Starting a Spa

At a recent Spa industry trade show, an exhibitor’s employee offered a gift to people who would let her scan their official show badge. There was an obvious goal; she needed to acquire a specific number of scans by the show's end. This employee smiled warmly as she scanned prospects, exhibitors, janitors, basically anyone breathing with a pulse and a badge.

As we watched her over the course of days, the quality of her scans continued to plummet. We estimated that her total number of scans was triple the actual number of show attendees. The net result, an abysmal contact list all thanks to the exhibitor's misplaced incentives. The goal that enticed this employee to obtain a specific number of scanned contacts ultimately overwhelmed quality and strangled value from the result.

Incentives can be an effective motivating tool for employees to increase sales, improve service and increase efficiencies. It is very important to design incentives that motivate employees toward a specific, well thought out result that provides value to an organization.

What is missing?

When your spa creates incentives for employees it is very important to give context or meaning. Explain the specifics of the incentive, clarify its value to the organization and describe all applicable processes. The information you provide will influence how employees behave toward meeting the goal and achieving their incentives. Context and meaning will give employees the ability to assess value and also minimize tangential behavior and idiosyncratic interpretation.

The exhibitor story perfectly highlights the execution of a plan that is based on misplaced incentives. This employee’s behavior made no sense but it was clearly based on an underlying incentive that steered her behavior in the wrong direction. When you are developing your employee compensation program, think carefully and clearly about incentives that will ultimately result in value to your staff and organization.

Posted in General, Spa Business Management, Starting a Spa • Comment »

If you are open about what you do, who you are, and what your plans hold, trust in your integrity will follow.  This is the case in your personal life as well as for your business.  To showcase a legal example of this, California had new regulations take effect on January 1st, aiming to bring to the forefront legitimate massage practicioners and attempt to reduce some of the stigma that many even in our modern society have with the concept of massage.  Getting certified by the state as a massage therapist is becoming more streamlined and open to the public, superceding the differing requirements from city to city that are currently in place.

The LA Times posted a nice article on the specifics of the law, which is almost universally lauded by spas and massage therapists, as well as some general information about the state of the industry and the health benefits – if any – from massage.

If you're in California, let us know how you think the law will affect you, even if good or bad.   Those not in California, what kind of an impact do you think it will have on the industry as a whole?

Posted in General, Spa Business Management, Starting a Spa • 4 Comments »

Tip #3

Sell packages or services online: Most of our top sellers sell packages or gifts for services. The top quarter of our sellers have an average a higher average sale amount, which makes perfect sense. If a (possibly male) spa gift buyer does not know what to buy they generally buy a $100 gift certificate (our average sale data supports this assertion). However, if you have a nice $129 Valentine's Day package, many buyers will jump on it-and you just raised your revenue 30% on the transaction.

Posted in General, Spa Website Design, SpaFinder, Starting a Spa • 4 Comments »

If you've recently opened a brand new small spa or started a massage therapy practice, you're facing the daunting challenge of bringing in new clientele while facing much more established competitors. But you have an advantage — chances are few of those long-time businesses realize the value of taking a spa online.

It does seem like a little bit of a contradiction after all — spas are all about the in-person experience. But your prospective clients are online, and that's where you need to be.

There are a ton of no-cost marketing opportunities online when you need more business. Don't have an appointment at 3pm? Pick a project, and go do it:

• You have to start by having a website that you can easily update, like a Dynamic Spa Website.
• Follow the search engine optimization (SEO) recommendations in the Spa Marketing Guide.
• Write an article every week to post on your website. Talk about the benefits of massage, attractions for tourists in your area, the perfect local B&B to stay at, corporate chair massage, rejuvenating facials — anything interesting related to your spa and the area you serve.
• Get links! Reach out to local bloggers, complimentary businesses (like the B&B you just wrote about), associations, tourism bureaus, etc. Offer to write an article for them, and make sure it includes a link back to your website.
• Post on online forums focused on your area about any and all passions that drive you. Include a link to your website in your signature line.
• Get listed and reviewed on CitySearch and other local directories that show activity for your area. Encourage clients to review you, trade services with other businesses with a review as part of the deal and get family and friends to write you up.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Starting a Spa • 2 Comments »

Last week, we talked about domain name renewal scams. Now it's time for another ugly little domain name problem.

