Offering holiday promotions is a great way to promote your practice: they generate excitement and encourage people to book sessions, buy gift certificates and purchase products. This article highlights three types of promotions that can be used for any holiday and then concludes with tips on how to announce your holiday promotions.
Holidays aren’t limited to the traditional fall and winter holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza. Many other prominent celebrations include:
• New Year’s Day
• Valentine’s Day
• St. Patrick’s Day
• Easter
• Mother’s Day
• Father’s Da
• Independence Day
• President’s Day
• Veteran’s Day; and
• Pride Day
Then there are industry-specific holidays, such as Massage Makes Me Happy & Healthy Day, an annual celebration of massage therapy that takes place every March 20. Also consider special awareness days, weeks and months that might be important to your target market’s demographics and health concerns, such as Teacher Appreciation Day or Skin Cancer Awareness Month.
While not technically a holiday, you can plan a special promotion for Small Business Saturday and take advantage of all the publicity that gets generated for this national event. You can also design a Cyber Monday campaign if you sell products or gift certificates online.
Signature Treatments for Holiday Promotions
Signature treatments are a fun way to introduce clients to new services and products and can be created with holidays in mind. Offering signature treatments is one of the easiest ways to indirectly increase your product sales and encourage bookings, as they generate client excitement and anticipation for the next special.
Give your signature treatments fun titles that spark your clients’ curiosity. Create packages that include a special routine and items like customized scrubs, aromatherapy blends, topical analgesics or hot/cold packs. When the session is over, show the clients the products you used and ask if they would like to purchase any to take home.
A lot of stress often accompanies winter holidays, so you could develop a couple of different options of varying lengths (and products), including an express service that helps them unwind quickly and get back to their busy schedule.
Include a product they can take with them, like a relaxing essential oil or a soothing aromatherapy candle. Fun titles could be The Pumpkin Pie Experience, The Ginger Snap, The Candy Cane Treatment, The Hot Chocolate Wrap, Peppermint Flurry, or Winter Wonderland.
Or keep it simple by enhancing your standard treatments with the season’s scents, like cinnamon or cranberry—and sell items with those fragrances.
An option for Signature Treatments is to bake products into sessions. Baking is done by creating a signature treatment that includes using a product(s) in the session and give the remainder of the product to the client to take home. This approach takes the stress out of selling. It is also an excellent strategy if you employ therapists, as the therapists can focus on the treatment and don’t have to be concerned about sales.
A simple example of a signature treatment with baked-in products is the “Weekend Warrior Pain Relief Treatment,” which includes a 90-minute massage with a topical analgesic and a hot pack. After the treatment, the client goes home with the remainder of the topical analgesic and the hot pack.
Now let’s look at pricing signature treatments. Let’s say that your standard 90-minute session rate is $100. The retail price of the topical is $25 and the retail price of the heat pack is $20, for a total of $45; your cost for the products is $25. You set the price for this special treatment at $130. The client saves $15 and you earn enough to cover your product cost. It’s a win/win experience for everyone.
Plus, by including a product that needs replenishing, and if the client really likes it, you have set it up for ongoing sales.
Product Bundles for Holiday Promotions
Bundling a product with other products or certificates is an effective holiday sales technique. Clients are always looking for unique gifts year-round. Bundling products with a gift certificate provides instant gratification (the products) and something for later (the session).
Consider pairing items you sell in your practice with other festive things. For instance, in February you could bundle a self-care tool, an essential oil, a mug and chocolate for Valentine’s Day. A Mother’s Day bundle could include essential oils, a body scrub, body lotion, a self-care tool and an eye pillow.
When assembling bundles, offer a variety of packages that range in price, so your clients can feel good about the purchase while staying in their financial comfort zone. Consider putting together a basic kit that costs approximately $25, a pampering kit in the $50 range, and a deluxe kit that costs $100 or more.
If a gift certificate for your services isn’t included in the kit, make a sign that encourages people to add a certificate. Your $50 kit could say something like, “$50 for the kit. Add a gift certificate for a one-hour session for only $50 more.” You can also effectively generate new clients with these retail packages by including a business card and an invitation for an open house or a complimentary mini-massage.
Package the products attractively. You can use baskets or pretty bags. Sometimes simply attaching a ribbon makes a purchase seem special.
Announcing Your Holiday Promotions
Announce your promotions at least several weeks in advance. Ideally, start planting seeds for the major gift-giving winter holiday season in September.
Keep it simple with a statement in your promotional materials: “Avoid the holiday crunch by giving the gift of health. We offer a selection of wellness products and services.”
As the holiday seasons approach, increase your promotional campaigns to full force by the beginning of November. Include photos, especially if you include products in the promotion.
• Posters: Print signs announcing your promotion and post them by your front desk and in the restrooms. Place posters in book stores, health food stores, gyms, sports centers and any place where you can find your target markets.
• Website: Place a banner on your website about gift certificates, special holiday signature treatments and bundles.
• Email Marketing: Include announcements in your e-newsletters and email blasts.
Add a tagline to your correspondence that says something like “Purchase the gift of wellness.”
• Advertising: Take out ads in local publications. Place online ads.
• Public Appearances: Be sure to mention your holiday promotions whenever you give talks and presentations or are a podcast guest.
• Merchandising: Set a festive tone by decorating your office.
• Social Media: Post your promotions on your social media sites. You can use photos or GIFs to add flair to your posts. Take out an online ad. Create a Facebook Event.
Phrases that Inspire Gift Purchases
• Give the gift of health.
• Your one-stop shop for gifts they’ll love.
• Gifts they will love—and are good for them!
• Our wellness products are one-size-fits-all gifts.
• Massage makes everyone happy!
• Give yourself and others the gift of AHHHHHH this holiday!
Create a Facebook Event
• Go to your News Feed and click “Pages” on the left menu
• Go to your page
• Click “Events”
• Click “Create Event” and click “In Person”
• Add Event Name, Start & End Dates, Description and Details.
• Click “Create Event”
Create an Offer on Your Facebook Business Page
• Go to your News Feed and click Pages in the left menu
• Go to your page
• Go to Meta Business Suite
• Click on “Commerce”
• “Offers” can be found under the “Promotions” drop-down
• Click “Create Offers” button
• Enter the details and duration of your offer
• Click “Create Offer”
Cooperative Marketing for Holiday Promotions
Cooperative marketing often increases the success of holiday marketing activities, reduces risks and costs, saves time and effort, and makes those tasks more enjoyable. Pooling resources helps you afford more imaginative, elaborate, expensive and long-term marketing projects.
Some of the best pairings for cooperative marketing for holiday promotions are between a massage therapist and another wellness practitioner who serves the same target market, or other businesses that would attract your target markets (such as retail establishments, suppliers and organizations).
You could put together a Valentine’s Day special that includes goodies from a local bakery, flowers, music, chocolate and a massage. You can also team up with another massage therapist and offer a couples massage with the package.
I hope this article has inspired you to consider some creative holiday promotions. Once you have one or more in place, get busy promoting them and watch your holiday income bloom.
About the Author
Cherie Sohnen-Moe is a recognized expert in the area of massage, business and marketing. She has worked in the massage field since 1978 and is the author of the textbook “Business Mastery” and co-author of “The Ethics of Touch” and “Retail Mastery.” She is also a MASSAGE Magazine All-Star, one of a select group of innovative therapists and teachers who are educating the magazine’s community of massage therapists in our print magazine, on our social media channels and online.