New practitioners price too low, then discover they have built a business that only works if they never stop working.
The usual reasoning goes: I am new, so I should charge less until I am experienced. It sounds reasonable and it creates two problems. Cheap attracts patients who are shopping on price, which is the group most likely to be dissatisfied and least likely to return. And raising prices later means either losing that group or having an awkward conversation with every one of them.
Start from cost rather than from what the clinic down the road charges. Work out what a treatment actually costs you: product, consumables, your prescriber's fee if you use one, the proportion of your insurance and indemnity attributable to it, premises time, and the unpaid time in consultation, review and admin. That last category is the one people forget, and it is often larger than the treatment itself.
Then decide what your time is worth, and be honest that this is a decision rather than a calculation. A rate that produces a viable income at a realistic number of patients per week is the target. If the only way your pricing works is by seeing more people than you can see safely, the pricing is wrong.
On the competitive question, there is always someone cheaper, and in this sector the cheapest option is often someone whose training, insurance or product sourcing you would not want to compete with. Deciding not to compete on price is a legitimate position, provided you can say what you compete on instead. Time, thoroughness, review appointments included, being reachable when something is worrying: these are real and patients notice them.
Avoid discounting as a habit. An introductory offer is fine. A permanent state of discount trains your patients to wait for the next one and tells them your list price is fictional. If you are discounting to fill a diary, the problem is demand, and discounting rarely fixes demand for long.
Be careful about how you advertise anything involving botulinum toxin. It is a prescription-only medicine and advertising it to the public is prohibited, which means price promotions naming a toxin brand are a compliance problem as well as a commercial one. Price your work by treatment area or consultation rather than by drug name.
Packages and courses of treatment need thinking through. Money taken for treatment not yet delivered is money you may have to return, and if you stop practising, or the patient becomes unsuitable, you need a clear position on refunds written down in advance.
Review appointments are worth including in the price rather than charging for. A patient who hesitates to come back because it costs them is a patient whose problem you find out about later and larger.
Put your prices where people can see them. Practitioners who publish get fewer time-wasting enquiries and more patients who arrive already comfortable with the cost. The instinct to keep pricing behind a phone call mostly protects you from a conversation that was going to happen anyway.