How I helped and the steps I used to grow a Clinic Business turnover to £1 Million
(107 Steps - free ideas and tools that actually works for clinics, salons and spas)
I have created a strategy using the steps below, analysing the data and reports and improved the existing month after comparing with the previous month. Completing the below steps for 12 months period of time generated a turnover of £1 Million for my client. In this article, you'll find actionable clinic, spa, salon marketing strategies to help you effectively make use of the tools and resources readily available as you reinvent your business.
1.If you are not already there, identify a Niche and Dig In
Whether your niche is laser hair removal, massage, waxing or filler you should do market research before you open your doors. It is very important to have your niche.
2. Target different clientele such as men and children
Offer competitive rates on standard services and open to different clientele like men and kids. Think about it when dad comes for a treatment you can have a haircut for the kid too.
3. Upsell Existing Clients with products.
Your existing client is already happy with your services, that means you have a chance to upsell a product or another treatment on your room is available and you can do this by providing an instant discount to fill up your empty slot from the afternoon.
4. Offer New Services and Products
Do a review to your offers and try to offer more for your clients even if you have to bring someone part-time for that service.
5. Ask Your Clients What They Want/Need
Client feedback is one of the most important aspects to improve your services. Ask if they are happy, what services they would love to see, create a contest to get the answers quicker.
6. Charge More for more expensive services and products
Some clients are expecting a different level of services. Create a luxury line of treatments, with caviar for example or special treatment by a Senior with lot of experience employee.
7. Create a referral program.
If an existing customer recruits another client to your clinic, you should reward the recruiter with some sort of discount. This will encourage people to spread the word about your business more and more often.
8. Invest in Your Staff
Provide some extra courses to your employees and share the new diplomas in social media.
Of course having them in a frame on the treatment room will help too. It’s your responsibility to cultivate them and reward them for excellent performance when they exceed in what they are doing.
9. Get Your Existing Clients to Visit Your Clinic More Frequently
If a customer is coming 8 times a year instead of 12 for a monthly treatment you should ask yourself why. You will need to always re-book clients for the next visit, use a crm to automatically send reminders via sms text and emails to your clients, start an email newsletter and always promote packages of treatments to book couple of sessions in advance.
10. Reduce Your Clinic Operation Cost
You have two ways to do this, by increasing your sales or by cutting costs.
11. Scale Up Your Salon Business
There are many ways you can scale your business, try to add more clinic locations, move the clinic consultations in the online too. Try to focus more on business management, measure your KPIs to understand your strong points in the business and connect more dots.
12. Develop a salon marketing plan
Marketing is a vital process for every business, but certain tactics work better for some businesses than others. When opening a clinic, you'll want to focus on becoming a part of your community. Since you're a clinic is important to be as central as possible and have a view to the street, building your local following is crucial for you to attract and retain loyal clients. Your marketing plan must include anything possible to have as much local presence. In the next steps I will focus on the most important aspects.
13. List yourself in online directories
To show up in digital searches, you'll have to make sure your business is listed in online directories, the more directories the better, with full profile description, links to your website to book online, to your social profiles and all the contact details.
14. Manage online reviews
Consumers tend to trust online ratings and reviews to vet local businesses. It's important to address every review you receive – especially the bad ones. Reply polite and ask for getting in contact to resolve the issue if the was any. Talk with your employee and listen to your customer too.
15. Partner with local small businesses
Partnering with another business in your community will help you broaden your reach and build a reputation for your brand in the area. Search online for your local businesses contact details. Host events or coordinate deals with your partner businesses to offer your customers an exclusive experience from their step into your business.
16.Create loyalty incentives
Loyal customers deserve special treatment. To show your clients you appreciate them, create incentives like discounts, gift cards, freebies and special promotions.
17.Utilize social media
Your social media is a place for customers to get to know you on a more personal level. Talk to them, create surveys. Connect with your community by following other small businesses in the area, engaging with your target market and sharing behind-the-scenes content (like before and after photos of clients' treatments) to build your credibility and cultivate brand awareness.
