Is your practice ready to set the stage for a successful holiday promotion?
Fall is in full swing which means Christmas is pretty much tomorrow and it is time to get your holiday promotions started if you haven’t already done so. You know you should be taking advantage of holiday promotions at your practice, but gift cards are one item that tends to be forgotten about as a strategy to boost holiday sales. A great holiday gift card promotion can help position your aesthetic business for growth well beyond November and December into the next year as they can turn into an opportunity to also re-book clients between booking for follow-up treatments and asking gift card recipients to fill out a client card so they can receive future correspondence from your office.
Properly promoted gift cards can make an indulgent gift and terrific source of holiday cash flow to help boost your bottom line after slower summer months. As a start, set your office’s goals to 5% of your total service and retail revenue. Here are a few suggestions to get you started with reaching this goal.
Decide On Your Offer
While it may be easy to think to discount your gift card in order to get people to purchase such as offering a $100 gift card for the price of $80, in order to preserve the luxury of your aesthetic brand, consider offering a separate $20 gift card in addition to the gift card. This could help serve as bringing in two patients for the price of one if the person doing the gifting gives the added value gift card away as a smaller gift to someone such as a co-worker, or serves to bring them back in for another service if they decide to keep it for themselves. Who can resist a potential gift for themselves as they are gifting friends and family? One tip is to be sure to word your offering so that the value added gift card can not be used the same day.
Create Luxury Packages
It’s great to have gift cards for monetary amounts as an option, but consider putting together some luxury packages to help people visualize what they could be giving when purchasing a gift card from your office. During the holidays, you can be surprised at how generous purchases for their loved ones can be so don’t shy away from higher priced packages such a “A Year Of Botox.” It can also be profitable for you to combine services which customers can purchase at a percentage off to encourage the trial of services they may have typically never purchased. Entice your in-office customers with a few beautifully boxed and bowed items. If they are going to be spending top dollar, why not present their gift card in something worthy of the money they are spending instead of just a plastic card in a paper envelope?
Make It Easy
You have been collecting customer emails all year on your website and in-office so it is time to cash in on your office e-mail list with a holiday email marketing campaign. Typically the holiday season kicks off on Black Friday with people expecting great deals to pop up in their in-box so don’t disappoint! Be sure to schedule email and social media communication throughout your campaign such as teasers, reminders and last chance notifications. Get emails together now reminding your patients that the holidays are approaching. A sample of what that promotional plan would look like may include an email announcement which you will set to send out on Black Friday with an reminder email set to go out December 6th about your gift card promotion with the denominations and/or packages you will be offering. There are always the last-minute shopping bunch which are out there still searching for something amazing so be sure to set up two additional reminders right before Christmas on December 20th and then a final “last chance” notice set to deliver on December 23rd. This plan assumes you are setup to sell gift cards online, but if not, at least have an e-blast ready telling everyone where they can send an email to place an order.
When it comes to your office website, be sure to have the option for gift card purchases highlighted on your home page. Link this to a landing page stating the denominations, available packages, terms and conditions, and exactly how they can make a purchase such as link to buy or dedicated email address for purchase inquires if purchases must be done in person or over the phone and mailed. In your office, treat this promotion like any other promotion and be sure you have in office signage displayed in treatment rooms, the waiting rooms, and even the restrooms. Most of the people coming into your practice or medical spa are not even thinking about purchasing a gift card from you so don’t be afraid to put out a sign as simple as “Ask Us About Our Luxury Gift Card Packages.”
Get Social
Now more than ever, social media is making it easier for you to spread the word about your aesthetic business and letting your community know about your gift card promotion is one more way you can use platforms such as Instagram and Facebook to your advantage. It is very hard for any campaign to be successful these days without going digital whether it be through your email list, website, or social networking sites. If your practice or medical spa is on Instagram for example, you can create a beautiful post in Canva which is sized specifically for the platform. You can then post your new graphic creation and caption on your business Instagram account to promote to your followers.
To make your promotion go even further, if you have set up your Instagram account as a business account, you can pay to promote that post as an ad from within the Instagram application on your phone to a population segment of your choosing such as females between the age of 30-45 who are fans of Allure magazine on Facebook and are viewing your ad within a 20 mile radius of Calabasas, California. Did you know you could get that specific with your targeting now that Facebook owns Instagram? Perhaps you will even promote that same post again, but to men in the area on December 22nd and December 23rd as a last-minute gift option for panicked shoppers. The possibilities are endless with a clear promotional strategy and digital ads being in your control.
Jasmine Hill, MBA serves as a co-founder of Aesthetic Influencer, a Los Angeles based organization assisting medical practices with developing their brand voice and digital strategies. She can be reached at jasmine@aestheticinfluencer.com. You may also follow @AestheticInfluencer on Instagram for more tips on digital tools like Instagram and Facebook for your aesthetic business.
