The wellness industry has grown significantly over the last two decades. While that growth is an indication of opportunities, it also means you’ll be facing more competition as startups try to get a piece of the market. Yet, competition shouldn’t be an issue if you can get visitors through your doors to try your service.
There are many ways you can make your spa stand out. Here are five tried-and-tested spa promotion ideas to set you apart. Read on, and with a bit of hard work, you’ll get those leads and conversions.
- Provide a Discount on Your Service
One of the most effective spa promotion strategies is to offer a discount on your usual service. The premise of a good offer is straightforward; provide a significant discount, and more people are likely to treat themselves to your service.
That formula of great value for money equates to more customers is hardly rocket science. Yet, while a good discount is effective, you need to have a considered strategy in place to maximize the value of the offer to your business.
Firstly, you need to be clear on who you are targeting with your campaign. For example, your spa might cater primarily to women between the ages of 50-65. Alternatively, you might run a spa that caters to people who are in their twenties.
Those are two very different demographics.
The approach you take to targeting these two demographics would be very different, so you need to create a customer persona.
Source: 99 Designs
Use information about your existing customers to create your customer persona. Try to discover why they come to your spa and the types of publications that they read. All of that information will be useful as you put together your campaign.
When you’re clear about who you are targeting, you can decide where to promote your special offer. For example, you might promote a discount through:
- Your website
- Social media channels
- Local newspaper/ magazines
- A site like Groupon
The special offer you put together will probably sell itself. What you need to do, though, is ensure that those leads turn into valuable long-term customers for your spa. You should also think about how you can maximize your profits from each visitor.
One way you could increase profits from people who take advantage of your special offer is to upsell customers. For example, if a customer comes in for a standard facial, you could upsell them to your luxury facial at a slightly reduced rate. It’s the same type of system that fast-food chains have in place when they ask you if you want to “have fries with that.”
Secondly, consider how to turn some of the people into longer-term customers. For example, you could offer an annual subscription at a discount.
- Invest in Video Marketing
If you’re looking for an effective spa promotion strategy, focus on your strengths.
Spas are a very visual medium. A nice photograph or a video of your spa helps to sell the experience. You get to see the setting. You can visualize yourself lying down on the massage table and relaxing.
Invest in creating videos that capture the essence of your spa and the unique value it offers to customers. The beauty of branded video content is that you can use it organically on most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can even embed those videos on your website for visitors to see when they visit.
Video marketing, however, should not be a one-time thing. You need to create videos consistently if you want to see genuine results.
You have many topics you can cover with video marketing if you want to take it seriously. For example, you can ask employees to create videos around the services you offer. For example, you could create a series of videos around massage tips.
If you are going to get a freelancer to produce your videos, invest in a work scheduling app to keep things organized. You’ll need to liaise between your staff and the freelancer to get the content created on time and within budget.
- Work With Micro-Influencers
If you’re managing a company looking to engage a local audience working with micro-influencers, it might be a logical way to grow your customer base. It’s certainly something you should consider when you’re coming up with your shortlist of spa promotion ideas.
As I mentioned initially, one of the first things you should do before setting on a micro-influencer campaign is to review how your target demographic consumes information. For example, if your average customer is between the ages of 50-70 and reads the local paper, it would make more sense to advertise in your local newspaper than work with a local Instagram influencer.
On the other hand, if most of your customers are active on Instagram, this could be one of your most effective marketing channels.
Once you’ve defined the channel you want to use, you’ll need to pick a suitable influencer for the campaign. I recommend you pick an influencer who shares the same demographics as your target audience. For example, it doesn’t make much sense partnering with an 18-year-old influencer if your target audience is 50 and over.
Choosing the right influencer for your campaign will take time. You need to research their audience and check to make sure they have real views and followers. There are plenty of online tools you can use to check social engagement.
Once you’ve decided who you want to work with, contact the influencer and set out the terms of your contract. Make use of email templates so you can reach out to these influencers at scale. You need to define how they will share information about your spa, the number of posts they will make, and other deliverables.
- Offer Gift Certificates
Gifts certificates are a great way to generate revenue and get warm leads through your doors. Gift cards are also a natural fit for the wellness industry. After all, people like to treat their friends and loved ones to nice presents. A day at a spa certainly falls within the definition of a nice present.
The demand for gift certificates will fluctuate due to seasonal demand. For example, you’ll generally get a lot of requests around Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and other seasonal holidays. If you’re planning to use gift certificates to promote your spa, it’s worth thinking about how you can incorporate these offers around seasonal events.
- Create a Referral Program
Referral programs take advantage of a powerful human need: the need for reward. With referral programs, you incentivize a regular customer to bring another to your spa. Usually, the reward (which frequently takes the form of a gift card) is issued once the new customer pays for a service or a product.
Source: Business2Community
Referral programs are very effective. According to Extole, a person is four times more likely to purchase something if the brand was referred to them by a friend. Through referral programs, in essence, you’re turning ordinary customers into brand ambassadors.
The Bottom Line
To succeed in the spa business, as in any other business, you need to put in the hard work. That means implementing strategies to get those leads to you. Once they do come to you, you need to execute strategies again to turn them into paying customers.
In this article, I gave you those strategies you can use. Run special first-visit promotions, invest in video marketing, work with micro-influencers, offer gift certificates, and create a referral program. Your skill, passion, patience, and hard work will go a long way. You’ll see those leads and customers coming in. Your spa business will be well on its way to success.
Bio: Owen Jones is the Senior Content Marketer at ZoomShift, an online schedule maker app. He is an experienced SaaS marketer specializing in content marketing, CRO, and FB advertising. He likes to share his knowledge with others to help them increase results.