Imagine if the lease for your spa's location didn't have your name on it. You could be held hostage by whoever's name was on the lease, subject to unreasonable demands or kicked out of your space.

The same principle applies to your domain name, as in "yourspa.com". There are some shady (usually small) website design/hosting companies that will catch you in this trap: you hire them to build your website, and they register a domain name for you — with themselves as the registrant. They're the only ones that can make changes to your domain name. Like where it's hosted.

To check your domain, go to what's called a Whois lookup and enter your domain name without the "www." part, i.e. "yourspa.com". Look for the "Whois Record" information, and make sure your name is under "Registrant" and your name and email address is under "Administrative Contact".

If it's not your name and email address, demand that the hosting company fixes it and that you are listed as the registrant. We've helped several SpaBoomers that switched to Dynamic Website solve exactly this problem.

Don't take this to mean you shouldn't hire a small web design company. For custom websites, a great option is a small design shop for which you've gotten personal recommendations.

But, just like you wouldn't establish a brick and mortar location without the lease being in your name, do the same for your website address.

Posted in General, Spa Website Design, Starting a Spa • 4 Comments »

Every email address from a client is like a little sparkling diamond — one whose value keeps increasing over time with the magic of email marketing.

It's easy to start building your collection:

• Ask for email addresses on intake forms.
• Have an email newsletter signup form at your front desk.
• Include email newsletter signup on your website. For Dynamic Websites, it's automatic and for linked sites, it's included on your Specials page (check out Help for adding the link to your website).

For email addresses you collect manually, go to the Clients tab and click Add. You can just enter their name and email address leaving everything else blank, if you desire. Then sit back and let Email Marketing polish up those little gems on a regular basis.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Starting a Spa • 3 Comments »

Naming your spa is tough. The hours of agony, the battles with your partners or significant other or employees or strangers on the street. I'm going to simplify it for you — all we're going to pay attention to is search engine optimization.

The most common way people will find you online is by searching for your name. So, you have to rank in search engines for the name of your spa. That means:

• Your name has to be easy to spell, and short enough that people can remember the whole thing.
• You really want the .com domain, and it must match your name.

That's it! It works, because search engines give precedence to searches that match the domain name exactly.

In the end, take heart: because whatever the name of your spa, it's not the syllables that make it up but the experience of your spa that gives the name meaning.

Posted in Spa Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Starting a Spa • Comment »

Every spa operator knows (and every soon-to-open spa should) that spa gift certificates sales represent a critical source of annual revenue and new customers. Depending on the age and client market of a spa, these important sales can account from anywhere between 10-25% of total sales, a particularly crucial life preserver for new cash-hungry but client-poor businesses. For many spas, just like the holiday rush for retailers, seasonal gift certificate sales (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas) provide a powerful boost to flagging service appointments and bank reserves. Yet all spas, regardless of their years in business, need this steady flow of ready income and new customer potential to drive the wheels of growth forward. Conversely, it is tempting to take these sales for granted — windfall that they appear to be — instead of planning an optimal strategy for this lush opportunity.

Here’s some advice that you can use in your company right away to make more money while reducing the potential hardships and hazards brisk gift certificate sales can pose:

Individual services and/or specified dollar amounts

• Make gift certificates easier to sell! While we love this upfront cash, the transaction can be time consuming for front desk staff and a chore for the purchaser. You may want to consider adding a sales feature on your company website to handle the job for you. Companies like SpaBoom help you set up your site with the tools needed to make online gift certificate sales simple and fast. They charge a small fee per transaction and relieve employees of having to work every sale — a real blessing during a holiday crunch!
• Selling gift certificates for cash credit is the ideal way to go if you want to avoid the unpleasant task of having to book packages out many weeks in advance. When a customer has a gift certificate for, say, $200, the spa is only obligated to redeem it for its full value, not guarantee the availability of a specific package. Many clients will prefer to use the credit in small increments, and these several visits help establish them with your spa and often lead to retail purchases. In any event it helps eliminate pressure on your schedule and personnel.

