Patients don’t just ARRIVE, they are ACQUIRED
You’ve moved from the NHS into aesthetics. In your NHS job, there’s a stead stream of patients. They seem to spontaneously arrive out of nowhere. It’s organic. Automatic.
In the NHS, demand is built in. Patients are allocated, referred, or simply turn up.
In private aesthetics, you are responsible for demand — and that changes everything.
There’s one uncomfortable truth that hits sooner or later…“Patients don’t just arrive, they are acquired”
And when they do, in the early days, it’s through organic and word of mouth, but then it needs to be systematised, professionalised and repeatable.
This costs. Time, money and effort.
Most clinicians have no clue about customer acquisition. They’ve never needed to. But if you want your business to grow, you have to be prepared to pay for customers.
The NHS mindset vs the aesthetics business reality
Most clinicians transitioning from the NHS carry an unspoken belief:
“If I’m good at my job, I will stay in my job. I will get paid because I will treat patients.”
Skill matters, of course. But essentially, demand exists and patients know where to go to get their treatment - their local GP, the out-of-hours clinic, A & E.
In your aesthetics business, you are competing with other clinics, you are competing with patient indecisiveness, you are competing for attention. Patients are scrolling, comparing, hesitating.
Attention is a paid-for commodity. It’s either paid for in time, effort and money. Often a combination of all three.
The NHS has referral pathways to bring patients to you, your aesthetics business has marketing.
The key concept you need to understand: Lifetime Value (LTV)
One patients value to your business is MUCH MORE than the price of one appointment.
The number of practitioners who, when they’re charged the 30% New Patient Commission fee on Glowday protest “I’ve not made any money on that treatment now” indicates a fundamental lack of understanding regarding how business works.
Take an aesthetics patient who has:
Regular wrinkle relaxing (3–4 times per year)
A combination of peels, skin boosters or microneedling
Occasional filler treatments
This typical patient is often worth £2,000–£5,000+ over their lifetime with a clinic - which is typically around 5 years if you deliver a great service and have good retention practices in place.
This isn’t just a theoretical value. It’s based on:
Repeat treatment cycles - wrinkle relaxing, facials and microneedling
Increasing trust leading to increased spend over time
Long-term loyalty once rapport is built, extended the period of time a patient remains “active”
So, rather than having the mindset where paying for a patient feels punitive, the real question you should ask yourself is
“How much should I be willing to invest to acquire a patient worth thousands of pounds?"
The answer most clinicians find shocking, but business people do not, is that in private aesthetics, a healthy benchmark is:
10–30% of lifetime value can reasonably be spent acquiring a patient
So if a patient is worth £3,000, spending £300–£900 to acquire them is not reckless. It’s commercially sensible.
This is why established, profitable clinics, with great systems in place:
Run paid ads
Invest in branding
Work with marketing agencies
Track leads and conversions
They are not “wasting money”. They are investing in future revenue.
“But I don’t make that back on the first appointment…”
Correct. And that’s normal.
Aesthetics is **not a single-transaction business**.
Most clinics don’t break even in the first year. There are incremental profit increases from year two onwards.
Botox patients return every 3–4 months. Skin patients stay when they trust you. Once someone lets you treat their face, switching providers is emotionally expensive.
Retention is where you make your money. But you can only retain patients you’ve acquired.
Under-spending on marketing actually holds you back
Many ex-NHS clinicians try to:
Rely on Instagram or Facebook posts only
Avoid paid ads because they “feel wrong” or “cringey”
Expect word of mouth to do all the work in attracting new patients
This results in being in a constant state of “feast or famine”. A diary that fills up when you have a push on marketing and dries up when you’ve gotten fed up of posting. This leads to anxiety, a lack of self-belief and a diary that is inconsistent.
Under-investing in acquiring new patients doesn’t protect your profits — it keeps your business small.
It’s not just as simple as boosting some Instagram posts.
You’ll churn through a ton of cash with little return on marketing if you don’t have a strategy and plan.
In order for marketing to work for your business, you need to think about what systems you have in place to keep a patient returning.
Automated re-book reminders
Treatment plans
Skin journeys
Packages or memberships
A consistent presence on socials and in emails
If you have these things in place, you can afford to spend **more** to acquire patients — because you know they’ll stay. You know the ROI is high.
Marketing spend without retention is risky. Marketing spend *with* retention leads to predictable growth.
The mindset shift that changes everything
Private aesthetics is not just clinical work — it’s a business.
That doesn’t make you less ethical. It makes you sustainable.
Paying to acquire patients isn’t greedy, unprofessional or “salesy”. It’s simply replacing the referral system you used to have in the NHS — with a marketing machine that you control.
You need stop feeling weird about marketing…and you need to grasp that acquiring customers costs money.