Spas

10 Actionable Tips to Boost Your Spa Retail Sales in 2023

Tips to boost spa retail sales

Are you a spa owner, manager, or professional seeking to boost your spa retail sales? If yes, you have come to just the right place. 

Due to their high-profit margin, retail sales have always played an important role in increasing the overall profit of the spa business. So if you haven’t given your retail sales the importance they deserve, it’s high time you should.

Here are 10 actionable tips to boost your spa retail sales in 2023:

  1. Choose the right products to sell at your spa
  2. Perfect your spa displays
  3. Train and educate your staff
  4. Set sales targets and incentivize your employees
  5. Employ personalized marketing
  6. Offer a test drive
  7. Give offers and discounts
  8. Bundle up
  9. Reward your customers through loyalty programs
  10. At last, promote!

1. Choose the right products to sell at your spa 

The first and most important step to increasing your retail sales must be to know what products you want to sell. The retail products you choose to sell in your spa must match the needs of your customers. If you choose products that your customers are not interested in buying, then chances are very slim that they will try them.

  • For this, you need to know your customers well. Guessing what they might like will not prove helpful in most cases, the best way to know them is to ask them. You can create a simple questionnaire about brands and products and ask your customers to fill it out. 

    You can also have a friendly interaction with them while they are receiving spa service or at the front desk while they are paying their bill. This will encourage them to open up and tell you about any concerns or problems they have. This information will prove crucial when deciding what products to sell in your spa.
  • Another important point is to do market research – you should find out what your competitors are selling, what products other spas in the area are selling, and also what is trending in spa products. You can also find out what brands and items most customers are buying. This will give you a comprehensive idea of what is trending in the market. 

    And this process of researching products is not a one-time thing. You need to conduct such market research on a regular basis. This will help you keep track of what is trending in the market and which brands or products customers prefer to buy.

2. Perfect your spa displays

The first thing the customers see when they enter your spa is the display of products; the products themselves are actually seen the second. The job of spa displays is to present your spa retail products in a unique and appealing way to the customers.

  • Your displays convey a tone and help create an atmosphere with their arrangement, lighting, and shelf talker cards. Not only that, but they also serve the purpose of educating their customers about the products, different brands, and offers applicable.
  • You can also set themes for different brands of the product. This kind of presentation can encourage brand recognition. 

    For example, bold displays with strong colors create a different mood, while displays with soft colors and aesthetic design create quite another.
  • Consider experimenting with different arrangements, themes, and lighting for your spa retail products. And then choose the ones that best suit the kind of mood and ambiance you want to convey to your customers.
  • Disinfecting and sanitizing your store is very important during these times. These things reflect that you care about your customers’ health and safety.
  • Segregating and categorizing your spa retail products properly is just as important as their display. You should categorize your products well and place them on designated shelves with labels. This way, your customers can easily find what they are looking for. 

    A messy shelf with all brands of face packs stacked together sends one message, while a stair-stepped display with designated labels for each brand sends another.
  • Another important point to pay attention to is limiting the number of products on the shelf. Too many products on the shelf can confuse customers. Therefore, it is very important to highlight your best spa retail products and brands. When placing your products, you need to make sure that your top-priority products are in the spotlight. This will give your customers a clear sense of what you are promoting.

Spa product display

3. Train and educate your staff

Your employees are the backbone of your retail business. Therefore, training and educating your staff should be one of the primary goals of your checklist. Given below are some tips on how to accomplish the same: 

  • Give them onboarding training where they learn all the details about the products you sell, the brands you collaborate with, the discounts you offer, and an overall overview of spa retailing and spa sales. This process provides them with the necessary knowledge for what they are required to achieve.
  • Provide them with courses on the basics of sales and marketing. This will help them develop the necessary spa sales skills so that they can approach the customers in a better way.
  • Put up the product specifications, details about discounts, and information about different brands all in one place in the form of a brochure. You can also distribute cheat sheets about your spa retail products. This will help your employees to refer to it at any time and have all the information at their fingertips.
  • Choose a product expert or leader from among all your staff members. The product expert can lead the team and be in charge in case of any discrepancies. 
  • In addition to product knowledge, it is also important to train your staff to have friendly and cordial conversations with customers. Conversations and face-to-face interaction are still the easiest way to get your customers to buy products.

