, Dr. D and his team decided to go through a rebrand, or a re-tinkering of the brand, to refine its messaging and to bring it forward. And I love that. Here's a practice 35 years into their career at the time, and they are still refining the messaging, getting it right, bringing the brand into relevancy today.

And if you had been a fly on the wall during that process, you would know that NJPS differentiates and shapes perception today because they are built on innovation, which is squarely centered at the intersection of science, technology, and aesthetic artistry — not on luxury, trendiness, or warmth alone. There is this undercurrent running underneath the brand of NJPS that it's literally a laboratory, an innovation laboratory disguised as a plastic surgery practice, which combines surgical authority and energy-based tech and an artistic eye to solve aesthetic problems that other practices simply cannot. And that is the kicker.

There are some truths in this brand — guided by light, built on innovation, proven through science, all the things, right? But this is the foundation. They know who they are, and they're shaping perception on this.

And so for the case study I'm going to share with you, that is the undercurrent. It is built on brand differentiation. And then they literally turn their expertise into proprietary protocols or programs that nobody else has. They build distinction through integrated activation across all their touchpoints, and they align their internal and external teams and partners to bring it to market.

So I'm going to share this case study. Last quarter, NJPS wanted to bring two new protocols out into the universe in Montclair and beyond. They had acquired an EON. They had TriBrid. They'd brought on Ballancer Pro. They had Hydrinity. And rather than hawking all of those things separately, individually, they — the innovators — combined them into a protocol, physician-guided, that is going to get to a better result, better recovery, better maintenance long term. And so that's the goal. That's what they wanted to do.

And the shaping of perception is underneath it, so they brought the Body Confidence Lab and the Facial Precision Reset to market. But before they did, intentionally as a team, internal and external, they're defining: What is the clinical positioning? Why is it different? What's the competitive advantage? Who's the candidate pool? What's the tech stack running underneath it? And how do patients work through the protocol?

And most importantly, rolling it up into a way to articulate this to patients in short-form content that can be shared on social, website, print materials, all the things, so that they understand it, realize that it's based on innovation, and that they cannot get it anywhere else.

And then it's super easy to wrap a brand around it — all the colors, all the snappy taglines, the photographic style for both the Body Confidence Lab and for the Facial Precision Reset — so that they can then articulate that, and their teams can articulate that on websites and on materials that patients take home with them, that their team uses to sell in patient education for both programs. Everything touches back to the perception that they're trying to articulate, which is this: built on innovation and solving aesthetic problems in a different way that other practices cannot. So, super fun case study to show you how that gets in play with a practice that's been around for a while.

And I want to take a little sidebar to say that it does definitely take a village to build a brand, and that brands do not develop in isolation. One of the things that I love about NJPS and other brands that I'm seeing today is that they're approaching the way that they manage their brand a little differently than the way that it has been done in the past.

There are a lot of ways that you can maintain control of your brand in your business. One of the ways that I see a lot of practices doing it is that the brand sits out here, and then they give away the entire brand to a one-stop shop, and that one-stop shop does all the things that are associated with that brand.

How Dr. D and other more innovative practices are approaching it, I think, is by using integrated teams of experts, and they keep the control of the brand central to their organization. I think that this does a number of things. Number one, it keeps that control within the company. They can hire best-of-breed specialists to work alongside their internal team to form a virtual super team, and it unifies the message across the media. We literally get together once a month. Everybody is there to build up the brand with the same goals. Everybody knows what the other party is doing. And we all play nice in the sandbox.

What I like about this is that it offers internal stewardship to the business. So it's allowing brand knowledge to accrue in the company instead of vanishing out the door if you sever the relationship with the last agency to work on it. I do think this requires a really strong internal team to run it, but I do really like that methodology.

So that was a practice that's four decades into their career, but you don't have to be that in order to shape perception. Ideally, you want to do it from day one.