18. Provide excellent customer service
Provide an experience for your customers not just a service. Ask yourself why Traditional Afternoon Tea at The Ritz Hotel has a price and why at the corner shop has another, at the end of the day the customer is paying for an experience not for a service.
19. Sell gift cards
Selling gift cards will increase your revenue. Maker sure people knows about them. Sell them at the reception. List them in your website, in your social media pages. Choose a nice fresh design, look for a local printing agency and print approx. 500 to start with. Don’t print the price on them so you can top up the cards with any amount the customer will ask.
20. Turn one-off services into subscriptions
I bet you know what a subscription service is. Everyone I know has a Netflix subscription. More and more businesses are migrating into the subscription business. Cash flow is very important for any business, so a subscription model is a good way to ensure recurring revenue.
21. Offer a reward scheme
Reward schemes are excellent for encouraging repeat custom and for building strong client relationships for long term. You can use the model x services + next you free or refer 2 friends and get 20% off, ideas are many. Offering a physical card with stamps for their visits, this will also serve as a visual reminder that your clients will carry around with them or track one with auto reminders.
22. Run a promotion, or two
Everyone always will love a good deal. If you’re experiencing a slow spell and want to open up some interest, consider running a promotion. This could be money off services, a free gift, or simply an window only discount. If you would normally only offer treatments to women, consider offering a men’s weekend. You could also focus on a bank workers workers, students or parents.
23. Train your staff in upselling
Keep in mind, when done correctly, upselling can be a great way to boost profits. And it doesn’t have to be obvious or annoying. The best salespeople can upsell without even making it obvious they do an upsale. Motivate your employees for upselling and they will get a commission.
24. Expand your merchandise range
If you’re only stocking a few facial care options, consider expanding your range. You could offer electricals, gift kits and gift vouchers. While you might need to invest in some stock, you can always start small and see if there is a demand for your plans.
25.Increase your prices
This is perhaps the simplest option for increasing your clinic profits. Increasing your prices can help to establish your clinic as a luxury destination that can come with good benefits too. Create a luxury division for a special treatment line.
26.Offer bundled services
No one wants to have to get their facial done in one place, their laser hair removal in another and then go somewhere else for false lashes. Bundle services together and you could soon become the go-to destination for pampering and relaxing.
27. Try email marketing
The email marketing is a natural step to grow for busy clinics. Email your offers, your gift cards, your news, shine with videos. Giving your customers a sneak peek behind the scene so they can see the work that goes into training and development can also help to establish your clinic as an industry-leader with great examples.
28. Get social
Nowadays so many people head to social media to share their everyday successes, it makes sense to maintain an active presence on the social media platforms. Putting a little bit of money into small campaigns can reap big rewards. Adding a share to social media button after the customer has booked the appointment online will help you with more shares. Sharing your reviews online will help growing too.
29. Partner with complementary services
Do a bit of competitor research and see who else is operating in your local area will help. Look for companies that offer complementary, not competing services. You can then approach them and see if they are open to the idea of a partnership. Inviting them into your salon to provide their treatments or promoting them into your newsletter will help expanding to more potential customers. You don’t have to see everyone as direct competition.
30.Dedicated Business Website
Having a strong online presence is very important. A website showcasing the services offered by a clinic business and providing a way to pre-book the appointments would make it easier for customers to approach and book the beauty services of that clinic.
Creating one with a free website builder like wordpress platform and a free theme or one from envato marketplace can save you few good hundreds of pounds or you can take the expensive web designer way doing almost the same thing you can do.
31. Clinic Add-on Services
Adding add-on services will help too. If booking the laser hair removal treatment then the filler treatments will get discounted price
32.Set Up the clinic at a Well-known Central Location
The commercial areas in the city are the most appropriate choice for the location of the clinics. If you already have a good location keep it, if not try to upgrade it and move to a better one.
33. Keep in Touch with Regular Customers
A salon business can use sms text email to apprise customers about the exclusive offers that are available only for regular customers.