Spa packages

By now you know that most spa service packages are sold as gift certificates and redeemed by persons for whom the spa is a rare experience. And while the welcome of this gift by the recipient can range from ecstatic to dread, even the most enthusiastic individual may require weeks, if not years, to get the thing scheduled. Now, that’s fine for them but if it’s your too-busy spa that’s causing the scheduling delay then you’ve got a real problem on your hands, namely, a miffed buyer and user. And since most package customers prefer prime time appointments (those precious evening and weekend hours) you may suddenly be forced to schedule these folks out many weeks into the future. This may inspire some to believe that they’re a low-priority to you, and that you’re making it deliberately difficult for them to use their gift. Worse, high concentrations of gift certificate appointments during peak hours can make it challenging for your loyal regular clients to schedule, leaving you with the terrible trade-off of top-value customers for the infrequent visitor. This isn’t a good deal for spas that depend on local trade for survival.

Solutions:

• Offer a maximum of 3 or 4 spa packages, all under 4 hours in length. Reduced-length packages are easier to schedule, are less damaging when cancelled late, consume less schedule time, and minimize the chances for something to go wrong over long hours of service that could cause you to redo or comp. the services… Ouch! Shorter packages are also easier to train employees on, and are more flexible when clients want to rearrange its order or substitute services.
• When customers call to schedule a gift certificate service be sure to offer your lowest demand appointment hours first! Never permit your concierge to voluntarily utter the deadly words, “When did you want to come in?” You’ll be amazed how positively people will respond to your time suggestions so don’t paint yourself into a scheduling corner needlessly!
• Never discount your spa packages!!! Considering the cost of scheduling them, then rescheduling them, poor retail sales after them, and the potential displacement of regular customers because of them you can scarcely afford to shave the price. Here’s how to sell your spa service packages above the combined services value:
1. Create a package that contains specially named and designed face and body services that are available only in the package: meaning, they are not sold or seen a la carte on the service menu. These “special” facials, massages, etc. should take no longer to perform, nor cost any more than a regular service would. There’s no need to lengthen or to make any significant changes in them they’ll be largely unfamiliar to both purchaser and recipient.
2. Charge roughly 20% more for this package than you would if those services were sold individually. This is a gift, and gifts aren’t as price sensitive as practical purchases.
3. Always schedule a package with the facial as the last service, if possible. This is the service that’s most likely to generate a retail purchase with this customer.
4. If you have some difficult-to-sell services at the spa then stuff them into your packages! After all, you have plenty of openings for those…
• Always direct gift certificate purchasers to the packages that you most want to sell! Instead of the passive and incorrect “Did you have something in mind?” ask the purchaser who the gift is for and then offer a suggestion: “That’s great! Would you like to know what everyone loves as a gift from our spa?” Then, describe the package that you’d like to sell, and do it in feeling terms, not technical. “It’s the most incredible and relaxing thing she’ll probably ever experience! She’ll love it — I would!” That’s about all it takes to get the card swiped and the envelope sealed.
• While the retail sales that follow spa package appointments are often dismal, and those gift baskets haven’t flown off the shelves, you can build products into the packages by designing it thus:



South Pacific Holiday

Our most popular package gives busy, working moms some needed time-out and a personal experience she won’t forget! She begins her visit with a wonderful tropical hand and foot exfoliation and massage using real papaya and natural loofah. Next, her tense muscles are soothed away by the hands of a specially trained therapist using the ancient Hawaiian Lomi Lomi technique, finally mom is carried away to the soft breezes of the islands with during our unique Tradewinds Aromatherapy facial.

As a special treat the package comes complete with an enchanting scented candle and skin smoothing body lotion for her enjoyment before we greet her here at Spa Leilani. Aloha!

