EP 442: The Retail Reversal: A Smart Way to Boost Spa Revenue

Hey Daniela here, and welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. If you’re an aesthetic professional who wants to build a profitable, systemized spa that generates a minimum personal income, that’s your take-home pay, of $100k a year without sacrificing your family time or burning out, you’re in the right place.

So today, we are diving into a retail promotion that can fold into your strategic plan to do just that. Yes, a retail promotion. Alright, retail isn’t just an add-on or an upsell. It is a strategic growth engine for your spa. But I have been asked on multiple occasions over the past 20 years, why do I invest in retail only to mark it up and take those same profits and buy more retail?

Well, I’m going to answer that question for you, and I’m going to give you some stats to show you some of the why behind it okay. So let’s just start there with the statistics and these are coming from booking softwares, Millennium and Zenoti. There’s also some from American Med Spa. I’ll link all this up in the show notes if you want to do your own research.

According to Millennium, clients who buy three or more products from you have a 90 percent likelihood of returning for another visit. A 90 percent likelihood. We’re focusing so much on retention and pre-book and all of those incredible things that help us have more predictable revenue and build deeper relationships with our clients and patients. If we have them purchase three or more products from us, we have a 90 percent likelihood of them coming back for another visit. Incredible. Andthat’s from a booking software that is seeing the data of thousands of different spas okay, so it’s really really important to kind of hear what that is saying.

Zenoti did another survey. They said that 80 percent of your clients are open to buying products if recommended by a provider. One in three will usually or always buy. Over in the med spa world, skincare sales make up an average of 20 percent of total revenue. And think about that, right? If you’re a million-dollar spa, you’ve got $200,000 in retail sales.. I actually know several spas that do far more than that, especially in the kind of med spa light world, as I call it, we’re seeing numbers much higher for the spas that are really putting in a focus and attention on retail.

And a whopping 92 percent of medical spas sell skincare products, with each purchase averaging $134. That comes from AmSpa. Ok, so what does that mean? Retail isn’t a nice-to-have. It is a need-to-have. It is bringing your clients or patients back into your business okay. It is boosting your profits. It is getting your clients better results.

So more simply, your providers gonna be busier, your clients gonna get better results, and your bottom line, your profit is going to make you happy this is such a win win win.

But I want to take a second and more directly answer the question that I have post above. And again, I’ve been asked this on more than one occasion. When I first started out in the consulting space, I did a lot of work with the physician-dispensed skincare brands here in the US. And that meant that I was speaking at events across the country, and I would often times go into medical spas and do trainings for their staff. I got hired to work directly with staff to help them increase their retail sales, so I was very very deep in the world of retail sales.

This question would often come up. And logically, it makes sense, but we gotta look at it in a bigger picture. Because, there are a few things that we want to remember when it comes to retail. And one of the most important pieces is strategic ordering.

Let me know if this has happened to you before. When you order a box of products, your team by, you know, with the best of intentions and trying to be so incredibly helpful, they go and they open up that box. They start selling products out of it before it’s been verified on the PO, or even before it’s been entered into the software. You don’t know where it’s going. Your inventory is all totally off again. They do it with the best of intentions, but it makes it really hard to set clear pars or even know what pars are, and you end up ordering from a reactive state rather than a strategic one.

Okay, when you order with no clear systems and strategy, just when you run out of something, you’re paying a lot more for shipping, plus you’re not getting all of those additional bonuses that are offered with a larger order. And I’m just talking about ordering once a month, guys, not anything like we’re not trying to figure out what we need for a quarter. I’m just a once-a-month dedicated time that we are placing one larger order that is going to last us for the month. Okay? Now by ordering strategically, meaning one person, and that can be you, the CEO, that can be your spa manager, that can even be a front desk lead, if you have somebody awesome up there, but one person owns the ordering process from start to finish. Okay, this happens once a month. It’s gonna be based around your pars. And if you don’t know what a par is, that’s the average. The average number of units per SKU that you sell on a month. Okay?

When you order in that way, you’re not only saving payroll dollars, but you’re also getting BONUS products for free. Okay, you know the buy six, get one free, whatever the offer is, right? I know with Dermaconcepts, they are the distributors of environ skincare here in the US, when you order strategically, you can get up to 25% off of wholesale you guys. That is huge, that 25% goes straight to your profit margin. And that is a very healthy profit margin for spas.

