When it comes to generating new patient leads for your med spa, it pays to take a multi-pronged approach. Doing Meta (particularly Instagram) ads and Google Maps local SEO are musts to get the word out to potential clients in your geographic area. In addition, you should be active on organic social media, posting relevant and understandable content and interacting with followers to increase engagement and drive appointment booking. But there is another strategy that you may be overlooking: marketing through hyperlocal influencers.
What is a hyperlocal influencer?
You are probably familiar with social media influencers and when you think about them, you might picture someone like Taylor Swift or one of the Kardashians with their millions of followers. However, there are many different levels of influencer and for a business that serves a pretty limited geographic area, engaging a major influencer would be a giant expense, with most of that money wasted.
For general businesses, the most cost-effective influencers tend to be what is called a micro-influencer, defined as someone who has between 10,000 and 50,000 followers. However, even this level of influencer is usually too big (read: expensive) for a med spa to get a great ROI. Hyperlocal influencers have fewer than 10,000 followers, and those followers are concentrated in a specific geographic area like a town, neighborhood or city district. They post local-focused content such as restaurant or entertainment reviews, shopping/fashion or wellness/beauty/fitness for residents of that particular neighborhood or area.
What kind of hyperlocal influencer should you seek?
Look for hyperlocal influencers in the wellness, beauty or fitness space that don’t compete with your offerings. For example, if your med spa offers body contouring services, you might want to partner with a functional medicine, biohacking or nutritionist influencer. Their followers are already interested in body wellness and may even be losing weight and wanting to take the next step to get rid of stubborn fat or address loose skin. They also trust the opinion of the influencer they follow and would therefore be more inclined to trust a med spa that he or she recommends. Here are some other types of hyperlocal influencers you may want to consider:
- Yoga, tai chi, barre and pilates instructors
- Makeup artists, hair stylists, lash and brow techs
- City guides oriented toward female audiences
- Mom bloggers
- Wedding planners
What to look for when choosing a hyperlocal influencer
First, you want someone whose audiences is primarily or solely in your geographic area, preferably within a 20-minute drive from your location. Next, look at the influencer’s audience. Is it mostly people in your target demographic, say women between ages 35 and 75? You also want to avoid anyone who has spoken poorly of the types of interventions you provide. For example, you don’t want to use someone who says injections aren’t necessary and people should just do whatever (lymphatic massage, use tallow balm, use sheet masks etc.). You also will want to avoid an influencer who has promoted a competitor or substitute product recently because they will sound disingenuous when promoting your business.
How to evaluate the influencer’s audience engagement
Next, you want to look at the influencer’s engagement statistics. How engaged are the audience? Do they like, comment and buy or just passively digest the content? You ideally want someone with an engagement rate of 6% or more, although anywhere between 3-5% is also good. You can calculate the engagement rate by taking the number of average likes and comments per post, dividing it by the total number of followers and multiplying that by 100.
When evaluating the influencer’s account, take a look at the comments. Are comments written in complete sentences? Are there multi-sentence comments and are they thoughtful? Well-written and thoughtful comments point not only to engaged followers but also followers who are more likely to be highly educated and able to afford regular visits to your med spa.
Verify the hyperlocal nature of the influencer. Look for these signs:
- City/area/neighborhood listed in the profile
- They follow other local businesses
- Posts include tagged nearby businesses
- Ask them what percentage of their followers are within a reasonable driving distance to your business – at least 60% but preferably more is ideal
How much do hyperlocal influencers charge?
This is going to depend on the area you are talking about (uptown Manhattan will be more than, say Greenville, South Carolina). It will also depend on the influencer’s audience size and positioning (is this someone who only talks about luxury products and businesses or is it a mom blogger with a wider socio-economic audience?). Here are some general guidelines:
Audience size of 1,000 – 5,000
- Post and caption: $50-200
- Stories (1-3 slides): $30-120
- Post and stories bundle: $120-300
- Event appearance: $200-400
Audience size of 5,000 – 15,000
- Single static post: $200-500
- Stories with poll or CTA: $100-300
- Carousel post: $300-700
- Reels/video: $400-900
- Event appearance: $400-1,200
If you would like help with hyperlocal influencers for your med spa, contact us!