Influx Predicts: Emerging Trends in Aesthetic Marketing

Max Baybak

Hello to all you lovely podcast listeners, those of you looking to level up your marketing and grow your aesthetic practice. We can't tell you how much we appreciate you listening to our podcast. This is Max here from Influx, by the way, in case you don't already recognize my voice. I'm actually recording this from the road, and I'm jumping on here to tell you about this coming episode, which is a little bit unique.

Myself and some of my colleagues just came back from VCS, or Vegas Cosmetic Surgery, in Las Vegas, where we gave several presentations. One of them was what we call the state of patient acquisition, our mid-year report. We started this last year at VCS, continued it this year, and plan to do it each year. We did a deep dive into and crunched all our numbers across our client base of aesthetic practices, plastic surgeons, med spas, facial plastic surgeons, and cash-pay medical practices across the country.

We rolled our insights up into key statistics and numbers that you could benchmark against to look at what it should be costing you to acquire a new lead, whether averages are up or down from last year, the cost per click on Google, the cost per thousand impressions on Meta, and consumer sentiment across the aesthetic landscape today. We gave that talk, and we're going to be putting that out as a webinar, an e-book, or a white paper that you can download. Stay tuned for that, as well as an end-of-year version of that report.

The other talk we gave is why I'm jumping on here right now to talk to you, which was our predictions for the aesthetic patient acquisition and marketing landscape in the coming year and beyond. We covered technology trends that we think are pretty interesting and that you should be paying attention to if you like to stay ahead of marketing trends and beat your competitors to the punch. If you're listening to this podcast, that's probably because you are someone of that mind, so I thought you might find this interesting.

We invited our friend John Wheeler, from Aesthetic Center and Alpha Partners, on stage simply because he understands aesthetic marketing better than anyone I know running and managing med spas. He always gives fascinating insights. As a disclaimer, he did read a not-very-nice message that came in to one of his staff from someone in their patient lead funnel, so there's a little bit of explicit language in that.

This is the live recording of us on stage at VCS featuring myself, Adam Daniells (co-founder and CEO), Erica Crawford (president), and John Wheeler (Alpha Partners). I led a round table conversation where we brought up different topics and discussed key trends that might change the landscape of aesthetic patient acquisition in the coming 12 to 24 months. I found the conversation really interesting, and I hope you do as well. Stay tuned for more episodes coming out from the ASAPS meeting in Miami, and thank you so much for listening.

Max Baybak

Thank you for joining us. First of all, let me make sure that I introduce myself for any of you who don't know who we are. My name is Max Baybak, and I'm one of the co-founders and Chief Growth Officer of Influx Marketing. I'll tell you a little bit about who we are at Influx just to give you that context in a moment here.

Each year at VCS, we like to take the opportunity to bring insights to the attendees. Yesterday we gave our state of patient acquisition report where we did a deep dive into all our numbers over the course of the previous 12 months, looking at trends to keep you informed. Today, we want to look at predictions into the future. Some of this is a little bit farther out there, but it's fun to think about where marketing will be going and how you can be ahead of these trends.

We couldn't have a marketing trends and predictions talk without talking about AI. We are past the hype phase, and real applications are starting to emerge where this is going to be more than just buzz. This will impact our lives in many ways, and patient acquisition will definitely be one of them. Today, we want to discuss how we connect with the patient of the future, focusing on how platforms we utilize today will look in a few years.

We will also discuss practice marketing management systems of the future because anyone cobbling together software systems for marketing and management has experienced frustration. Having done marketing in other verticals with better standards, it is frustrating to see the state of this space, but we are seeing improvements. Additionally, we'll talk about loyalty and membership as true marketing tools, and end with a quick look at Apple's new mixed reality headset.

Influx is a digital agency 100% focused on aesthetic practices, plastic surgery, and med spas. Up here on stage, I have my business partner and CEO, Adam Daniells, our president, Erica Crawford, and our friend John Wheeler. John is the CEO of Alpha Aesthetics Partners and previously ran a multi-location medical spa in Sacramento. He understands how to put systems together for complete transparency into the patient journey better than anyone, so we asked him to join us today.

To give a quick numbers perspective on Influx, in 2022 we had 9 million visitors across our clients' websites and acquired over 270,000 new leads. Our development team wrote 3 million lines of code, managing over 50,000 web pages and 12,000 keywords on page one of Google. Our media team traveled over 100,000 miles to create assets, and we produce two podcasts: The Technology of Beauty and The Next Level Practices.

Now let's dive into artificial intelligence. We use AI these days to process audio for podcasts, and it is staggering to see what you can do with the click of a button compared to traditional sound engineering. AI is breaking through into creative use cases, ad copy, marketing automation, and intelligent chat. We're going to see real use cases where you can train an AI to have intelligent conversations using your practice's voice, as well as clinical applications in intelligent devices.

Photoshop recently released a feature called Generative Fill where you type a prompt, like a man in a puffy jacket on a snowy street, and it seamlessly generates backgrounds with matching lighting and shadows. Here is a real example using a photo of Adam's soccer team from when he was eight years old. Adam filled in the missing parts of the photo using Generative Fill.

Adam Daniells

It was a great season that season.

John Wheeler

Which one are you, Adam? Give us top left, top right—where are we looking here?

Adam Daniells

Middle left, middle row.

Max Baybak

The reason I wanted to show you this is that you see a lot of hype online, but experimenting with it ourselves yielded astounding results. Here is another example where you can manipulate a photo to be anything you want. While it's not 100% perfect yet, image generation capability is already here and will soon be indiscernible from original photographs.

Adam Daniells

So I guess don't believe the internet anymore?

