Marketing
Marketing includes having a strategy and a “proposition” for your potential customers. You must decide what experience you are offering; be it luxury, value for money, novelty, whatever, and then work out how you are going to introduce your offer to them.
By far the most effective publicity are word-of-mouth recommendations from your customers to their friends and colleagues - and this is free! It is, however, up to you to ensure their experience exceeds their expectations for this to work really well.
Advertising is under your control but it is very expensive. Most ad agencies will advise you that single adverts are ineffective; you need a campaign. Our experience confirms this. The cheapest form of advertising is leaflet drops where you do the distribution yourself.
The dynamic men who run Float On, in Portland, Oregon have come up with some very interesting marketing ideas which they are happy to share and which can be replicated around the world. We have prepared a one-page summary of their ideas which we can send you if you’d like to receive it. They also sell their marketing package. You can contact them at www.floathq.com
You can also consider Public Relations. This can be cost effective if you do the work yourself and may be the most effective use of your money if you employ professionals. PR can include issuing press releases, visiting large employers in your vicinity, giving demonstrations or talks to local groups, visiting local doctors, dentists, hairdressers and so on. Draw up an offer, for example a discount to every employee of a local big company in exchange for a notice on their notice board, and prepare concise leaflets explaining your “proposition” for doctor’s practices to display.
Publicising in your reception area that you offer gift vouchers for birthdays, etc. is an excellent way to sell more float sessions. Many people don’t think about offering such a thing as a present, but several of our clients discovered floating precisely in that manner! Web-based gift services such as www.lastminute.com offer float sessions and you should consider registering with them.
Your local press and radio stations are very important as well. You may find they are reluctant to publish just a “puff piece” about your new centre, especially more than once, so you need to conjure up news. Get photographs of local celebrities, even quite minor ones, (with their permission, of course) entering your centre, or even better, saying a few words about their experience and send it as a press release to your local paper. Don't disregard all the small specialist local publications such as the school magazine, the church news and so on as they all look for local news stories with photos. Do not underestimate the importance of this activity, especially in the first year; where we have seen float centres fail, a huge factor has ALWAYS been a lack of marketing effort.
An excellent resource for all business-owners is book entitled “The E- Myth” by Michael E. Gerber. This book will give you extraordinary insights into all aspects of running your own business and we believe it will give you the best advice available today!