Download A sound marketing strategy can transform your business from

MARKETING
PLANNING
A SIMPLE plan
“Far too many salon owners and
managers create a promotion
without considering their
objectives and revenue targets”
A sound marketing strategy can transform your business from an
unknown to the salon or spa everyone’s talking about. Kicking off this
month’s special, Jenni Middleton explains how to create a winning plan
Our experts
Tracey
Stapleton
is
managing
director of
The Spa
PR Company, a
five-year-old PR and
marketing agency
specialising in spa and
beauty. Stapleton started
her career over 20 years
ago working for one of
London’s largest
consumer PR agencies
Andrea
Ayling
has
extensive
agency
and
in-house PR and
marketing experience,
specialising in professional and consumer
beauty. She worked at a
leading consumer
agency before working
for R Robson (Guinot).
She now runs Acuity
Communications,
developing PR and
marketing for salons
Y
ou’re in your local, buying two
large glasses of Pinot grigio to
get the rest of the bottle free,
when the pub quiz starts. The
first question is, “What is marketing?”.
You may think it’s public relations;
you could guess it’s sales; you probably
reckon it means booking an ad in the
paper. The answer is actually all of the
above. Marketing is anything that raises
the profile of your brand, retains and
attracts customers, and ultimately
induces them to buy more of your products or services. That could be handing
out flyers on the street while wearing a
sandwich board pointing out where
your salon is, hitting the phones to
encourage customers to book traditionally quiet slots, getting a column in your
local press to answer readers’ beauty
questions or a two-for-one promotion
– not unlike your pub’s offer that tempts
you into staying when you were only
planning a quick one on the way home.
But marketing is less about wining
and dining journalists – and more about
working the spreadsheets. The consensus seems to be that you should spend
around 5% of your turnover on marketing, although some businesses make a
good job of spending 2% wisely, while
start-ups will give their marketing
department a cash injection of anything
up to 15% of their projected profits.
“The most commonly used method
for calculating marketing budgets is by
percentage of forecast sales, but this
can vary enormously depending on the
type of business,” says The Spa PR
Company managing director Tracey
Stapleton. “Salons and spas fall into
the services sector that is more dependent on margins rather than volume, so
they tend to have to spend more on
their marketing to drive sales.”
Whatever you spend, make sure you
know what the goal is. Susie Santiago
is the owner and founder of Santi, a
leadership programme for salon and
Susie
Santiago
runs the
Santi
Programme, a
business coaching
course for salon and spa
owners and managers.
Members can join any
time throughout the year,
and learn disciplines of
marketing, finance
and staff training
Jo
Goodman
is a
regional
spa
manager
of Virgin Active.
Goodman joined
Virgin in 2006 and
rebranded Virgin Spas
as Heaven V. Prior to
that, she worked at
Holmes Place Health
Clubs and also owned
three salons in the
Manchester area
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL
41 Tie-ups: why collaborating with other companies can be good for your business
44 Customer profiling: the better you understand
your customer, the more targeted and effective your marketing efforts will be
47 Local media: how your business can cash
in on free publicity by boosting its profile
36 Professional Beauty October 2009
Susie Santiago, Santi
www.professionalbeauty.co.uk
www.professionalbeauty.co.uk
spa owners. She teaches members to
undertake a swot analysis of their businesses’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, a competitor analysis and an evaluation of which
marketing activities worked and which
didn’t in the previous 12 months.
“Without a goal, you have nothing to
aim for. Far too many salon owners and
managers create a promotion without
considering their targets,” she says.
Think on your feet
Justin Musgrove was spa director at
Center Parcs before joining Bannatyne
Group two and a half years ago as group
spa director. He says one of the benefits
of working for such an entrepreneurial
business is that it can react quickly to
any changes. So, while a lot of fitness
clubs have suffered with low membership retention and low spa usage in the
downturn, Bannatyne Group has not
caught the same kind of cold. “I guess
it’s because we did not have a grand
recession reaction strategy, but instead
focused on getting the basics right,” he
says. For Musgrove, that has meant
planning on a club by club basis.
Once you’ve done the bean counting,
it’s time to get spending. But planning
activity around the year is a better
Useful websites
www.thespaprcompany.com
Specialist beauty and spa
marketing and PR agency
www.essencepr.com
Experts in hair and beauty PR
and marketing campaigns
www.acuitycommunications.
co.uk
Specialists in salon marketing and
PR to clients and the media
www.santi.co.uk
Development programmes
for salon and spa owners
(Above and main picture)
Bannatyne Group is
investing in digital
marketing to promote
its spas and any special
offers on treatments
to its members and
the wider public
approach than just spending as and
when you think you need it. Most salons
and spas have a traditionally quiet time,
so it’s best to plan something for those
lulls, such as the new year slowdown.
But you must canvas during strong
times of trade, such as at Christmas,
Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, or
you could miss out to other businesses.
Santiago advises salons and spas start
thinking about the calendar year in September or October, then present their
strategy to their team in November so
the plan is ready for roll-out in January.
Virgin’s Heaven V spas take a similar
approach. Marketing manager Jo Goodman says: “We prepare an annual plan
in accordance with our budget and we
usually start putting this together in
September for the following year. We
split our budget in two – one bit for
planned activity and another to allow
us to react to changes in the economic
climate and local or current activities.”
