Spa Marketing | SpaBoom

Keep Your Eye on the Turkey

October 31, 2014

Even though the frost is barely on the pumpkin, things are starting to get serious in terms of end-of-year marketing. We’re about to hit the big time in terms of opportunity to generate significant revenue, all while we’re helping our clients choose most excellent gifts for their intended recipients, recipients who may not yet be loyal to your business.

Gift certificates represent a very solid way to boost your revenue stream and bond with those who are new, or at least new to you, in terms of enjoying relaxing, nurturing, stress-reducing services. There is a lovely symmetry to the gift certificate sale that begins with you promoting your services via your website, in house signage, voice mail recordings, and social media interactions and ending with the lucky giftee scheduling time in your establishment.

You reach out via the media that you’ve chosen to the people you’ve nurtured and to whom you’ve provided spa, massage, esthetic and salon services to in the past to do the right thing – gift a wonderful service to a friend or family member on their list – and in return you gain access to new and more potential long-term clients, clients that you will then be able to reach out to with great promotions and service offerings that they can then gift to other lucky people and so on.

Everything that you do to promote your business, and to provide the absolute best experience possible for everyone who walks in your door matters. Every time a future customer becomes a current customer your hard work has made a difference, for those people decide to seek your services for any number of reasons, all of which you have a modicum of control influencing in positive ways – a friend refers your business by straight recommendation or via gift certificate, an article you have written on your blog has impressed to the point where curiosity is piqued and a decision to try out your services is made, or a social media post gets liked by someone whose like is seen on a friend’s wall. The possibilities are limitless; the choice to reach out with compelling and thought provoking marketing, regardless the medium, is one that pays dividends in countless ways. The process builds on itself – that’s the beauty and frustration of marketing, actually. Even if you ask someone how they found your business, sometimes their answer is only part of the equation. After all, in our day and age of being constantly overwhelmed by a daily barrage of messaging and information – much of it designed to make us buy something or try something, or, right now, to vote in midterm elections for someone, actually – the real reason for finally seeking your services may have begun months before when a friend shared a helpful blog article. The fact that your new client has now bookmarked your blog, or is notified when a new article goes up simply reinforces the entire process.

Back to the turkey.

By now we’re all painfully aware of the Black Friday idiocy ridiculousness chaos tradition. Most of us have participated at one point in the rush to get the best deal on a down comforter or TV or home appliances or….to be met with extremely long lines full of people suffering from serious turkey hangovers. It’s not fun, and often the object of your original desire is gone by the time you actually get into the place that’s offering up the deal. It’s fundamentally unfair, blows a perfectly good morning to sleep in and relax, and is so not how you need to do things.

You offer the perfect, elegant solution with your instant gift certificates for your services. Use the convenience factor, the elegance piece, the ‘they are absolutely right for so many people on your list’ aspect, and promote them like crazy.

Starting now. Because it’s about to get ugly out there, and you are in the perfect position to make the lives of gift givers a whole lot easier, once again.

Go forth and promote. And go easy on the stuffing – it’ll make you sleepy.

Are You Looking at Facebook Insights?

October 30, 2014

We all have a Facebook business page these days (& if you don’t, you should). And we try to post things we think are interesting to our clients, along with the requisite posts about promotions or sales we are having. But do you ever stop to think about whether your posts are really connecting with your clients? Or whether those same posts are helping to drive further engagement, not only with your clients but also with their extended circles? Facebook Insights can help you do all that and more.

Facebook Insights is a set of analytics that Facebook provides to business pages. It offers you a lot of powerful information that can help you analyze what is happening on your Facebook business page. It can help you understand what is working effectively on your page, as well as learn more about who is visiting your page, what they are doing, and when.

Let’s take a look at the 6 main sections of Facebook Insights. You can find the Insights information by going to your business page and clicking on “Insights” at the very top of the page (above your cover photo). Within Insights, you will see 6 different tabs: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts, & People. Here is what you will find on each of these tabs.