Now, second, when you are building a relationship with a product rep, they become a support for you in the business, a good product rep has a wealth of knowledge around what’s working or what’s not working right now in Spa in your local area, plus they get to see the inner workings of so many other spas and have conversations with their colleagues across the country to get new ideas, to understand trends. This is huge, you guys. This is such a huge thing now that rep is going to benefit you professionally and financially. They benefit professionally and financially if your business does well, right? So you guys are both aligned with the same goal of your business succeeding. The more your business does, the more products you are going to order, right? I’ve seen reps play a big part in training new staff, in showing up for events, in creating sales incentives for your providers to sell their particular brand. All right, there’s so many ways that they can support you in the growth of your business.

Now. Finally, I believe, and I know you do too, that when clients or patients use quality home care products, they’re going to get better results, all right, that means that they are more likely to leave you a positive review or to recommend their friends, and, of course, to come back for more services, just like those booking software stats that we read earlier, from millennium and Zenoti. All right, so with retails impact crystal clear. I want to pivot to the promotion that I want to highlight today, which is something that I call the retail reversal. All right, I’ve talked about this on Spa Marketing School, which is a series we started this year where we share quick strategies to help you get more profit in your business. We try and just go straight to the point. We try and do those in 15 minutes or less. We’re posting those in the spa marketing Made Easy Facebook group. So if you’re not in there, get in there so that you can watch those. If you’re needing a bit of inspiration. Those are every Thursday.

Now, I felt like when we did that strategy, yes, I went into it and went kind of trying to give you just the meat of it, but I felt like I wanted to go deeper, like I wanted to elaborate further, because this is such a no brainer offer for the client and for you as the spa owner, it is such a win win.

So let me walk you through how this works. Instead of discounting products, you’re rewarding retail purchases with complimentary services that drive loyalty value and growth. So the offer would be something like this, spend $200 on skincare, get a chemical peel on us, so the client feels like they’ve received $200 in value, right? This is based off of the kind of average chemical price peel that I’m seeing somewhere between 175 and 225 okay, so spend $200 on skincare, get a chemical peel valued at $200 for free. So when we look at the cost of peels, most peels, you’re gonna block off 30 minutes of time, and depending on the brand that you’re carrying, you can get the total cost of the consumable, like your cost and payroll combined, down to about $25

Now, certain brands, yes, they’re going to be more expensive, but I’ve worked with some incredible. Brands get incredible results, tremendous feedback, that you can get the consumable cost and payroll down to $25 if you don’t know a brand like that, just message me. I’ll point you in the right direction. Okay, so think about how different it sounds to say, come in and save 10% off retail products. That’s that’s not going to get me to get me to come in, that’s going to not going to get me to make a trip to the spa, that’s not going to make me think about getting a chemical peel, right? But with the retail reversal, I’m providing the client with a high perceived value service, coupled with their skincare, that’s essentially going to cost me the same as discounting my products by 10% and I get the added bonus that chemical peels are best received in a series, so I have the opportunity to work on the client skin, to start to build a relationship with them. Recommend the peel package all with the knowing that they’re going to have that high quality home care at home that they’re going to be using after the service, which means they’re going to love the changes that they are seeing in their skin. Talk about a win. Win.

Okay, so let’s get into how you are going to make this work for you. First things first, I want you to review your service menu and look at your lowest consumable cost, highest perceived value services. I don’t want you to just guess the consumable cost. Okay, so if you’re one of the hundreds of spa owners who’s gone through growth factor, I want you to pull out that cost of treatment and profitability tracker. This is going to help you make a decision from data, not from a guess or a feeling. Okay, the next thing that we want to look at to narrow down the service is, what are we going to use in the retail reversal promo? Okay, we want to look at services that are best received in a series. Okay, so we’re looking for a series service, like a chemical peel, perhaps you come up with a series of facials that are best received, like a microdermabrasion facial, something along those lines. But we also want to look at the amount of time that it takes to perform that service. The less time, the better, right? Because we’re looking at consumable cost, but we’re also looking at payroll cost. So the shorter the service and the lower the consumable cost, the better. If you’re going through and you don’t have anything that makes sense on your menu right now, just create one right stack, some services together, like Dermaplaning with a 2% lactic and led and, you know, throw in some other low consumable cost offerings that you can put together to create an incredible service for your clients.