34. Membership Plans
Proving membership plans makes the clinic services cost-effective for customers also the customer will come in more frequently. The membership plan strategy is among the popular and successful clinics advertising examples.
35. SMS Marketing
Targeted marketing campaigns also sending campaigns to segments of customers is the most powerful way to promote your business and have great results in a short period of time. Think about it, everyone has the mobile phone in their pocket. They will not miss any of the messages they get from their friends and family, that means they will not miss yours too. The opening rate of emails in our industry is close to 19% when the opening rate of an sms text campaign goes up to 90%, these are great way to send your message and your offer to your client.
36.The Online booking of your treatments
Keeping the business open 24/7 will increase your sales exponentially and will even process payments for you when you sleep. The online booking will show you only the available slots to your clients helping to fill your empty slots.
37. Quickly Adapt to New Trends
In the clinic industry it’s crucial to stay up-to-date and upgrade services that are in line with the latest trends. From laser hair removal services to coolsculpting, hifu and many it is important to provide them all. Explore the industry news.
38.Create New Trends
Try to create new trends so other companies will follow and make the buzz in social media. Create new press release and show your ideas in popular printed magazines like Grazia, Vogue or others
39.Hire Skilled Employees
Learn how to fire bad employees and hire skilled employees. Is very important because that’s what your image is.
40. Have a Digital Clinic App for App Store and Google Play
Clinic scheduling apps are a must-have for anyone trying to grow an established clinic business. Opening hours, bookings, reviews, team, and great push notifications will help too.
41.Introduce Seasonal Offers
There are SO many festivals throughout the year when there’s an increase in the number of people hitting clinics for getting a new treatment, like Christmas, Halloween, Easter, New Year and many others.
42.Clinic Atmosphere
It is vital to provide a calming, peaceful environment for the customers to relax and unwind in the clinic receiving services to treat themselves with after a long tiring day or week. The smell is important, the interior design and of course how the client will feel in the clinic.
43.Brand Recognition (Logo and slogan)
Making people familiar with your logo makes it easier to form a subculture or to follow around your company. Having a simple but unique logo that can help a business to enhance its brand recognition is an integral part of clinic marketing strategies. Create a strong logo that will communicate the core values of the company, a clean and luxury image, trust, confidence, and passion.
44.Limited Free Treatments Trials
Provide a free trial to the services normally the customer does not have however after a while if the customer was happy with that treatment for sure will come for more.
45.Expertise in a Specific Field
Clients will recognize the business for being good at that particular treatment. The specific area of expertise can be different for different on-demand clinic businesses: it can be either fillers, botox, or skin treatments.
46.Build a Reputation
People talk about their experiences to their friends, coworkers, family etc. Word of mouth is an excellent clinic promotion idea with impressive results. It can be a top bookings generator too.
47.Preserve Good Employees
Provide the employees with discounts on the services provided in the clinic along with other benefits for long-term employees like medical insurance, paid maternity leaves, etc.
48.Repay clients for their loyalty
If a client stays loyal for a long time, then it is more than fair to celebrate it. Giving them a free service, a gift card, or anything that would make an excellent gift is a kind gesture that your clinic values loyal customers.
49.Selfie/ Photoshoot Backdrops
A picture is worth a thousand words. Give the term picture-perfect facial an entirely new meaning by providing beautiful backdrops for people to take pictures after the gorgeous facial or filler results.
50.Reward People who follow and tag Your Company and 3 friends on their Social Media
Announce contests and give rewards for your business’ most liked picture with a particular hashtag, you can promote your on-demand clinic services and at the same time connect with your customers and get feedback from them.
51. Make the Wait Interesting
Provide your clients with Magazines, newspapers even tablets, plus a good suggestion would be to place charging sockets near the seating area with different charging adapters.
52. Uber for Beauty style
Providing your treatments at the comfort of the customer home is more and more popular nowadays. Easier for salons but not impossible for clinics this will change the industry like Uber did.
53.Guaranteed Satisfaction or Discount
Start providing discounts if satisfaction is not high sky. It is okay to lose a few bucks than to lose a customer and earn negative reviews from them that will spoil your business reputation.
