In this episode, Cameron is joined by Cori Sue Morris, founder and CEO of Retreat, and they discuss the importance of balancing emotional intelligence with data-driven marketing strategies, the benefits of fractional leadership, and the key performance indicators that drive successful marketing campaigns. The conversation emphasizes the need for aesthetic practices to invest in marketing to capture demand and grow their businesses effectively.

In this conversation, Cori and Cameron talk about the critical importance of investing in marketing for business growth, particularly in the aesthetics industry. They explore the role of digital advertising, the necessity of a solid tech stack for tracking marketing effectiveness, and the challenges of content creation. They also emphasize the need for practice owners to understand their marketing metrics and make informed decisions to drive long-term success.

Transcript

This is medical millionaire the podcast, helping your Med Spa increase in status, visibility and profitability. Join your host as he dispels myths, shares trends and gives you actionable steps today that will take your medical practice to the next level. Here’s your host, expert marketer and founder of growth 99 Cameron Hemphill,
everybody. Cameron Hemphill, here your host for medical millionaire. Hey guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune into the podcast. Our goal is to give incredible value and insight for practice owners. So if you’re thinking about getting into this industry, or you’re thinking about growing your practice, maybe going from one location to two to 10, whatever your roadmap is, every single one of these episodes, we want to help you take your business and practice to the next level. So guys, today I have a guest on and we’ve had some wonderful conversations offline. She has an incredible background, and this is going to be a really cool interview and conversation, especially going into 2025 if you guys have been tuning into the recent episodes, you know, I’ve been like, hammering home everything around numbers and KPIs and utilization rates and ROAs and Sven and so, like, I feel like this is perfect timing to bring her in. So guys, I have Corey Sue Morris with us today. She is a fractional CMO. So for those of you that don’t know what a fractional CMO is, we will get into that. And she works with a an amazing brand out of Texas, the injection room, and she just has a phenomenal background for everything that has to do with marketing, and really understands like benchmarks and what success looks like and failures and so. Corey, thank you so much for joining and welcome to the show. Cameron,
I’m so excited to be here. It’s been fun to sort of get to know you through this process. And I’m excited to jam on all things marketing, for esthetics, practices,
absolutely. I love it. Let’s get into the meat. I mean, we only have you here for a short period of time. I know you’re super busy. And you know for the audience, like, what is, what is a fractional CMO, right? I know that someone, I mean, and does a medical esthetics practice, like, need a full time CMO, fractional. Cmo, Head of Marketing, like, talk to us about that.
Yeah, so fractional. You know, it’s, it’s part time. And CMO is a chief marketing officer, and a chief marketing officer in most you know, big corporates is responsible for revenue along with the you know, CEO and customer acquisition cost. We’re looking at metrics like cost of CAC, cost of customer acquisition, lifetime, value managing budgets and growth for an organization, sometimes it’s a CRO Chief Revenue Officer, but marketing really takes also into account the creative and the soul of the of the brand in the business. You know, I think I’m seeing, in the last few years, a lot of businesses get creative as to their hiring practices, right? We’re in the, you know, era of the consultant, the hustler, the contractor. And I think most businesses the two roles that should be fractional, that don’t need to be full time as a chief marketing officer and a Chief Financial Officer, right? Like so. And you can get the benefit of fractional as you get somebody with, you know, more years of talent and experience, and you don’t have to pay for them full time, right? So in New York City, right? A cmo might start at like 300k annual salary, right? But fractional, you’re paying that person as a consultant for part of the time. So, and I don’t know, I like efficiency, so you can get a lot a lot done in terms of, like, working with agencies like you all in a couple of days and then, and then free up that time and budget for other things for the business specifically,
I love it. I completely agree. And I see, you know, fractional CFO very common, and also fractional cmo very common as well. And I think like to build on your point. It makes total sense in terms of keeping costs low, because when you’re starting to build out your let’s call it a C suite, you know, upper level management, you know on the executive leadership team, if you will, salaries can become expensive. You’re paying for top tier talent, which is extremely important. And you know, having the ability to bring someone in, let’s call it part time, fractional time, is interesting, obviously, to keep costs low, but at the same time being very much dialed in in terms of of hitting our benchmarks and and make. Sure we’re on track, right? So it’s almost like, let’s say, like, I’ve hired a fractional CFO historically, and I think they had 10 hours a week with me, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that’s, you know, common in the fractional world. Are, you know, better than me? Is it like a 10 hour? Would you bet? Would you put it around that? Or, I mean, for
fractional CFO, for sure, like 10 hours, we do need more than 10 hours, they’re looking at the dollars in, dollars out, managing, like an Excel file and communicating with the CEO for a marketer, you definitely want them a couple days a week. I don’t really do specific hours from, like, for the injection room, because I, for me, I think it’s a lot about like, adult like, like a C suite executive is not only has the experience, but they have, like, you know, the accountability, and they’re not, you’re not acting like an employee, you’re acting like an owner, right? Like, because if you’re a CMO of Coca Cola, you’re full time, you’re getting paid half a million bucks, maybe a million bucks, and you’re going all the time, and you have responsibility to the shareholders, right? Like, as a fractional CMO, I’m, you know, spending part of my time in order, and I’m just focused on efficacy of those hours and and frankly, like, accountability. I feel like it’s the most important thing for fractional is, like, an owner mentality, like, you know, not, and it’s like, not. There. You’re never saying, like, this isn’t my responsibility kind of thing, yeah. Like, you need, you need somebody with experience, but you also need somebody that’s, like, accountable and as adult in the room,
yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, it’s interesting. It’s like, if someone gives you a task and they’re like, hey, I need this task done by, you know, Friday, it’s probably going to take the person and get the test done by Friday. But if it’s like, hey, I need this task the next three hours, they’re probably going to get it done to three hours, right? It’s like that time slot commitment. So I, you know, just to kind of get a little deeper for the audience, guys like you don’t necessarily have to go hire somebody full time, and, you know, take on that cost. That’s going to impact your bottom line, where you could go fractional and get, like, upper tier, crazy talent. I mean, Corey has a big background when it comes to, you know, really high level marketing. And guys I’m talking, you know, very different from hiring your social media person or hiring an agency, or hiring, you know, somebody that’s going to help run some paid search campaigns for you, or something that’s internal. This is not like website related. This is not bringing somebody that’s in your practice all the time that’s going to help capture content, you know, for social media. This is somebody that’s going to hold the business accountable, and let’s call an agency accountable that can come in for a fractional period of time, look at the numbers and say, this is working. This is not working. Kill that, or let’s put more spend on this, because it’s giving you the right return on capital. Yeah. Is that a good way to say it?
