subject: An Important Look At The Big Picture Of Why And How You Should Be Marketing [print this page] Before we dive into specifics, I wanted to take a moment and talk about the big picture of the "why and how" behind your marketing. On the surface, the "why" question may seem dumb. If I were to ask you "why are you marketing your spa?" you would probably stare at me blankly and say something like "to make sales" or "to make money".
Those answers, while correct, lack a broader vision of the real power of marketing. Here's what I mean - have you ever thought of what it would be like to someday "cash out" and sell your spa? Perhaps the thought of such a thing is laughable to you at this point. You might be thinking "who would buy a spa that's barely getting by?" Which is exactly my point. If you were to put your spa up for sale and ever dream of getting "top dollar" for it, realize that the greatest asset of your spa isn't in your used equipment, your location, or your employees.
The #1 asset of any business is its client base. A perspective buyer of your spa - if weighing the option of buying your spa, or just starting off on their own - could easily replace your equipment, find different employees, even a different location. But the hard thing for any spa to get are clients.
The #1 job of marketing is to gain a client. And once you gain a client, you must market to them consistently so you can, in essence, "put an iron fence" around them, making them impervious to being stolen away from your competition. When you have huge, loyal client base (and you actually know this because you actually track their individual sales...not because you just "assume" they're loyal), not only will you be rewarded financially from great sales figures, but you will have also built the #1 asset that a potential buyer will be very interested in paying you top dollar for, should you decide you want to sell.
I've attempted to not only give you a few marketing tips, but hopefully you'll see a logic to the entire spa marketing plan. So many small business owners have a totally haphazard way of spending their marketing dollars. In the end, not only do they waste a ton of money on marketing that just flat doesn't work, but since they have a limited budget, they waste the opportunity to spend money on promotions that would have built their relationship with their #1 asset (their client base).