Overview
The Overview tab provides you with a snapshot of data for your page from the last 7 days. It also compares the data from this week with the data from last week. You will see it broken down into several sections:

Page Likes – this shows you the overall number of likes as well as any new likes this week.
Post Reach – This shows you the number of people shown your page and posts.
Engagement – Engagement is the number of people who saw a post and then liked, shared, clicked or commented on it.
5 Most Recent Posts – Your 5 most recent posts are displayed at the bottom of the Overview page.

This page is a good one to visit on a regular basis as it gives you a snapshot of the most valuable information from each of the other tabs.

Likes
The Likes tab shows you information about the likes on your business page. This information is broken down in several different ways.

Total Page Likes – This is the current total of likes on your page, as of today.
Net Likes – This shows you the total number of likes minus unlikes on your page.
Where Your Page Likes Came From – where any likes on your page in this period came from, whether they were referred from an external source like your website.

Knowing where your likes come from can be useful when trying to allocate resources.

Reach
The Reach tab shows you information on the reach of your posts, including who saw them and what sort of engagement each post had.

Post Reach – This shows the number of people who saw your posts. It is broken down by both organic and paid.
Likes, Comments, & Shares – This section shows you information on all the positive engagement your posts had. Increased numbers in this section shows an increase in your overall reach.
Hide, Report as Spam, Unlike – This section shows you information on all the negative engagement your posts had. Increased numbers in this section shows a decrease in your overall reach.
Total Reach – This shows you the total number of people who were shown any activity from your page.

The information on reach can be helpful in determining what sorts of posts have the most reach and positive engagement, as those are the sort of posts that can help grow your page.

Visits
The Visits tab shows you information about what people did when they visited your page.

Page and Tab Visits – This shows the number of times people clicked on each of the tabs on your page, such as About, Hours, Info, or Likes.
Other Page Activity – This shows the number of actions that people took that involved your page. This could be the mention of your page in a post or a post by one of your followers on your page.
External Referrers – This shows the number of times people came to your Facebook page from an external website or link, such as the link to Facebook on your website.

This information can help you determine whether certain sections of your page need more attention. You can also see whether your reach is increasing based on people who already like your page sharing your posts and pages with people who haven’t liked your page yet.

Posts
The Posts tab shows information about both your followers and your posts. It provides you with information about your followers habits as well as how they have engaged with your posts. It shows two main sections of information:

When Your Fans are Online – This shows when the people who like your page are on Facebook. You can track it based on the time of day by mousing over the graph to see how many of your followers are online at any given time of the day or week.
Post Types – You can click the tab next to When Your Fans are Online to view this data. It shows the average performance (reach and engagement) of each post type (status, photo, link) on your page.
Posts You’ve Published – This section shows all the posts you’ve published in chronological order. It provides a lot of powerful information about each post including:

Type of Post – This shows what sort of post it is: status, photo, link to an external article
Targeting Information – Who this post was shared with. Typically, your posts will tend to be shared globally with all your followers. But you may have subgroups that you share specific posts with
Reach – How many people were reached by this post, usually broken down by organic and paid
Engagement – Number of people who engaged with this post (liked it, clicked on it, shared it, or commented on it)
Boost Post – this is a link that allows you to pay to boost this post and put it back at the top of people’s feeds
You can also click on any individual post to view a detail page for each post

This can be useful information when you are trying to determine what sort of posts get the most reach and engagement. Or what day of the week or time of day is the best time to post on your Facebook page to get the greatest number of views.

People
The People tab shows you information about the people engaging with your page. There are three tabs on this page.

Your Fans – shows you information about the people who like your page, broken down by age, gender, and geography. You can also mouse over each demographic to see how your engagement with that section compares to Facebook as a whole.
People Reached – shows your demographic information about the people reached with your posts.
People Engaged – shows you demographic information about the people who engaged with your posts.

