A Tale of Two Advertisements

A few days ago, whilst scrolling through my Instagram feed, I came across two different posts from spas that I follow. Both were promoting an upcoming event at their respective spas. Read the two event advertisements and pay close attention to how you feel when reading them.

Post #1

Do you have cabin fever? Need a break from the winter blues? Join us for a night to escape when you book a getaway night out with your closest friends.

This intimate experience is a full spa takeover where your group will enjoy relaxing massages, personalized facials, and complimentary wine and charcuterie.

Come unwind with us and let us treat you to a night your friends will be raving about for the rest of the year. Comfort and relaxation are calling this winter.

Post #2

Looking to be “that girl” in your friend group? We went all out so you and your friends could enjoy the unforgettable girls’ night out.

This exclusive event is a wine night on steroids. Enjoy the vino alongside luxury massages and facials that will leave you glowing.

Dress up, ball out, and come spend a night with us to glam up the girls.

Ok… I have a confession. I may or may not have made those posts up. But did you feel that? Did you have two wildly different reactions to the words that you read? After all… weren’t the two posts promoting the exact same thing? A rented night out for you and your friends to enjoy some cocktails and get some facials. But then why did you feel so differently about the two?

That my friend, is marketing; in particular, the power of language. And the first rule of marketing is to know your target audience.

Post #1 is marketing to the woman that craves the plush feeling of comfort. To market to her we are going to use words such as “escape, intimate, relaxing, and unwind”. You can feel the emotion that those words evoke.
Post #2 is going to attract the person that likes to feel important— they like to stand out. Here we use words such as “unforgettable, exclusive. luxury, glam.” Completely different reaction to the exact same promotion.

Know Thyself… and then know your customers

When it comes to marketing, one must start within before identifying who this elusive “target customer” is. At the core, all spas are designed around the same principles: they exist to cure existing skin concerns and elevate the health and beauty of skin.

But if that is the case for all spas, what is stopping someone from getting a facial from the spa down the street? In other words… how are you different?

Within the construct of “curing skin conditions and elevating beauty,” there are millions of variations and ways that this can play out in real life. Any marketing and brand strategies must first answer the question, “how is my spa different?” and only you can answer that.

Only then can you begin crafting the vision of your target customer. Once you have identified your key differentiators, you can begin designing for whom you want to be in business. Who do you want to come and enjoy your space and experience the vision you set out to make? To best truly understand your customers, you must be able to answer the following questions that make up a customer profile:

Identity: Who is your target customer at the core? Give them a made-up name for fun. How old is this person? What do they do for a living? Are they married? Kids? What are their hobbies? Where do they spend their time when they aren’t getting facials? What organizations do they belong to?
Gains: This is getting into your target customer’s psyche. What motivates them? What in their life gives them energy? What fuels them? What do they love? What are they passionate about?
Pains: In life, we all make decisions based on two core emotions: love and fear. What is taking away this customer’s energy? What puts them in a bad mood? What do they wish did not exist in their lives?

The best way to get started with a customer profile is to get it down on paper. Take a blank sheet and write the name of your target customer at the top followed by the three categories (Identity, Gains, and Pains) with ten bullet points under each topic.

Marketing of any type is about emotion. The best part of our industry (and the reason most of us pursued it in the first place) is that our solutions directly work toward the betterment of our client’s emotions and well-being. But how can we market toward them if we do not first understand what motivates them in the first place?

A spa that is located in a busy city with younger clients looking for a quick glow-up before a busy weekend is going to market to its clients very differently than a suburban spa whose clients are concerned with completely different skin and life problems. A lot of this sounds intuitive— business owners have a keen sense of who their customers already are. But it is important to actually list them out to uncover some key emotions and motivators that you have not previously considered.

As we are all in the business of making money, we have the opportunity to be selective with whom we do business. Marketing is a way to make us money, grow our brand recognition, and form an army of customers that are obsessed with our services.

Promotions: The First Idea of “Marketing”

When people think of marketing, their first idea is often associated with promoting, or synonymously, discounting. “I am going to market a spring sale so I am going to discount everything 30% off.” But what is this mentality really doing?

Sure, this might get some new faces in the door, but a discount is really only catering to customers that are looking for a cheap deal. Keyword: customers (transactional). Not clients (loyal, passionate fans).

Any marketing promotion should be geared toward one thing only: creating new value for the clients that are passionate about your brand. This win-win approach will not only benefit your customers for the added benefit you provide them, but you will also be either growing sales or your client list along the way.

Growing Sales

Are you used to having seasonal sales that heavily discount your products and services? Do you see huge boosts in revenue for those months? This is because your customers have been conditioned to wait for these discounts and stock up on products and service specials until the next seasonal sale comes along. Is this a win-win? Or are your customers just being opportunistic at the expense of your profit margins?