Be adaptable
Little and often seems to be a good way
to manage your marketing workload
and have the greatest impact. Samantha Grocutt, managing director of
beauty specialist PR agency Essence,
also urges salons to be adaptable.
“There will always be last-minute
opportunities – new product launches,
charity events – so consider these, but
don’t feel pressured into anything. You
need to understand why you’re doing it
and what the reward will be,” she says.
“Marketing activity must be properly
planned with clear objectives and a
return on investment set,” says Goodman. “We’ve seen a number of our sites
rush into things and not prepare first.”
It seems that, in marketing, to fail to
prepare is to prepare to fail – but it’s not
the only stumbling block for salons and
spas trying to boost their sales. “Making
offers too complicated and confusing is
a downfall,” says Dove Spa international 
October 2009 Professional Beauty 37
MARKETING
PLANNING
 development
director Fran Hayter.
“We do best with marketing when we
keep offers simple, such as our £10
offers. Focus on driving in new guests
and giving added value to loyal guests.”
One of Heaven V’s most successful
marketing promotions adhered to these
principles. Its Refer a Friend initiative
– where clients were offered a discount
on their next treatment if they introduced a new client, who also received a
discount off their first treatment – “was
relatively cheap to implement”, according to Goodman. Another inexpensive
tactic is sending late availability e-mails
to the client database, offering discounted off-peak appointments.
Digital routes
Musgrove says that e-marketing is
something that Duncan Bannatyne –
head of the group – and he are very
keen on. “I hate to spend a fortune on
first-class stamps. Why should we in
this day and age? We’ll email hints and
tips from our fitness instructors, and
tell clients about offers,” he says.
And, in an effort to reach a bigger
slice of the online audience at its fingertips, Bannatyne will relaunch its website before the end of the year, allowing
clients to book their own treatment,
treatment room, time and therapist.
Santiago says that involving the team
is vital to the success of any marketing
plan – they have to be behind it so they
can sell it. “Focus the team on the objectives, and recognise their achievements
and contributions,” she says.
The Spa PR Company offers marketing and PR services to a range of spas
and salons, including Ark Salons in
London and Fortina Resort in Malta,
and knows how to get a beauty business
THE INSIDE TRACK
Ruth Mortimer, associate
editor of Marketing Week,
explains what’s hot and
what’s not in marketing:
“For some brands, viral campaigns
will suit their ethos and target
consumer. Lots of brands are
currently using Facebook and
Twitter, along with other social
media channels, to reach buyers.
Facebook can work for brands
where people feel a great deal of
affection for them, such as
Cadbury’s Wispa, which was
brought back after the confectioner
saw a Facebook group demand it.
Twitter works well for brands
where people are interested in what
the brand has to say, such as
celebrity brands. Anything
personalised and more targeted is
better when it comes to marketing.
How can ads encourage you to buy a product?
“Ads need
to have a
creative
flair about
them.
They need to be
unique and draw me
in. It also helps when
the people using
the product are
good-looking.”
Mohammed Waqas, 23,
graphic designer,
London
“What
makes me
want to
buy a
product is
when the ad aims to be
as close to reality as
possible. When ads are
too fake – like some spot
cream ones – it really
puts me off.”
Megan Williams, 18,
student, London
38 Professional Beauty October 2009
“Ads need
to show the
product
clearly. You
sometimes
get ones that show
products not included,
which can be misleading. Also, I like to see
statistics – something
which proves that the
product is worthy.”
Shamim Fatima, 44,
sales assistant, London
The Spa PR Company
offers creative marketing
approaches, including
inviting the original
Calendar Girls to visit
Huddersfield’s Titanic Spa
(left) and encouraging
Malta’s Fortina Spa to
sponsor events
in the public eye. “Increasingly we are
using the web to market our clients and
it’s important to test new areas,” says
Stapleton. “Some of the initial digital
advertising on mainstream national
newspaper websites didn’t work as well
as expected and we have now refined
this to focus on subscriber sections,
more targeted wellness sites such as
Wahanda.com and PR-driven editorial.”
For good PR, though, you need a good
story. Grocutt believes a top-performing
salon or spa always makes journalists
raise a glass. “I’m pro-entering industry
awards. We have had great success at
this and I then work with salons to promote their wins to the customer through
editorials in the local press, text notifications and window displays,” she says.
The Spa PR Company has also
worked with award-winning Royal Day
Spa and Titanic, and says that finding a
business’s USP is essential to achieving
its long-term ambitions. “In the case of
Titanic, it was its eco-credentials, which
has brought them to virtually full capacity month by month,” says Stapleton.
But sometimes it is about being open
to opportunity. “We match treatments
with seasonal requirements and recently
had a three-minute broadcast on GMTV
for the new Lava Shells Massage and
Gerard’s Green Tea Abdomen Treatment
at The CityPoint Club as perfect treatments for achieving that bikini-body flat
tummy for summer,” Stapleton adds.
But there is a difference between
last-minute opportunities and marketing as an afterthought, which Santiago
says happens all too often. “Salons and
spas fail [with their marketing] because
they don’t plan,” she says.
Who knows, if you get your marketing basics right, you can afford to
reward yourself and your staff with a
couple of bottles of Pinot grigio –
even if it’s not on special offer.
www.professionalbeauty.co.uk