How to Keep Treatment Room Customers

In part one of our marketing and customer development series, we looked at how best to attract new clients to your treatment room; but drumming up interest isn’t enough to make a business successful. This month we’ll be exploring how to secure return visits from the customers you have worked hard to acquire.

Here are our top tips for encouraging clients to return

Be the very best you can be

It goes without saying that when clients come for a treatment they expect a good level of service, to be treated well by the therapist and to be handled with care and respect. Often holistic treatments are used for relaxation and a stressful, poorly handled treatment could have the opposite effect on your client.

Be sure to have a code of ethics and practise for your business and don’t be afraid to refer back to it regularly. Be confident with the treatments you are offering, professional in the way you offer them and most importantly do not do anything during a treatment that you would not wish to experience as a client yourself.

Be upfront and honest

Be as transparent as you can when talking to clients about the treatment you offer, the location and facilities you work in, the length of the treatment and the expected outcomes.

Customers may find it misleading if your website shows images of an opulent treatment room, set in rolling hillsides, when actually your work space is a far more humble affair.

Clients may also expect results which are not achievable for you, this is fine, but by discussing this with them before their appointment, expectations can more easily be managed and disappointment avoided.

Be competitive

Regardless of where you set up your treatment space, your business is likely to have some competition in the form of spas, beauty salons and private holistic therapy practices, like your own. In order to stay ahead of your competitors you need to first understand who they are, and what they are offering their customers.

Websites and social media are fantastic ways to explore how a company communicates with its followers and what they are doing to attract clients. Once you understand who your competitors are and what they offer, you can put measures in place to make sure you don’t lose your customers to them.

Be conversational

Be sure to communicate with your clients regularly, if for nothing else than to remind them that you are still there! Make sure you capture client’s email addresses on your consultation form and be sure to ask them if they’d like to opt in to receive e-newsletters from you.

Keep the emails fairly short but be sure to cover any main points for your business, such as upcoming promotions, new treatments and any changes in how or where you work.

To really help your newsletter to stand out, try using a free email marketing service like MailChimp, which will help you to manage your contact list and help you easily design professional looking emails in a few hours.

Be rewarding

 Offering a loyalty card or incentive for a return visit can be a great way to encourage your customers to keep coming back. You could try offering a discounted or free treatment after a certain number of bookings, or a discount off the products you sell in your treatment space.

If you make your own aromatherapy products, you could also give these away to your customers with a treatment. This little gesture will cost you barely anything, but will make your clients feel like you have gone the extra mile and encourage them to come back to you.

Be organised

Be ready with your diary at the end of each appointment and encourage your clients to book in for their next treatment before they leave. Being organised in your approach to this can help to secure more bookings and also to save you the administration task of contacting them once they have left you.

As a holistic therapist you should never prescribe complementary therapy to cure any medical conditions, but you can certainly suggest that regular appointments may be helpful to a client’s general health and wellbeing.

Level 3 courses at Brighton Holistics Online include an in-depth module on how to market your business. This unique approach allows you to pull together a full business plan, ready for the launch of your new venture. Find out more at https://brightonholisticsonline.co.uk/product-category/massage-therapy-courses/