Yeah. I think when you think about marketing and then like thinking about what a marketer does, like, when you’re doing 360 marketing, you have to be analytical, right? You have to be able to look at the spreadsheets and the numbers and say, you know, revenue, CAC, LTV, ROAs, like, and a lot of those, you know, performance marketing numbers are daunting to people that have say, only worked on the brand and creative side. So Mark, a really strong marketer needs to be ruthlessly analytical and like comfortable talking to CEOs and CFOs. They need to also be creative and understand how to build a brand that’s going to, you know, drive performance marketing, but also, you know, brands are like people. They need to have a relationship with your client and your customer, and build trust. And then the third piece is, like, the organizational people skills to like, come in and build trust with an executive team and the team across the board. Right as part of it, it’s that like, EQ emotional piece to, you know, build the trust and confidence, and then, frankly, the experience to be able to say to a CEO and a business owner like this isn’t working. We need to cut the budget here, or we need to increase the budget by $10,000 and have that experience to be able to, like, not, frankly, get, like, too much pushback, right? So, and that’s definitely not something that, like a social media manager can do promoted within an esthetics Med Spa practice. And so when you think about hiring for a fractional cmo for your esthetics practice, you would want to, you know, ask them the scale of the budgets that they’ve managed and what they’ve done with those budgets, right? Like, if you know, and that’s often how you hire CMOS just across the industry, right? If you manage budgets and revenue, up to $1 million up to five, up to 10 and so on, right? Like nobody’s hired me as a CMO of Coca Cola. Back to that example, because I focus on small and medium sized businesses, right? And a lot of experience in that space. So what kind of budgets have they managed? What size teams have they managed? Have they gone through things like rebrands and organizational. Change and how they manage that. So really, again, back to that, like analytical people, and then can they really think about the soul and heart of a brand?
That’s a really good point, a really good point. And I think, like so many times I see emotion get in the way when it really needs to be around analytical data points, right? And so like guys for the listeners out there, you know, I think that sometimes you can look at, let’s call it your website, or your social media page, and you may, you know, have, obviously there’s an emotional attachment. I totally get it. But at the same time, we need to really peel back the layers and say, Hey, what is working and what’s not working and why? And start to look through the lens from data versus like, I don’t like that image, right? Okay, well, if you don’t like that image that’s on the website or your social or whatever it is, test it, right? Test it and see if people are actually clicking there. Like, what the click through rate is, what the conversion rate is? Because what’s interesting is, I’ve done a lot of AB testing in my world of being in marketing for many years. Me not liking an image is me having an emotional impact in that image. But the other viewers we’ve random. I’m like, wow, that would perform better than I thought it would. I actually thought this side would perform way better. It’s very interesting.
Yeah, the I mean emotions, I think that’s the next phase of, like, personal growth, right? There’s so much emotion that comes into being a small and medium sized business owner, like a lot of these esthetic practices, there’s so much emotion in the workplace these days. You know, people bring their whole selves to work, and they care about, you know, about their work for like, as an example of these injectors, like, it’s their personal brand, it’s their business, like their own micro businesses within these practices and also with marketing, what’s so hard is that everybody has an opinion Right? Like, everybody thinks they know social media because they’re on social media. And that’s not always the case. But yeah, I think for it’s having that experience to balance, like, brand values, right? Like, for me, the way you take emotion out of it is you have systems and processes and so, you know, we have a brand book and guidelines for so for that the ad created, and then you’re just like, well, it’s about performance. It’s about the AB test, right? And I see that all the time, like I, I was previously for that allergy care company. And there was this, like, we’ve tried all different, like, people with allergies and the ads. And there was this just like Jar of the allergy product that performed the best over and over and over again. And it was just a silly, like, GIF of a jar, transparently. It was like a phallic looking jar. And so that’s the hypothesis that we had, that it was just like, you know, this jar that was shaped in a certain way, and it beat out every single like, creative agency, ad creative, that we had. And sometimes that’s just the way the algorithm works. That’s,
yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, you know, because I’ve seen the same thing where it’s like, you can run a campaign that’s maybe, like, high res video based, looks engaging, but and you may really like that video, and then another ad campaign could be graphic based, maybe kind of boring, who knows. And you’re like, Well, this one’s definitely going to perform better because it’s video based. And I always think, obviously the ads from a video organic like social conversion rate have outperformed over the past couple years static images. But it’s interesting. You have to run it and look at the data and then make a decision what the data tells you, because you could be completely wrong based upon emotion. Yeah.
