Referral Business

The most reliable revenue growth comes in two forms: repeat sales and referral business. The better your skills for generating referral business, the faster your client base will grow leading to increased revenues and a healthy bottom line. There are many ways to help increase your referral business without having to have to spend a lot of money in advertising and/or marketing. In fact, enhancing your referral business is one of the most cost effective ways to increase your client base. It also helps yield a very lucrative ROI.

Three simple ways to assure a successful referral program in your spa.

Be Memorable
Competition is fierce in the spa industry. After all, we are in an industry that is constantly growing. By introducing something new in this arena, you will have to have something that your clients will talk about to their friends and family, which in turn will push them to recommend your spa to them. Examples of incorporating something memorable may include:

- A unique type of spa treatment
- A different kind of service never before experienced
- A new retail product that is untraditional in the spa industry
- The way your staff meets and greets your clients

Be Personable
A genuine “Hello” is hard to come by these days. We tend to worry so much about our revenues and profits in this difficult economy, that we tend to forget that client satisfaction is one the most important aspects of good business Don’t forget…this is a people industry! Be more personable to your clients by:

- Remembering their names
- Let them hear you smile with your positive attitude
- Engage in conversations with your clients using open ended questions
- Follow up with thank you notes or letters

Provide an Incentive
Having a referral program in place that allows your clients to benefit as they refer other clients is an excellent strategy to increase your referral business. Think of cost effective solutions that you can provide as an incentive to motivate your clients to refer their friends and family. These incentives may include:

- A free spa treatment after a defined number of referred clients
- Gift certificates to your spa
- Free retail products
- A gift basket with content to drive them to come back

Spa Biz: Marketing strategies to increase new clients and returning guests

As economic woes continue, spa businesses must become a little more creative in effort to increase profits. There are many new ways to generate sales leads today: email campaigns, website optimization, social media, podcasts, but even with all these options, direct mail remains one of the most powerful lead-generating tools – and the best part is that it can be pretty inexpensive.

Here are some ideas:
1. Postcard – Simple postcards are a terrific way to generate leads. They’re easy to print and pretty inexpensive as far as mailing goes. You can use a variety of online printers or even your own printer and apply stamps and address labels by hand. If you have a much larger mailing list using an online printer to do all the work for you can actually be more beneficial and less expensive in the long run!

• Postcard message: Postcards can generate a phone call or help drive people to your website. Since postcards are small your message should be familiar and easy to understand for your customers. Simple and direct – people don’t read postcards as much as they glance.

2. Flyers – Print up a well designed flyer, fold it, affix a mailing label and a stamp, and throw it in the mail. This kind of guerrilla tactic is dirt-cheap and can produce fantastic results.

3. Invitations – This is a great opportunity to not only introduce a new treatment, product or just a way to say thank you to your guests by inviting them to an ‘exclusive’ event at your spa. You can easily head to your local office supply store or use an online printer (our favorites www.uprinting.com and www.vistaprint.com) to purchase pre-made invitations. If you have a much larger budget then have a professional design the invitations for you. The key is that your customers will feel special that you thought of them for something exclusive.

• Use your vendors – Setting up a party can be expensive, so to minimize some of your costs ask your vendors to help with either free samples, basket donations or by co-hosting the party with you.

If you have other great inexpensive marketing ideas and would like to share them please email us at info@sequencexo.com. We’ll feature it in our next Nourish.