This can be useful information if you are trying to target a certain demographic, such as women ages 35-50.

As you can see, Facebook Insights offers a lot of powerful metrics to help you better understand what is resonating with your followers and where you can make improvements or shift focus in your posts in order to engage an even larger audience.

Take some time today to check out your insights. By using all the valuable data that Facebook has already compiled for you, you can make better decisions about both your Facebook strategy and the content you post on your business page.

Partner Up to Grow Your Clientele

October 23, 2014

As children, our parents always encouraged us to make friends. It wasn’t always easy, since society is complicated and not everyone gets along famously, but, over time, we ended up with quite a posse. Grade school through high school, many of us were friends through the travails of childhood, adolescence, then young adulthood. Having a close group of like-minded cohorts made us feel stronger and a part of something, which was a good thing.

As professionals within the spa, massage, esthetics and salon industry, following our parents’ sage wisdom would be a very very good practice. For some reason once we’re adults, and practicing in various areas of expertise, the bonds we enjoyed in our youth seem less important. As members of a community of businesses that serve the needs of clientele seeking relaxation, rejuvenation, hair care, and beauty, we need to look around and become friends with businesses in our local area. Developing business relationships with restaurants, florists, B&B’s, golf courses, yoga studios, and others makes very good business sense.

Referring to others in your community provides an entre for your clients to enjoy that new French Bistro down the block, perhaps at a discount, or maybe with a lovely glass of wine added to their meal, gratis, because you sent those diners to try the cuisine. Conversely, offering up a special perc or add on to services for customers of that same Bistro who visit for the first time demonstrates your desire to spread good will within the local business community as well as grow your client base in the process.

I have seen many partnerships develop between small businesses that make me smile and believe in the power of collaboration and professional support as a way to engender positive feelings within a mutual client base, and, ultimately generate referrals which are really opportunities to form relationships with new clients.

Who within your business community could you strike up a referral relationship with? If you sit down and make a list of possible complementary partnerships you might be surprised at the potential just waiting to be tapped.

What Will You Do In 2015?

October 22, 2014

We’ve all been there. It’s Friday afternoon and suddenly you realize that the end of next week is the start of the Valentine’s or Mother’s Day season and you’ve been too busy to plan anything yet. So you spend the next several hours rushing to prepare some sort of promotion or special, creating stress for you and your team and ending up with what is probably not the greatest campaign. Plus, by then, it’s probably too late. Your competitors have been advertising their promos for days or weeks by now and probably have an effective plan in place that encompasses email marketing, in-store signage, and social media interaction. By waiting until the last minute, you’ll have to rely on your loyal clients to hopefully remember your business and choose it as their gift option. Or settle for a less than stellar campaign and poor market penetration.

Let’s make 2015 different. Why not schedule a bit of time in the next couple of weeks and get your 2015 marketing plan in order now? Not only will it set you up for success in the new year, but it will reduce stress, and help you plan out your promotions and stay within your marketing budget for the year. By planning it all out now, you’ll also be afforded the time to look at what has worked and what hasn’t this year and last year. And you can make more effective marketing decisions for the future.

Here are some things to think about when planning your marketing strategy for 2015:

First, some Analysis
The first thing to do is to analyze what has worked for you (& what hasn’t worked) in the past. Take a look at your promotions and numbers for this year and 2013. You should be able to look back and see what worked and what didn’t work. Your staff is a great resource to look to for feedback as well.

Here are some things to look at:

What promos were successful in the past year? in 2013?
What promos were unsuccessful in the past year? in 2013?
What did your revenue numbers look like by month?

From here, you want to really look at why certain promotions resonated with your clients, while others just didn’t seem to hit the mark. Were all the successful promotions during certain times of the year or for certain types of specials? What about the unsuccessful promotions?