54. Offer Polite Compliments on their New Look
People like compliments, especially when they’re trying to look good, making the client feel special is a good nice way to improve your business relationship.
55.Attract Younger Customers and Kids
Since they’re young, it’s easy to please them, research about popular games, mobile games, cartoons, and toy collections, so there’s always something to talk about to them and keep them happy.
56.Have a pleasant smelling clinic
These refreshing and relaxing aromas can affect an individual’s mood so much that they come back to the same place again and again.
57.Target a Group of Friends
They are more likely to stop by often enough that it becomes a regular place that they visit every few weeks or so. Smart moves are to be in those group of friends they move around and come together, make sure the therapist will be there too.
58.Free wifi
Provide free wifi to kill the waiting time and open the share pictures in the social media.
59.Vending Machine
It attracts kids and adults alike while making their stay at the clinic a bit more enjoyable.
60.Sponsor Beauty/Fashion Bloggers
Promote more with bloggers, they would get a free service done on them, and they would talk about it on their platform and also provide a discount for their followers too.
61.Blogging
By featuring and updating your business website with new blogs, customers would love to stay on your website, and the chances of individuals booking beauty services from your site would also increase. You can provide the latest information regarding the trends in the beauty industry to customers through blogs.
62.Join a Marketplace
You have two options, join an existing marketplace with other type of services or partner with local businesses and build a marketplace where to provide your services on a platform owned by you.
63.Community Tab
This helps form a community of people, and it also helps the salon figure out their weaknesses and improves on it in the future. Let your customers talk and exchange their experience.
64.Community Charity
Doing charity work can also help your business to become visible to more prospective customers. Donate to local charities a specific amount of money also provide to your customers at the way out a box for charity donations too.
65.Reward Regular Customers
Bear in mind that offering rewards to regular customers is one of the best clinic marketing plans.
66.Television/Radio Advertising
The old school marketing strategies like television ads are still practical due to the number of people again using it.
67.Contests and Prizes
These contests motivate people to post about the salon and create more awareness amongst their followers.
68. Social Media Fame
Start posting in social media facebook, instagram, twitter, linkedin, etc. A creative photo and video posts illustrating the products and services can significantly increase the curiosity of the customers. This can increase the influx of customers who want to try out the product and service of the business.
69.Discounts and limited-time Offer Throughout the Year
Discounts on mother day or father day only. This randomness would make it seem like a limited period offer and consequently uniquely appealing to the customers.
70. Endorse the Next Local Fashion Show
Networking, the best promotion. Using the opportunities available locally. And offering them the services provided by the clinic in exchange for publicizing at the even, is a great way to get the brand out there.
72. Geo-targeted Ads
Even if we speak about youtube or adwords or facebook you don’t want to be fielding appointment requests from a client in another city when your salon is in capital! Geo targeting your add will show only on that city or miles distance.
73. Mobile Ads
Like geo targeting, the new mobile ads can be hugely beneficial especially with AdWords and facebok new bidding features that allows users to bid differently on desktop and mobile, the latest research shows that the people are more online on their phone then on their pc.
74. Use hashtags
You can use them to be proactive. With so many couples announcing their #engagements or planning bachelor/bachelorette parties on Instagram and Facebook, complete with a wedding hashtag, you can be proactive today. Simply search for engagements, find the owner of the hashtag, and slide into their direct messages with a sales pitch providing your treatments.
75. Post coupons locally
When I was in college, we received daily planners at the beginning of the year with a schedule for the year and various coupons from local businesses strategically placed throughout the planner. It’s a great way to capitalize on a big event and get involved in your community.
76. Allow online booking with coupon codes
Open your online booking with discount coupons that can be used at the checkout step. Print a QR code on your business cards and flyers and leave them at the entrance.
77. Collect Email addresses
More emails, more chances for new leads, you can use them for appointment reminders, newsletter updates, referral bonuses, and remarketing lists on facebook and google.