And I think, you know, we, obviously, we work with growth 99 for our paid agency. And one of the biggest things is, like, it’s, it’s fun to work it like the other we’re talking about, all the serious stuff in marketing. It’s fun, I think, to do new creative and to test things and move fast. And like, as an in house marketer, one of your if you’re spending on performance marketing. You have to be, whether it’s any agency, you have to be resourcing your agency, right? And so it’s so naive to think that you can hire an agency and extend, you know, as a business owner, and be like, I’m so annoyed I’m paying them x 1000s of dollars. And like, what are they doing? And you also expect them to solve everything. Every relationship is two way, right? So as an in house marketer, fractional otherwise, I know that I need to be resourcing that agency to do their best job. So I’m forever like, sending new creative to your team, and we’re just flipping it back to me really quickly, and we’re testing new things. And that part, I think, is really fun. You get that like, dopamine response of like, oh, let’s launch the new thing. And then five minutes later, there it is. And then I mean, same thing as well, like, we’re onboarding a PR firm, and I was working with one of the internal I taught, like ops folks and just really explaining that, like, we need to resource the PR firm like they can. You can only do it. Everything is a two way street, and you want. Have to provide the resources for them to do the job. So the answer for your agency, ideally, when it’s occurred, when it’s an assets, the answer should be yes, not budget wise. If it’s something outside of budget, budget, it’s about the numbers. But if the you know, agency is like, I want to test this video, yes, if the offer is like, I need this, this thing, yes, like, the answer should be, you know, as long as it falls within budgets again, aside, but you got to resource your agencies.
Yeah, that’s a great point. I agree. I think a lot of times people can, you know, contract with an agency and think that they’re, you know, Hey, you’re the experts. You guys figure it out and just flip on the switch and make it work for me, right? But you have to have those conversations you have to meet. Ultimately, the content that’s being created is inside the medical esthetics practice, right? Like someone on site that’s shooting and filming and so we have, you have to pull that, give it back to the agency, get inside the ad campaigns. What’s working, what’s not working. So you walk us through some of that Corey, because I know that. You know, I’ve seen other med spas historically have that false narrative that they think that they can sign up with an agency and they can set it and forget it and just hope it works. Yeah.
I mean, I think, like, I love, I came to the injection room through, actually, they found me through, like, a marketing hire platform, and they, you know, like we had such a great relationship. We started working together, and they had three look. They have three locations and a really incredible brand, and going through, like a little bit of shifts. We did, sort of a Tuesday now, a brand facelift. We like tighten things up, back to that organizational piece of just having a brand steward going through, seeing where messaging was out of alignment, updating, you know, the website with you all, scrubbing social media, and really was able, obviously, They have such loyal customers and five years of incredible narratives. And, like, the testimonials on the Google reviews that are, you know, are incredible. They bring you to tears. So I was, I’m so fortunate to be working with something that was like, I got, you know, I didn’t get a boost. I got, like, something great to start with. And, yeah, and so you a bunch of thing agencies aren’t doing is in houses like I’m the steward of the brand. So is that creative aligned? Maybe not you have so let’s see. I mean, I think about it with organic right, Tik Tok and Instagram, and having a content creator, ideally locally, that understands the esthetics practice. Understand is it is excited about the team, right? Like these are often all women’s teams. It feels like a sorority, like they need to be a part of the of the group and feel excited to be there. That’s one of the biggest things we look for with hiring of content creation or social media, and, you know, up to speed on what the trends are, right and so and with social media, organic content, we think about is just content meant to be, you know, there’s four buckets. Is it educational? How sculpture is great for your face? Is it entertaining? Kind of memes and jokes about like trending audio around Botox and things like that. Is it aspirational? Our injectors are kind of micro celebrities in their own right. They have these loyal followings, which is such an asset, and these clients that have come to them forever. So education, entertainment, aspiration. There’s a fourth pillar with Instagram, it slipped my mind, but which categories, when we bucket out the content, like, what categories are performing better? As an example, like the entertainment, the funny stuff that I think is so hilarious doesn’t actually perform as well as the the aspirational and the educational, right? Because people are really coming to our page to learn about the procedures that they want to get with us, or that they have gotten or, you know, so that’s actually incredible as a marketer, that we don’t have to be like, you know, chasing the trends because people only want the funny stuff. But I was also enjoying the like, the humor and Tik Tok and Instagram, but the people are really coming to us as example for for information and an aspiration, right? They want to be like the girls, look like the girls, or they want to see what the next treatment we’re offering is. Am I
hearing you right? That you’re saying that those ads that are that are based around inspiration are performing better for this brand in particular.
It’s a specific to or organic right thinking about that. And then our, you know, our ad creative is a lot of before and afters because that’s the bread and butter. Salts driven. And it’s also a lot about our injectors, because we are fortunate. Like, I’m getting, I’m getting hyped up, but we’re the fortunate, the best of the best injectors. Like, truly, like, this is a it has kind of owned the San Antonio market. There are a lot of coffee cats out there, which is, you know, different story. And then there is, you know, an expanding toxin. So for the ad creative, it’s, it’s really hyping the results and and the person behind those results,
it’s amazing. And the only way that you can actually look at that and know what’s performing is to look at the the metrics, right? So what are some of the metrics that you know, fractional cmo would look for? Is it clicks? Is it conversions? Is it return on ad spend? Is it engagement? Yeah,