This can also be a good time to do a SWOT Analysis to really take a look at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as you begin to plan out the next year. Even if you don’t have time to do a SWOT Analysis, you can still do a less in depth analysis of your current situation and your goals for the future. Here are some things to consider:

Who is your current demographic? Are you effectively reaching them? If so, where?
Do you have a different demographic that you would like to target in 2015? If so, who?
As a business, what are you doing well? What could you be doing better?
Have there been any major changes in the marketplace?
Are there any new opportunities that you would like to pursue?

Now that you’ve completed an analysis of what worked and didn’t work in the past and where you want the business to be headed in the future, it’s time to start thinking about what you want to do in 2015.

Time to Lay Out a Plan
Start off with just a short calendar list of the promotions for the year. I like to break mine down by quarters and then by months. Lay out on the calendar when you will start and end promotions, along with a general description of what the promotion will be. But don’t stop there. You want to make your marketing plan more in depth than that.

Take some time to think about your social media and what sort of posts you want to share on there during the course of the year. Be sure to consider when and how you will post to social media and your blog. Keep in mind that while social media plays an important role in informing your customers of specials and promotions, that should not be its primary role. Social media is a place where you can create a community and use it to inspire and engage. If you do that well, then sharing news such as upcoming specials and promotions becomes an organic part of the communications.

Be sure to consider where other forms of communications, such as email marketing and newsletters, fit into this plan. Give some thought to what sort of information you want to feature in your newsletters and blog posts. Taking the time now to plan out what the overall year of posts or newsletters will look like will make it much easier down the road.

Make sure all of this gets onto your marketing calendar. And be sure to leave some room for flexibility. You want your plan to have the flexibility to make changes or shuffle things around based on the changing needs of your business and the marketplace throughout the course of the year.

Schedule Time to Implement Your Plan
Now that you have a plan in place, marketing in 2015 will be so much simpler. But there is one more key element of your marketing plan that you need to put into place. Regular attendance. A plan is only as good as the people who implement it. So make sure you schedule time regularly (once a week or so) for someone on your team to take a look at the plan and take care of the tasks that need to happen next to keep things running smoothly. If you make this plan a priority, and everyone knows what they need to do (& when they need to do it), then nobody will be running around in a panic at the last minute trying to get things done.

So now you have a plan in place and your team is ready for 2015. Be sure to revisit your plan regularly. Ask for feedback from your staff and clients. And don’t be afraid to make changes throughout the course of the year to make your plan even more effective. By putting a plan together in advance, you’re making it much easier to analyze and improve your business practices throughout the course of the year. That will lead to far less stress and a healthier business.

*** This article concludes our “Time for a Tune Up” series. We hope the series has helped identify ways that you can tune up your business practices, and carve out time to think about your business and marketing strategies for 2015.

Sometimes Credibility Comes From Outside

October 16, 2014

Fortunately for the spa and salon industry, many people fully understand the benefits and enjoyment around receiving regular massages, facials, manis/pedis, and hair treatments. These people have either learned from friends in the know, or simply appreciate the value of care delivered in serene, well-designed settings by professional practitioners.

There are some out there, though, who need a nudge in the right direction. These people may have perfectly good reasons for reticence, but mostly they may feel like they need science to justify spending on themselves (spending time and/or money). I have friends who never ‘got’ how healthy massages are for us until they heard a spot on Oprah or read an article in a health magazine outlining the benefits. After that, they were converts…

The good news is, there is more literature than ever espousing the benefits of massage, foot care and skin care. Using articles (referencing them on your blog, or linking to them from a resources page on your website, for example) to add credibility to ‘tangible’ benefits of your services can help convince those who just haven’t quite figured out what the rest of us embraced long ago – regular care by gifted professionals means feeling and looking better no matter what!

A quick search just netted two articles worth a view on the benefits of massage:

MASSAGE: GET IN TOUCH WITH ITS MANY BENEFITS
The Mayo Clinic published this piece, which is simple and straightforward, and provides some general information that may help the uninitiated feel more comfortable with massage as a beneficial addition to a healthy lifestyle.

