00:00:04:06 – 00:00:31:07
Paige Hamilton
You’re listening to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast where our expert consulting team steps behind the mic to share some of the strategies and solutions we implement for aesthetic practices nationwide. With decades of combined experience of running and coaching aesthetic and medical practices. We bring you the guidance that strengthens operations, elevates profitability, and supports long term growth. This is where solutions begin.
00:00:31:09 – 00:01:05:11
Paige Hamilton
All right. Welcome back to another episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. My name is Paige Hamilton. I will be your host for today. I am the marketing and advertising manager here at Shorr Solutions. And today’s episode, we are going to be talking about your marketing agencies and how you should be leading them and being involved. So today, I am joined by Ana Suarez, who is one of our partners and she is also our Director of Client Development. So welcome to the podcast, Ana.
00:01:05:13 – 00:01:11:03
Ana Suarez
Thank you face. I’m so happy to be back and happy to be here with everyone. Thank you so much.
00:01:11:05 – 00:02:10:15
Paige Hamilton
Yes. So today’s conversation, as I said, is going to be about marketing agencies to both Ana and I, are very heavily involved with the marketing, with our clients and internally as well. So many practices will hire a marketing agency and kind of think that their marketing is handled. But we like to advise all of our clients that being involved and actually leading your agency will produce much better results for your business. So it’s not just something that you can pass off and then kind of forget about. today we’re unpacking what the leadership will actually look like for you. first we want to start off by saying you need to have goals in place. And step one is not hiring an agency. It’s defining where you want to go. So Ana, I’m going to pass it to you. can you talk a little bit more about what kind of goals that they should have before looking into a marketing agency?
00:02:10:17 – 00:04:30:07
Ana Suarez
Yes. And I’m so glad that you’re bringing this up, Paige, because we’ve had a lot of clients. Ask us this question, and and now that we’re starting a new year, I think that will be a great thing to do. We have a plan in place for, like, a better idea of some things that we can do, where we’re managing the marketing agency or even if you have like an internal, small marketing team. there has to be, some type of plan and goals. And usually they, they would align to your business goals for the year. So for instance, if you’re trying to promote a specific new, procedure that you’re offering now at the practice, or maybe you have noticed that, there’s a high demand for one of your, treatments and services, then making sure that the marketing efforts reflect that. And so maybe, doing a little bit more of, a campaign or maybe some paid ads, whatever it may be, to make sure that you are promoting that service And just making sure that there’s the plan is cohesive with your overall business goals. And the reason that that’s important is because if you don’t know, as a business owner, as a practice, manager or administrator, if you don’t know, what are the goals the business goals for that quarter or for that year, it’s going to be impossible for your agency or your marketing team to to get what those are. And so that’s why it’s so important that, at the beginning of the year or on a quarterly basis, just sitting down and reviewing some of the metrics, some of the information and deciding, okay, this is our goal as a business, we want to increase, sales by 20% for these three procedures. And so that that will be the goal as the business. But then communicating that to your marketing agency or your marketing team so that they can put initiatives and efforts in place to be able to obtain or at least do the best that they can to reach that goal is important. like I said, it could be a percentage. It could be, promoting a new service. It could be if you have a new provider that you want your community to be aware of, that now you have, let’s say, like a female provider in your practice. Whereas before you didn’t used to have her then making sure that that’s very clear so that your marketing teams can execute towards those goals.
