subject: The Opposite Of How Most Spa Owners Market Their Spa [print this page] This is the opposite of the way most spa owners (and small business owners in general) think about marketing. Most would say "we need to run an ad and make some sales" and then they wait for the next guy selling advertising to waltz in the door. When the guy selling ad space in the local nightlife newspaper stumbles in, the first question out of the spa owner's mouth is "how much is it"?
To which the ad rep usually replies saying something about a limited-time special they're running, where you can get such-and-such placement in the health and beauty section of the magazine, plus a banner ad on the homepage of their website, which he claims gets "100,000 hits a month" or other such nonsense. "Tens of thousands of people will see your ad", he claims. And you can get all this for only $350. Doesn't sound like too bad a deal, so you decide to give it a try.
This all-too-common scenario is totally backwards from the way you should think about marketing. As you can see, your first priority should be to market effectively to your current clients. Sure, you always need to market to get new clients, but unless you're a totally new spa, marketing to your current clients should always hold priority.
Ok, see if you can find the other big mistake in this scenario. Ask yourself...where does running an ad in a local nightlife magazine fall in the easy-money to not-so-easy money chart above? Well, it's going out to a "heckuva" lot of people with a pulse (7). I'm sure there's some folks who read the magazine who fall into the other categories, like some people who "fit the profile" of your average client (6). In fact, I would bet the ad rep probably was sure to bring up the "fact" that XX% of their readership "fits your target demographic".
And I'm sure you could probably make the argument that by sheer number's sake there's going to be some people reading the magazine who are people who are looking for what you sell but don't know it (5). I mean, there's always people out there who want to look better and feel better, right? And lastly, you may even find a few who are actually people who are looking for what you sell and know it (4) - people actually looking for a spa.
With this in mind, your next problem is what is the ad going to say? Since it's clear you really have no idea who may be reading this magazine, your ad rep suggests "why not just run an ad that tells the name of your spa and what you do?" I mean, it's most important just to get your name out there, right?
