Is your spa or massage practice ready for the challenges of New Year? As you wrap up 2024 and look toward 2025, developing an annual business plan helps you focus and prioritize activities so that you have a clear direction to keep your business on the right course.
A yearly business plan looks at the various components of your spa or massage practice to ensure you have the right tools to meet financial and operational goals and the right marketing strategy to keep up with the competition. When it comes to your team, make sure your most valued employees have the tools and support they need so they will not be looking to move on.
Most important, as you create your annual business plan, take the economy into consideration. Consider the state of the labor market and the pace of inflation. During the New Year, you may need to adjust your annual operating plan to respond to significant changes in the economy. Have contingency plans so you are not caught off guard.
Consider these strategies when planning
A few years back, 13 experts from the Forbes Coaches Council shared techniques for developing their annual business plan. Here are recommendations: [1]
Be honest with yourself: Be realistic when setting goals for the New Year. Do not try to make every dream into a goal. Some goals may be too difficult to achieve.
Conduct your own SWOT analysis: Conduct a personal SWOT – strengths, weaknesses, growth opportunities and threats, both internal (mindset) and external (marketplace) to success. Use that feedback to help ensure annual business plan goals.
Take time for self-reflection: Take stock of what you have and have not achieved and use what you learned from those experiences to help achieve what you want in the year ahead.
Prioritize: Hone your goals and get buy-in from your team. You just need a few goals to energize you for the New Year.
Annual business plan 5 steps
Your yearly business plan should focus on the following steps:
Assess the market
The first step in developing your annual business plan is to examine the competitive landscape, looking at both established spas and massage practitioners and new market entrants. Conduct online research through social media and review sites to find out what clients are saying about the competition. Also ask your vendors and business associates what they know about the competition. Assess your advantages and disadvantages against the competition so that you know your opportunities and challenges in the coming year.
Include on and offline research as part of your marketplace assessment to find out what clients and prospects are saying about your spa or massage practice. Also decide if the marketing messages about your business resonate with your clients and prospects. You may find that your business has a perception problem among clients and prospects that needs addressing.
Review your marketing program
Conduct a thorough evaluation of your marketing activities both on and offline as part of your yearly business plan development.
- Look at response rates of your direct mail and/or email marketing to figure out what campaigns have been the most successful.
- Assess your web traffic to see how it has grown and where visitors are coming from – email marketing, online ads, social media channels or blog posts. Also analyze where most of your visitors are spending time on your website to decide if you need to make changes.
- Evaluate how other marketing activities, such as community involvement through volunteer work or sponsorship and participation in local business events, have helped raise your visibility and attract new clients.
Based on your research and your goals, decide what activities you want to continue or launch next year, and set a budget for each.
Analyze operations
Conduct a complete analysis of your operations. Look at everything from rent to information technology. You may need to adjust your new annual operating plan to improve efficiency and productivity and support growth.
Determine hiring needs
Decide who you need to hire to meet projected goals. Consider if there are new areas of expertise you need to service new client targets. What you find may require adding staff or providing current employees with training to meet evolving client needs. Training costs should be factored into your annual operating plan.
Review financials
Review financial information over the past three to five years, if applicable, when you are working on the annual operating plan. Break down total sales into different service areas and retail products. Next figure out gross profit margin for each. Include figures on capital expenditure and make sure that balance sheets and profit and loss statements are up to date. Use this information to forecast financials for the next three years.
Annual business planning can help you avoid mistakes that can be costly and keep you from achieving your goals. Even when you have a plan, review it throughout the year to make sure you are on track and make the necessary adjustments to accommodate changes in the marketplace, which can affect achieving your goals.
[1] Expert Panel, Forbes Coaches Council, “13 Key Strategies to Remember When Planning for the New Year,” December 4, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2019/12/04/13-key-strategies-to-remember-when-planning-for-the-new-year/