my big three kind of top tier, looking at big picture for KPIs, our revenue clients, and row ads, CAC and row ads, right? So, like, big picture, like, your CMO is, like, you’re partnering with the executive team. What’s our revenue? I’m not, I’m not worried about, you know, profit and margins, that’s off operations. I’m just like, how, what’s the dollars we’re bringing in, and what’s that, you know, what’s our percentage of marketing spend to those, to those dollars. And then, you know, we think a lot about when working with in the big picture, I also think between marketing and operations, like the lifetime value and the service value, right? So, like, we work with the agency a lot like everybody loves facial balancing, and it’s incredible, because you can literally see someone’s face go from like, you know, lopsided, to like, perfectly, glow up. It’s what. It’s what performs really well on our ads with growth 99 because it’s just and it also forms across the board, and it’s also a high ticket item, right? So the injectors like it because they’re getting more revenue in the business is getting more revenue in so I’m thinking about not just, you know, like running ads for toxins. That’s one of the things we’ve been optimizing with toxins. Is a lower price item. It requires a less, less level of sophistication, right? Like, you obviously don’t want to go to anybody for toxins. You don’t want to trust anybody for your face, but it’s less sophisticated than facial balancing. So that’s some of the stuff we’re thinking about. But back to like, let’s involved with an agency. How much are you spending? What is your return on ad spend? And then what is your cost per you know, click and CAC. But ultimately, we’re running most ads specifically for conversion. And that’s a, you know, dollars into dollars out. So I’m able to say, Okay, we’re spending, as an example, say they were sending $10,000 and then per on a campaign, and we’ve got, you know, it’s a simple math equation. We get 1000 customers. That’s X, you know, CAC and so forth. So, yeah, and you guys have got, you know, our row as is insane. Our row as is return on AdSense is almost 8x so, and that, that is, I’ve never seen anything like it, to be honest, and in a good way. So
let me build on that, just for a second, because that was, that was, thank you for saying that 8x you know, for the if you guys are tuning in, like, like, Hold on tight for a sec, okay, because she mentioned, you know, there’s some terms out there. She mentioned, right cost per click. CAC, that’s something I want you guys to start to get very familiar with. You know, it’s customer acquisition cost. I put to, I call it pack, in this world, patient acquisition cost, same thing, guys. So if you hear, you know, CAC, pack, it’s the same thing. I just kind of put the spin on it, just to for patient, just for this vertical ads, for conversion, dollars in and dollar out, right? And then ROAs, when she says, ROAs, that’s return on ad spend, how much are you spending, and what is your return? And what she’s saying is, you know, they’ve been able to move the needle to get it to an 8x so if you put $1 in, you’re going to get $8 back, right? And so let’s, let’s like, let’s talk about an investment vehicle outside of marketing for a second. Okay, let’s just like, make this super simple. Corey, I’m gonna give you, I’m gonna invest with you, because you have some great idea. For an example, just hang with me for a sec, and you’re telling me, if I give you a buck, you’re gonna give me eight back. Okay, well, why don’t I level up? I’m gonna give you 10,000 bucks. So you give me 80 grand back, right? Like, if you see that type of return on your ROAs, you’re going to want to obviously increase the spend ratio to capture the demand, right? And so an 8x return, like, that’s, that’s, that’s huge. I’ve been saying 7x so the fact that you said 8x very. Between
seven to nine, which is insane. So, I mean, look, ROAs is, like, marketing terms can be super scary. But like, you know, ROAs is the I hand Cameron $20 and at a, you know, 9x row, as he’s giving me $180 back. And that is, you know, spectacular. I think some things to think about with roaz, though, is, is brand and spend, right? So, and for the industry, seven and X, I’ve worked for brands like, we’re trying to get 2x row ads, we’re trying to give Cameron $20 and we’re trying to get 40 back, which is great, you know? And then there’s other and so it’s about spend and brand recognition, right? Because if you’re building a brand from the ground up, it’s going to take time, and you’re going to have to spend more on the front end, which is why industries like venture capital exist, right? They take brands like Casper, and they throw millions of dollars in them to increase that brand awareness, and the spend, you know, gets more efficient over time. Most small businesses don’t have venture capital dollars to spike something like a Casper, so you have to build the brand first. And you you know, building that comes from heart of a company, operation, stuff, incredible quality, building, trust, referrals, all these things that are hard and unfortunately, take time to build up an esthetics practice. But if you’re getting to the point where you have consistent revenue, have a strong customer base, are interested in growth, then you start to think about, okay, where are we going to spend on on advertising and digital is the best, because you can track it. You know, I hate getting these, like, print. I studied print journalism as a kid, but, like, as a college, but like, you can’t track a print ad, and nobody picks up these magazines, these regional magazines. I’m sorry I worked for my first job out of college was a regional magazine. I got laid off because they didn’t have any, you know, income rights, shocker, and that breaks my heart as a journalist, but like, when I say advertising, it’s digital, because you can track it and you can see and so yeah, you have to, you have to spend, like, you can’t put in $10 only to get $100 out. So you need to be putting in enough spend for companies, like for your company, on platforms like Facebook and Google, because you’re competing against companies with other budgets. So if you’re there and you’ve got a big pool, and you’re just putting droplets of water in it, you’re not going to saturate it, right? So you need to have enough spend on your performance marketing that it’s going to make enough impact, that you’ve at least filled up the kiddie pool, and you have enough of an audience. I don’t know that the pool analogy works, but you catch my dress like you can’t be spending. You can’t get the efficiency of spend if you’re not spending. It’s like, and that’s the hardest thing in marketing, is you got to spend money to make money, but you can’t be stupid about it. And I feel like part of the issue that set its practices have with marketing is that you do have people in there that are brand people that just spend and they don’t tie it back right? So back to that, like, trust. It’s like, you know you’ve been in a toxic relationship before, you don’t trust anybody anymore. Yeah, good point.