MASSAGE
The University of Maryland Medical Center published this overview, which contains definitions of the various modalities of massage we tend to encounter, as well as the health benefits imparted by same.

Foot care also falls into the realm of ‘seems like an indulgence’ until the health benefits are listed at which point pedicures move into the realm of the possible, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Everyone’s feet can use a professional assessment from time to time, particularly if there is concern, as there may be in the case of diabetes or extreme athletics, that the feet are less healthy than they could be. From a diabetic perspective, keeping one’s feet healthy is a very serious matter as the consequences of blisters, sores, fungal infections or other breaches of the healthy skin layer can present concerns, and a need for medical oversight and treatment. From an extreme athletics perspective, the feet take a beating, and the results can include damaged toe nails, significant callous buildup, as well as strain and stress on the toes and feet structures themselves, all of which can be identified by a professional pedicure.

PEDICURE
Foot Vitals’ Dr. Kelsey Armstrong has outlined the importance of regular foot care in overall health, as well as the benefits of professional pedicures to help identify and relieve potential issues.

Skin care is also a hot topic, and from a very simple and practical standpoint, regular skin care means someone other than you is assessing the health and well being of the largest organ on the body. Professional estheticians see what we might not – changes that may indicate a need for a visit with a dermatologist for follow up, as well as signs of health concerns or aging that can be addressed with any number of modern approaches.

While we can’t win everyone over into the land of consistent spa, salon and skin care, we can use the power of information and the media to make the argument for us when all that’s needed is just that little nudge to venture into a beneficial and rejuvenating place.

‘Tis The Season (Almost) ~ Are You Ready?

October 14, 2014

Yes, I know. The kids just went back to school and football season just started. It’s still warm outside and Halloween isn’t even here yet. But the holidays – they are looming on the horizon. And NOW is the time to start thinking about them.

The holidays are a busy time for everyone. Not only are you trying to run a business and promote it as a gift choice during the holidays, but you’re also trying to manage your personal life, with parties, shopping, and your own holiday preparations and celebrations. Planning for the holidays now gives you the time to really think about what you want to promote and accomplish this holiday season. It also gives you the time to create good packages and effectively promote your offerings and your business as a gift option. By having a plan in place now, it makes it easier on you and your staff to effectively carry out that plan. It also makes it easier to market your promos and events to your clients with enough advance notice for them to make the time in their schedule to shop or attend. Your clients are busy during the holidays too.

Here are some things to start thinking about and putting together before the holidays are upon us. Take the time to plan these things out now, while it’s still a bit slow. You’ll thank yourself come November.

Think about your holiday packages
The time to start thinking about your holiday packages is now. You want to make sure that these packages are attractive and offer good value to your customer, while also not putting your bottom line into the red. What will you be featuring? Special holiday-themed packages & products? Tried and true offerings? Take a look at what did well, and not so well, last year and then start designing your packages from there.

Don’t forget to think about creating a few offerings for your stressed out clients during the month of December – maybe some mini-treatments to help them rejuvenate, de-stress, and spoil themselves a bit during the busy shopping/party time of December. A quick 15 or 30 minute mini-treatment could be a great quick break for your clients while they are rushing around running errands and getting their holiday shopping done.

Plan out your Holiday Campaigns!
What will you be promoting and when will those campaigns go out? It’s better to decide this now and start putting your holiday promotions schedule together. Once you have your holiday packages and offerings put together, start creating your holiday promotions and get them on your calendar and entered into your SpaBoom account.

Think about how you want to use your social media outlets to keep your followers engaged during the holidays. This could be as easy as creating posts that encourage interaction, such as “What is your favorite holiday tradition?” or What is your dream holiday destination?” or you could create a set of holiday mini-tips to post that offer your clients advice on managing the holidays while still looking and feeling great.