So Kyra is another brand that is a co-client of Influx's and Pinpoint's. And literally, I think they actually might have opened less than four months ago. They're in a solo suite now while they are building out the actual physical big practice, which is going to open, I think, in Q2. Their website hasn't even been launched yet. This is literally at the ground floor. But this practice has invested in defining the brand before opening. And not every aesthetic practice takes the time or the resources or the investment to do this. And I think it's really important. So this is the foundation that —

Erica Crawford

Hey, we have a little surprise for you. We just launched it about five minutes ago. I wasn't sure it was going to be ready in time for this.

Tami Vileta

Oh my gosh. I can't wait.

Erica Crawford

I'll drop it in the chat, but continue. But yeah, I wasn't sure if it was going to happen or not, but here we are.

Tami Vileta

That is so great to know. All right. So you guys can all go out and see the manifestation that Influx has done with this brand, because I'm sure it is spot on.

But investing in this is so important. You could have your uncle, your niece who just went out of design school, or AI do your brand. But it's been my experience that those kinds of things might bring your brand 70% of the way there, and I think that most brands go into business wanting to be an A business, not wanting to be a C-minus business. And so this is important stuff.

And a couple of things that pay off out of this: number one, you're starting to build the perception that your vision encompasses into the business from day one. But this is the other biggest one, I think, that's so important: brand clarity can be used as a guide to build culture and onboarding. And there is nothing more important to a business as they're starting than their team. Having a really strong brand clarity set of guidelines really helps to align the right people behind you, to believe in you, and to bring that forward into the market right from the beginning.

They also have used, curiously enough, the same strategy of that external team, an integrated team, to bring their stuff to market. So I'm going to not share everything, because I didn't know that this was not in the public domain, so I blurred out some of the things that I felt were really proprietary to them until it is in the public domain.

But I just want to illustrate: they went through a really thoughtful brand strategy. Visual, but also verbal. And I think that's so important. The verbal brand, or the essence of the brand, comes out in brand pillars, and they had seven of these. So this is the set of things that make your practice different from anybody else. Nobody else can claim these things quite in this way.

They also figured out their golden circle: What do we do? How do we do it? Why does it matter? And this is tight. It is approved by the brand. They have a mission, a purpose, and a vision — and again, tight for the brand.

They have a brand story. This is the one that makes people cry and makes people really emotional, and you want to have that. You want to have the founder, the journey story, so that the people that work on your team can really relay that to people from their heart, and it's just going to grow brand love and brand affinity.

They also have gone through and defined what Kyra is and what it isn't. Those things are really important. And also: who do we attract, and really specifically who are we not for? And who are the archetypes? Who are the main avatars we're going after? And what are our core truths?

And that I can share with you. This is how Kyra differentiates and shapes perception today: they are for those who are always becoming, not for those standing still. And that is a very different thing than saying, "We're here to help build confidence and make you feel your best." This defines a very specific individual who's purpose-driven, who wants to be better today than they were yesterday, and who appreciates community and a sense of belonging and a sense of shared growth together. I mean, all the other things.

And so when agencies who are hired to do the work to bring the brand to life have that knowledge, all of a sudden it makes it so much easier to bring that to life. These are literally on press this week. But it really shares the vision of the founder and allows that brand to come to life from a very authentic place. I have no doubt Kyra will be a top 1% brand, because they have approached it with that mentality.

All right. Next question from Influx: How do you align your brand identity with your clinical excellence so you can confidently command higher fees without apologizing? Love this question. So I'm going to go back to you, Erica, and ask you: which cup would you be willing to pay more for?

Erica Crawford

This one's unfair. I know you want me to say the one that says "Have a great day," but I am famously a Starbucks hater.

Tami Vileta

So I'm setting you up here, unfortunately.

Erica Crawford

But for the sake of this, the pretty cup — and we'll just ignore the logo for my sake.

Tami Vileta

Yeah. Okay. So up here in Seattle, which is where we're from, we actually have the reverse of that. We have a lot of Starbucks evangelists, because this is the birthplace —

Erica Crawford

It's true.

Tami Vileta

— of Starbucks. You could still go to the original store in Pike Place Market. But I will say that you'd be willing probably to pay more — the general population would probably be willing to pay more — for this, because —

Erica Crawford

Yes.

