BUSINESS
MARKET mapping
The end of 2025 is the perfect time to, reflect, and refine your business to stay ahead and stand out in a fast-changing market.
The market is changing for aesthetic clinics as the industry matures and competition intensifies. Attracting and retaining profitable new clients is challenging, aggravated by the reduction in website traffic caused by the introduction of AI summaries and the progressively lower organic reach of social media. The successful clinics of 2026 will be the ones that are able to differentiate themselves in their local markets, identify the treatments that are likely to achieve the highest client demand and profitability and have achieved high levels of client retention.
AVERAGE HOURLY CHARGE
At its core, the fundamental dynamics of an aesthetic clinic’s revenue can be reduced to one simple equation: Your earnings =
Your average hourly charge (P) x Your total hours billed (Q)
The “average hourly charge” is a blended mix of your premium and lower value services. The “total hours billed” is a reflection of your booking volume and how much time you lose to admin and HR activities. Therefore, to increase revenue, you need to improve the blend of services you sell, marketing the more premium services and increasing the number of billed hours or “utilisation” by removing non-productive activity, creating more time to sell services to clients.
THE LOCAL MARKET
Review your local competition and get a comprehensive understanding of the services they offer, their pricing and promotional initiatives and compare them to your own. When comparing their services against your own, ask yourself the following questions
• Are there treatments that your clinic can provide that are not available elsewhere?
• Can you offer the same services but at a better price?
• Can you offer better quality?
• Can you offer a better experience?
• Do you get better results?
CURRENT PERFORMANCE
Undertake an analysis of your current treatment portfolio and identify how popular and, more importantly, how profitable they are. To accurately compare one service against another, use the “rate per min” metric to compare them fairly and understand the relationship between revenue and effort.
BOOKING PERFORMANCE
Review your booking calendar and identify typical quiet periods, seasonal fluctuations and underutilised slots. Ensure that you have matched the demand for services to your staffing.
CLIENT INFORMATION
Understand your client base, identify loyal clients and determine their demographic profile, for example:
• Are they professionals seeking minimally invasive treatments?
• How old are your clients?
• Can you specialise in local demands?
• How many of your new clients came from client referrals?
Calculate your repeat visit rate or RVR % by dividing the number of repeat visits by the total number of visits and multiplying by 100. Subtract the result from 100 and find what your clinic’s rate is. Review the % of missed appointments and no-shows, and calculate what the opportunity cost was to your overall financial performance.
MARKETING
Review your website traffic and conversion rates using Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Understand your clinic’s search visibility and ranking in search engines with tools. What were your engagement levels in your social media channels using engagement rate calculator tools. Your ultimate goal is to determine how visible your clinic is compared to the local competition.
FUTURE TRENDS
Staying ahead means being first! Continued monitoring of trends means you can better predict future client demand and ensure your clinic is better positioned to benefit from new developments.
LISA KELLY
Lisa Kelly is the founder of Websites For Clinics by Salon Solutions, industry experts helping aesthetic clinics, doctors, dentists and nurses attract new clients and generate new bookings to grow their clinic business.