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Oh yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, that’s, that’s, you know, what’s interesting is, you know, I’ve been in the esthetics world for shoot 10 years, and I’ve worked with 1000s of practices, you know. And what’s what they’ve done, like, a lot of them have done a really good job, not all of them, but you know, like quite a few of them have built up a really good organic brand through organic social content, and, you know, good word of mouth, they do a good job, good great reviews. And they’re they built a brand. I think this, I don’t know something happens like I’m just thinking of a couple practices I’ve worked with for many years that has a solid patient base. Great revenue, probably pretty predictable, has really good retention rates, and they’re afraid to spend money on ads. They’re afraid to spend money on marketing. And when I look at like, their revenue to marketing spend ratio, Corey, it is, like, completely off. Like, yeah, it’s so off that it kind of worries me, you know, like utilization, race or 50% great brand, predictable revenue, profitable. Business doesn’t want to invest in marketing, and I’m over here thinking like, Oh my gosh. Like, why are you not investing in your brand? You already, you’ve done the hard part the heart now it’s just putting the right spend on it. Boost your utilization rate, which is going to boost your EBITDA, which is ultimately going to boost your valuations if you ever sell. And you know, here’s the other kicker too. Is if you don’t, if you don’t invest correctly, right for the Okay, so for the listeners that have the brand, the audience, the time, retention rate. I know that some of you are tuning in right now, like, this is specifically for you. When you go into 25 guys, like, look at your revenue to marketing spend and get that corrected, because here’s what’s going to happen these patients. There’s demand out there, and these patients are going to go somewhere, they’re going to they’re going to find it, or an ad is going to hit them, or they’re going to go on Google, they’re going to find a practice. Now the data shows that if they find that practice, they’re going to stay at that practice for three years, like that’s the typical life cycle. So And hey, shoot, if you have a patient that spends 10 grand a year with you, you just missed out on $30,000 and all the referrals that person is going to give you, they’re going to go somewhere. And so if you’re not capturing the demand, especially for like markets and like, you know, I’m seeing big push in the southeast right now, my gosh, like demands there, it’s up to you to take it, or they’re gone for three years.
Yeah, I think, look, marketing spend is supposed to be a percentage of revenue, you know, two to 10% it’s higher for consumer brands, five to 10% this is not some number that Corey made up. This is a number that, you know, they teach in business school. It’s commonplace for for the marketing industry, for corporations. So it’s, you know, it’s kind of like daylight savings time. There is. It’s a known thing that you need to spend two to 10% of your revenue, not profit, on marketing if you’re trying to grow a company for, you know. So for business making half a million dollars, that’s, you know, 25,000 a month, and that sounds like a lot, but it’s not, when it’s a percentage of spend, and it’s spent effectively, um, but it’s scary, right? It’s, it’s the back of the emotion, the motion of things. When it’s your business, it seems scary, but, um, to your point, I think, like, how consumers, if you take it down to the customer, the individual, right? Like, if they’re totally new, if I’m new to Tampa, Florida, and I’m trying to find a esthetic thought, I’m going to google it, and I’m going to look on reviews, and if they admit they’re able to follow me with a Google ad or a Facebook ad that you can do and drive me to conversion. That’s, that’s how I’m going to make that decision, right? I’m like, thinking about it. Oh, I need a book, Botox. Okay, let me Google. Okay. You know, Sarah’s spot looks good. There’s some good Google reviews, etc. And then the next time I’m like, going to do that action, if I see an ad for Sarah’s spot, then I’m gonna, I’m going to book or, you know, or, obviously the referral piece is the other huge one. But, and also people, people make decisions via Google. So Google ads are very smart. When you’re searching for things like, then you get a Google ad, and then you make that decision. And then the other piece is, like, customers are accustomed to getting Instagram ads. They know good brands. It’s not like a sketchy thing, like a good ad on Instagram is also going to, you know, drive that, that integrity. So I think the customer is aware and how you make those decisions. So it does seem like a huge Miss to not be investing, particularly if you’re a local brick and mortar Google ads like, it’s just a no brainer. It’s
a no brainer. I think that there’s, there’s fear around it. Here’s what I hear all the time is, oh, yeah, we tried it, it didn’t work. And then I build on that. I’m like, All right, hold on, let’s talk about what you mean by you tried it and it didn’t work. Well, I don’t know, we hired someone and they kind of did it. I couldn’t really tell. And what I’m really ultimately hearing is you actually never gave it a shot. You kind of, you dabbled in it for a second, right? It’s like, it’s like, hey, yeah, we tried a billboard for and I’m not a big fan of billboards, but if you’re, if you’re gonna, like, build a brand or do it the, you know, filling billboards, you can’t put a billboard on the side of the road for a day. You probably got to commit to, like, a few years for people to see it and recognize it, you know, for a long period of time. But, yeah, I hear that all the time in. Terms of, we tried it, it didn’t work. Oh, it absolutely works. This is brick and mortar local, you know, practices guys and people are within that area. They’re searching near me, right? Like, med, spa near me. Like, they’re searching a lot of these, these keywords. And you guys have to be, you have to own that real estate to get those conversions. And then I think, like, also, what you’re saying Corey is also hitting them with a retargeting campaign. You know, if they don’t book with you now, like they’re gonna go pull up their Instagram is some point, probably within the next hour,
right? And see your ad there.
