7 FCMO Local Tactics That Redfine Success for Denver Spas

Denver residents are serious about health and wellness. As such, the health spa industry is a booming niche in The Mile High City.

The market is rife with opportunity for an enterprising health spa entrepreneur, especially with marketing leadership courtesy of an expert Denver FCMO or fractional CMO.

Health spas are a hyper-local industry. A fractional CMO will usually tackle this scalability challenge with one or more of seven tactics designed for surgical local targeting, including:

• Hyper-Local SEO
• Tapping Into Denver’s Unique Culture
• Collaborations With Local Influencers
• Personalized Loyalty Incentives
• Hosting Events and Wellness Workshops
• Geotargeted Social Media Advertising
• Community Partnerships and Cross-Promotion

Ready to explore what these tactics entail and how a Denver fractional CMO can help? Let’s go!

Wondering what a Fractional CMO can do for your business? Watch this video below.

The Competitive Denver Health Spa Niche

Health and wellness is one of the fastest-growing industries in Denver, with nearly 200 medical spas already in operation and more set to open as national players continue to expand their footprint in the market. 

Denver spas also face competition from the world famous natural hot spring resorts that dot the Rockies. Most of the most popular hot springs are over 100 miles away, so local spas still have a robust niche. 

That said, if they want to succeed in such a competitive, health-conscious landscape, they need to emphatically differentiate their brand. This is where marketing efforts shine.

The Role of a Fractional CMO in Denver Spa Marketing

A CMO is a Chief Marketing Officer, a C-level executive in charge of marketing. A fractional CMO is a qualified CMO who serves multiple companies, usually on a part-time basis and a limited contract.

Startups or SMBs that cannot afford or are not ready for a full-time CMO rely on fractional CMOs to provide experienced strategic leadership for their marketing efforts.

Most Denver spas are too small for a full-time CMO to be a sensible investment. However, a fractional CMO puts superior marketing leadership within reach for most small-to-medium health, wellness, medical, and day spas in the Gateway to the Rockies.

7 Local Marketing Tactics Fractional CMOs Employ to Help Denver Health Spas

Because health spas thrive on localized markets, a Denver fractional CMO retained to help a Denver spa will first look into highly localized tactics. Here are seven of the most effective ones.

     1. Hyper-Local SEO

Most business owners know that SEO means search engine optimization. 

SEO involves attempting to get a website ranked on the first page or even the #1 spot on search engine results pages (SERP) when users search Google, Bing, and other search engines for relevant keywords like “med spa,” “shiatsu massage,” “rejuvenating facial,” and so on.

What many businesses do not know, however, is that search engines maintain separate protocols for local searches. These include Google Map results that appear high on SERPs, showing the locations and phone numbers of matching local businesses. 

They also include algorithms triggered when users include words like “near me” or “in Denver” in the search. For example, “Medspa near me” or “massage therapy in Denver.”

Many recent statistics attest to the power of local SEO:

• 46% of all Google searches trigger local algorithms. 
• Four in five people run local queries on search engines.
• 50% of local searches on smartphones preceded a store visit within 24 hours.
• 18% of local search queries result in a purchase within 24 hours. 

A Denver fractional CMO will lead efforts to target this lucrative traffic source with laser efficiency.

     2. Tapping Into Denver’s Unique Culture

One of the reasons to choose a Denver fractional CMO is that to market a local business, you need to speak the local language. A Denver fractional CMO can guide the crafting of messages that resonate with the average Denverite. Examples include:

• Robust outdoor lifestyle.
• Thriving microbrew culture.
• Arts and culture, a $2.6 billion local industry as of 2022.
• Commitment to sustainability and environmental awareness.
• Cannabis culture.
• Sports culture, including the Broncos and the Rockies.
• Old West heritage.

Whether you are adding local photos to your website or timing sales to coincide with local events, showing you are a part of the culture drives brand recognition and loyalty. 

     3. Collaborations With Local Influencers

Influencers: anyone on the local scene who has influence. When they talk, people listen. In the past, this would have been local media personalities, sports stars, musicians, politicians, and other local celebrities.

In the social media age, however, the category has expanded to popular content creators, spokesmodels, activists, fashionistas, food bloggers, artists, and much more. Nearly every niche has an influencer who has built a popular personal brand around it.

Partnerships with local influencers are a robust part of a Denver fractional CMO’s strategy. This tactic is most powerful when the influencer can give an honest endorsement. They genuinely like the product or service and enthusiastically recommend it. 

