Business, May 2019

Popular and Profitable Summertime Promotions

May 1, 2019 | by Pam Stellema

Take advantage of warmer weather with these summer strategies

Summer is a wonderful time of year, especially for the spa industry. It’s when clients shed their winter woollies and expose their skin to the world. In turn, this creates a boat-load of opportunities for spas to promote their skin revitalizing treatments designed to restore skin to a healthier, smoother and softer condition. Fortunately, most spas offer plenty of treatments that achieve this perfectly.

Choosing the Right Treatments for Your Promotions

To achieve a successful promotion, you must start by choosing the right treatments. They must be:

• already popular with your clients, plus

• make you a healthy profit.

The combination of these two elements guarantees a positive outcome. Don’t be tempted to choose your less popular treatments as the basis of your promotions, as this will always result in less interest and, therefore, fewer sales.

Use previous years’ sales reports to identify your most popular and profitable summer-time treatments and list them down. These will be your go-to treatments for promotions that will return your best financial rewards. Let’s call these your Primary Treatments.

Each of the Primary Treatments on your list can form the basis of a successful promotion. You can create a low price-point promotion by just using one of your Primary Treatments as the drawcard treatment, or a higher price-point promotion by combining several of them into one package. To build your promotional offer, you simply need to marry these Primary Treatments with some suitable Secondary Treatments that will provide value for the clients. It’s very simple and straightforward to create popular and successful promotions using this simple strategy.

“To achieve a successful promotion, you must start by choosing the right treatments.”

Value-adding to create your Promotional Packages

Clients love the opportunity to pamper themselves, especially when they also see great value on offer. This can be achieved by using a value-adding strategy for your promotions. It entails selecting one or two Primary Treatments (from your list) and then value-adding with time and cost-efficient Secondary Treatments that you either currently offer or can create.

The benefits of value-adding are:

• Your most popular and profitable treatments are never discounted (which can result in damaging the long-term pricing integrity of the treatment).

• Your clients may be introduced to a treatment or treatments they’ve never tried before.

• Your clients receive excellent value and leave happy.

Creating a Value-add Promotional Package

To get started, choose a suitable Primary Treatment from your list. On paper, draw a circle and enter the name of the chosen Primary Treatment. Branching off from this, add all the smaller Secondary Treatments that you know will complement it.

If you intend to use only one Primary Treatment, choose one or two Secondary Treatments to value-add with. The more Primary Treatments you include, the more Secondary Treatments should be included in your package.

Remember, you can also create additional Secondary Treatments to build out your promotional offer that may not necessarily be on your Service Menu.

Examples of promotions using one Primary Treatment.

In the following examples, the treatments in bold are the Primary Treatments, with those following being Secondary Treatments which provide the additional value.

Body Scrub + Back Mask + Foot Massage.

– Both the Back Mask and Foot Massage are inexpensive to provide and the Foot Massage can be done after the Back Mask is applied.

Body Massage + Body Brush + Scalp Massage

– Body brushing is an excellent Secondary Treatment. It is quick to do with no additional outlay once the brush is purchased. The Scalp Massage can be incorporated into the Body Massage.

Skin Peel + Hand Peel + Neck or Décolletage Peel

In this package, the addition of the Hand Peel and Neck or Décolletage Peel requires almost no additional time but some additional product cost. If your peel product is quite expensive, you could increase the cost of your promotion to allow for the additional product expense.

Skin Revitalizing Facial + Foot Refresher Treatment (scrub and massage) + Lash or Brow Tint

– This facial promotion includes a pampering of your client’s feet which can be done during a mask phase of the facial. The lash or brow tint is also done during a mask phase if two masks are included in your treatment. Both very low-cost and time efficient.

Examples of promotions using two Primary Treatments.

Revitalizing Facial + Body Massage + Foot Revitalizer Treatment + Mask upgrade/serum

– Once again, a promotion with low-cost and low time value-add treatments. The Foot Revitalizer Treatment is done during the mask phase and while there may be an additional cost for the mask upgrade or serum, they are done in place of the regular mask, meaning no additional time is required.

Body Massage + Body Scrub + 10 min Facial Massage + Aroma Foot Soak

– The facial massage can be done in conjunction with the Body Massage and the Aroma Foot Soak is done at the commencement of the treatment (possibly during the consultation process). Very little additional time is required and there is minimal cost for additional products required.

All things considered, the secret to success when planning your promotion lies in the following:

1. Choosing popular and profitable Primary Treatments that your clients will love to receive.

2. Ensuring your Secondary Treatments complement the Primary Treatment/s and are time efficient and inexpensive in cost.

Pricing for Profit and Value

This is where most spa owners make their biggest mistakes. They discount their promotional offer too heavily believing that only a very cheap offer will attract clients to purchase. Instead, your promotion’s price should be no less than the normal price of the Primary Treatments you include.

Think ‘value’ not ‘cheap’.

Marketing your Promotions

There are a number of ways to market your Promotions to existing and prospective clients without spending a small fortune.

• Salon Newsletter: If you send out a monthly e-newsletter to your client database, start with this. Focus on explaining the benefits of each of the treatments included in your promotion along with a call to action to make a booking.

If you intend to limit the number of packages available, be sure to mention this also as scarcity can encourage people to make a booking rather than risk missing out on a great deal.

Don’t limit your promotion to just one email. Send it out several times to your database throughout the offer period to remind people to make a booking. These additional emails will definitely improve your results.

• Social Media: Focus on using the type of social medial your clients prefer rather than what you personally like to use. Video marketing is popular and will help you improve your organic (non-paid) reach.

Consider using Facebook advertising but ensure you target to the right audience to get the best return on your investment.

• In-house Promotion: Ensure all your team members are aware of your promotional offer so they can start talking to their clients about it. Have some printed flyers on hand out to provide clients with package and booking detail. If you can use a street sign-board, this will also help attract local passers-by.

• Website: Every spa website needs a promotions page to entice lookers to purchase. Be sure to update your page regularly with your upcoming promotions and encourage readers to purchase early.

• Local Businesses: If you’re located in an area where there are a high number of transients, approach local businesses and ask to promote your offers in their premises. This could be cafes, restaurants, hair salons, and hotels. People love to pamper themselves when on holidays, so this is definitely a worthwhile strategy to bring in those once-only clients.

• Couples: If you have the room required, promote your packages as suitable for couples. Selling two instead of one will instantly double your revenue.

To sum it all up, remember, everyone loves to be pampered whilst getting great value at the same time. Move your mindset away from being cheap to offering great service and value, and you’re sure to enjoy great success with your summer-time promotions.