Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa heavily involves the franchisee experience into its marketing efforts, highlighting their successes while supporting them with a consistent brand message. The strategy focuses on promoting examples of successful franchisees to share with prospects and increasing support, profitability, and ROI to its existing owners.
Hand & Stone's Chief Development Officer Jennifer Durham provides her thoughts on how the company uses this integrated approach to create a brand message that reaches new franchisees while supporting existing ones. She also discusses how they incorporate AI to engage prospects and customers and use technology to grow the brand and increase owner profitability.
What excites you the most about the future of the Hand & Stone brand?
Durham: The future of Hand & Stone is incredibly exciting as we continue to build on what has made our brand stand out for years: innovation and commitment to enhancing the customer experience. While that may sound obvious, we can back it up in numbers. Across our more than 600 spas, we’ve provided 1.6 million personalized facial treatments to our guests. From massage to skincare, we’re expanding our service offerings and our technology to provide personalized wellness solutions, including introducing LED light therapy, NuFace microcurrent therapy, Neveskin toning treatments, and more. As we’re becoming more convenient and providing members with more reasons to visit, these innovations paired with our membership model are creating more revenue streams for our current and future franchise owners.
Can you discuss the role of digital marketing and technology in your franchise development and marketing efforts, especially in the context of recent industry trends?
Durham: Digital marketing and technology are pivotal in our franchise development and marketing strategies. We leverage analytics to understand what compels prospective franchise candidates and are tailoring our marketing campaigns to provide insight into the brand as they consider their franchise options. Recent trends like AI-driven personalization and omnichannel marketing have allowed us to engage with potential franchisees and customers more dynamically and efficiently. As our audience conducts their franchise diligence, we assure that our message is consistent and reaches them wherever they are.
What unique challenges and opportunities arise when working in both franchise development and marketing within the franchise industry?
Durham: With a proven brand track record of over 600 spas in the U.S. and Canada for nearly 20 years, our brand is trusted for delivering great results through massage and facial services. The balance of both franchise development and consumer marketing presents unique challenges, such as ensuring brand consistency while customizing local marketing efforts. However, it also offers opportunities to create cohesive strategies that drive both franchise growth and brand awareness. By aligning our development and marketing goals across our existing markets, we can support our franchisees more effectively and foster a unified brand presence.
How do you bridge the gap between franchise development and marketing?
Durham: With nearly 1,300 available trade areas, there is plenty of room for franchise ownership, and we bridge the franchise owner and consumer marketing gap by fostering close collaboration between our development and marketing teams. We meet bi-weekly to ensure that both teams are aligned on goals and initiatives. This integrated approach helps us create marketing campaigns that not only attract new franchisees but also support existing ones.
How do you leverage Hand & Stone's marketing efforts to attract new franchisees, while maintaining consistency with the existing brand identity?
Durham: Our marketing efforts are designed to highlight the value proposition of the Hand & Stone brand while clearly setting expectations on what’s required as a franchise owner. We use targeted campaigns to showcase success stories and the benefits of joining our franchise owner community. By maintaining a consistent brand message across all platforms, we ensure that new franchisees understand and align with our brand identity from the outset. It’s also important to note that most of our franchise owners were members or clients before they pursued their dream of spa ownership.
Building strong relationships with franchisees is crucial. How do your marketing efforts contribute to fostering such relationships, and what role does franchisee satisfaction play in growth?
Durham: Our marketing efforts are focused on creating a sense of community and support among our franchisees. Hand & Stone has 280 franchise owners and nearly 40% own and operate multiple spas. We highlight our successful franchise owners which helps them stand apart as they recruit talent for their spas. Franchisee satisfaction and transparency with existing owners are key drivers of growth, as happy and profitable franchisees are more likely to re-invest in the brand and also promote the brand as an advocate for future growth.
How do you ensure that your marketing strategies provide franchisees with the tools they need for growth?
Durham: We ensure our marketing strategies are franchisee-centric by offering tailored spa-specific marketing plans, ongoing support, and access to leading MarTech tools to drive marketing ROI. Our in-house agency is a strategic advantage because we directly manage spend and gather feedback from our franchise owners to refine our strategies and ensure they meet their needs. This collaborative approach helps our franchisees grow their businesses effectively.
How do you measure and track the effectiveness your marketing plans and the execution of the plans?
Durham: We use a combination of key performance indicators (KPIs) and analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of our marketing plans. In the past year, we’ve also introduced advanced tools that have improved the precision of spend to drive marketing ROI. Our system is laser-focused on increasing spa membership and profitability, and unique to franchise systems, we make all KPI’s available to every franchise owner so that we can transparently benchmark every location and drive meaningful performance.
What advice would you give to emerging franchise brands looking to establish a strong presence in both franchise development and marketing?
Durham: For emerging franchise brands, it’s crucial to build a strong foundation with a clear brand identity and value proposition. First, define your target audience and invest in digital marketing and technology to reach this audience effectively. Foster collaboration between your development and marketing teams to create cohesive strategies. Finally, and most important, prioritize franchisee support, profitability, and ROI as there is no sustained growth without this trifecta.
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