00:04:30:12 – 00:06:45:22
Paige Hamilton
I would also say with that, have long term goals and then also have short term goals. So Ana just mentioned, if you have a new provider that might be a more short term goal. If you wanted them to have full schedule right away, or, you know, maybe you have a monthly promotion, that also might be a short term goal. Increase the volume for that one procedure that you’re doing for that month, but then also have long term goals if you want to increase your leads from last year by a certain percentage or something along those lines as well. So that way you have two sets of goals to be able to measure. And I think now, as Ana mentioned, that it’s the beginning of the year. Now is a good time to look at how you did in 2025 and then set your year long goals for 2026 and then so that’s an easy comparison to compare how you did last year and where you want to go. So the next thing that I want to jump into is I had mentioned at the beginning of this episode, hiring versus, we want you to lead the agency. So I want to talk about what that actually means. simply hiring means you’re going to be passing off your marketing to someone. Maybe you’ve given them your goals and you kind of just want them to execute them. But your involvement as a practice may be very minimal. Whereas leading, we want you to have a hands on approach. Agencies will have a lot of resources and a lot of expertise that you can be able to use, and if you aren’t utilizing them, they might not be using them. So you kind of have to look into what are all their services, what can they offer you, because they might just try and do the bare minimum with your account. If you’re not very hands on and asking them, well, can we do this? Can we improve on this? And then you can utilize those resources to get to where you want to go with your goals. So on a, I want you to talk about how the line of responsibility may get blurred, where a practice may think, oh, well, this should be handled by the marketing agency versus where the agency might say, well, we’re not going to do it if they haven’t asked for it. So can we talk about who should be in charge of what?
00:06:46:00 – 00:08:55:13
Ana Suarez
you know, once you hire the marketing agency, it’s almost like when you hire a new employee. Yes, they’re they’re they’re going to, work on what it is that, that they know that they have to do that is part of their job responsibilities. But you still have to be involved and you still have to manage and lead them, towards the direction that you want to go to. So based on my experience, usually what happens is that when a practice hires a marketing agency or they have a marketing team, they just leave them by themselves, and there’s not a lot of communication or guidance as far as, like what it is that, you know, everybody’s trying to achieve. And so that’s that’s something that definitely needs to change or something that you have to be aware of that just because you have a marketing agency, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to have all of the answers and that they’re going to know exactly what to do, all the time. instead of just assuming that they’re just going to go do what they have always done and that they don’t have any questions or that whatever it is that they’re doing, they should know because they are the experts. And while it is true that they are the experts in their doing the best that they can, you should still be involved as either the practice owner or the practice administrator practice manager. Be involved in letting them know this are our goal. This is what we want to obtain, for these for this quarter, for this year. And how can you help us get there? And then that’s when they will come in and they’ll let you know. Well, you know, we could do a couple of different things. I know we’ve already been doing, SEO for your website and we’ve been doing social media, but how about doing paid ads and, you know, then they’ll have the opportunity to walk you through the process of the ad campaigns and, the prices, what you can expect, how soon can you see the results. So once you have communicated what you what you want to obtain for your business and long term, then they can come in and help you and provide you some solutions. Whereas if you don’t let them know and you just kind of like just let them keep doing what they have been doing, there’s no way to track how, you know, how are things going? Is their their progress happening? How has you know, how’s everything moving?
00:08:55:15 – 00:10:02:12
Paige Hamilton
And don’t feel like you have to have a marketing degree to be able to collaborate with the marketing company. So even though you’re not a marketing expert, even just knowing your goals and where you want to go and then knowing the basics of how your performance is going, and we’ll talk about the analytics a little bit later in this episode. But as long as you have a little bit of a foundation and know the basics, you’re able to lead. And we’ve had a lot of trainings recently where we are teaching practice administrators and practice owners a little bit about, you know, what they can expect and how they can help guide, their marketing, even if they’re doing it themselves or if they’re hiring an agency. So that is something else that you can also keep in mind is, you know, maybe if you aren’t comfortable managing the agency yourself, you could look into sure solutions and our consulting and coaching and we can help with your marketing company and the direction that you want to head in with them as well.
