If you’re ready to implement more efficient & effective marketing strategies for your practice, book your FREE strategy session & marketing plan: https://go.medspamagicmarketing.com/schedule
How Brand Equity Supercharges Your Direct-Response Advertising
One of the themes that has been on my mind continuously over the last six to twelve months—and a topic I’ve brought up many times on the podcast—is the concept of building a brand. Not just posting content. Not just running ads. But truly developing a brand that elevates your med spa above the noise and creates marketing results that go far beyond the one-to-one return you get from direct-response campaigns.
In this article, I want to walk through what brand actually means, why it matters, how it connects to attribution in the advertising world, and how med spa owners can apply these principles for superior, long-term results. Every element below comes directly from the transcript of my episode, expanded and organized into a clear, professional long-form article.
Introduction: Beyond the Direct-Response Mindset
If you’ve listened to our podcast or watched any of our YouTube trainings, you already know that direct-response advertising is one of the most effective tools a med spa has.
This includes platforms like:
These ads allow you to put forward attractive new-patient special offers, highlight your reputation, nurture leads, and convert new patients efficiently. The data is very clear: direct-response marketing is one of the highest-ROI strategies for acquiring new med spa clients.
But long-term growth isn’t dictated solely by how well your ads perform today.
The med spas that grow with an unparalleled snowball effect—where every input generates multiple outputs rather than a one-to-one return—are the ones building brand.
And that brings us to an important conversation that many med spa owners overlook: attribution.
The Limitations of Last-Touch Attribution
Why Your Ads Perform Better When Brand Equity Exists
In digital marketing, especially in the med spa space, most advertising success is measured through last-touch attribution. This is when the final click before a conversion is credited for the entire customer acquisition.
For example:
- A patient sees your video on Instagram on Monday
- Talks to a friend who visited your med spa on Wednesday
- Sees your Google ad on Friday
- Finally fills out a lead form on Facebook
Last-touch attribution gives the credit to Facebook, even though Facebook was only one part of a much larger chain of influence.
This leads to two major problems:
1. We overvalue the last step and undervalue the brand-building that made it work
Your ads perform dramatically better when your brand is already known, trusted, and respected in your community. Many of our highest-performing clients are not just strong advertisers—they’ve built name recognition.
They’ve been in their market for a while.
People know their doctors.
People recognize their logo, their reputation, their approach.
That brand equity makes their direct-response ads far more effective, often at a lower cost per lead and with higher conversion rates.
2. We get addicted to measurability
Because last-touch attribution gives a clean data point, we mistakenly think it tells the full story. But it ignores the reality that brand drives conversions—brand makes advertising cheaper, more efficient, and more profitable.
Marketing Mix Modeling and Why It Matters
A Broader View of What Drives Growth
A few months ago, an Allergan digital marketing consultant shared with me a model he was exploring called marketing mix modeling. At its core, it tries to analyze correlation between:
- Where you’re spending money
- Where you’re seeing growth
While the methodology has limitations—and I have concerns about relying on correlation without causation—it does illustrate an important insight:
Some of your marketing impact comes from things you cannot directly track.
And that is where brand becomes essential.
What Brand Really Means (And What It Does Not)
Brand is not your logo.
Brand is not your Instagram grid.
Brand is not your fonts or colors.
Brand is the layer of recognition, trust, and preference that causes people to:
- Seek you out
- Choose you first
- Confidently pay premium prices
- Convert faster
- Convert more frequently
- Recommend you to others
Brand means customers are chasing you—rather than you constantly chasing customers.
This is the polar opposite of relying exclusively on last-touch attribution.
Gary Vaynerchuk’s Example: Why Brand Drives Consumer Behavior
I referenced a quote from a Gary Vaynerchuk podcast that perfectly captures this idea:
“I did not buy in the 80s and 90s all of that Nike stuff because someone last-touch attributed me, cold-called me, or because Nike sent me an email. I bought it because of brand.”
People don’t buy Nike because Nike retargeted them. They buy because the brand carries weight.
The same ecosystem exists in aesthetics.
