The spa industry is thriving and allows for many experienced professionals to become successful business owners. But creating a spa product line can be daunting. It can be a time-consuming and expensive endeavor that will require creativity, talent, and determination.
That’s why it’s so important to arm yourself with the right tools and knowledge. If you have a strategy from the get-go, you can easily reach your goals. Here are five steps to follow to launch a spa product line successfully.
1. Create Your Product Line Name
A spa product line is composed of beauty products designed to keep customers attractive and healthy. Your spa product line name should not just take those into account. It should also take into consideration your business mission and your target customers.
Let’s talk about that second point. A typical spa product line will primarily have women aged 18 and above as its target audience. But that’s not the case all the time. That’s why you need to create customer personas.
A customer persona is an in-depth description of a person who represents your target audience. It is not a real customer but a fictional person who has all the characteristics of your top potential customers. You need to give this fictional customer a name, interests, demographic details, and behavioral traits. You also need to understand their goals and buying patterns to come up with a name that will most likely cater to them.
Source: LH3
When choosing a name, it’s essential to research what you can and cannot include, too. For instance, you can’t use words like medicinal, curing, or healing. You will run into problems in most countries for doing so, and you don’t want to jeopardize your product that way.
Source: Herb Hedge Row
Luckily, there are many names you can use. See the above screenshot and click here for the complete guide of 214 words you can use to describe your products. Sure, the words are for skincare products, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them for other products in your spa line.
Just to give you an idea, here’s an example of a spa product line with a good name and branding:
Source: Acme Hardesty
Note how the name, and the slogan, are concise and straightforward. Anyone who sees the name will realize that this is a product with green credentials. The visual branding fits with the name. The packaging looks attractive.
The chosen name is also based on a trend. Research by Statista shows that 52 percent of consumers worldwide look for green features such as vegan ingredients when selecting beauty products.
2. Decide Which Products You Will Offer
Your spa product line can be composed of many beauty products. You can create skincare products, bath lotion products, essential oils, among others. The types of products you create should depend on customer interests.
When deciding which products to produce, it’s important to be aware of spa trends. For instance, at the moment, the organic and vegan trend is very popular, as is the movement to reduce stress. Check out the graph below:
Source: Mindbodyonline
You want to stay in touch with general spa industry news to help you make an informed decision when choosing your products. It’s important to remember that the beauty industry is a saturated market. Industry experts emphasize that you will need an original product with an authentic, compelling story to succeed in this sector.
When creating products, you should also consider how easy it is to work with the supplier. You need to have a good relationship with your supplier to avoid issues with deliveries.
3. Write A Business Plan
Creating a business plan for your spa product line is an in-depth, lengthy process that requires detailed research. Your business plan, after all, serves as your guide throughout the entire process. In a nutshell, here are the eight important parts your business plan should have:
- Your beauty brand mission and target customers: We discussed these in the previous section.
- Your competitors: What are your competitors selling?
- Your manufacturing and sales strategy: Where are you getting your products from? Will you manufacture them or get them from a supplier? How do you plan to sell them?
You also need to understand your costs before launching a spa product line. Account for these expenses in your business plan. Your start-up costs will vary according to your goals, the products you are producing, and where you are selling these products.
If you want to outsource the product creation, initial start-up costs will be high because most of these contracted manufacturers will require a large minimum order. That means when you sell your products—you’d have to sell them at a higher price, too, to generate a profit.
Your packaging can also add to your budget, especially if you are creating packaging that appeals to the luxury end of the spa market. Here is an excerpt from a spa business plan. You can download a template like this and then change all the details and images.
Source: Slideteam
The more detailed your business plan is, the better.
4. Build A Marketing Campaign
Building your marketing campaign is a complex process, but you’ll be fine if you base it on your customer persona. Some companies allow you to download a free marketing campaign template, like the one you will see below.
Source: Smartsheet
If you don’t want to use a template, here are the steps you need to follow:
- Choose your marketing campaign end goal. Do you want to generate sales? Or increase awareness about your product?
- Set your marketing campaign budget: How much do you think you’ll spend to promote your products?
- Identify your marketing campaign target audience. For this, go back to your customer personas specified in your business plan.
- Design your content, including your message and your call to action. All these should be based on your customer personas. Also, make sure you consider your marketing campaign budget when doing this.
- Choose your marketing channels, for instance, email, social media, among others. I suggest complementing email with social media.
- Launch and monitor your marketing campaign. You want to know which parts of the campaign work and which don’t, which is why it’s a good idea to set SMART goals.
It’s worth spending some time looking up some of the current best beauty marketing campaigns. One campaign that immediately comes to mind is L’Oreal with their marketing efforts that embrace the 21st century and cater to their target audience. L’Oreal’s products aren’t really just spa products, but you can take your cue from how they market beauty products in general.
5. Choose Your Management Software
You need to think ahead before you launch your spa product line. After all, as your business grows, you’d need to employ some staff members to help you sell and market your new products. You can use employee scheduling software to manage staff. It’s great for managing freelancers.
You may also want to take a look at project management software. The tool is handy when you launch your subsequent marketing campaigns. Trello allows you to assign work related to your marketing campaign. Other examples of this kind of software include Connecteam, Sage HR, Wix, and Omnifiy.
Choosing the right software solutions for your business can be crucial to your success, ensuring you do some thorough research before choosing them.
Conclusion
Launching a spa product line is hard. You’d need to invest a lot of effort, time, and money. Even worse, it’s also possible you’ll fail despite all the hard work and resources you put in. That’s why planning is critical.
A plan for launching your spa product line can work wonders for your business.
This article shared the steps you should follow to launch a spa product line. Create your product line name, decide what products to sell, then write your business plan. After that, build your marketing campaign and choose your management software. The more time you spend on planning and researching the start, the higher your chance of success. You’ll propel your spa business 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.
