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.