78. Capitalize on Instagram
Use your skills and record your clients, with permission, of course. Even better, have your clients share the videos on their personal pages to attract their friends to your clinic, I love seeing their “friends jealous and them coming to the clinic too”.
79. .. and Facebook
You should also try out carousel ads! A perfect way to showcase your work and appointments these days. Facebook advertising allows you to target your audience by interest, try targeting an audience with a birthday coming with an ad that reads, “Treat Yourself!” or “Let Us Make You happy for Your Big Day!”
80. Offer Flash sales on Twitter
Twitter is the perfect place to advertise this instantly or follow the last minute... Send out a tweet, “50 pounds laser hair removal session for anyone willing to let our best new addition show off her skills!” and give it away to the first respondent or use a pick a winner websites.
81. Birthday promotions
Who does not like a gift on their birthday? Provide a 20% discount on their birthday, is once a year and will make them feel special. Another take on this is to celebrate your clinic’s birthday, with a week or month of a certain promotion.
82. Carry business cards
You can be the own greatest advertisement. Not only is it flattering, it is the perfect opportunity to say, “Thank you! I did laser hair removal myself, here is my business card if you’re interested in the same treatment!”
83. Produce Video content
Use free wistia or youtube to embed videos in your website or paid vimeo.com
Jump in and create video reviews with your clients, share them anywhere.
84. Host parties
This might be the most fun salon marketing tip! Hosting pamper parties for charity or bachelorette can be a great opportunity to bond with your clients and get the word out about your clinic.
Big Boys Toys accelerate growth: More ideas and marketing tools to manage and scale the business (paid and free tools to get the job done too)
85. Run PPC Campaigns
These tools can be a great place to put your money but it requires some technical knowledge and understanding of digital strategy on google, facebook, Instagram. I believe one of the most key components to a online ad strategy is the marketing funnel that it feeds. Getting people to your website is no good if you don’t have a clear path for them to follow when they get there, less clicks possible to get the payment page and no distraction from their booking steps.
86. Incorporate online webchat via Facebook
Use Free Facebook chat and install it in your website or paid solutions like ChatFuel.com
If you find your site visitor land on the contact page you can send them a message if you like and offer some assistance. If they are on the services page you might be prompted to do the same thing.
The quicker you will reply to their questions with treatment benefits, before and after care and video testimonials, the quicker they will book the treatment.
87. Use local SEO
Use google maps to list your business also register your business in local directories like yelp and others. And considering that 91% of searches are executed via Google, having your listing on Google My Business Page is crucial. When clients type in 'clinics near me' or 'best clinics nearby,' you want your clinic to be one of the results. To shape your online presence, be sure to claim your listing. A few suggestions to perfect your local search engine optimization (SEO): Regularly update your business profile on every platform Google, Facebook, LinkedIn. Ensure your contact information is accurate.
88. Send out a newsletter
Use free Mailchimp.com for your first 2000 clients or paid aweber.com
If you collect emails through an online reservation system or loyalty program, you can ask if clients would like to opt-in to your clinic's newsletter or digital communication. In these emails you can send out: Treatments tips Promotions Product recommendations Contest/giveaway information,
89. Extend promotions
Monthly special offer, don't forget to share your offers on social media or in your newsletters. Sharing a Local Deal on local newspaper and with all the neighbours is another great way to promote sales and promotions. By trying all your communication platforms together, you can increase your reach and better influence your local community platforms.
90. Pick the right CRM software
You cannot manage and scale a business with pen and paper or excel only. That's why using a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) is essential. Not only will it help your sales team manage relationships, but a CRM will also give you a place to deliver those leads you generated to your sales team having everything in one place.
You can start using the ClinicSoftware.com CRM + Clinic Software App all inclusive – for only 99 pounds / month for solo or 149 pounds / month for 5 users including access to the automations or you can use Salesforce that can go up to few thousands dollars a month.
