What Rare Beauty and Rhode teach med spas about branding

Pull up five med spa websites in your area. I’d bet at least three use a blush or champagne palette, a thin serif logo, and a hero photo of a woman touching her cheek. Most promise “natural-looking results” in the first line. That sameness is the biggest problem in med spa branding right now, and it’s why so many skilled practices end up competing on price.

Consumer beauty brands face the same crowded shelf, and a few of them have handled it well. Rare Beauty and Rhode are two of the clearest examples. They sell very different things in very different ways. But you can explain either one in a sentence, and that clarity is worth studying.

You don’t need a celebrity founder to learn from them. You do need to know what your practice stands for, show how it shapes the experience, and make every touchpoint agree.

What Rare Beauty gets right: a belief with a visible role

Rare Beauty makes makeup. Its brand is also built around a point of view. Its About page says the company wants to “help everyone celebrate their individuality by redefining what beautiful means.” That idea shows up in its imagery, its language, and its focus on mental well-being.

The lesson for an aesthetic practice is to give your beliefs a visible job. “We believe in enhancing your natural beauty” could sit on any med spa website in the country. So ask what your belief changes in practice.

Maybe your injectors would rather send someone home with less product than she asked for. Or perhaps every new client gets a full consult before any treatment is booked. You might also refuse to post before-and-after photos that rely on lighting tricks. Those are beliefs a client can see and test. A slogan alone gives her nothing to hold on to.

What Rhode gets right: a focused idea that’s easy to remember

Rhode takes a different route, though. Its About page says its philosophy is “to make one of everything really good.” Because the product line stays small, the brand has a clear center.

That focus is a strong lesson for med spa branding, because most aesthetic practices do the opposite. The service menu grows with every new device and every new rep visit. Injectables, lasers, facials, IV drips, body contouring, and a retail shelf all get equal billing. When a new client can’t tell what you’re best at, she shops by price.

You can keep every service and still have focus, as long as you decide what leads. Pick the two or three treatments you want to be known for, make them the center of the homepage and the consult, and give everything else a supporting role.

Med spa branding needs more trust than a lipstick

Here’s where the comparison stops working. Someone buying a lip balm risks a few dollars. Someone booking a filler appointment is trusting you with her face.

So med spa branding has a heavier job. It has to feel desirable and safe at the same time. A client is weighing taste, credentials, and price all at once, often in a few seconds.

She’s also checking you out beyond your website. In a 2022 YouGov survey for Reputation, 72% of consumers said they read online reviews when considering a new healthcare provider. If your reviews describe a warm, careful, expert team and your website looks like a coupon site, she notices the gap.

That means a med spa brand should answer practical questions with the same polish it uses on visuals:

• Who performs treatments, and what are their credentials?
• What happens at the first consult, and is there a fee?
• How do you decide what to recommend?
• What should she expect afterward, in plain language?
• How do pricing and memberships work?

Clear information can still look beautiful. In the right hands, design makes a nervous decision feel easier. I go deeper on page structure in what a med spa website needs to book the right clients.

Polish is fine when it says something true

A lot of beauty marketing advice comes down to “be authentic,” which usually translates to “post less polished content.” I think that’s too simple.

Rare Beauty and Rhode are both carefully built brands with professional photography and deliberate language. So the useful test is whether the polish communicates something real, or covers up a practice that hasn’t decided what it stands for.

A candid video of your lead injector explaining her approach can build trust. So can a beautifully art-directed photo shoot of your treatment rooms. Neither will help if the message underneath is vague.

How to apply this to your med spa branding

Start with strategy, and then let it drive everything else:

1. Name your belief. Write one sentence about how you approach aesthetics that a competitor couldn’t copy with a straight face. Then list three ways it shows up in your actual process.
2. Choose your focus. Decide which treatments lead. Reorder the website, the consult, and your social content around them.
3. Build a visual identity that fits. Your colors, type, and photography should express your point of view, beyond whatever is trending in aesthetics this year. Our guide on choosing brand colors for a wellness practice can help.
4. Write copy that sounds like your best consult. Specific, reassuring, and free of “rediscover your radiance.” For more, read about finding a voice for an aesthetic practice.
5. Make it consistent. Your website, intake forms, aftercare cards, and signage should all feel like the same place.

Alternate View is a good example of how this plays out. It’s a new concept combining eye care, eyewear, and facial aesthetics, so the brand had to make an unusual mix feel coherent and credible from the first look.

Why piecemeal med spa branding falls short

Most med spas try to fix one piece at a time. A new logo here, a website refresh there, a new Instagram template from a freelancer. Each piece might look good. Still, together they rarely tell one story.

Rare Beauty and Rhode feel clear because the belief, the visuals, the words, and the experience were designed together. A practice needs the same thing at its own scale. That’s why we build strategy, identity, copy, and a custom website as one project in the Complete Brand. If you’re wondering what that kind of project costs, here’s a guide to practice rebrand cost. And if your practice has started to look like everyone else, read why your practice brand blends in when your care stands out.

Your brand doesn’t need to resemble either of these companies. It needs a point of view grounded in your work and expressed clearly enough that the right clients recognize it. If you want help finding yours, apply to work with us.