Teach them the mantra – Educate and upsell.


4. Set sales targets and incentivize your employees

Training your employees will give them the knowledge but setting sales targets is what will give them the direction.

Knowing where you want to go is extremely important for your team to be effective. Sales goals give your team direction and a target to work towards. Without sales goals, your team won’t know if they are meeting expectations or if they need to improve.

Unmotivated employees can be a major reason why your retail sales might decline. Therefore, encouragement and incentives are very necessary to keep your employees motivated.

  • Organize friendly monthly or quarterly sales competitions among your team members. This creates an atmosphere of growth within the staff and builds momentum.
  • Give them commissions in addition to their base pay. This will incentivize them to perform better.
  • Reward your team through recognitions like Retail seller of the month, monetary awards, and prizes. And don’t just reward them for hitting the target, reward them for improvement. This will keep them working hard every day.
  • You can give them additional perks and benefits based on their performance like insurance benefits, retirement benefits, vacation policies, etc.

Remember – “Appreciation is a much better motivator than criticism“.


5. Employ Personalized Marketing

It’s better to make a few people really happy than making a lot of people semi-happy.

Paul Graham

Knowing who you are selling to is very important. Analyzing customers’ buying habits, likes, dislikes, and trends in your area can go a long way toward increasing your spa sales. This information will help you effectively suggest the right products to customers, allowing you to address their concerns with a more personalized and professional approach.

For example, if a client mentions that they are struggling with a hair loss problem, you could make notes about it and save them for the future. This would then help you offer customer-specific products for their concern the next time they visit. Not only that, if you have their past records of which brand they prefer the most, then you can suggest to them hair care products of their favorite brand. This will show your customers that you really care about their concerns and know them well.

Keeping personalized records of customers can also help you keep track of the products they buy and when their products might run out, giving you the opportunity to send them reminders to refill.

It can be very overwhelming and time-consuming to keep records of all your clients manually. But spa booking software can come to your rescue. 

A spa scheduling software like Appointy can help your spa in customer management. Using customer profiles in Appointy’s cloud-based spa software, you can store important information such as past treatments, purchase history, consultation forms, customer notes, reviews, etc. all in one place with the built-in CRM.

Sign up to see Appointy in action –>

This enables you to track your customers’ behavior and take specific actions for each customer.


6. Offer a test drive

Providing product samples that customers might be interested in can appeal to them and motivate them to make a purchase.

With creative marketing logic, you can also earn by offering freebies. For example, you can set a condition that free samples are only provided with purchases over $100. This way, you give your customers free samples, but you also increase your overall spa retail sales because they have to buy some of your other products to get the free samples. Your customers will be happy to get the free products and you will get a chance to increase your sales on other products. It’s a win-win situation.


7. Give offers and discounts

Holidays and special events are best for offering discounts to your customers. These are the times when customers are most likely to buy more products.

You can offer discounts and special offers on various holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc;

It is also important that you keep track of the personal celebrations of your customers like their birthdays and anniversaries. This personalized treatment will make them feel special and they may consider buying your products. 

You can hold sweepstakes and contests. You can offer limited-time discounts on certain products. Here’s an example of an offer on Mother’s Day.

You can also offer deep discounts on products that will soon expire. These products will have no value after the expiration date anyway, so why not sell them at low prices and make at least some profit.

When talking about offers and discounts there is another important strategy that you can leverage – Creating Urgency.

Making customers feel like they’re going to miss out on a great offer – and thus triggering that FOMO (feeling of missing out) – is a powerful way to increase conversions and sales.

People are more likely to be attracted to things that are in high demand. So if you post updates letting them know that certain offers are running low, they’ll be enticed to buy more.

One way to do this can be to promote seasonal products and let customers know that the stock is limited. 

It could be something like a limited stock of summer skincare goodies, pumpkin-packed products in the fall, or Holiday gift packs in the winter. Customers will be excited to buy the products before they are gone.


8. Bundle up

Product bundling is one of the most important marketing strategies. You can bundle products with services, or bundle products together. 

