As I’ve said in my Marketing Matters column, I am constantly wowed by my massage therapist. In addition to having excellent skills, she is very good at focusing on her clients’ personalities when it comes to marketing her practice.

Here’s what I mean: the other day she called and left a message, “Hi, Eileen, I haven’t seen you in a while and I just had a cancellation for this evening. If you want to come in, I’ll give you $10 off. Give me a call before noon.”

Wow.

See what she did? She noted my absence (She remembered me! She likes me!), she gave me an incentive ($10 discount) and then gave me a deadline.

Nice. Very nice.

I couldn’t make it, but I called her up to find out what inspired her to take this approach and why she called me.

In a nutshell, she knows that clients sometimes can’t give 24 hours cancellation notice and she is concerned about losing those clients if she charges them a cancellation fee. She wants to fill the appointment space when there is a last minute cancellation so she decided to call clients who usually take appointments during that time slot and who likely wouldn’t be offended if she called out of the blue (that would be me).

This is a new approach for her, but she says it’s working out fairly well. Often, if someone can’t take the cancelled spot, she still gets people (like me) who call and make an appointment for another time.

Think about it.

All my best,

Eileen

Forecast: In the next entry I’ll talk about ways to bend and twist this idea so you can make it fit your own practice.