What about all the other holidays?
Don’t just think about Christmas – Consider all the other holidays to celebrate in the final quarter of the year and all the different ways your clients celebrate (from Thanksgiving and Hanukkah to celebrating small businesses on Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday offers). There are so many different holidays to celebrate during that time of the year. Find out what are your clients celebrating and market your holiday offerings to those holidays.

Are you Having a Party?
Do you want to host a holiday event (or multiple events)? Now is the time to start planning and promoting that event. The Saturday after Thanksgiving (Small Business Saturday) or a Holiday Open House in December are great opportunities to promote your business and offerings, while also saying thank you to your loyal clients. But you will need the time to plan out and market this so don’t put it off. Get started on your party planning now!

Consider Holiday Logistics
Take some time to think about some of the unique logistics that the higher traffic and sales of the holidays create. Do you need to stock up on extra product for the holiday? Or need to order decorations, signage, extra gift wrap supplies, or holiday collateral? Now is the time to think about getting those orders in. It’s better to think about these things now and get them handled before the rush starts. Nobody wants to be rushing around at the last minute trying to get more supplies in. That only creates stress and extra expense. Give some thought to whether your staff will need additional training on new services, packages, and products that you plan to feature during the holiday season. That training should happen before the holiday madness starts. Make sure you get that scheduled.

Will your staffing needs change during the holidays and the month of January?
As holiday traffic and business increases with gift packages and rising demands for regular services (during this festive party season), will you need to increase staffing or extend your hours? Consider how you will staff your business during the holidays and into January to ensure that you can effectively provide the regular services your clients expect as well as the demand for additional services that gift packages and increased gift certificate sales generate.

By taking some time to plan out the holiday season now, you’ll be ahead of the game when November rolls around. And that will mean you can focus on delivering the best possible experience to your clients and providing amazing gift ideas and options rather than running around trying to pull your holiday campaign together. It will make everyone’s holidays a lot more joyful.

*** This article is part of our “Time for a Tune Up” series, designed to help you tune up your business practices, get ready for the holidays, and think about your business and marketing strategies, both for the rest of this year and heading into 2015.

Tune Up Your Social Media

October 1, 2014

These days, just having a Facebook page and Twitter account is not enough. They shouldn’t just be an afterthought, or something you signed up for because you thought your business should have them. They also shouldn’t just be a place to advertise your specials.

People spend more time on social media than they do watching television, so making sure your business is not only present but offering interesting and engaging posts is more important than ever. People are looking for engagement and benefits from liking your page. Social media should be a place where you create and foster a community. That community then becomes a captive audience and a strong contingent of your regular customers.

Now is a great time of the year to tune up your social media pages & rethink your social media strategy. Here are some things to consider:

First, Do a Bit of Housekeeping
Here are a few initial places to start off the housekeeping on your page:

Is your contact information (phone number, address, & website) correct? Have you entered your business hours and are they accurate? Is your About section filled out and up to date?
Make sure your Facebook page is a business page and not just a profile. Not only is it more professional, it also doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies. If someone can “Friend” your page, then you have a profile. A Business page can only be “Liked”.
Do you have a cover photo and profile picture? Studies show that users are drawn to pages with photos. Make sure your page has them and they are sized to fit properly.

What makes a good post? Trends in Posting
More and more people are spending more and more time on social media, and they aren’t just on there to watch videos of cats. They are there looking for inspiration, engagement, and to feel like part of a community. So make your page the sort of place that provides that sort of experience, rather than just a spot to check out your specials. Inspire them with tips and information about how to achieve a more beautiful and healthy lifestyle. Engage them with questions that encourage interaction. The trend in posting to social media is moving towards shorter, more frequent communications, with a focus on visual. This is the perfect place to test out your brand voice and personality (two topics we’ve covered recently here on the blog). The best posts create and foster a sense of community and initiate conversations.