All right, I’m really looking for a service that’s going to be around 200 to 250 as a price point. Okay? Now, once we have the next steps, or once we have that, right, we’ve got our offer. We’ve got our service, something best received in a series. We’ve got a low consumable cost. Now we want to train our staff on the offering, especially if this is the first time that you’ve done this, if you’re making up a service, okay, or if it’s the first time that you’ve run this promotion, now having a script that you can share with your providers in your front desk that also it’s going to have the offering on there. It’s going to talk about how you actually recommend it. It’s going to have the FAQ section. That’s an internal document, right? This is not something we’re sharing with our customers or our clients or patients. This is internal to your staff that is going to really help them understand the offering, because if they don’t understand the offering, they’re not going to be able to communicate it effectively. Okay?

Now, even if you’re solo, I still recommend creating the script and writing out the FAQs. All right, it’s going to help you document this promo. It’s going to help you in the debrief. It’s going to be super beneficial if you do ever grow a team, or if you choose to run this promotion again in the future, you’re going to save yourself time in the future. Okay, now when you’re marketing this promo, I want you to think about email sequences.

I want you to think about countdown timers. I want you to think about ways that you can showcase not only some of your top selling products, but also the benefits of the service that you’re offering. Now, if you’re feeling stuck and just don’t really have any ideas how to do that, if social media is not your you know, favorite thing, just ask chatgpt get some ideas of what to post. So create a prompt that’s going to say, you know, here’s my ideal client avatar. This is the person that I am serving. Okay, upload that FAQ, doc that you created with the offer and the script and the frequently asked questions. Upload any information about products and services that are being offered during this promotion, and ask chat to give you an idea of. Are five different posts that you can create for social media to promote this offering. Okay, there’s also a lot of old school but still effective marketing strategies of simply having signage up at the front desk and in the treatment rooms, making sure that you’re talking with all of your clients or patients that come in and calling the existing ones to let them know about the offering. Okay.

Now I would also add some level of scarcity to this offer by either only having a certain amount available or only having the promo run for a set amount of time. That can be kind of a one day flash sale. It can be a week long promo, or it can be something that you’re offering for the entire month, but I wouldn’t do longer than a month. Okay, now, as you’re going through the promotion, I want to ensure that you are noting what worked well, what didn’t work well, and ideas that you may want to incorporate next time. Overall, we’re looking for about a 10 to 15% increase in your retail-to-service percentage for the entire spa. We’re aiming for that magical number of three or more products for each client to purchase, and we want to see about 70 to 80% of those free services that we’re offering being redeemed within 60 days. So that means that you will need to be proactive in getting those appointments booked.

Okay, keep note of how many people end up purchasing a package from the initial free service, and once those services have been completed or the cash has been collected, take a look at the amount of total revenue that you brought into your practice from this one promotion, it will be worth your time. Okay, I know you might be on the treadmill right now or driving your kids to school, and you might feel super inspired by this episode and just motivated to see those retail numbers go up. That is one of the big areas of opportunity that I almost always find in businesses, are their retail numbers.

All right, when we talk about the low-hanging fruit, or where the fastest, easiest ways to increase those profit margins and those numbers retail, okay? Now, if you’re not at your desk right now, as soon as this episode is over, I want you to talk to Siri or talk to Google and say, Hey, add this as a task to my calendar, or create me a reminder to work on this offer. Okay, I know life is busy. I just added a garden and a flock of chickens. I’m a chicken mama. I’m so proud of that to my world, which made my already busy life even busier in the best way. But I know that this episode is not going to help you unless you take action. Okay, so I want you to listen. I want you to be inspired. I want you to be motivated. But even more than that, I want you to take action, because without action, nothing changes. And I want you to pay yourself a six figure salary, I want you to be present with your kids for those little moments, not just the big ones.

Okay, now, if you need further support, I hope you’re in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. We have 1000s of aesthetic professionals in there. There’s so many free resources, so many great conversations that will help you build a profitable business again without sacrificing your family time. Okay? Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. I hope you take action, and I will catch you in the next episode.