Even though you know that marketing is essential to your spa or massage practice, you may find yourself neglecting it. It’s understandable. You may have a small team – or it’s just you. Servicing clients, dealing with suppliers, keeping the facility spotless, repairing broken equipment (or having someone come in to do it), paying the bills, managing a retail business and hiring and if necessary letting folks go is plenty to do in itself. Marketing often takes a back seat or starts out with a bang and ends up a whimper.
If you marketing efforts are gathering dust; it’s time to shake out the cobwebs. Even if your client roster is healthy now, things can change. New competition can come into the area; current competitors can get more aggressive in their outreach; and competition aside, clients leave for any number of reason, including moving out of the area. The success of your spa or massage practice depends on new clients coming through the door all the time and keeping current ones motivated to say.
Start with Tried and True
Getting back into the marketing game as soon as you can should be your priority. It’s great to have a strategic marketing plan in place but when you need to prime the pump, your plan can wait until things get rolling again.
Start with activities that have in the past yielded a good response in a short period of time. If sending out an email for a special service has helped attract business, go with that. Maybe you’re good on the phone (or someone on your team is) so call clients you haven’t seen in a while. If social media has been effective in raising visibility and attracting customers – get back on Facebook and/or Twitter with a week long campaign that includes an incentive for coming to your spa or massage business.
Don’t worry if you only do one thing. As long as it gets the phone ringing or more traffic through the door, you’re moving in the right direction.
Make a Plan
Once you have some things in the pipeline, work on a plan for the next three to six months. You may want to get your team together to brainstorm ideas. List any ideas you or others have for marketing. Be creative.
Once you have a good list, prioritize action items. Time, cost, experience, and skills needed to get the job done should be thoroughly considered. Don’t lose momentum by focusing on a ground breaking marketing idea that will take months to implement.
When you have a ‘must do’ activities put together a timeline, assign activities to team members, as appropriate, and meet at least weekly to evaluate progress. If you don’t have internal resources to keep your plan going, consider bringing in consultants even for short term assistance.
Having a bias for action will get you back into the marketing game even if some time has lapsed. The key is to do something. Once the ball is rolling make a commitment to keep it that way.