You can bundle a back massage with a product such as an essential oil, where the customer gets a discount on the service only if they combine it with a product purchase.

You can consider bundling low-selling products with some of the highest-selling products. This helps increase spa sales of products that customers wouldn’t otherwise buy.

You can also run programs like “Bring a friend” or “Family Bundles“. This increases your reach among people and also puts you in touch with potential customers.

Considering the post-COVID era where people are more inclined towards at-home spa treatments, you can offer DIY skincare kits, manicure kits, or pedicure kits to your customers. Along with offering these kits, you can also hold #AtHomeBeauty online sessions on how to use them on your social media channels. This will not only promote your spa retail products but also keep your customers engaged. 


9. Reward your customers through loyalty programs

Did you know that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one? Given these statistics, it’s needless to say why customer loyalty programs are so important. 

Link your loyalty program to your business or start a loyalty program if you don’t already have one. Good and accurate loyalty programs will motivate customers to visit you again because they will be getting something extra from your spa.

You can offer them points for every purchase. And then offer them benefits through a hierarchy of rewards that the customer can unlock as they spend more. DSW’s loyalty program is an excellent example of how this can be done.

Another option may be to give your customers the freedom to choose how they spend their earned points. They could use them to get a discount on the product they are interested in or for gift cards.


10. At last, promote!

Last but not least, promoting your spa retail products is crucial. You can have amazing products and have all the marketing strategies applied, but they lose their relevance if people don’t know about them. Promotions help increase awareness, visibility and also attract new customers to your spa. Here’s a checklist to make sure you are promoting your spa retail products using all the tools at your disposal:

Make your products available online

It has been found that 93% of customers used the internet to find a local business in the last year. With the pandemic and e-commerce boom in place, making your spa retail products available online has become a necessity to strive in the competitive world. 

And selling online is not only a boon for the customer but also for your business. It will increase your reach among customers, serve customers in far-flung locations, and provide your customers with real-time data about product availability.


Update/ create your website

This is one of the most basic ways to increase your online presence. Your website creates an important first impression on your customer. So it needs to be good. If your website is outdated, then it is very likely that you will lose customers. Therefore, you need to focus on building a website where you can post all the important information about your products, offers, and discounts.


Promote through blogs

Running a blog on your website will keep your customers engaged. You can blog about your services and products, the latest trends in the spa industry, or at-home skincare tips. It will keep your clients interested and keep them coming back to you.


Promote through social media

Social media has become increasingly important for marketing your products. It’s no longer just a place for people to share photos and converse, but it has become an important foundation for increasing your brand presence and social selling. Therefore, promoting your products on social media is a must in order to increase spa sales.

One of the trendiest ways to promote your products on social media is to collaborate with social media influencers. These influencers can promote your product very well as they have a good reach among the masses. A study has found that influencer marketing reaches 11x more ROI than banner ads.


Promote through email newsletters

Sending out monthly newsletters will keep your customers up to date on what’s new in your spa. It will help you maintain a connection with them throughout.


Share customer testimonials

It has been found that 87% of customers read online reviews for local businesses in the last year. Thus there is no doubt that reviews can be one of the assets to increase your sales. Therefore, you must encourage your customers to write reviews about the product they purchased on your website.

You can also post some of the best reviews on your social media outlets to build credibility with customers.


Conclusion

It may seem like a lot of work right now, but applying just five or six of these retail sales strategies can do wonders for your spa business. If it feels too overwhelming just remember the basic checklist: 

Displays, Staff, Strategies, and Promotions.

While you go forward to apply these tips, you might want to monitor your performance and make decisions accordingly. Spa booking software can serve to optimize your spa’s performance with clear insights on all-important spa metrics and KPIs. You can track customer satisfaction, sales, and staff productivity and hence take data-driven decisions.

We hope these points will help you increase your spa retail sales and help your business flourish in 2023.


About Appointy

We at Appointy, help business owners grow and run their businesses with our online scheduling software. This blog was a part of our ‘Manage your Business’ category, where we provide expert tips, and resources, or simply talk about the challenges that small and medium businesses face every day. 

If you have any thoughts on this blog or would like to chat about your business struggles and achievements, let us know in the comments below. 

We love a good talk!