Tami Vileta

— it's packaged well. And I don't mean the sleeve. I mean the brand around it.

So the brand around Starbucks promises some things, and you get that through seeing that sleeve. Number one, it's consistent. You know what you're getting. You have no idea what the heck is in this other one — poured out of some vat. It's customized to me. I can tell you that I want five shots instead of two and make it stronger. I'm in an elevated cafe environment. It's beautiful. It's not a janky gas station. I have an emotional connection here. The baristas are nice. They write me notes. There's convenience and digital rewards and premium packaging, yes. And that's going to make me more willing to spend $3.99 on this and maybe $1.20 on that.

And I want you guys to recognize that your premium packaging is essentially your clinical and experience excellence that is elevated or packaged by your brand. And that formula includes things that are very similar to what was included in the Starbucks example.

Number one, your trustworthy authority — your credentials, your mastery, your earned experience — it all matters. And is it a difference that can be seen? If I'm $14 Botox and $9 Botox is next door, there better be a proprietary approach so that this doesn't also feel like a commodity experience. I need to understand the process as a client. What are you going to do to intervene before, during, and after treatment that's going to make me more comfortable? Can I see believable proof? Are there outcomes, stellar results, great reviews that demonstrate and prove your expertise? And am I going through an experience that is felt? Is every touchpoint reinforcing things like care and intention at more value? And most importantly, is this something that I can regurgitate and repeat to my friends? This is a clear reason why this experience can't be received somewhere else, and why I'm willing to pay more.

And so I want to go ahead and bring this home with another case study. So Dr. Mark Murphy is a facial plastic surgeon who practices in Palm Beach, Florida, which is the epicenter. It's one of the most competitive markets in the country to do facial plastic surgery, not only for local clients, but for destination travel.

And as a facial plastic surgeon, I'm going to argue that Dr. Mark Murphy doesn't sell facelifts. He sells Elévolve, the lift you'll love, by Dr. Mark Murphy. And why Elévolve doesn't sell a facelift is because it packages Dr. Mark Murphy's expertise in a proprietary transformation journey from discovery to consultation through surgery, recovery, and maintenance. And when you can do that, when your excellence is evident, experienced, and wrapped in a strong brand package, the premium starts to feel justified and not apologized for.

So let's take a look at how he does this. Right off the bat, when customers come in contact with Dr. Murphy — whether that be on a landing page, on his website, on social media — he is educating about the Elévolve difference. He's talking about it. He's 30 years into a career. This is his proprietary procedure that leads to better results, and he is letting people know about it.

He's also educating with his existing patients. He's out into the communities, not only in Palm Beach, but in destination areas — pop-ups in New York and other key markets educating about Elévolve.

When that patient inches towards "Let's have a consultation," whether they're remote, in which case this is delivered digitally, or they're in person, in which case this is delivered as a piece — this is a 16-page e-book or booklet that really sets this procedure apart. Here are my credentials, here's how this procedure is different. This is what it's like to recover in Miami. It's a total benefit. This is what you do to prepare for your procedure, what the results will look like, and all the things. What is maintenance like? What is post-procedure like? And so this starts to look really packaged.

And then he goes even further. So in the lobbies, in the consultation rooms, he's got look books that also share that same credential, experience, all the things, for patients who are in their 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s. So they can start to see visual proof of what I can achieve, and how I'm going to be able to meet my goals, with other patients who were where I was at.

He brands the entire treatment planning process to Elévolve. The take-home bags are branded, even down to the pre- and post-treatment information packaged up in a bow. This is what sets a $15,000 facelift apart from a $50,000 facelift, in addition to obviously the results. But — great case study to share that.

And one other thing I just want to point out. He's actually been really innovative in using the tools that were created, because this piece, which was really a conversion piece at the point of purchase, is now being brought out, packaged really sexily, and it's in high-end country clubs, resorts, and high-end residential towers in the Palm Beach community to get new patients to come in the door. So, super innovative ways that you can transition certain tools.

