This week on the DrMarketingTips podcast, Jennifer and Corey discuss how small trends across the world could have a downstream impact on your business. New notions of gender neutrality, Generation Z, and men’s cosmetics are all set to provide new and emerging market opportunities.

Join us as we dive into one of those emerging trends and follow the money to see how it may impact the practices we work with. Understanding what makes the upcoming generation of male patients tick and capitalizing on the opportunities they provide your medical practice can give you a substantial long-term advantage over your competition.

Tune in to discover:

• Global trends you need to keep your eye on
• How Generation Z is redefining new notions of manhood
• What gender neutrality means to how you market your medical practice moving forward
• How you can be an early adopter and capitalize on emerging opportunities

Transcript Notes

Speaker 1: Dr Marketing Tips, paging Dr Marketing Tips. Dr Marketing Tips, you’re needed in the Marketing Department. Welcome to the DrMarketingTips podcast. Your prescription to the answers you seek to grow your medical practice easier, better, and faster. This show is all about connecting practice administrators and medical marketing professionals with peers working in practices, learning from experiences, making mistakes, and sharing successes. Let’s get started.

Jennifer: Hey there. Welcome to the DrMarketingTips podcast. I am Jennifer.

Corey: I’m Corey.

Jennifer: Today we’re going to talk about a trend in men’s cosmetics that for some of our listeners, it’s going to make you shake your head and roll back in your chair a little bit. I already had a conversation with Corey to see if this is something he’ll be getting on board with. Doesn’t really seem like he’s game for it, but you never know what’s going to happen in the future with the world changing the way it is. Corey, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about this trend in men’s cosmetics, and then we’ll dive into how it might impact some of the medical practices that we work with.

Corey: Okay. Men’s cosmetics are beginning to gain traction in the U.S. and China. We’re starting to see big brands like L’Oreal and Estee Lauder, they’re developing products basically for Gen Z, for men. So the global men’s market-

Jennifer: These are young men, very young men right now, boys.

Corey: Yeah. The makeup market, it’s valued at over a billion dollars a year according to some market research from JUV Consulting. It’s a fraction of the 71 billion cosmetic industry, but it is gaining a lot of traction. So what we’re seeing, this trend, is that a lot of Gen Zers are starting to use makeup as men.

Jennifer: Yeah. There’s an article that Forbes put out a couple months back, and basically it’s talking about men in China. It’s talking about really in particular one young man in China. It was focusing on where his girlfriend said, “Hey, you got to, you need to update your look.” His girlfriend was 22 years old, and so what did he do? He went out and bought some foundation and some lip gloss to update his look. Then it’s talking about another young man in China who’s getting ready for his first career choice and he needs to … I mean he’s going to get ready to go into the workforce, so he got some foundation that’s really subtle and some lip liner.

Corey: Yeah. What we’re seeing basically is that these consumers, especially the younger gentlemen, they don’t subscribe to the traditional boundaries around gender, so this doesn’t threaten their masculinity in any way. That could blow open a big opportunity, not only for cosmetic companies, which is what we’re starting to see now, but also for medical practices, and med spas, and those kinds of things. Because this could be an entirely new audience that you can start to target and market to that you wouldn’t have thought of a few years ago.

Jennifer: Yeah. We’ve talked about this in past episodes, and we’ve talked about it a lot. But Generation Z, which is the next group coming, I mean they’re like, some of them are in middle school all the way up to high school type timeframe, but they are going to be the most influential, and I say this in air quotes, “dangerous consumer”, because once they have some money, they know exactly what it is they want. And the expectation from generation Z is going to be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Corey: Yeah. I mean they’re going to be incredibly well educated on the product or service. They’re basically going to have their mind already made up, and they’re going to be ready to pull the trigger. They’re just waiting on the funds to have the ability to do that. But when it comes to makeup, the shift can be anything from just changing the ads and things to be gender neutral, or targeting entirely new segments. We work with one med spa in particular who does spend a little bit of money every month on digital ads. Those ads are targeted specifically to women around the practice that fit a certain profile. But with this uptick in men’s makeup and skincare specifically, that’s an audience we haven’t even looked at. We haven’t even tried. It’s a potential huge revenue opportunity.

Jennifer: Yeah. We see it with anybody that does injectables, that maybe it’s time to make some adjustments for the types of ads that you’re feeding. We see it in men, weight loss for the sake of weight loss, for cosmetic weight loss not necessarily clinical weight loss. We see it in plastic surgery. There’s an uptick in men hair removal on top of hair growth. Men we’ve always targeted for hair growth, but now men want to have their chest hair, or their back hair removed, their leg hair removed.

Jennifer: I mean there’s just a completely different audience, and that’s really being fueled by I think, one, the beauty industry or the cosmetic industry being much more mainstream than it ever was before. Two, in that younger generations are just different than the older generations, and so those preconceived notions are very different. We’re seeing that unfold every single day as it plays out on TV, and reality shows, in the mainstream news, even gender neutral bathrooms, and things of that nature. It’s just so much more common now, and it’s changing the way we market our practices.

Corey: Yeah, exactly. Like I was saying earlier, it’s not really a threat to masculinity. Instead the message is, “This is a form of self-improvement for the empowered man,” so it’s, excuse me, it’s totally different. What does that mean for your practice? Like I said, it’s an entirely new audience to market to. Typically, we say that women are the household decision makers, and especially when it comes to cosmetic, and beauty, and those kinds of things, the audience is usually women. So it’s a whole new segment there. But also early adopters can really establish their practice as a leader in catering to this empowered man, and helping men feel okay with the use of makeup and skincare dermatology practices, and med spa, plastic surgery specifically.

Jennifer: Absolutely. I mean I think that we have to all have an open mind when it comes to marketing our medical practices, and we need to look at trends like this, and we need to look at trends that are happening maybe not specifically in medical, but that have ramifications to impact medical down the road. Because the downstream is that if this is happening right now in China on the other side of the world, and we’re seeing an uptick, that eventually it’s going to make its way into the U.S. market, especially as the generations that are growing up in an Instagram filtered world this is how they’re growing up so it becomes very commonplace. Their expectation when they come of age is going to be different than maybe a Generation X or a baby boomer.

Corey: Yeah, and here’s the thing to remember too. If the cosmetic industry is getting on board with this, that means they’re going to start to spend a lot of money to raise awareness about it, and get everybody else onboard. So as more men are going to be exposed to these ads, and whatever the cosmetic industry is going to do to get their name out there, there’s going to be a trickle-down effect, which means on a local level they’re going to start looking for a med spa around them that can maybe discreetly, maybe not, maybe it doesn’t matter, but offer these services. So if you’re that practice before your competitors are, it’s a great place to be.

Jennifer: All I know is I’m so glad I am not a younger person, part of Generation Z, because I’m still, my preference would be that women are the ones wearing makeup. But hey, I don’t really care what you do, so more power to you. I think that’s a good place to end. With that, I’m Jennifer.

Corey: I’m Corey. I’m still not wearing makeup.

Jennifer: I will see you next time on the DrMarketingTips podcast.

Corey: Thanks guys.

Jennifer: Thanks guys.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the DrMarketingTips.com podcast. If there’s anything from today’s show you want to learn more about, check out DrMarketingTips.com for our podcast resource center with all the notes, links, and goodies we mentioned during the show. If you’re not already a subscriber to our show, please consider pressing the “Subscribe” button on your podcast player so you never miss one of our future episodes. And if you haven’t given us a rating or review yet on iTunes, please find a spare minute, and help us reach and educate even more of our medical practice peers. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time. Doctor’s orders.

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