A Guide for Promoting Your Holiday Massage Offers (That Works All Year)

How to Build, Plan and Implement Your Holiday Massage Offers For Repeat Success

Giving an experience is an increasingly popular gift to give during the holiday season.

According to Eventbrite, 3 in 4 Millennials (who make up a quarter of the population) “choose to spend money on a desirable experience or event over buying something.” And Millennials aren’t alone. Eventbrite also reports, “consumer spending on live experiences” increased by 70 percent since 1987.

This is great news for massage therapists who offer an experience every time a client gets on their table.

But how does an LMT promote that experience amidst all the seasonal noise? Here are a handful of repeatable steps you can use year-round.

1. Build Your Offer

Whether it is a discount on multiple sessions, a package of services or a bundle of both, the quality of your holiday massage offer matters.

Consider the following:

• Build a Desirable Offer: If you received it, would you think it was a nice gift?
• Build a Valuable Offer: Is it a good deal? Would you think it is a generous gift?
• Build a Rare Offer: Can they find an offer like this anywhere (or everywhere) else?
• Build a Relevant Offer: Are your specific clients looking for an offer like this?

Struggling for ideas? Look around. If there is a massage provider you admire, check out what they are offering and copy them. A good offer is a good offer. No shame in following the wisdom of someone you admire. 

2. Establish an End Date

Every good deal has an expiration. But beyond establishing an end date for your holiday offer, creating a timeline for your offer will also help you outline a promotion timeline and tactics that ensure your offer gets, well, actually offered!

For the holidays, the end of your offer may be the day before the holiday itself. If your offer is a digital download, it could be midnight the day of the holiday. If you offer takes a lot of time to develop – like if you are making custom sugar scrubs or aromatherapy blends – you may end your offer the week before the holiday.

Think about it…

3. Pick a Platform

Next, decide what platforms you will use to promote your offer. You do not have to use them all. Use your strengths.

For example, if you only have an email list with five people on it, promoting your offer that way may not make a lot of sense – especially if you are really active and have a good following on Instagram and/or Facebook. Maybe you have a budget for paid advertising, so Adwords is an option. If you plan to work a few holiday marketplace events, don’t forget to bring along signage that promotes your offer.

A good tip is to be where your people are. Are most of your clients living in their inbox? Are they all Instagrammers? If you don’t know where they spend their time, ask them!

4. Create and Automate a Promotion Timeline

Then work backwards from your offer expiration to create your promotion timeline. If it is possible, build your emails, ads, social posts and other promotional collateral before the holidays hit.

MailChimp allows you to schedule emails. Hootsuite is a favorite for social posts.

Automating your holiday massage offer promotions allows you to spend your time during the holiday season implementing (that is selling, wrapping, delivering, etc.) your offer instead of worrying about how to get the word out about it.

When creating your promotion copy, use well-timed messaging that creates urgency.

Consider the following:

• Only 5 available
• Black Friday only
• Ends December 24th
• 3 days left to buy
• Only until midnight

Keep it simple – no one has time to read a windy email during the holidays or figure out an overly complicated offer.=

Be honest. Don’t say there is only five available if you’re happy to offer 100. People catch on. Don’t call it “the best massage offer in Austin,” if that’s not actually true. (And how would you prove that, anyway?)

5. Launch with a Smile

The last step is to launch your offer. You’ve done all the hard work. All there is to do, now that you are in the thick of the holiday season, is to sell those offers – with a smile.

And then repeat. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner…

Make sure you make a mental note of what worked in each of your offers, so you can improve the types of offers, their timing and the messaging you used to promote them.

Do you have an offer you’ve run in the past that has been a huge success? What platform do you find most useful? Join the conversation in the comments on Facebook.

Happy holidays!