Think Visual!
Consumers continue to become more and more visual, and they are drawn to posts with images. So think about incorporating more visuals into your posts. All of the social media platforms are set up to incorporate photos or videos into your posts, so posting with photos is now easier than ever.

Consider using Video
YouTube has more viewers than cable television. Used effectively, video is a great way to connect with even more of your clients or prospective customers. Plus, with the Facebook algorithm, users who watch videos will start to see more videos in their feeds, which means your posts will show up more frequently if they include photos and videos. Video can be a great tool for sharing tips with your followers or introducing them to your staff.

Create a Series
Series are a great way to generate interest and also a way to bring followers back again, to check out the next installment. It’s also a great way to set your business up as an expert, or to help foster your brand identity online by helping your followers get to know your business better.

A great idea for a series is to answer your five most asked questions in little videos. Then share them on your social media outlets in a weekly series & make a landing page on your website that features them as well. Or create an Ask the Expert series where followers can post questions and you post a video response/tutorial once a week.

Should you add another outlet?
Facebook and Twitter are still the kings of social media. But there are lots of other platforms out there that continue to grow in popularity. Now might be a good time to think about adding another to the mix. Consider Google+, the fastest growing of the social networks. Experts predict that it will only continue to grow and its users are very active. It could be a great third social media outlet to add to your marketing plan.

There are also quite a few social media platforms that are a bit more specialized, such as LinkedIn for business contacts, Pinterest for pinning fave photos and links to websites/articles, Instagram for posting snapshots, and Vine for posting short 6 second videos. It’s worth evaluating these to determine whether any of them will provide added benefit to your social media strategy.

Now more than ever, having a strong social media marketing strategy is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing plan. Make sure you keep it up to date and invest the time and effort to make it useful and interesting for your followers. You’ll see that commitment reflected in your bottom line.

Celebrate Your Clientele!

September 29, 2014

Marketing your spa, salon, massage therapy or esthetics practice requires a very clear picture of your ideal target. Painting a picture of that target means listening to your clientele and remembering (noting) key points about them. These points provide marketing opportunities, and will further strengthen your relationships which engender client loyalty, which in turn helps you succeed. It’s a beautiful process, really it is.

Birthdays immediately come to mind as key points to remember. Everyone has one, even the timeless, ageless clients who appear to be untethered to the same laws of physics as the rest of us. Why not offer up either an extended service for the price of a regular session, or throw in a complementary lovely lotion or potion with a service to commemorate their event? The actual cost to you as the provider can be carefully managed to be minimal, and the good will you build in the process will be considerable.

Another example? Anniversaries. Some years back my husband and I decided to celebrate ours each year with indulgence in the form of side-by-side massages. We have two spas we love to frequent (very different, both amazing, both staffed with very skilled practitioners), and alternate between them for these annual events. After this year’s lovely indulgence, we were escorted out to a lovely sitting area and offered champagne to help celebrate our event. We enjoyed the cool, sparkly beverages as we chatted about our massages, and both felt that this final touch was lovely.

Start simple by designing a couple of options for birthdays, then making a point of asking clients when their special day is each year, then mentioning your special treatment of the birthday celebrant. They’ll be happy to give up the info knowing that when theirs rolls around they’ll be getting an email, postcard, text or phone call letting them know that you know that it’s time to celebrate.

The Power of Storytelling

September 22, 2014

We’ve talked a lot lately about how to build your brand, through creating a personality and voice. And one of the most effective ways to do that is with storytelling. The best brands are good at telling stories, both about their company history and their clients’ experiences. But why is storytelling so effective as a marketing tool?

Storytelling is an ancient form of communication, one in which we all have a long history. From the time we are small we are told stories as a way to inform, educate, and entertain. We are wired to crave stories and to feel like we are a part of them. At some point we’ve all been completely mesmerized by a good story.