All right. Next question that Influx asked is, "How do you build emotional equity with your audience to turn first-time patients into lifetime advocates and referral machines?" I love this question. And I'm going to start out by saying that these stats are not mine. I sat in on Erica's interview with Audrey Neff a couple of weeks ago — Audrey's from Aviva Aesthetics — and if this is one you have not seen, it is worth a look for sure. I learned so much from this webinar.

Why do you care as a practice about emotional equity? It's because it's literally what helps you to build actual value for your business. A lot of the KPIs that have to do with your business valuation have absolutely nothing to do with lead gen. They have more to do with the relationship that happens after that patient has walked through the door.

And so number one, if you're not measuring on these KPIs, it's really important to do it, and here are some of the targets that you should be trying to attain. New versus returning patient volume — is it plus 70%? Is your patient retention rate more than 75%? That's a healthy business in terms of private equity. Do you have a membership, number one, and if you do, are at least 35% of your eligible patients enrolled in it? And on the other side of the coin, there should be less than 20% of people actually leaving the membership annually — your churn rate should be lower than 20%. Lifetime value: are you seeing people for Juvéderm for $750, and that's their lifetime value? Or is it building to the target, which is plus $6,000? So many different things have to do with the emotional relationship after the lead comes through the door.

And so I think there's this paradox out there. I call it the acquisition-loyalty paradox. Marketing dollars in this industry overfund the chase, and they underfund the relationship, even when the relationship produces the greatest long-term value for their businesses. So practices invest really aggressively in getting patients through the door, and they spend a pittance on giving them reasons to come back, return, deepen the relationship, and advocate for the brand.

And yes, you have to have lead gen in order to have that first transaction. You won't have a business unless you have first transactions. But it's actually brand consistency, patient experience, and continued relevance that create the lifetime value.

And there are some really compelling stats that also support this. So, 5% — I think many of you have seen this one, but it's always good to reiterate — a 5% increase in customer retention will shoot your profits through the roof. And this is a great one: existing patients are way more likely to buy new treatments or to upgrade their plan compared to new patients. I love the third one: 92% of customers trust recommendations from people they know above all other forms of advertising. So do you own your patient's network? And a lot of other great things. I mean, 63% of customers prefer buying new products from brands they already know. So if you're bringing on new service lines, if you're bringing on new laser treatments or whatever you're bringing on, your internal customers are going to be more likely to buy from you than somebody else.

And so that trust blueprint actually has six business outcomes, not just one. Yes, you have to convert. You have to win the decision. And at Pinpoint, we look at winning the decision as: have we helped to create a practice that they can't compare to somebody else? But then you better also be paying attention to the other five. The second visit is so critical — are you giving them a reason to come back, to return? And then are you keeping them? Are you winning the actual relationship? Are you keeping that repeat business alive so that it segues into loyalty? And then are those people referring? Do you win their network? Are you creating advocates who grow the practice? And are you actually growing the share of wallet? Are you increasing patient lifetime value over time? All of this rolls up into creating stronger brand value. So are you increasing a long-term practice that is going to be worth more every single year?

So those are the outcomes. And so if those other five things are super important, and on the other side of lead gen, what things build emotional equity and brand investment?

And I threw this quote up here because for me, this resonates: "Understand me, make a difference in my life, surprise me often, give me more than I paid for, and show me you love me." I mean, if a brand can do this for me — and there are probably only four or five in the universe that do — they have me. They have absolutely gotten me.

But what I realized from this quote is that those brands understand my journey. They know what it's like for me to experience that brand. And so I think what that tells practices is that you have to map your patient journey through your patient's eyes. And you've got to note, it begins long before someone actually schedules, and it continues long after the treatment is complete. And double note: every interaction is able to reinforce your brand promise and grow emotional equity, or it's going to start to quietly weaken it.

So I have an AI assistant, and her name is Palmer — that's what I call her. But I asked Palmer to do a fun little exercise for me this week. I asked Palmer to go ahead and map me the patient journey in an aesthetic practice and show me all the touchpoints. And I do not want to show you these next slides to raise your blood pressure, and I'm happy to share them with you.