This tactic also works best if the product or service resonates with the influencer’s brand. It does not make sense for a steakhouse to approach a vegan food blogger for an endorsement. 

Natural influencer partners for a health and wellness spa in Denver might include fitness and athletic influencers, beauty influencers, lifestyle and wellness influencers, mental health influencers, and ecology or sustainability influencers.

The fractional CMO may arrange for the influencer to recommend the spa in their content, make joint appearances, have the influencer as the guest of honor or keynote speaker at events, or even collaborate on content for the spa’s website or social media accounts.

     4. Personalized Loyalty Incentives

People patronize local businesses for the personal touch. They like to do business with people who know them, who can come to learn their tastes and anticipate their needs. A loyalty incentive program that shows your business is customer-oriented and personalized can provide a boost to your brand recognition and your bottom line. 

Your Denver fractional CMO can help your marketing team to create a program that outdoes the competition. Examples of personalization in loyalty rewards include:

• Discounts on favorite services.
• Gifts and rewards timed to birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones.
• Refer-a-friend bonuses.
• Wellness-journey tracking. 
• Regular personalized communication through emails, texts, and social media.

     5. Hosting Events and Wellness Workshops

The best digital marketing campaign in the world cannot compete with the power of eye contact, a smile, and a handshake. Events and wellness workshops are a fantastic opportunity to bring new prospects into your funnel. 

At the event or workshop, you can meet those prospects, make a personal connection, find out what services interest them, and make personal recommendations.

     6. Geotargeted Social Media Advertising

One of the most powerful features of social media advertising is its ability to put messages onto the social media feeds (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) of people in a specific geographic area. You could set a social media ad to target only people in the Denver metro. You could even drill down further and target specific suburbs or zip codes.

Add to this the ability to target users by sex, age, interests, and other demographics, and you have a formidable tool to put your message in front of the people who will be the most interested and qualified to receive it.

     7. Community Partnerships and Cross-Promotion

One of the oldest local marketing tactics is still one of the most effective. Cross-promotion involves partnering with a local brand so each brand gets exposure for their message to the other brand’s audience.

Potential cross-promotion partners for a Denver health spa might include:

• Fitness Centers 
• Yoga Studios
• Organic and Health Food Stores
• Eco-Friendly Beauty and Skincare Brands
• Boutique Hotels and Resorts
• Athleisure and Sportswear Brands
• Nutritionists and Dietitians
• Local Artisan Markets and Craft Fairs
• Outdoor and Adventure Gear Retailers
• Mental Health and Wellness Practitioners
• Charities and Advocacy Groups

The spa and the cross-promotion partner could co-host an event, co-produce content, share each others’ content, or collaborate in any number of ways. 

Measuring Success: Key Performance Indicators

Every business should track KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure the effectiveness of their marketing and identify areas of improvement. KPIs that make a big difference for a Denver spa might include:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Return On Investment (ROI) for all marketing expenditures
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
• Conversion Rate
• Retention Rate
• Average Order Value (AOV)
• Website Traffic
• Social Media Engagement
• Booking Rate
• Online Reputation (reviews and testimonials)

A Denver fractional CMO can help a Denver spa identify the most relevant KPIs, set benchmarks for success, implement analytics to track those KPIs, and suggest or facilitate solutions if one of the KPIs falls short of the benchmarks.

Cost-Effectiveness of Fractional CMOs for Denver Health Spas

Glassdoor puts the salary range for a CMO at $240k-$450k per year. Most wellness spas in Denver do not have the budget for this.

A fractional CMO, by contrast, charges a reasonable hourly rate, usually for only part of the day and on a limited-time contract. This puts C-level marketing leadership within reach of most small-to-medium-sized Denver spas.  

Summing Up

Succeeding in the competitive, fast-growing Denver spa industry requires marketing excellence at the local level. This, in turn, requires excellence in marketing leadership. A Denver fractional CMO is the secret weapon most spas are missing. 

With experienced leadership at the head of the marketing team, a Denver spa can master local CMO, personalization, face-to-face relationship building, influencer marketing, and cross-promotion, all in alignment with the unique culture that makes Denver great!

Not sure where to start to find the perfect fractional CMO? Digital Authority Partners is your source for the top C-level fractional marketing talent in Denver. Contact us now to get started.