With the popularity of social media, and the personal connections and stories that we are addicted to having daily, storytelling is even more important. Storytelling allows you to connect with your clients. But more importantly, a story allows your clients to feel a more personal connection to your business. It allows you to build a persona for your brand, to set your brand up as a relatable commodity and as an authority that your clients can turn to when they are looking for advice.

So how can you start incorporating storytelling into your content marketing? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Tell the story of why you decided to open the business or how you went about becoming a small business owner
Talk about challenges you have faced and the successes you have had, both personally and as a business
Talk about your staff – share their stories so that your clients will start to feel a more personal connection to them
Engage your audience – ask them questions about their life, what they want to see from your business, or what sorts of activities they are interested in
Share stories from events or volunteer activities that your business or staff are involved in
Tell the stories of your clients and their interactions with you, your business, and your community

Incorporating more storytelling into your content marketing sounds like a hard task. But in reality we are all storytellers already. It’s just a matter of writing our stories down and sharing them with our communities.

The power of storytelling can help you establish your brand identity and voice. By building a more personal relationship with your clients, you’ll solidify their connection with you. And you’ll see that reflected in growing brand loyalty and increased sales. After all, people tolerate a good pitch, but they love a good story.

What Is a SWOT Analysis?

September 17, 2014

As a small business owner, you are often so focused on the day to day activities of running your business that you don’t take the time to sit down and really evaluate how your business is doing and how it compares to other businesses in the market. In order to help your business grow, it is key to get a clear idea of what your business does well and how it fits into the marketplace. A SWOT Analysis is a great tool for helping you focus on your business’ place and purpose.

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, & Threat. Through a series of questions and analysis, a SWOT Analysis can provide you with information on the strengths and weaknesses of your business, the opportunities it has in your market, and the threats it might face in that market. From there, you can use that information to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business, but also to uncover new opportunities. A SWOT analysis can also be used to evaluate how your business compares to similar businesses in the marketplace, which can help you craft a more effective business strategy to help your business grow.

So how does a SWOT Analysis work?
It can be as easy as sitting down with your staff and going over the following questions. It can also be helpful to involve some of your clients as well, maybe by asking them to fill out a simple survey. Here are some of the things to consider and ask from each of the four categories:

Strength – characteristics that give your business an advantage over others

What do you do better than anyone else?
What advantages does your business have over others in the area?
What do your clients see as your strengths?
What factors help you make sales?

Weakness – characteristics that leave your business at a disadvantage over others

What could you improve about your business?
What should you avoid?
What do your clients see as your weaknesses?
What factors cause you to lose sales?

Opportunity– instances or areas that your business could develop as an advantage

What opportunities do you see in your marketplace?
What trends are you aware of that could affect your business?
Weaknesses can also often open up new opportunities. How could you improve or eliminate your weaknesses?
Threats can also often be turned into opportunities. How can you take advantage of the threats and turn them around into new opportunities for your business?

Threat – instances or circumstances that could have a negative effect on your business

What obstacles is your business facing?
What are your competitors doing better than you?
Do you have a cash flow problem, or debt?

Once you have all these answers, it’s a good time to sit down with your team and evaluate what those answers mean to your business. By identifying not only what you do well, but also what new opportunities there are out there, and how you will handle threats and weaknesses, you will come up with an overall big picture of your business. From there, you can start to discuss and plan out strategies for taking advantage of your strengths and opportunities and managing your weaknesses and threats. In the end, what should emerge is a business plan based on all of this, with ideas on how to leverage this new information to strengthen your business and bring about growth.

A SWOT Analysis is a simple but powerful tool for evaluating your business. By taking time on a regular basis (at least annually) to ask yourself these questions and evaluate what the answers mean for your bottom line, it can help you not only streamline your business practices but can help you better understand where your business currently is and what it will take to get it to where you would like it to be. It can also help you come up with effective strategies for distinguishing yourself in your market.