00:10:02:13 – 00:11:39:14
Ana Suarez
Yes. And that’s a great point. Paige because we can certainly help, to have those conversations with your marketing agency or maybe your marketing team and just give them that guidance and direction that they need. With that said, it’s super important to have constant communication with your marketing agency, and that’s something else that we see all the time where, the practice owner or the practice administrator, they don’t really make time for it. And so they don’t they don’t know what is going on. They don’t know if the team has questions. So it’s crucial to have at least monthly meeting with your marketing agency or again, your internal marketing team and see where things are at. And as you probably know, there’s different efforts, different marketing activities that can be done could be anything and everything from social media to paid ads, your SEO efforts for your website. Or it could just even be maybe you’re putting on an event And as Paige mentioned, if there’s things that you don’t know you don’t understand about marketing, that is actually your opportunity to ask the questions and to get to know more details. And even though you’re not going to be implementing the work and doing the work day in and day out, you still have to have an idea of what it is that you know that is happening with the teams, what it is that they’re doing, if they have any, questions, if they’re struggling with anything specifically, that’s still your job, because, as you know, their client or, the leader, you have to make sure that you know what’s going on, and then you can guide them in the right direction, at all times to make sure that you have, successful results.
00:11:39:19 – 00:11:56:01
Paige Hamilton
And can we talk about a few of the questions that practices should be asking their marketing agency every month. what are your analytics. What are your metrics. Who’s converting. What other questions should they be asking What should be the topics that they’re covering every month?
00:11:56:03 – 00:14:39:08
Ana Suarez
Yes. So there’s a couple of things that could be asked. Again, having those recurring meetings is helpful because, marketing has a lot of things, like many areas that it covers a lot of areas. Right. So for instance, for your SEO, which is a search engine optimization, the efforts that they’re doing to optimize your website and to make sure that, when someone goes to Google or any other search engine and they typing, the name of one of their procedures You want to make sure that your practice comes up within the first page of Google. Because otherwise it really won’t be found. Like most people, they just look at that first page and they don’t really take the time to go to page 2 or 3. So if that’s where you’re ranking right now, that’s a really bad position to be in. You always have to make sure you like on that first page, within the search engine. In this case, you know, I see example Google. Right? So for instance, for that specific, initiative, you want to ask them, well, how many new visitors are we getting to a website? On a monthly basis? And how long are they staying on the website? Because if they, if they leave right away, like, let’s say someone go through a website and they’re only there for like five seconds, it means that whatever it is that they were looking for, they were not able to find it on your website. And so you want to try to find out what why is that? You know, is it because of the content that you have on the website or you know, how they have titled a specific procedure that is makes it confusing for people, and then they think that they’re going to go to the website and find information about that procedure. But in reality, it was another type of procedure. Right. So you want to know the new visitors, you want to know how long you’re staying on the website. You want to know which are the most popular, web pages that they’re looking at. Are they reading a lot about, let’s say maybe like a facelift or and maybe like, the fillers are they are most of your visitors going to those pages? Because that tells you those are the procedures that they’re pretty interested on. And so they want to learn more about them. And so maybe now in your other marketing efforts, you can put more information about those specific treatments, the specific services that you’re offering. Right. So there’s always metrics you can take a look at and you can ask them about to make sure that everything is moving forward or if something’s not working, how can we improve it? How can we, do it differently. But just having that conversation is is very helpful because you can ask those questions as you go and then you’re learning. And also you’re able to answer the questions that they have as well. So Paige, are there any other metrics that our audience should take a look at and should consider asking their marketing agencies or their teams just to know where things are at and how they could be improved.