I think what you can take away from this is that there are touchpoints that matter more, number one, and then in your practice, there are probably touchpoints that you're really already good at. And then there are some that might need to have some work. But I do want you to see what was spit out, because it's pretty amazing.

It starts with awareness and first exposure, and it goes all the way through the inquiry and decision stage. And then they're ready to schedule an appointment and to prepare for that and to travel and arrive. And what does that first physical impression feel like? And then they check in, they're waiting, they're transitioned from reception to clinical, and they start to go into that clinical room, that consultation room. What are all those experiences and touchpoints like? They might be hauled off to photography and imaging, and then they come back for treatment planning and conversion, and then they have pre-treatment preparation, and then on the day of treatment, they arrive. What does that feel like? What are the actual non-surgical and surgical experience touchpoints? What do they feel like? And what happens to them immediately post-procedure and at checkout and at payment?

And then, so important, what happens 24 to 72 hours after their procedure? And what about follow-up appointments? And what if they have a complication or a concern? What happens when they are in that phase of ongoing results and maintenance? And then now I'm the patient, so you're marketing to me — what does that experience feel like? And do you have a membership and loyalty experience, and what are the touchpoints there? And how about referral and advocacy, and your whole product and retail experience? And then do you do events and community experiences? And now I'm a patient, and I'm going through life transitions, as we all do, or special circumstances. What does it feel like to leave or pause or end the relationship, especially in a membership? And then there's this slew of intangible, invisible, operational things that patients still feel, and your sensory brand, your language, your verbal cues, and also your referral partners and physician networks — how does that handoff feel?

What I want you to get from this is there's a lot that goes into your patient experience. And I think it's really important for practices to cherry-pick the places where they feel they're weak, where they can improve, and ask themselves: is this the best it can be? Does it look, sound, and feel like us? Does it reflect what we promised? Does it serve the people we're built to serve? All the things, right? These are really important questions to ask. Does it strengthen trust, confidence, and belonging? And does it make me look different? Does this experience seem unique if my logo were not on the page? Every touchpoint builds upon the one before it, with an aim to drive the outcome of convert, return, keep, refer, grow, and build my brand value.

And so I showed you that not to, again, raise blood pressure, but to show you, number one, this stuff doesn't happen overnight, right? This is a continual work in progress. And also to share another case study to show you how a practice is achieving making a difference at some of those touchpoints along the way.

This is a practice that we've only been working with for about four months, and they're in Canada. I love this practice. They have things so buttoned down. It's a beautiful brand. It's a brother-sister team of providers. They are amazing providers. And the practice is exquisite, very sophisticated.

And so they are literally going through those touchpoint journeys right now with an aim of: how do we build more emotional value, number one, and how do we build more business value? And so the low-lying fruit for them was, we have a lot of patients coming in and they're doing one-off treatments, and we want to segue them into more longer-term treatment plans, things that are going to achieve more results for them based on their goals. So this is an easy touchpoint to address. Let's go ahead and wrap it up in the brand, make it very clinically sound, make it sound like the sophisticated brand that they are.

And then every patient should also walk home with a skin regimen, right? Because again, this is going to do a couple of things: strengthen the relationship, improve patient satisfaction, hopefully improve advocacy, but also some business value — residual income, long-term income, more share of wallet.

And then they're literally like, check, check. Those two things have been done, and so now let's go to the next things, right? And so one of the things they do is aftercare instructions and considerations. And they've done these in Canva as a practice, and they're great tools. But can they be better, right? Are there things we could tweak about these? And yes. Off-brand photography. This is dated. It doesn't match the sophistication of the practice or show the natural results they achieve. Off-brand fonts. Just little things.

But also some really great business goals. So let's go ahead and zhuzh this up, make it look a little bit more sexy. But these patients are now achieving a result. And so this is a perfect opportunity to segue into the fact that you have a referral program and the incentives for that. It is also a great place to take advantage of the fact that you want this relationship to continue. Now, whether these are discounts or whether these are bundled up or whether they are gifts — how about come in and have your next appointment in the next 30 days? Schedule something with our aesthetician to get a skincare product and learn about our memberships.

