A major pitfall is thinking your Spa will survive off of your patients alone...Many Doctors have the mentality like the old Charlie Brown cartoon where Lucy walks over to her booth, flips the sign over that says, "The Doctor is in", and waits for patients to miraculously arrive.

A Medical Spa is not a doctor's office. This is a business, and in some cases you may have six to ten, to perhaps fifteen staff members' livelihood relying on you and your ability to book them services. The Spa can either hemorrhage on Payroll or execute a strong Marketing Plan that generates traffic, promotes services and sells products.

A forward thinking marketing plan takes a pro-active approach to creating client traffic. Unlike other small businesses, you own the greatest tool for marketing; a list of Spa clients names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail. This list must be utilized in order to make clients aware of happenings in the Spa.

The three steps to marketing Spa services are communication, follow-up and commitment. Using your mailing list, communicate with your clients by sending out a Postcard or Mailer informing them of upcoming promotions and events.  Follow-Up your mailers with a phone call to get a commitment to attend. Keep walk-ins and passer-bys aware of your promotions and events through in-house signage and hand out flyers.

Weekly Events
Weekly/monthly events and lectures on wellness issues act as a vehicle to sell services and products. Hold a lecture on ‘The Pros and Cons of Botox' and invite guests that you feel would be interested in this service. Discounts should be given for those who book an appointment that night.

Staff Rebooking and Follow-Up
At the end of each treatment, staff must be trained to re-book clients' next appointment. Thank you cards should be sent to all new clients. Check-up phone calls should be placed three days after client's service and reminder calls should be placed six weeks after a guests visit if they haven't already re-booked.

Appointment Taker
The Appointment Taker or Booker is a virtual Tele-marketer. Every phone call is a lead. Ensure that the Booker is taking names and addresses to place on the mailing list. Each person that calls to make an appointment should be recommended ‘add-on' treatments advised of monthly promotions and upcoming events.

Community Outreach
Join with companies, politicians or artists that do not have their own venue and allow them to use your location on a rental basis for parties/events. An artist who is having his/her first show can hold an art exhibit in your facility after hours, for a fee or percentage. As a result, 50 people walk through the door that you never knew could be clients.

Product Sales
There is no limit to how much money you can generate with product sales. Product sales can be as healthy as 30-50% of your total gross revenue. The Product has to move off the shelf. Prior to being hired, the staff must be informed that they will have a product sales target. Various tools should be in place to motivate and measure those targets, such as Weekly Sales Targets, Team meetings, Individual incentives and Team Incentives.  The entire staff and team should be motivated and working towards reaching a weekly or monthly revenue goal.  Product knowledge and selling techniques should be taught at weekly team meetings.

Once developed correctly, a medical Spa is an extremely rewarding and lucrative business. The possibilities are endless of adding healing services to Western medicine. By keeping your mind open and your focus on client care, spa services will be an inevitable addition to all medical environments of the future.

By Alexis Ufland,  Director at Lexi Design www.lexidesign.com

A respected authority in the Spa industry, Alexis Ufland has developed premier Spas across Europe, Asia and the United States. With a unique combination of creativity, development and operations, Ms. Ufland will create and implement a proven turnkey operation that guarantees success. Ms. Ufland has written numerous articles on Spa development and has been quoted in the top industry trade magazines as well as lectured at national trade events. She is currently pursuing certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. (LEED).