00:14:39:10 – 00:18:11:14
Paige Hamilton
Of course. So I feel like your first instinct may be to think I need to check my likes. I need to check shares comments and this would be for social media. So those we like to call more of like the vanity metrics. So those are things that will tell you your post if they’re organic post or if they’re paid ad how they are performing. And if you get more likes, you’ll get more reach. But that’s not as important as knowing the quality of the leads that are coming in. And then how many are actually converting. So as Ana mentioned, you know, maybe you’re getting a lot of traffic to your fillers. Maybe that’s coming from a post on social media where they can click right there. I’m interested. It takes them to the filler page on your website, and then from there you want to know. So they came from social media. You’ll be able to track that as an analytics. So that’s important. Where are they coming from from your website. And then the next would be how they converted. So if they were on social media and then now they have a consult. So that’s important because maybe 5000 people liked your photo, but only five people actually converted from the ad. So you would have to then look at what is this successful? Or is this not were the quality of the people who were coming in for consults, were they ready to book? Were they ready to get the procedure done that same day, or did they end up canceling? So then something else would be from consult to treatment booked, and then even looking at your revenue per, person coming in, how much did it cost for you to acquire that lead and then how much revenue are they bringing in. So that would be like lead quality and then them converting. And then you also want to take a look at channel performance. And that’s kind of what I was mentioning with social media. So rather than asking did your social media grow. How many likes did you get asked what channel influenced the most consultations? Where are people coming from? If most of your people are coming from videos that you’re posting on TikTok, you don’t spend as much time on your Facebook or Instagram ad. Put more effort into TikTok and vice versa. If it’s more coming from Facebook and you realize that, well, then maybe your audience is more on Facebook and they’re not going to be on TikTok. So that’s something that’s very important. And then also, what other channels have assisted, did people find you on everything? And then they decided to Google you. So you have to basically ask all of these questions and figure out what’s working and then why it’s working. And if it’s not working, what can you change? What other things can you look at? Maybe month to month So an example could be maybe your filler page is your most popular page. That’s where everyone on your website goes. Then maybe for a few months it takes a dip and nobody’s visiting it. Now you need to figure out why are you not running ads anymore? It did the page go down for a certain amount of time? Did something like you change the wording on it and now it’s not ranking on Google? There should be always an explanation. And then you need to figure out what can you change to go back to making it your top page. So then that’s what you need to change. If it’s not working and then just is it helping you achieve your goals? Because the answer should be yes. And that’s what I said about making sure you’re on the right channel, sending the right ads and everything like that,
00:18:11:16 – 00:20:00:18
Ana Suarez
Yes, those those are, great pieces of advice. Just kind of reminding yourself that you don’t you don’t have to know everything about marketing and the KPIs, but it is your job to always communicate. because as you’re learning about marketing, they’re also learning more about your practice in, you know, how are you different from the competition and what is your vision? What is your mission? What is your branding like? Because that’s also important, right? You know, you want to make sure that you’re having a consistent look and feel throughout all of the different marketing channels from your social media to your e-newsletter to your website, or even if you have an in office event, you want to make sure that it’s always the same colors, the same fonts, because you want to make sure that everything is, cohesive in that builds trust, because then everybody, every time they see your name come up and they see your logo, they know it’s you. They know what you stand for. They know your values, your mission. So everything, everything has a place, an important part. and then also observing. Are they providing suggestions? Are they being resourceful? Do they know what they’re talking about? They know about the latest trends in how could they be applied to your practice? Just by observing how they respond to questions, your inquiries, it will tell you a lot and it will let you know. Will I have the right team? I have the right agency, or maybe not. Or maybe we have to supplement and get, let’s say, like another vendor or maybe another freelancer or someone in-house to help me oversee these efforts as well. We do have for many of our clients, just having those conversations with the agencies, following up on the metrics, asking the questions, communicating the goals.
00:20:00:20 – 00:20:41:01
Paige Hamilton
So just remember we can help you with that. So if you’d like to reach out to us and schedule a free consult, we’ll be happy to talk to you and see how we can help you in your practice. And thank you to honor for being a wonderful guest on this episode of the podcast. We will see you in the next episode. And thank you for joining us on Sure Solutions. The podcast. Before you go. New episodes are released every two weeks, offering perspective on the decisions, systems and leadership behind well-run practices for continued insight between episodes. Follow us on social media. At Shorr Solutions, this is Shorr Solutions: The Podcast.