And then that causes a chain reaction, because now we've brought up memberships. And are our memberships the best they can be? Is this communicating, number one, our brand and the value of the membership? And again, some of the same things — little things that are out of whack, like off-brand photography, maybe not as consistent on the fonts and stuff like that. But let's make this sexier. Let's make this harder-hitting. Let's clarify the message and make this tool the best it can be.

And literally, they're going through the touchpoints to improve every single thing with the aim of getting that patient to segue into a more long-term relationship and to also achieve some of those business goals.

All right, so here is the fourth and final question that Influx has asked us. How do you audit and align your digital presence, clinical environment, and team communication to deliver a seamless high-end brand experience? And I love this question. And I'm going to start it out with the game of telephone.

So if you guys did not grow up in the '70s, you might not have played this game, but I'm going to explain how it works. So literally, they would line the 15 girls up at the birthday party, and the mom would tell the first girl in the line a phrase, and that little girl would have the opportunity only once — she had one chance to tell that phrase to the next person. And then it would literally go on down the line until it got to the last girl in the line. And that last girl would have to repeat that phrase out loud. And it was absolutely always a hot mess, because what started as "Birthday cake tastes better with sprinkles" ended up being "Birdie Jake makes sweaters with chickens."

And this is in play in your practice. The telephone effect creates chaos. When brand knowledge lives in people instead of systems, every single handoff is going to change the message.

Number one, turnover in your practice literally walks institutional knowledge out the door. So if you have one or two brand keepers in your practice and they leave, you're up a creek, right?

And then informal training turns brand strategy into interpretation. You all train on your devices, on the consultation and sales process. You have got to train on your brand. Otherwise, patients are going to hear different answers from different people. I hear this all the time in practices.

And make no doubt, every retelling without the guardrails built around it is going to edit, omit, or add something that you definitely do not want to your brand. Things like value propositions start to become vague. Differentiators are kind of diluted down to generic claims because they're easier to retrieve. Your marketing promises and your patient experience start to drift apart, and this all starts to weaken trust.

And so the antidote to chaos is to document your brand, teach your brand, deliver your brand, audit your brand often, and refine it.

And that's going to bring me to this next slide, which is: the biggest misconception about branding is that it is something you do once, rather than a discipline you commit to over time.

I'm going to illustrate that with this. So here's Apple's marketing 30 years ago — built to the core from the very beginning on the fact that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and also that they think differently than anybody else. Here is how Apple innovates the idea of simplicity and thinking differently today. It's still built on that same foundation, but it has been refined to be relevant in this decade. And if they hadn't done that, Apple wouldn't look like it does today.

And so I want to bring this to life with a case study, my last one, and this is a client that we work with who is based in Idaho. They have three locations, and I respect this practice so much because they are constantly working on their brand to refine it and to just bring it into relevancy all the time. The proprietor is very high up in the Allergan training program, and they just are so buttoned down.

About, I think, four years ago — three years ago — they renovated their practices. And what that caused... You have to realize that sometimes when you make a change over here with your brand, it causes a domino effect, and it makes you have to also elevate other things. And so when they remodeled their practices, they realized that the way that they presented themselves digitally online didn't match the sophistication of that new look, that new feel.

And so they went through a visual rebrand positioning — so just tweaking a few things. This was not a heavy lift, but modifying the logo, the color palette just a little bit, just making those colors just a little bit more adult, sophisticated, high-end. They totally redid — they zhuzhed up — their texture palettes to match what was going on in the practices. And they also refined their photographic style so that they were calling out to the more sophisticated audiences and affluent audiences that they were seeing in their practices. Rolling that up into brand books, little brand cards, a brand book, and then giving it to all the partners, has really allowed this practice to now go ahead and redesign the website so that it matches the look and feel of what's in the actual practices.

So then go ahead and fast-forward six months after that, and they're still evolving. They brought Terri Ross's team in to go ahead and do a whole consultation process overhaul, team training, sales training, and this completely changed the way that they looked at selling services in the practice, which was great, and it made a big difference. But it also caused a domino effect, because now there are new tools that need to be created, and they need to be created in the context of how the new practice looks, how the website looks.