Max Baybak

Don't believe the internet anymore. There are definitely going to be issues regarding what's true and what's not. For instance, AI in healthcare is being used to identify new categories of heart failure, manage kidney disease, and predict cancer spread. However, there's no room for error, and AI can fabricate information when it doesn't know the answer. Adam, will you tell the story about that lawyer?

Adam Daniells

A lawyer in New York used ChatGPT to write a legal response for a lawsuit, and it referenced case law that didn't exist at all. The AI fabricated the case law, and the lawyer was censured as a result. AI is only as smart as the data it's fed, and while it gives you answers, you have to verify accuracy. It remains an incredible tool for tasks like drafting a website terms of service, but complex legal or medical details require close inspection.

Max Baybak

When it comes to AI in aesthetics, John, do you have a take on where we might see it show up in a meaningful way first?

John Wheeler

Digital marketing will be greatly impacted by AI. On the fly, you can serve custom, curated ads to an individual based on their web browsing history, Amazon purchases, age, and interests. An AI could know if someone is a fan of The Office and serve them a custom meme ad referencing the show to explain why they need a neurotoxin injection.

We could also see the rise of AI bot catfishing, where bots post as real people on social media and build relationships over time to push prospective clients toward purchasing decisions. Furthermore, lead responding sequences can be automated 24/7/365 by connecting ChatGPT APIs with open API EMRs like Zenoti, NextTech, or PatientNow. On a basic level, I personally use AI to help draft polished email responses.

This protection for teams is essential because responding to leads can be brutal. For example, our team member Ellie received this text message from someone in a sequence: "STOP, remove my number and f*** off before I crush your skull and reach up through your ahole and pull your worthless head into your guts to be digested so you can s* yourself out like the worthless pile you are." Using intelligent chatbots insulates your team from that kind of abuse.

Max Baybak

I completely agree regarding custom creative; eventually, no two people will ever see the same ad copy or imagery. As AI interprets user targeting data, ad delivery will become precise to a level far beyond today. Regarding trust, as before-and-afters become effortlessly manipulable, verification mechanisms like blockchain metadata will become essential to prove images are authentic.

Eventually, the entire lead follow-up process could be handled by AI without human involvement, connecting directly to EMRs to book real appointments. This won't displace staff, as practice team members wear many hats and immediate lead response within minutes is now expected. You can also use AI right now to generate hundreds of ad copy and social media post ideas instantly.

Erica Crawford

To add to that, every practice or agency currently has content writers for SEO blogs and procedural pages. Content writers will shift into content editors—AI will draft the initial content, and humans will review and edit it for technical accuracy before publishing. Master classes in prompt engineering will become essential because writing detailed, structured prompts yields vastly superior results.

For example, I tested prompting AI to write a blog on buccal fat removal, specifically instructing it to cover Ozempic face, aging concerns, and pros and cons. The resulting article was detailed and well-written, but required two paragraphs of precise prompting to produce.

Max Baybak

Prompt engineering is becoming a core skill, freeing humans up for higher-value creative decision-making. As AI content floods the market, it may create a new level of spam, possibly driving a subculture that values analog, human-crafted content.

Moving on to connecting with the patient of the future, the platforms we rely on today are shifting. Google is testing Search Generative Experience (SGE), which provides direct AI-generated answers in search results rather than traditional blog links. Microsoft is leveraging ChatGPT in Bing, rumors suggest Apple may launch a search competitor by 2026, and Twitter is evolving under Elon Musk. Adam, why don't you tell us a little bit about Google SGE?

Adam Daniells

Google developed SGE in response to Bing incorporating ChatGPT, which threatened Google's search dominance. SGE provides conversational answers directly in the browser for knowledge queries. While B2B and local service searches remain largely unchanged for now, product searches feature more generative summaries. Since Google derives most revenue from ads, ad placements will adapt rather than disappear.

Max Baybak

Apple is also integrating search capabilities directly into iOS and Siri via tools like Visual Lookup. Elon Musk has expressed a vision for advertising on Twitter (X) that informs and entertains rather than annoys. John, do you see a world where aesthetic practices acquire patients through Twitter?

John Wheeler

Twitter is my favorite platform, and its ad relevancy has improved dramatically recently. Elon Musk is transforming it into a video platform—where shows pull tens of millions of viewers—and allowing creators to retain monetization revenue. Med spas could leverage features like Twitter Blue or Twitter Spaces to host live audio discussions or monetized educational content for prospective patients.

Erica Crawford

Currently, almost no aesthetic practices actively use Twitter for patient acquisition; it's mostly used for B2B industry networking. To succeed long-term, Twitter needs to expand its demographic beyond its current male-dominated user base, as aesthetics decisions are predominantly made by women who currently favor Instagram and TikTok.

John Wheeler

Social media platforms follow a predictable lifecycle: they start with kids, parents join to monitor them, the user base broadens, the youth leave for the next platform, and the original platform eventually fades. Therefore, practices shouldn't rely on a single channel. Emerging platforms like Lemon8 or BeReal are worth keeping an eye on, though BeReal's non-addictive structure limits its marketing utility.

Max Baybak

Platforms will also continue to adapt and reconfigure, such as Instagram introducing broadcast channels similar to Discord or Telegram.

Erica Crawford

Treat marketing like a financial investment portfolio by diversifying across multiple channels—SEO, paid ads, email, and several social platforms. If one platform's reach declines or disappears, your business remains protected because your marketing investments are spread out.

Max Baybak

We will be covering more of these topics in upcoming webinars. Thank you so much everyone for joining us today, and enjoy the rest of Vegas Cosmetic Surgery!