91. Project Management.
ClinicSoftware.com CRM has a great project management tool for small teams and individuals. With its Kanban-style setup and fun user interface, TASKS lets you set up to-do lists and tag individual cards with due dates, members, labels, and more. Use ClinicSoftware.com CRM included Tasks management tools or paid tool Asana.com
92. Online Advertising
Do you manage different campaigns, on top of this just managing them, you then have to try and report on the results of all of them. What a struggle. Luckily, there's tools for that.
Google Keyword Planner, Google analytics, or Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads.
93. Social Media
For marketers, using a social media tool to schedule all of your posts so you catch those typos beforehand is a must and schedule from different platforms is very time consuming.
Schedule your posts from your social media for free or use Buffer.com to schedule them.
94. Search Engine Optimization SEO
For keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page rankings, every marketer needs a go-to tool for planning what content to create and how to optimize it for SEO.
Using free tools like semrush.com or paid moz.com to analyse your SEO and your competitors seo.
95. Content Creation
In the world of content creation, there are tons of different tools you could use to create various types of content every day. Whether it's social images, logos, blog posts, or ebooks the options and tools are endless. Use free Canva.com for content and social or paid adobe spark.
96. Video Marketing
Maybe your strategy is just to put a YouTube video embed on one of your blog posts or landing page website. But then what happens? Someone else's ad plays on your landing page before your video even begins. That's bad for your conversion rates, brand, and your leads. Use Wistia for free video creation, youtube if you are ok with ads or paid vimeo.
97. Event Marketing
Eventbrite brings people together through live experiences. Discover events that match your passions, or create your own with online ticketing tools.
Free Facebook events or pro Eventbrite.
98. Lead Capture and conversion
When it comes to your bottom-line goals, you probably want tools for not only attracting prospects to your business, but just as importantly, converting those visitors into leads and customers. Use the ClinicSoftware.com CRM integrated tool leads generator forms or Typeform.
99. Lead Generation
Custom Landing pages are a must for capturing lead information on important offers and opt-ins, converting anonymous website visitors into contacts with email addresses that you can successfully nurture today. Thanks to the ClinicSoftware leads management tools you can create those pages or paid Instapage.
100. Website optimization
Hotjar is a tool that reveals the online behavior and voice of your users. Use Hotjar to understand your clients and read heatmaps, also google optimize could be a good choice.
101. Lead Nurturing and email Marketing
Use ClinicSoftware.com CRM for leads nurturing. Use free Mailchimp or paid aweber for emails.
102. Marketing Automation.
Use ClinicSoftware.com CRM Automation OR marketo.com by Adobe.
103. Data Reporting and Analytics.
Use Google analytics and Google Search Console or paid databox.com
104. Digital Asset Management.
Use Google Drive free or paid WeTransfer.com
105. Team Communication.
Use free discord.com or paid slack.com also use free zoom or paid join.com
106. Vital KPI Reports and Graph you must have inside your CRM.
• Revenue by staff member report
• Revenue by month report
• Booking cancellation reason report
• Product sales by category report
• Services sales by category report
• Consultation conversion report
• Leads report
• Marketing sources report
• Forecasting report
• KPI consistency report
• Number of enquiries per day / week by treatment interest by marketing source
• Revenue by treatment type by marketing source
• Conversion percentage from lead enquiry to booked consultations to booked procedure by marketing source by practitioner
• No show rate by marketing source by procedure interest
• Cancellation ratio of confirmed consultation and booked treatments by treatment interest by clinical administrator
• Conversion ratio from new lead enquiry to booked consultations by clinic administrator
• Conversion ratio from booked consultations to booked procedure by clinic administrator
• Confirmed treatment revenue by treatment interest
107. Franchisee.
The next level in managing and scaling the business is the Franchisee model where you have the perfect recipe of your business with multi-branches, the right software in place to automate most of the jobs, track the actions and measure the results also the secret on how to provide the perfect treatment to an unlimited number of customers looking for high quality treatments.
Thank you for reading!
I hope this article has given you some ideas on how to test or apply new strategies in your business, or even to create a new ones from one day to another. We can continue the discussion in the comments and if you have questions, suggestions, or want to work with us, feel free to contact our team.
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