And now every patient needs to walk out the door having filled out a cosmetic interest questionnaire. They need to leave with a treatment plan for both the body and the face, and they should walk out the door with a skin regimen. And we better also try to grow share of wallet and make sure that they know all the things that we do, so that we are not losing laser hair removal because we're just doing Botox right now. And package it all up in a bow so that it feels much more luxurious, higher-end, sophisticated. I can charge more for my services.

So then go ahead and fast-forward another six months, because after the training with Terri, it identified the fact that it would be a good idea to upgrade their EMR and to transition that EMR, and so they moved to Zenoti to provide a better patient experience. And what that allowed them to do was to alter or refurbish their membership program.

This practice had been built on memberships from the very beginning — super smart — but they'd noticed that their membership was not doing one important thing, and that was growing share of wallet for them. And Zenoti distributes points. Points, let me tell you, because I belong to Atmos and a couple of other points-based programs, are incredibly motivating. They make you want to move up tiers. They make you want to try new things.

And so here we have the new practices, the beautiful practices, the better website, the better team, talking within the same language context, and now let's revitalize our membership. And let's make sure it all matches. Let's make sure the value proposition talks in our voice. Let's make sure we arm our teams with tools that are going to help them to sell and explain the membership and show the value, and then let's launch it so that everybody knows about it. It's in email marketing. It's up on our lobby loops. It's in static signage. It's on social media. And oh, by the way, when you join, we're going to show you we love you with a gift.

So just a really great way of showing how a practice is aligning all of those things and continually evolving to make their practice better and better.

Okay, so I know I threw a lot at you today, but I'm going to try to boil it down into five simple things that you can think about.

Number one, don't leave the perception of your brand to chance. You've got to shape it and you've got to reinforce it.

Number two, define your points of distinction and literally bake them into your brand, your team, and your partners.

You want to wrap your earned experience, excellence, all the things, within the package of your brand to position it as something that is unduplicatable and is worth more.

You want to pay attention to that complete patient journey that patients take through your practice, with an eye towards building emotional equity and long-term practice value at every single touchpoint.

And do strive to combat the chaos, codify your brand, and train your brand, so you can continue to refine its meaning and evolve into a better and better version of yourself, staying relevant into the future.

So that is all from me today. I want to thank you so much for your time. That is my cell number, my email address — personal email address — and also our website QR code. And again, we are here to help aesthetic practices become more valuable businesses, bottom line, with a number of things that we do. All right?

Erica Crawford

Thank you so much, Tami. That was excellent. So much amazing information.

I put this in the chat, but we will email — just give us a couple of days to get everything transcribed — we will email you a recording of this webinar if you want to share it, if you want to look at it again later, or if you're looking at any of the slides. We will send that to everybody here.

But now, let's get into the Q&A a little bit. And feel free, if you haven't put a question in, now's the time. Go ahead and put any questions that you might have in either the chat or the Q&A. I will get to them.

So one of those — this was much earlier on, this was towards the beginning, or about 10, 15 minutes into your talk, Tami. Can you elaborate on the diagram? This was a marketing diagram. Are you advocating for practices to bring marketing in-house?

Tami Vileta

So I think you have to answer that question, number one: do you have a strong team? Not marketing in-house per se, but the ownership of your brand. So you have to have people on your team that are central to the brand and understand it and know what it's trying to accomplish. That I advocate for.

And hiring specialists, I think, is a way smarter kind of way to do business than to hire generalists. Obviously, in your business too, right? Everybody says attach yourself to some key things that you are really good at and hang your hat there, rather than trying to be everything to everybody. So yes, I do love that model. It can be maybe a little harder to manage and maybe a little more expensive at times, but I really love the model for all the reasons I mentioned.

Erica Crawford

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that some people — you're going to utilize marketing companies like ourselves, branding companies like Pinpoint. You're going to utilize all the resources, but at the end of the day, you have to have somebody in-house who's responsible for all of that, right? Somebody who's even maintaining those relationships with Influx, with Pinpoint, with Terri Ross, with whoever you end up hiring to help you, who are specialists in the area.

