Thought Leadership Tracey Stapleton, The Spa PR Company
9 tools and apps to refresh your spa marketing
W Tracey Stapleton EXPERT CONTRIBUTOR
hat tools do you use for your marketing activities? Today we are spoilt for choice when it comes to digital resources that can help us run our businesses more efficiently and effectively, and there’s always something new or trending to discover. So I’ve gathered together some of my favourites, some of which are free and all of which are guaranteed to add value to your marketing strategy.
Canva
This has been revolutionary in making it quick and easy to design anything. It’s great for flyers, spa menus, social posts and presentations. The ‘pro’ version, which opens up premium tools and content, including a wider image bank, costs around £100 (€120) a year and is great value. It also gives access to your team and other Canva users so you can share documents.
Free image banks After a decade and a half in consumer public relations, 16 years ago Tracey Stapleton began to specialise in spa and wellbeing. Now managing director of The Spa PR Company, she offers a targeted range of PR and marketing services to spa and hotel operators as well as beauty and wellbeing product brands and services. www.thespaprcompany.com
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Generally I’d recommend using your own images and video wherever possible, but occasionally you need a specific shot that you just don’t have. There are a wealth of free image banks to choose from, including Unsplash, Freepik, Pexels and Pixabay, covering a wide range of spa and wellness topics. These enable you to use their royalty-free images or videos often with just a credit to the photographer or content creator.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a great research and data analysis tool and one that PRs use frequently for identifying newsworthy topics to attach their client stories to. It can monitor how your brand is doing and alert you to what audiences are searching for during a certain time period and in particular geographic zones. It’s also useful for making business decisions, such as which keywords/phrases to prioritise on your website, and for SEO.
AnswerThePublic
There are over three billion online searches made each day and gaining access to this data provides a fantastic insight into consumer thoughts. AnswerThePublic tunes in to autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then cranks out every useful phase and question people are asking around your keyword, so you can shape your own content to appeal to them. Simply type in your subject, brand or product and you’ll be presented with a web of words. www.europeanspamagazine.com