Yeah? And I think, like,
yeah, and ad spend is, is, is. Again, it’s scary, it feels weird, but for something so specific as, like, a brick and mortar with esthetics, it’s like, it’s how people make decisions, and you’re like, gonna just get eaten alive by the competitors. And again, we’re taught. When I’m talking about, like, the first month, I think, like, I love business, right? And marketing is my skill set. But I also, like worked in small businesses. I’ve had my own small businesses, right? Like, you need to have the baseline there of you know, profitability, scaling your operations, tight, ideally, a fractional CFO that’s managing the budget. Because people kind of look at like, oh gosh. They go to Marketing, Marketing, everything always gets blamed on marketing, right? And it’s like, oh well, they’re, you know, they’re, they’re paying double for some you know, thing in operations. Or they’re like, there’s a lot of areas that you can tighten budget from an operations perspective, but it immediately goes to marketing, which is the outbound piece, so, but that’s, that’s normal. That’s not one specific client. That’s not, that’s the experience of being a marketer, right? People don’t understand it. And you see, you have to make the spend to to have the growth. But then, you know, when you pull, when you cut that budget, you’re screwed. So, yeah,
yeah, it’s like the last thing. I mean, you know, I have conversations, you know, if I told my CMO, hey, I want you to shut off the ads. He would would just laugh at me and think I was at gun cuckoo, right? Because, like, they create conversions, which creates revenue, which then creates referrals, which then, you know, ultimately builds the brand and builds the revenue. So, yeah, I think it’s, I completely agree. You know, some other things that I was thinking about as well is attribution. You know, in this industry, it’s been hard to tie attribution back to ad dollars, because everybody like when they click they want to click on book an appointment. And the breakthrough that’s happened in the past few years, or a couple years, I’ll say, has been, you know, being able to tie Google Analytics four directly into attribution on the booking. Yeah,
that’s great, critical. It’s critical. And it’s, it’s like, also, what a dream. That’s another thing that is not within the marketing wheelhouse that I that just upsets me with small and medium sized business is they get screwed over by like, the tech folks. Like, it’s like, somebody builds them a website on a platform that they can, can never use, and it’s not accessible, and then you have to pay some guy overseas 50 bucks every time you want to change your website. And so that’s often what happens when I have a new marketing client, I come in and I’m like, again, I had my own businesses, not just responsible for marketing, but the whole thing. So I know it’s like, no, we’re taking that website out of this Yahoo’s hands, and we’re putting it into we can make changes. We’re cutting this tech cost. We’re cutting this tech cost because I no wonder small and medium sized business and practice owners hate external agencies or distrust them because you’ve gotten often sold by somebody for your website and for your creative and for your social and also your window washer, and they’re all just trying to, you know, take a piece of you. And so I get the resistance, and again, back to my original point that one of the three pillars is like dollars created and building trust, and you have to have that third piece. So, you know, we use web flow and Boulevard for our tech stack in the injection room. Specifically, web flow is great. I can go in and change things. Your team can go in and change things. It’s not and then Boulevard is obviously incredible for esthetics practices, because you can track it all the way through, and that’s back to that transparency and that trust. So
I’ve been, I’ve been huge, like, I’ve built a really good relationship with Boulevard over the past year or so. And, you know, actually, I have one of their colleagues on our podcast tomorrow. I’m excited to have her on and, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s really, it’s super important to have the ability to tie the attribution guys. So, like, you know, take this, you know, for a nice little nugget for you, make sure to connect attribution on your booking widget to your agency. So you can, especially if you’re gonna deploy ad dollars. Which I’m obviously the whole, this whole entire talk, is to educate you on that, and that way you can actually see the ROI. So if you have that fear factor or that worry of, like, I don’t know if it’s going to work, you have to have the right tech stack. So I’m sure, like, Corey, can, you know, lean into that a little bit. Is the last thing she’s going to do is raise her hand. So, yep, I’m a fractional CMO. Come in, pay the X amount of dollars, and I know the best agency in the world, and we’re going to crush it right, like she’s going to analyze the current situation and say, Nope, this web platform doesn’t work. Nope, that EHR doesn’t work. Nope, this tool doesn’t work, because I can’t track any of the metrics that’s going to show what’s working. So, you know, in some cases, she may have to, like, break that down and change systems and have the right tech stack. Then you deploy the marketing so you can actually see what’s working, what’s not working, 100%
whether it was the injection room or any any client, the first thing I do when I go into a new, you know, Project partnership is look at the existing budget and the existing tech sack. And as a marketer, you have to work so closely with tech and with operations. So you and then, you know, you listen first, like, you do an audit of what’s working from a financial perspective. You clean up spend, like, what is this random tech thing? Like, you know, Trello. I love Trello, I love Trello, but look, we don’t need to be paying for the 40 bucks for Trello premium or whatever it is. There was like a million. There’s a million of those things, because you’re trying new things as a small business, and you’re getting excited, and then somebody forgets to downgrade the tech cost or whatever it is, and that stuff adds up. So I do an audit of the tech stock. I do an audit of the spend. I do an audit of the spend of the miscellaneous technical sign up thingies. And then, and then you talk, you talk to operations and see what’s working. You know, who are the rock star injectors, who needs support, things like that. And then then you start, and then you’d make sure all the bells and whistles are connected. And that’s in any business. That’s an esthetics practice. But you know, for startups in the tech world, you’re also using something like Zapier, Zapier to really connect everything, because if you can’t see the full customer journey, I’m hesitant to spend right, that’s the 101,
that’s the 101, what’s, you know, it’s crazy. It’s like, you could talk about this, like, it’s one on one. I’m telling you, from the consulting and as long as I’ve been in the industry, it’s not 101 it’s Wow. This is very technical, you know, this sounds like, you know, maybe it’s over my head. It’s almost like someone talking to me about, you know, like the anatomy of the human body. Like, yeah, you know, yeah, it’s it, you know, it’s gonna take me a while to kind of understand what the heck you’re talking about. But give it to me in layman’s terms. It’s like, you know, guys, there’s, there’s EHRs and EMRs and booking widgets out there that have great attribution and ones that don’t. And I would take that extremely serious, because, you know, you can’t just say, okay, cool. I listened to the episode and Cam said, for 2025 I need to invest in marketing, and so I’m going to do it, you know, great. I love it, but make sure you have the right tech stack in order to convert the patients, and then build up like benchmarks. So, you know exactly, okay, this is working. This is not working. Kill, spend here, apply, add budget there, and then start to really understand, like, Man, if I could have a conversation with someone in six months from when this recording goes out and they’re like, Cam, I listened the episode, and I’ll tell you what. Before, I had no idea what ROAs was. I learned about it. I implemented it. I had no idea what CAC was. Learn about it, implemented it. And I could tell you, can our what our patient lifetime value is like, that is gold, you know. And I think going into 2025 I’m just really, I’m trying to encourage practice owners more than ever, to get extremely educated on the the metrics when it comes to running the practice like a business, from data points guys, instead of really just like, you know, I hate to say it again, but like, I see a ton of emotion, and I want to see practice owners just level up as we continue to scale. Because what I’m seeing is demand is is out there. Patients want to come in. And I know there’s going to be practices that close their doors. I think that’s going to increase. And these patients still need to go somewhere. And I think that for the sophisticated group, the ones that have a brand, the ones that have run rate, when you start to really zero in on the numbers and data points, going forward, not only are you going to capture the demand, but you’re going to know how to drive. And I’m telling you, your practice is going to take off.
