Why Isn't My Promotion Attracting Clients?
I have been seeing a lot of service providers on social media asking why their promotions aren't working to attract clients. Like, they feel like they're doing everything that they can, they've put out these promotions, and they're just not seeing anybody booking. So I thought that this would be the perfect topic to break down in today's episode of the Spa Business Building Podcast.
I'm Tiffany Nadolny, your host of the Spa Business Building Podcast. I'm a licensed esthetician, massage therapist, and solopreneur in My Day Spa. With nearly two decades of experience in the beauty and wellness industry, I've learned a few things about building a career and maintaining longevity.
Outside of the treatment room, I'm a wife, mom, to the human and fluffy kind, plant enthusiast, and book lover. Join me while I share my experiences and insight on attracting clients, maintaining and building a thriving business while achieving a work-life balance. So whether you are a new solo spa boss or seasoned, this podcast is for you.
Before we dig in, I want to define two things, marketing and promotions. So marketing is essentially all the activities in creating, promoting, and delivering products or services to customers. And a promotion is the specific tactic used to encourage those sales or increase brand awareness.
They are usually like short-term activities that are often incentives to customers. So common promotional strategies could include sales. So when you're offering a discount on your services or products, if you're offering a coupon, that's also a common promotion where you're providing like a voucher or something that can be redeemed.
If you're offering contests and giveaways, if someone were to sign up for, you know, your email list, or you're doing a giveaway in that way, sometimes I do giveaways with around like Mother's Day, where I do a Mother's Day basket. And if they sign up for my email list and they get an entry into that contest. Loyalty programs are also a promotional tactic.
So you're rewarding repeat customers with points, discounts, exclusive benefits, things like that. So those are the specific promotional strategies. But here are some reasons that your promotions may not be hitting to bring in clients.
Number one, your promotion isn't aligning with your target audience or your ideal client, your perfect person. Your promotion has limited reach. If your promotion isn't reaching enough potential clients, it's not going to generate any interest.
If people aren't seeing it, then how do they know that you have a promotion? It could be unclear. So if your promotion is confusing or difficult to understand, potential clients just may not want to sign up because they don't really know what's going on or how to sign up.
So you want to make it super easy for them to understand. You want to make sure that you've laid it all out very clearly. You want to make sure that you are outlining how to redeem, where to redeem, and you want to make sure that they understand all the fine print.
Your promotion could also be lacking urgency. So if there's no sense of, oh my gosh, I need to get in to do this promotion. If there's no time constraints, customers will delay.
If they feel like they don't need to get it now, then they'll always be like, oh, I can do it later. Because life gets in the way, one, they'll forget about it, two, they'll be like, oh, it's not that important. I have something else going on.
I'll just wait later. So if you create a limited time offer, that helps to encourage that immediate action. It could be an ineffective promotion.
So if your promotion isn't well executed or promoted effectively, it's not going to attract any attention. So you need to make sure that the promotion is visually appealing and easy to find. So where are you promoting your offers?
That's one question that you need to ask yourself and really plan that out. So you have a promotion, but where are you putting it out? If you're like, oh, I just created it, I sent out an email.
You need to put it in more places so people know and can find it. Send it in your emails, put it on social media, maybe run an ad, tell your friends, post it in groups, all those types of things. But if you're just putting it out there one time, then people aren't seeing it.
There could be that there are just too many hoops to jump through to join or get access to your promotion. So if your offer has like too many steps or requirements to participate, that could turn people off and they just don't want to participate. If they have to like this post, send it to a friend, join your email list, and fly to the moon and back, whatever that is, then people are going to be like, oh, this is just too much.
People want instant gratifications if there's too many things. Like, for example, if I'm reading a post, there are too many, it's like super duper long, too many words, I stop. There's just too much going on and our minds work very quickly and we lose interest.
So remember that when you are creating a promotion. And lastly, and I hope that this is not the case, usually it's not, but it is something to consider. There could be a negative perception.
So if your business, your brand has a negative reputation or if customers have had bad experiences in the past, your offers may not be enough to entice them to come back in. If this is the case, then you should focus on improving your overall customer experience. So you want to make sure that you elevate that.
You're really getting those positive reviews, that positive experience. And then when you go to run promotions, there won't be that negative perception about it. It'll be easier to attract the clients because remember that people are more likely to talk about their negative experiences and they're going to tell like 20 people how terrible it was.
So then everybody else hears about it. So when people have a positive experience, unfortunately, they aren't really talking about it that much, unless you're asking them to, that's where you're asking the testimonials and things like that. But when there are negative perceptions around your business, like the word of mouth spreads faster than those positives.
So you want to really elevate the positive, try to bring down those negatives to get more, so that your promotions hit better. Now, I think that there is this misconception that if you create a promotion, that it's going to bring everybody in. And I just want to say that just because you're running a special or promotion for your services or your products, that does not bring customers flooding in.
There is a lot more that goes in to promoting or attracting clients. And it's really the overall marketing strategy for your business. Like I said, if we remember in the beginning when I said marketing is everything that you do to promote your business, the promotion is the specific way that you're enticing people through that coupon, through that sale, through the referral program, the loyalty program.
But marketing is everything, all the tics that you have to check to make sure that your business and your brand is aligned so that people are finding you, then you run the promotion. So just saying, I ran a promotion and I don't understand why people aren't coming in. Do they know about you?
Do they know that your business exists, first of all, because if your business isn't showing up online and offline, nobody knows that you exist. So just running a promotion isn't going to do anything. You have to put your business out there first and get that visibility so that when you run the promotions, people are seeing it and you have to know where to put the promotions for your perfect person, your ideal client to want to take on that promotion.
So you have, essentially, you have to do the legwork to get out into your community, especially if you're local. If you're a brick and mortar, if you're a service provider and you're taking clients into your business, it is so important to create that community awareness around your business to attract clients. You have to show up online and offline.
So, like I said, there's a lot that goes into creating promotions and really figuring out how to market your business. That's what it comes down to is marketing. And I will tell you that it's a lot easier than you think it is.
I know it sounds complicated, but it really is easier. And I break all of this down inside the Solo Spa Bosses Society. It's a brand new community that I created for Solo Beauty and Wellness professionals to find mentorship, support, encouragement, and the how-to to run and grow their solo practices.
So if you feel like you've been looking for something like this, it's a place for support to hang out with other Solo Beauty and Wellness service providers who are like-minded and really get you, who have been there, done that, offer encouragement. This is the place for you. Now it's more than just like a Facebook community.
We're really doing coaching calls, group coaching calls. There's a video library for training. There's so much in this community that I really find, I really think that you're going to find value in it.
So enrollment opens very, very soon. If you would like to jump on the waitlist and join as a founding member. Now, founding members will get exclusive offers.
It's for a very limited time. You can join as a founding member, but you need to join the waitlist because I will be sending, opening up enrollment to the people who are on my waitlist first, who can join as a founding member. I will add that link in the show notes for you to sign up.
So that is it for today's episode. I hope that you found this information helpful. And I encourage you to share this with your business besties.
If you have anybody in the industry that you feel that this episode can really help them and help their business grow, please share this with them. And invite you to also leave a review, because that is how people find me and my business, and it helps me to grow as well. So until next time, my friend, stay fabulous, stay inspired, and happy business building.
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