Learn how to use music as a part of the marketing strategy for your Spa or Massage Center across the full customer life cycle to boost service experience as well as customer conversion and retention.
Make music a part of your Spa strategy
Consistency of branding, sound, graphic design, color, message and tone will help to build customer trust in you as you develop your relationship and demonstrate your authority and value to them.
Yet whilst marketing is usually the focus for high quality content, as a Spa owner or operator your objective is not only to gain new clients but retain them and encourage them to book regular appointments and make you part of their lifestyle.
Music has the opportunity to reinforce your Spa brand everywhere your clients see you. Including music to represent your business across the customer life cycle can be a powerful selling & retaining asset.
Choosing and including the right music from the start within your marketing plan, into your Spa or Massage Center reception and treatment rooms and within after care content and support is a powerful way to enhance your customer’s experience and boosts your differentiation in your local market place.
So how do you choose what type of music to use in a Spa or Wellness setting?
Whilst it is clear how music evokes emotions, research has highlighted how common themes within music exist across personality types that in general will evoke the same emotions. (1)
From my experience this translates into music for relaxation, well-being and therapeutic environments (such as Spas or Massage Center) as follows:
- Pitch: ensuring the pitch isn’t too high (can be alarming) or too low (can feel ominous or ‘dark’).
- Volume & Dynamics: Mid volume with no large variances (variances and dynamics are connected to energetic emotions).
- Sounds: soft, gentle, warm, rising and flowing.
- Rhythm: regular, predictable. No surprises of complexities that draw the listener to engage them, relaxing tempos, nothing to fast, try to match the tempo to the heart beat you would hope your clients have at particular touch points. Little or no percussion in treatment rooms.
- Composition: Simple predictable, optimistic. No minor melodies or conflicting and sudden key changes.
- Instruments: plucked acoustic, naturally sounding harps and guitars, dreamy flutes, and soft mallets on wooden marimbas. Congas work well for percussion as they aren’t too harsh if played gently.
- Complexity; predictable compositions, no conflicting melodies or sudden shifts in key.
- Tempo: Use tempo to wind down customer ready for treatments, set the pace within the treatment room itself, and increase the tempo to awaken clients once the treatment is complete.
So applying this to the client life cycle phases you can set out a plan for different music to guide your guest´s during their Spa journey, helping them stay connected to you and make you become part of their lifestyle.
Mapping music choice to key phases in the Spa guest´s life cycle
Pre-Sales Marketing
Objective: Build authority and trust
Goal: Booking
Music (within introductory videos):
- Melody: uplifting with a positive, simple but memorable tune.
- Instruments: natural and fresh sounding.
- Complexity: foot – tapping percussion and a ‘happy’ tempo.
- Examples: chillout, lounge, light acoustic.
So for your marketing, you will be looking for music that makes clients generally feel optimistic, uplifted and rejuvenated. Nothing too energetic of course, but enough to give them a hint of how they will expect to feel once they have experienced your services.
Background Music: Spa Reception Welcome
Objective: Calm and prepare client for treatment. Reduce any worry.
Goal: Client is better prepared for the treatment.
Music:
- Melody: Warm and relaxing
- Instruments: soothing and winding down. Sounds and styles similar to what is offered in the treatment rooms.
- Complexity: Less complex, less tunes to engage and gentle tempo.
- Examples: ambient-chillout, light acoustic, relaxing classical.
Background Music: Spa Treatment / Therapy Rooms
Objective: Fully relaxed, cared for, even pampered.
Goal: Client’s treatment a success
Music:
- Melody: Very minimal, more emphasis on sounds than melody
- Instruments: warm soothing sound waves with light sounding instruments delivering gentle composition over the top.
- Complexity: Little or no percussion, tempo: slow.
- Examples: ambient, nature sounds, new age.
Background Music: Post appointment relaxation / café / dining areas
Objective: Relaxation and feel good.
Goal: Reflect positively on experience and decide to book more treatments, the first being within a week.
Music:
- Melody: Awakening, optimistic
- Instruments: Some lead instruments to take lead tune elements of compositions. Tunes here can be what is left in the memory of clients during the rest of their day.
- Complexity: Light percussion to build up the pace from the treatment room with a cheerful tempo.
- Examples: ambient-chillout, light acoustic, relaxing classical.
- Note: if your post appointment area is your reception then a compromise of both styles can work effectively here as a step down from the outside busy world and preparing for the next step down in the treatment room.
Post Service Informational support and aftercare videos
Goal: Feel supported and cared for and books more treatments within the next week.
Music:
- Melody: Optimistic, happy
- Instruments: Natural and light. Nothing too heavy and harsh.
- Complexity: foot – tapping percussion & happy tempo again.
- Examples: chillout, lounge, light acoustic.
Note: if you produce instructional videos you can use the more lively tempo music as part of the intro and end and then move into the relaxation music as part of the instructional footage.
Create unforgettable Spa experiences with the right music
So with careful planning you can build a marketing plan that uses music, along with other content media to boost your market propositions.
This will not only help to build that critical early trust with clients that will increase the number of treatment bookings but also build customer loyalty across all touch points with the client.
Customers will love being your Spa or Massage Center’s advocate and sharing your great content with their friends and colleagues. Music will help them remember you and the great experience they always have in your caring hands.
This article is written by our guest writer Guy Lewis, qualified Reiki practitioner and psychotherapist, music producer, product marketer and the 
director of Melody Pods.
(1) A Mood-Based Music Classification and Exploration System by Owen Craigie Meyers B.Mus., McGill University (2004) particularly referencing Hevner / Rigg and Watson’s independent researches.
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