By: Christin Trujillo

Summer is just around the corner and, if you’ve ever lived through a summer in the medical spa industry, you already know that those months are a little challenging for the business. In general, we typically see a reduction in patient appointments and revenue and an increase in cancellations. All of these things combined seem to create the perfect storm for a business lull.

As a matter of fact, in 2023, “almost a third, or 32.8%, of all U.S. households took a vacation between May and August, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Monday. That was up from 28.5% in August 2022 and a record high in data going back to 2015”, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “SCE Household Spending Survey”.  

If you are already thinking ahead and wondering what you can do to keep your medspa profitable in the summer you might want to consider these approaches to implement now.

1) Rebook Patients

If you’re not following best practice by rebooking patients who are visiting your practice right now, you absolutely need to start. Rebooking patients means that each time your patient visits your practice, your providers or front desk is rebooking the patient’s next appointment prior to them leaving their appointment. This approach is critical in creating predictability in revenue within your practice and is also essential to keeping your schedule full throughout the year. The best time to start rebooking patients is yesterday, but the second best time to start rebooking patients is today. Rebooking patients now, in the spring months, can help ensure your schedule stays full during months that are typically less full i.e. summer months.

When rebooking your patients, it’s helpful to ask them if they have any summer vacations planned and remind them that it’s best to get treatment 2-3 weeks prior to a big event or trip. Working with your patients now to coordinate their next visit helps them plan their treatments accordingly, reduces future scheduling work for your staff around managing appointments, and ensures your schedule is full before the month even begins saving potential marketing costs.

2) Plan for Additional Marketing Spend, Promos, or Events

When you are anticipating a drop in business due to seasonality, it’s best to partner with your marketing team in advance to ensure you’re investing in the right places and even strategize additional spending prior to the months ahead. Another approach is planning specific promos that generate existing patient appointments and attract new patients to the practice.

You may want to consider doing an open house or hosting a summer block party that attracts new and existing patients to the practice. These parties can help generate a lot of revenue or cash if you run sales on packages, prepaid, or gift cards. As always, it’s key to assess profit margins before doing deep discounts, but planning for package sales and promos can be a big traffic driver.

3) Implement a Cancelation Policy

If you don’t already have a clearly communicated and defined cancelation policy, this can be one approach to implement that deters patients from doing last-minute cancellations. While it’s not always foolproof, it can certainly alleviate the stress of a lot of cancellations without the opportunity to replace the appointment. A good best practice is to always keep a card on file at the time the appointment is booked and ensure your patients are communicated with during and prior to the appointment as well as at the time of a booking to minimize any issues. If you don’t have appointment reminders sending out confirmations via text a week and two days before appointments, now is a great time to start.  

4) Plan for Employee Time Off

Lastly, a good strategy to save yourself profits during times when the business is slower is to plan ahead for employee time off and vacations. When providers take time off, or paid time off, as a practice owner you are taking on the expense of their payroll while also losing out on missed opportunity revenue. Because providers are not producing when they are not in the business, this can impact revenue significantly if your providers take time off during peak or busy times. If you know that you are typically slow in July, go ahead and communicate with your team now to ensure providers and staff are staggering time off so they can be back producing when the business has an uptick in patient traffic.

If you know your business is subject to summertime lulls, and you want more help planning for profitability, click this link to book a time with someone on our team who can help!

‍