When it comes to marketing, we need to be thinking of ways to create more value for the clients that desperately want to consume more of what you have to offer. These are the people that are driving the real profit for you. Think of your own life— who are you a super consumer of? Are you the type to pre-order the new Taylor Swift album on vinyl, pay (a lot) to see her in concert (twice, if you’re lucky), and then buy merch at said concert? Contrast that to the person that just listens to the new album on Spotify for, well… free. Feel the difference.

For a spa, growing sales through adding value for your loyal clients can take many forms that benefit them (make them feel seen) while making you high-margin money.

Do you have a client (or many clients) that routinely comes in for facials but does not buy retail from you? Market a bundle deal with their next spa series that includes a mini kit of products for them to take the treatment room home with them.
Do you have loyal clients that want more time in your beautiful space but your booking sheet is full? Market an exclusive spa night just for your most loyal clients (you can even steal my mock Instagram posts above). You can charge essentially whatever you want for a night like this because you are creating a unique experience for your super fans.
Do you specialize in cosmetics but your clients know you more for skincare? Offer a complimentary mini-makeover after their facial. I guarantee they leave having purchased cosmetics from you. Costs you nothing. Added value for the consumer. You increased the sale of an already paying customer.

The list goes on. Adding value must be at the core of any marketing. Of course, how you get the word out is up to you. Social media and a strong up-to-date website are again the first right answer. But in the world of spas, we are serving the local community. Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Remember that you are adding value that people want to tell their friends about… and they will!

Finding New Clients

The flipside of penetrating existing customers is the struggle to find new customers in the first place. If you are a new spa, you have taken the brave step of opening your own space, and the struggle to find clients is real. You started with friends and family, but the jump to the rest of the community has proven difficult. You may have gotten a few people through Groupon but they never came back (again… we don’t want customers just looking for a discount). Here are some ideas to get started when marketing to find new clients.

Start with word of mouth (and add value!!!). The cost to acquire a new customer in the marketing world is high. But who better to spread your name than your already small group of loyal clients? Start a referral program to reward your loyal community for bringing in new people. Refer a friend for a facial, and receive a free product (if you are smart it will be a product that a particular customer has never purchased before— always be marketing!).
Engage the local community. Go back to the target customer profile that you created. Where does your target customer spend their time outside of a spa? What organizations do they belong to? Answering these questions will point you in the right marketing direction.
Are you collecting emails from customers? Are you doing anything with those emails? A well-crafted email newsletter is a timeless way to engage with your customers. If you are providing real value, you will not be cluttering their inbox but rather they will look forward to reading what you have to say as a beauty expert.

“How do I know if it is working?”

The word, “data,” can seem intimidating to a lot of us. I get it. Spa manager. NOT accountant. When it comes to marketing, we have to know if our efforts are working. If so, great! Double down on them. If not, okay! We tried something and now we get to try something new.

But these insights are impossible if we are not tracking our marketing efforts. While there is a world of marketing analytics and metrics that I could go into, I want to keep this simple.

Whenever you start a new marketing campaign or strategy, define what your goal is and attach a number to it.

What does a good job look like? Starting a new referral program? How many referrals do you want in the next 2 months? How many new customers would that convert? And how are you going to track each new referral?

If you are a spa owner or a spa manager, tracking marketing efforts becomes that much more essential when you have employees working for you. You need to train and engage them in these promotions. How many times did the esthetician offer a complimentary makeover? How many clients accepted? How much retail sales did this turn into?

As managers, owners, or employees, you have a good pulse on what is working. But to truly maximize marketing, we need to convert your anecdotal data into numbers that you can evaluate. At the end of the day, only one metric matters: sales.

Creating Your Marketing Strategy

So far, we have discussed what marketing is and what it is not. We have identified who our target audience is, we know what motivates them, and what struggles they are facing. The next step is to get your name in front of them.

When setting up your marketing strategy, you must first identify what value you are adding, who this campaign is for, what channels you will be using to reach them, and what metrics you will use to determine success.

When running any marketing strategy, the more ways your customers see and hear your name the better. Thus, all of your brandings must be aligned. Your social feeds (or even paid ads), emails, and in-spa signage should all point to the same north star of your strategy.

Once all of this is in place, your team is trained, and you begin to get the word out, the real marketing begins. While we live in a viral world, the reality is that the key to business success is consistent, steady revenue growth. A true marketing strategy is one that is bringing in sales while continuously trying new things that increase the customer experience by just 1%. If you can do this consistently, you are on the right track for consistent growth powered by loyal clients.

A Tale of Two Advertisements