• The package is only sold inclusive of the retail products that you place into a gift bag with the gift certificate. This is an excellent way to move slower selling stock while guaranteeing some commission-free retail sales!

Some final advice: do everything in your power to convert your gift certificate customer into a loyal, long-term client! With all the emerging competition in the spa market you cannot count forever on this fat flow of nearly passive income. It’s the clients you keep that ultimately represent your spa’s foundational business. If that gift river should run dry you’ll be glad you have a well of reliable supporters beneath you!

Posted in Preston Professionals, Spa Gift Certificates, Starting a Spa • Comment »

I know, you're a spa. But what do you do that makes you unique? What are you known for, what is your speciality? What differentiates you from the rest of the spas in town?

Are you:

• Middle of the day escape?
• Weekend getaway?
• Amazing massage that you come back for every week?
• The latest exotic body treatments?

Don't try to be everything to everyone — become well known for one thing, a niche you can carve out for yourself.

• Betty's Bath is Albuquerque's only soak and relaxation spa.
• The Spa…for the woman who cares offers total privacy, for women only.
• Adventure Spa is the local spa that offers the same rejuvenating effects as day spas in Boston.
• Skin Institute is the peel experts.

This is old school marketing. You're creating a unique selling proposition for your spa. Business owners often struggle with this idea, because they see it as limiting what they can do. But being everything to everyone isn't an effective marketing approach, and you can't defend it when competition comes to town. Instead, look at your niche as a hook around which you hang all of your other services. If you're known as the great local weekend getaway, then introduce middle of the work day escapes.

Once you've defined your niche, all of your marketing should tie into it. That includes your website — your niche should be immediately obvious.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Starting a Spa • 1 Comment »

I love talking with our spas and learning not only why they do what they do, which is very interesting, but how they compete in the spa business. They all have their own style of advertising and marketing, and in fact if they’re clients of SpaBoom they’re demonstrating a vision which respects and relies upon the power of the Internet.

One such spa, La Dolce Vita Spa & Salon, has achieved considerable success with Instant Gift Certificates. I asked Jose Herrera, the owner, why he feels they’ve been so successful.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Starting a Spa • Comment »

You've opened your brand-new spa and commissioned a beautifully designed website to go with it (hopefully a SpaBoom Dynamic Website). An obvious way for somebody to find out about your new business is to search on Google, maybe for "Albuquerque spa". There's only one problem: chances are very good that your brand-new website won't show up on the search pages, or will be buried so deep that no one will ever see it.

You're stuck in what many search engine experts are calling the Google sandbox. Your time in this Internet penalty box can last several months.

There's a simple explanation for this purgatory-on-earth: Google's goal is to return the most relevant results for searches. And they've decided that brand-new websites tend not to be the most relevant. It's part of the search engine's fight against "spam" websites. You've probably clicked on them after running a search: a website filled with junk surrounded by ads. Well, your brand-new website is caught right in the middle of this battle between Google and spam websites.

Note that we're not talking about a redesign of an existing website. Don't worry about updating the look of your existing site — you won't have this problem. This is only an issue for a brand-new website, or more accurately, a brand-new domain, e.g. "yourspa.com".

You only have one solution: wait it out. In the meantime, focus on the core marketing that will turn your website into a great asset for your spa:

• Include your website on every piece of printed material that you put out: your service menu, business cards, advertisements, etc.
• Direct clients to your website on your voice mail. Tell them they can buy Instant Gift Certificates and schedule appointments online. Consider custom hold "music" that includes your website.
• Ask relevant organizations and businesses to link to your site: the local Chamber of Commerce, the tourism department, the bed and breakfast down the street.
• Get listed in Discover Spas.
• Collect e-mail addresses on your new client forms and when you sell anything at retail. Then, put them in SpaBoom under Clients (we don't have e-mail marketing yet — but will soon!).
• Consider using Google AdWords to buy text ads for search terms that prospective clients are likely to use when looking for a spa. Yes, there is some serious irony here in paying Google for text ads to help compensate for Google penalizing you.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Spa Website Design, Starting a Spa • Comment »