How to Upsell Spa and Salon Services – 13 Effective Tips
Marketing tactics to upsell spa and salon services are rooted in psychology. Value, personalization, and instant gratification are what clients desire. If your marketing is built around them, your upselling works.
How to implement them the right way? We’ve collected multiple tips to assist you. Overlap, these tips to upsell spa and salon services will help you to:
- Increase average transaction size.
- Encourage repeat visits to your salon.
- Boost your revenue and customer satisfaction.
Let’s get started.
Train Your Team in Customer-Centric Selling
Start with your team of experts. Stylists, estheticians, or massage therapists are in a sweet spot to upsell because clients trust them! Probably your staff even already has some sort of previous connection and interaction – some sort of established relationship. Personalized recommendations are key in this case.
Train your staff to understand the real needs of customers – for example, a guest coming in for a Swedish massage might be the ideal candidate for a hot stone add-on or aromatherapy upgrade.
Someone booking a haircut? A sea of opportunities! A keratin treatment or a split-end repair service can sound very needed.
Use the Power of the Language for Service Descriptions
People are often drawn to clever names and mouthwatering menu descriptions in cafes and restaurants. This also works for services!
Inside your booking system’s backend (in our case BookingPress for WordPress sites), simply use the built-in service description field to add compelling descriptions and entice clients to book more. If you add images (which is also possible with BookingPress), you make each listing look and sound irresistible. For example:
Instead of “Deep Tissue Massage – 60 mins,” try something like:
Deep Tissue Massage – 60 mins | Melt away chronic tension and restore muscle flexibility with focused, firm-pressure techniques designed to target deep layers of muscle.
Bundle Popular Treatments as Packages
Packages are a classic upselling strategy in the beauty industry, and most importantly, clients should be aware of them before they book an appointment on your salon website.
Curated bundles always trigger the real needs and pains of your client:
Examples: Bridal Glow-Up Package (spray tan + lash lift + facial), or a Winter Wellness Trio (body wrap + scalp massage + hot stone therapy).
BookingPress has cool features to build multi-service packages with built-in discounts and limited-time validity. You may feature them on your WordPress site as a separate offer. Use the Service Package add-on, which is available with the Professional plan.
Create Seasonal Treatment Offers
Seasonal campaigns in the beauty industry are very natural – there are times when the skin must be protected better or when the massage is more needed. And… when it comes to beauty, clients always want to try something new! So, make some of your service offerings available only during specific seasons, holidays, and trends.
Example: a “Summer Skin Rescue” package in July or a “Winter Hydration Facial” in January instantly makes services feel timely and necessary.
Suggest Extras With Every Booking
Another popular technique from the retail industry that can be easily implemented with BookingPress for your salon – offering clients to add extras related to the main service chosen.
For instance, adding extras like a paraffin dip, collagen eye mask, or scalp exfoliation are small upgrades that feel luxurious.
With the ‘Service Extras’ functionality inside BookingPress (you simply need to enable it as an add-on), you can associate these optional add-ons with any main service. When clients book a facial, the booking system asks them whether they want to have more.
Simplify the Group Scheduling
The more people for the same time slot, the higher the check! If you have spa days, couples treatments, or mother-daughter makeovers, make such group scheduling easy for clients.
Using BookingPress’s Multiple Quantity add-on, clients can book for multiple people in a single session without the hassle of creating multiple bookings, which easily ends up in higher-value bookings.
Offer Tiered Discounts for Bigger Appointments
Why not reward clients who book more services – thus enticing them to do the latter, actually? With BookingPress’s Advanced Discount feature, you can offer automatic price breaks based on the number of services, attendees, or the total cart value.
How can you do this? Enable the add-on and use text cheat sheets like:
Book three or more things together (like a mani-pedi and a brow wax) and you’ll automatically get 10% off at checkout.
And once they add all the services, the Advanced Discount feature enables a discount dynamically, in real time.
Sell Customizable Gift Cards (Especially During Holidays)
Big days like Mother’s Day, Valentine’s, or the winter holidays roll around? Gift cards are your trump cards! They’re also a popular choice for birthdays.
The booking system should also support them. Use the dedicated Gift Card add-on from BookingPress to enable recipients to use the code directly while booking online. The add-on allows customers to enjoy a happy, smooth, and convenient gifting and redemption experience.
Use “Happy Hour” Pricing for Time-Based Discount
Every salon or spa has its off-peak times. Why not turn those into your golden times? Once again, the booking software and its great automation is to the rescue! Create time-sensitive pricing tiers to forget about this problem in your salon or spa.
Use the ‘Happy hours’ BookingPress add-on to configure variable pricing to fill slow times. For example, offering 20% off facials from 1-4 pm on weekdays or half-price blowouts on Tuesdays can actually boost your revenue.
Give Clients Flexible Payment Options
Seems obvious? You might be actually losing clients if the payment flexibility is not enough.
Offer deposit-based bookings with BookingPress to those who might hesitate. This way, you let them reserve their spot with a partial payment (works well with a decision-making process). You may also combine this with limited-time coupon codes to give clients even more attractive options.
Build Buzz with Email Offers
You can totally use those automatic email tools you probably already know, like Mailchimp, AWeber, or Omnisend and hook them up with BookingPress in clicks using dedicated add-ons.
With the chosen email marketing automation service for your salon or spa, you can set it up to automatically send out emails for things like holiday specials, birthday treats, and rewards for loyal customers.
Remind them about yourself and get people to book again – and maybe even add some extra services based on what they’ve done before.
Allow Clients to Choose Longer Sessions
Upselling is not necessarily about more services, it’s also about longer appointments! Let clients choose between a 30-minute or a 90-minute massage, or offer both standard and deluxe versions of facials.
BookingPress comes with a unique feature for service upselling available through the Custom Duration add-on. It allows your salon to offer multiple timeframes and associated prices for the same service, helping guests upgrade and choose longer appointments naturally.
Use a Waitlist
A client is in the mood to book but their favorite expert is not available? When your hair colorist, esthetician, or massage therapist is fully booked, let clients join a waitlist. BookingPress makes it easy to activate this feature with the add-on of the same name.
Final Thoughts on How to Upsell Spa and Salon Services
Putting aside the software add-ons, especially those marketing tricks you might find in the BookingPress WordPress plugin, your choices for upselling are a bit more limited.
However, just by letting clients book ahead of time, you actually unlock a bunch of chances to offer them extra goodies or services that they’ll know about even before they arrive. These add-ons allow you to highlight irresistible experiences and make the most out of every appointment in your salon or spa!
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Brian is a WordPress expert with a decade of developing experience & technical-writing. He enjoys blogging, movies & hiking.
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