It is that time of the year again when everyone in the spa industry takes a collective sigh of relief. The holiday hoopla is behind you, and now you can turn your attention to the year ahead. I’ve created a basic list of online marketing resolutions for 2013. Use them as a starting point to set some new goals for your day spa or salon. Then resolve to follow through on the measures outlined in each category.
REASSESS YOUR MARKETING PLAN
Look at all media and evaluate conversions and ROI. Is it time to switch from one platform to another? According to Monetate, Social Media (e.g. FaceBook advertising) has poor conversions – around 0.59%, while Search weighs in at 2.49% and Email Marketing at 4.25%. You can see that by shifting from one venue to another, it’s possible to realize better conversions, and conversions is what you’re after.
Review Your Spa’s Value Proposition. What is it that makes you different from the spa or salon down the street? Have you done your best to articulate that to your customers and website visitors? Is that message clearly visible in all your content – both online and offline?
LOCAL SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for SPAS
Assess at Your Day Spa’s Ranking. Just because you had prominent ranking last year, does not guarantee this year’s positioning. Search engines periodically change their algorithms and that has a huge bearing on your search placement.
Update Every Local Business Listing. Many salons and day spas never get around to claiming their local listings on search engines and other internet properties. Others never complete them correctly. Many of these listings are free. Take advantage of them as they’ll bring a lot of traffic to your site.
SEARCH ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS
Review All Campaigns On All Platforms. Your advertising campaigns should be monitored and updated regularly. The “build it and forget about it” attitude is doomed to fail.
Understand Your Metrics. Know how keywords, match types, day-parting, conversions, and other search metrics affect your ROI and the effectiveness of the campaigns. Each year there are many new features in Google and Bing. Keep up or lose out.
EMAIL MARKETING
Resolve to Send Regularly. Email still has the best conversion rate for online media, but are you using it effectively? Do you regularly send out newsletters and promotions or do you have a hap hazard approach? Are your emails interesting and engaging? Are your promotions stale?
Clean up Your List. Too many spas and salons never clean up their list. Remove all emails that have been unresponsive or bounced in the last six months. You’ll find that your conversion rates go up when you get rid of the dead weight.
A/B TESTING
Conduct Landing Page Tests for Each Marketing Campaign. You should be testing and evaluating every campaign associated with your online marketing. Some items to test include the headline, image, clarity of message, call-to-action, and even your value proposition. Minor tweaks to your landing pages can have major impacts on the performance of your campaigns.
Use A/B Testing in All Your Email Campaigns. Most Email Service Providers (Constant Contact, MailChimp, to name just a few) are set up so that you can run split testing on your promotional emails. Consider testing your subject line, your call-to-action, image, and headline.
VIDEO MARKETING
Create One Video Each Quarter. Videos convert so be sure to include a high quality professional video and your website and/or landing page.
Use Event Tracking to Measure Video Plays. Google Analytics gives you the ability to track the number of times site visitors play your video. Do you have an analytics account? It’s free.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Resolve to Regularly Post Engaging Content. Got a blog, FaceBook or Twitter account but just too tired to post regularly? Allow your therapists and staff to regularly contribute messages and articles. Your fans and readers will love interacting with the people who actually provide their services.
Try Your Hand at a New Venue. Maybe a blog or Twitter isn’t your thing. Think about expanding into other venues such as Pinterest or Instagram.
Let’s make 2013 a banner year.
Happy New Year to ALL!
