It’s No Wonder Medspa Owners and Operators Are Confused!

by Ryan Harris, Co-Founder of the Medspa Marketing Institute

I am thumbing through a recent copy of Spa Management Magazine “the world’s only spa management journal” and I can see why medspa owners and operators are confused about what works in marketing, and what doesn’t.  The first thing I noticed is that I couldn’t find the word “profit” anywhere in the magazine.  Even the ads from vendors of spa equipment, who should be touting how their equipment will help a spa improve business are devoid of any references to increasing revenue.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but aren’t you in business to make money (while doing what you enjoy)?   Why aren’t the ads in magazines and trade journals that are supposed to be “selling” top spa owners touting how their products will help you make more money, so you can take a month off from work and go play gold or lie on the beach somewhere.  THAT is a benefit worth touting!

But instead I see page after page of 90% nude beautiful women, but not an “effective” ad to be found.  As a man, I appreciate the nudity, and as a marketer, I know that sex sells – sometimes, under very specifc circumstances.   But do you think sells sells massage tables, skin care products, and laser packages to anti-aging practioners, doctors, and the people who help others look younger and feel great?

If the vendors of equipment to the spa industry don’t even understand the fundamental of marketing or creating display ads that get response, how can doctors, who are trained in medicine, not marketing, understand it?  Doctors and spa owners are not marketing experts, nor do they need to be.  But unfortunately, humans have the tendency to look around at what everyone else is doing on the assumption that if other people are doing it, that it must work!  Don’t buy into that marketing myth.

In fact, the opposite is true.  If everyone else is doing it then it is almost guaranteed to NOT WORK.  The crowd is never right when it comes to doing things that are highly effective.  Don’t follow the crowd.  In fact, if you want to be successful, all you have to do is look at what everyone else is doing, and do the opposite of it, and you will right on the money 95% of the time.

To get people to respond to an ad, you have to appeal to an emotion beyond just the sex drive.  Listing features of a product or service is nice, but it’s the BENEFITS that get people to respond.  Benefits that appeal to emotions.   In my next post, I will discuss some of these emotions and how you can tap into them in your next marketing piece, to experience a significant jump in the response rate, so you can make more money with no additional effort.  That’s what it’s all about.

And to the folks at Spa Management – I love your magazine, and look forward to seeing better ads in the future from your customers.  If you want them to keep advertising in your magazine, help them to help you, by providing some advertising guidelines based on a hundred years of direct response marketing principles.  If you’re not sure how, send them our way, and we’ll help break them of the “branding marketing” habit.

Dedicated to Your Prosperity,

-Ryan Harris