Consumers choose injectors, lasers, and med spas based on trust and perceived quality—not just because they clicked an ad.
How Direct-Response and Brand Work Together
The “Purple Zone” Where Long-Term and Short-Term Meet
Gary often talks about the importance of embracing the “gray”—or the “purple”—instead of thinking in black-and-white terms.
It’s not:
- Direct response or brand
- Measurable or immeasurable
- Short-term or long-term
It is both.
Your med spa should:
- Run direct-response ads to generate predictable customer acquisition
- Simultaneously build brand to create long-term demand, reduce acquisition costs, and boost lifetime value
Brand multiplies the impact of direct response.
Direct response monetizes the impact of brand.
When combined, results accelerate.
How We’ve Done This Internally (And Why It Works)
Most of our own clients find us through:
Very few come from a single ad click.
We still run ads, but ads supplement the brand—not replace it. People actively seek us out because our content builds trust long before a sales conversation happens.
Med spas can replicate this exact effect.
Creating the Flywheel Effect: Moving Beyond Last-Touch Attribution
Below are the exact strategies I recommend if you want to build a brand that compounds over time and amplifies your direct-response advertising.
1. Commit to Real Content Creation (Not Blogging for SEO)
When most med spa owners hear “content,” they think:
“My SEO company writes blogs for me.”
This is not what I mean.
Blogs—especially generic outsourced ones—rarely build brand, rarely get read, and rarely differentiate you.
Real content = your perspective, your philosophy, your face, your personality.
It requires:
- Education
- Storytelling
- Authenticity
- Demonstrating expertise
- Sharing your nuanced approach
- Explaining why you recommend certain treatments
- Showing people why you do what you do
This is what creates a pre-existing relationship with prospects before they ever walk in the door.
2. Use Video to Build Trust and Familiarity
Get a high-quality phone.
Get good lighting.
Get a simple lavalier mic (I referenced the RØDE micro-mini pack, which clips to your shirt).
Start recording.
If you’re not the personality in your practice, someone on the team must be.
People buy from people.
Consumers want to know the injector, hear their voice, understand their values, and observe how they think.
3. Use Strong Hooks to Capture Attention
Creating content is not enough.
You need people to watch it.
One of the best resources I mentioned is:
Personal Brand Launch (Ava)
She has free downloads with proven hook ideas. You can use these to make sure the first half-second of your video captures attention so viewers keep watching.
Even med spas with great information fail because their video openings are weak. The hook determines whether someone engages long enough to hear what makes you different.
4. Use Paid Distribution to Amplify Your Best Content
Once you create content, amplify it with:
- Boosted posts
- Strategic ads
- Local targeting
This ensures your best educational pieces are repeatedly shown to the exact audience you want to attract.
This is how brand is built at scale.
And once that equity is built, your direct-response ads become dramatically more effective.
Why This Creates a Compounding Effect
When you merge:
- Consistent video content
- Strategic storytelling
- Brand education
- Strong hooks
- Paid amplification
- Direct-response advertising
You create an ecosystem where:
- Your acquisition costs decrease
- Your conversion rates increase
- Your retention improves
- Your patient lifetime value grows
- Your cold traffic warms before ever clicking an ad
- Your practice becomes the “default choice” in your market
This is the flywheel effect.
And it does what last-touch attribution cannot measure—but absolutely influences.
Final Thoughts: The Long-Term Payoff of Brand-Building
Your direct-response ads will continue to be one of the strongest drivers of new patient acquisition. But if you want long-term growth, long-term consistency, and long-term trust—brand is the multiplier.
Brand:
- Makes every ad perform better
- Improves every conversion
- Increases patient loyalty
- Elevates price tolerance
- Creates organic referrals
- Separates you from competitors
- Allows you to grow faster and more sustainably
You will have to become comfortable with the fact that brand building is less measurable. But its impact is undeniable—and essential for med spas that want more than just quarter-to-quarter gains.
If you combine strategic content with strong direct-response advertising, you won’t just generate leads. You’ll build a med spa that people actively seek out.