It is important that you have one person who owns it. Owns your brand, owns your marketing, does things in-house, gathers the assets needed — because I can tell you, on the industry side, we always need photos and videos and before-and-afters and testimonials, and Tami needs all those things too. Make sure that they're responsible for gathering all those assets to communicate to us. And that is honestly really important, to have that person in-house who really is responsible internally.

Tami Vileta

Yeah. And also not only responsible, but making sure that these entities are not working in silos. So one of the —

Erica Crawford

Yes.

Tami Vileta

— imperatives is bringing your teams together. And that may not be every month, right? Realistically, it could be bi-monthly, it could be quarterly. But you guys all have to have a shared set of goals that you're working towards.

And how many times have we been on those NJPS calls in the monthly schedule where one side's specialist is bringing up something that another specialist can use, and we're kind of playing together to elevate the goal, the end goal, which is to generate more business and more brand value for NJPS. So not working in silos is really important.

Erica Crawford

Absolutely. Another question here. So what's something that a practice might think looks premium, but actually cheapens a brand?

Tami Vileta

Huh. Okay. There are so many answers to that question.

Erica Crawford

Mm-hmm. Something that's just — think of maybe commonly used, that you find out there on a bunch of websites.

Tami Vileta

Yeah. I mean, outdated photography for sure. On our team, we have one of our team members, Jessica — she has an eagle eye for photography. And so some of the things that are going to date you, like bangly earrings or things that are going to go out of date, clothing. So really trying to make intentional decisions so that you can keep that for a while, right? You don't have to reinvent it every year. So fads, things like that, can cheapen a brand look. If you're going towards uber trends that you know are going to be out of favor maybe six months down the line, I think that that's something that you could really look for.

I also think overused phrases, right? Again, this goes back to really figuring out who you are and saying it in a slightly different way. And I've always said, if you can just be 10% different, you can claim and own a space. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to be able to say it to somebody in a way that they haven't heard before, that doesn't sound like the practice down the street.

So those are two big areas where I think brands can really help themselves to not be pigeonholed to be like the guy next door, and to also sustain themselves so that they don't have to revisit things every couple of months.

Erica Crawford

I agree. I love that. And what's it like working with you and Pinpoint? What is engagement like? What's it like to go through the branding process?

Tami Vileta

Yeah. So if a practice is going to go through a branding process, one of the things that they need to know is that it takes time. This is not something that we type into ChatGPT and then it comes out the other end of the funnel 15 minutes later.

Our branding process starts with a two-hour discovery. And it literally is — we have a set of 50 questions. They are very poignant. And oftentimes, the best brand interviews make people cry. That's the end goal: we kind of want to have that emotion, right? We want to have that connection.

So this is a two-hour interview, and then once that interview happens, you still have homework to do. There's about a week's worth of homework that we have you go out and gather. It's not crazy, but it really helps us to get closer to that pinpoint result that you're wanting. And then from that point, once the homework comes back, our process is about six to eight weeks.

I think the important thing — the thing that we get asked a lot in calls when clients are either wanting to do a brand because they're emerging, they're brand new, or they're going through a rebrand — is, "Well, I'll go ahead and do rebranding with you or branding with you, and then I'll engage my web team." We really like to have the web team start almost the same time we do. As you know, and you can probably speak to this, you have about six weeks of activity that you need to do that doesn't depend on creative.

Erica Crawford

Right.

Tami Vileta

And so we can both be doing the things that are really important to us and to the client in tandem. And then our process is done right about the same time that your team is ready to receive it.

Erica Crawford

Yeah, I agree. You should always hire your branding company alongside your marketing company, if it's resulting in also building a new website — which you would be doing if you were going through an entire rebrand.

Tami Vileta

Yeah.

Erica Crawford

Okay, perfect. I think we're out of time here, but thank you so much, Tami. This has been amazing. Once again, we'll be sending this out to everybody, but thank you so much for joining us.

Tami Vileta

Really appreciate it. Thank you for your time, everyone.