Yeah, and I think the fact of the tech piece, like the fear and the thinking we need everything, like, you know, EMRs, etc, but like for a tech stack from, like booking through marketing, like blow up, what? Whatever your existing tax tech stack is, you don’t need all of that literally build a website on web flow. It’s like $50 a month connected to Boulevard, which is like $200 a month, and then get a strong agency, like a growth 99 that is going to do your paid and then get a quote and a bang in content creator for Tiktok and Instagram like those are the that’s the baseline. You need a website that is easy to manage and not a million dollars Webflow that connects with everything. You need a patient booking system that connects to Webflow and email Boulevard. Also you can send great emails via Boulevard and then Indian so Webflow Boulevard and a paid agency and an incredible content creator, and connect it all together, right? That’s like your baseline. So we thought we had this other thing that we needed, and we were running ads on the local Hulu and whatever else. If you don’t need any of that, like, just start with a really strong baseline, and then the other piece is like, get a, get an adult that has, has the has had the experience, right? Like, I’ve had to go in and fix technical like, back to that owner mentality. And again, I come from startups and small businesses, but the startup land has taught me that, like, I can fix the Zapier integration myself. I can find somebody on Fiverr. I know the questions to ask for these, like dogs, the business terms around marketing metrics are really scary, and the tech integrations are scary, and the tech integration should be scary. They’re and they’re annoying, and they break a lot if you don’t have a really strong base like Fortunately, these things are getting it’s getting are getting better. Back to Boulevard and Webflow push. They should be giving me an affiliate fee.
Yes, I’m telling you, sometimes I feel like a used car salesman for Google and Facebook. It’s like, geez, yeah. Should be paying Google
and Facebook, yeah, Webflow, Boulevard, Google, Facebook, a really incredible, like snappy content creator and then somebody to manage. I’m a
big fan of WordPress myself, but Webflow, I see it on the rise, you know, I know that you guys have had a ton of success there. And you know, but to WordPress Webflow, they all tie directly into components that you can easily update, and are great for local SEO and capturing that audience and tying it into a booking system that, you know, creates a good patient experience, guys, and that’s, that’s the most important part. So no, this was really great. So I want to really quick, and I know that we’re getting short on time, but you talked a lot about, like, here’s what you need, right? In order, like, the tech stack the content. So when you came, when you when you come in to a practice, if they they typically have the content creator, or, like social media person or something, I’m a big fan of saying, bring that in house, film everything, push everything out there. Some of them are doing it. Some of them are not.
But what like,
from a team standpoint, right? Like, how do you kind of set that, that team up internally? Because I know you’re, you’re remote, right? Like, you’re, you’re in, you’re in New York. You don’t necessarily have to be on site.
I’m remote. I do go. I enjoy going on site, like, once a once a month or so, but just hold on. But
you don’t necessarily have to, like you can run your job from being you know, anywhere, right? But,
yeah, but you need a really good content creator. Let me just switch this perfect I’m simultaneously on Zoom. That’s my life. Okay, all right, so I think, yeah, like, it’s hard, I don’t know about but I’m, like, very much an elder millennial, but finding the right content creator is like a needle, finding a needle in a hay stack, right? There’s obviously, every 20 something year old female, most of them can, like, think, be on Tik Tok and Instagram. I think it’s, it’s about account like with younger folks, with any like small business, right? You need reliable folks, whether that’s the front desk or tick tock. And I think that can always be a challenge when you’re hiring younger people who are newer in their careers. Not to be anxious, but like, you need, you need a content creator that’s like, knows the ins and outs of the business number one. And they’re passionate about the business. They’re excited to be there. They love esthetics. They want to get their lips done, whatever it is they are. They understand the platforms like Tiktok and Instagram are different. There’s different trends, etc, like the filming and the cuts as well. Like, I’m not as good as I would like to be with, like, I just kind of hold the camera up, right? But like, a really good content creator, they’re, like, getting different angles, and they’re zooming in and they’re zooming out, and they’re doing the different cuts that are going to make the videos, whether it’s for organic or paid, really, really, like, snappy and engaging. So our content creators are. Really, really good at the different the different angles, particularly with esthetics in the chair, and you’ve got the like the cheek from that side and the nose from that side, and all the different shots. So that is huge on the three, know, the angles and then, and they’re, they’re reliable and committed, right? So hiring for small businesses is hard. No hire is ever going to be perfect, but those are the things that that we look for. And, yeah, the
piece, you know, yeah, I was just kind of thinking, like, is there ways to compensate? And based upon like, like, the the amount like, for me, I’m just totally thinking outside the box. I’m obviously gonna, if I’m gonna hire somebody in house, you’re on salary or hourly, or whatever it is, but I, I’m big fan of incentivization, and so it’s like, hey, the better content you create. That converts more patience, the more I’ll pay you. I don’t know, do you guys have something like that in place? I’m totally just curious, because that’s kind of a thought that I have, we’re going
through that right now.
You know, marketing again, always is the tension between the executives and the contractor. Like, the Yeah, we’re kind of like, could we structure marketing based on performance? But ultimately, with all these creators, like, it’s, it’s time suck, like they have to go in there. They have to film that, you know, they do the research, etc. I haven’t been able to find any creator that is like, Oh yeah, I’ll do it based on views that you know, they want. They want to be compensated for their time, which is like, Fine, the rate at which you compensate for your time, right? You can get a younger person who is excited about the practice to again, it’s like, it’s hourly rate based on age and experience, not age but experience, right? If you’re 22 if you can, you’re looking for a job, great, like you can, you know, monthly retainer plus plus trade, I think, is the is the most fair, right? Yeah, and you want them in there for both parties, and you want them in that practice, like, at least once a week, twice, ideally. And then, you know, the other big thing is, like, really making sure that they’re, like, open lines of communication with the office managers to who is going to be? Would we have consent to film number one thing and then from that patient or that create the or the influencer as an example, and then, is it going to be a good like appointment day kind of thing? For example, facial balancing always looks great. So if we can get permission from our happy clients with film facial balancing. That’s always a win. That’s huge.
Yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that I and I agree, you know, the experience based upon the age I’d like to trade opportunity to, I think that that’s very big in a way, to keep costs down for the practice owner and also benefit the content creator too. So well, well, that’s, that’s, I appreciate you joining, coming on, like your level of expertise is just, it’s, it’s truly amazing. And I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. So here’s some takeaways for you guys, before we completely shut down. Is like, as you go into 25 look at your revenue to spend ratio, try to get it aligned. You know, because I consistently see practice owners underfunding their marketing. Here’s another thing too, that’s starting to, you know, like, make me just think about things. Like, I go to a lot of conferences, and I see a tremendous amount of designer attire, which which look. I get it. We’re in the esthetic space. I totally get it. But at the same time. I also think, like, we’re probably overspending on instant gratification for personal reasons, versus thinking about our business and long term future for, like, long term success and, like, true wealth. And, you know, that’s like, that’s one takeaway. I’ll, you know, because some people are like, I don’t have any money to spend. I don’t, you know, it’s like, well, how much are you paying yourself? And, you know, like, maybe we should look at, you know, some of the things on just more of a, maybe a humbled approach,
you know, and try to
invest in the business for Long Term versus, you know, short term gratification and kind of delay that is, you know, something I would hone in on for 25 and because every go back just, just reset, Corey, like, a one to eight return on capital when it comes to ROAs is office
charts and so,
yeah, well, I think that’s the thing, right? Like, you’re funny, you’re like, causing the Gucci bags, we need to get the, get the investment property kind of thing. I mean, I love a Gucci bag, so I can’t really, like, speak to anybody’s personal spending, definitely. But from a marketing perspective, like when you if row, AG, is your metric, you’re not, like, losing that money. Organic. It means return on AdSense. Back to our analogy. I gave Cameron 20, he gave me 180 or he gave me 40. Like, even if you’re getting a 2x ROAs, that’s a great place to start, because, anyway, you’re a newer brand, because you’re again, you’re able to track it, if your tech system is correct, like, you’re able to track it in and out. And I think sometimes there’s still, like, not that’s not what the injection. But I think just generally, there’s a mistrust of, like, you know, the the marketing spend, and if you are, if you have a tech conference, no one is lying to you. It’s like you can literally see dollars into dollars out when your tech stack is appropriately set up and and so it’s not, it’s not a waste, I think. And then there are, there are marketing, things that you invest in that don’t, you know, directly pay out, right? Like investing in brand and photography, right? There’s creative things that are expenditures, and that’s, that’s part of the gig. But, yeah, it’s not, it’s not a waste, if you’re able to track the metrics correctly, totally, totally.
And I’m gonna let you go. Like, there’s one thing I wanted to point out, but we’ll have you back on.
You guys are the best agency I’ve worked with. Like, I hated a lot of agencies I don’t hate, but I like, as back to the accountability piece. Like, even if it’s a client, I look, I love the injection room. I don’t want them to waste their money at all like I’m, you know, I have accountability and ownership and pride in the work that I take, right? And so when I say hate agencies, hate is a bad word, but it does make you mad if they’re wasting your money. So, you know? And so that is where that emotion comes from. And finding a good agency is hard, and you guys are really, really good at what you do. And so I can similarly and imagine there’s frustration on your end when you’re like, yeah, like eight. 8x row is great. 2x row as is great for a new business, and just having you know the results are there. So I hear you wanting to drive more results for more esthetics practice. It’s a fun industry to be in.
Totally. It is very fast paced. I mean, it’s, you know, you’re, you’re changing people’s lives, improving their lives, which is, which is so much fun. And, you know, I think it’s important to partner with an agency that understands the industry and the trends and like, where things are going. And we’re like to the tech stack standpoint, like, that’s critical. People that are in the industry have built relationships with the hrs, EMRs. They know how to connect the dots. Know how to make it work, bring it all together. Can work with the CMO. Can work with you know, the practice owner, I think is critical. So no, I appreciate the shout out, the kind words, and if, if people want to connect with you, court they have any questions, if they want to, just like, I don’t know, follow you. Like, what’s the best way to for them to contact you? Well, yeah,
so if you’re in Austin or San Antonio, it’s the injection room for esthetics, highly recommend. And we’re the injection room on Instagram. My I’m on Instagram at Corey Sue C, O, R, i, s, u, E, and you know, my website is Corey morris.com you can find me on LinkedIn. I love, love connecting with people. So yeah, it’s all just, it’s all my name. And then yeah, if you’re looking for a glow up in in Texas, I highly recommend the injection room. I’d let them do my Chase. And then, yeah, we just, we’re just only growing, thanks to the team there and some of some help from y’all so thank you absolutely,
absolutely. It’s been a pleasure.
And next time I’m in Texas, I’m definitely gonna pay you guys a visit, and, you know, drop in and say hi. So I’ll leave it at that, guys, let’s we’ll wrap it up. Thank you so much. Corey, you guys know where to follow her and find her. If you guys have any questions for me, feel free to reach out again if you found this episode valuable, if you have a colleague or a manager, or, you know, somebody in your mastermind that could benefit from this conversation, guys like, my only ask is share it. Share it, rate it. You know, I want to create these episodes to ultimately just give value. And you know, it’s an honor to have expertise on, you know, with with Corey, and so that’s, that’s my ask. I’ll leave it at that. You guys have a wonderful weekend. Until next time. Happy injecting you.