How to Use ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Lead Flow & Future-Proof Your Spa Business
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Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, a podcast for spa owners who want to step up their leadership and business skills and step into the role as spa CEO. I'm your host, Daniela Warner, CEO of Atto Aesthetics and founder of the Growth Factor Framework program where we teach, coach and guide spa owners in scaling their spas to the next level of growth and unlocking freedom in their life and their business. I'm so glad you're here now, now, let's dive into the show.
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Let's talk about the reality that spa owners are facing right now. If you feel like it's getting harder and harder to attract new clients, if you're struggling to find high quality staff, especially when fast food places are offering $22 an hour, you are not imagining things. It is harder, but it's not impossible. Now we are in a time of massive transformation. The way that we market, the way that we connect, and even the way that we run our businesses is shifting at such a rapid pace. And a huge part of the shift, AI, AI is changing the game not just in our business, but also in our daily lives. So today, right here on the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast, I wanna pull back the curtain and share exactly how we're using ChatGPT to streamline our content, optimize our lead flow, and give ourselves back the time to focus on the most important things, building real human to human connections. Now, I'm also going to give you some specific ChatGPT prompts for spa that you can plug in and start using today. All right, so first up, ChatGPT, this is by far the AI tool that we use the most. We have the paid version. So there is a free version and a paid version. The paid version is $20 a month. It is so worth the $20 a month for the just incredible output that it has. So highly recommend getting the paid version. Now. When I started playing around with chat, we people will call it training. And I didn't really know what that meant, but essentially training it to understand your brand, your voice, your business. I was simply uploading transcripts from my podcast episodes. I was adding blog posts that we had written in the past. I uploaded our brand style guide, I uploaded the PDF of our book. I asked ChatGPT to scan my Instagram and my website to understand the tone. And I was also always prompting it to only use my content as a source. That's really important because one of the biggest big kind of red flags that people are bringing up around chat is that it is essentially a giant search engine and can pull Anything from the Internet. So if you are educating on something, you want to make sure that you're using your own unique content. Okay, so the other piece that I want to add in there, when we're talking about training our chat, when you have the paid version, so I have the $20 a month vers, there's a little sidebar that you can add that it's. You're always using that same folder on the side. So mine is Atto Content Creator. All right. You can have different sidebars over there. My husband actually has one that helps him come up with his morning workouts. He trained it to make sure that it knows all of the equipment that we have in our gym. And he just plugs in a few things of how long he has, what areas he wants to work, and it just pumps out his settings for him. So, side note, that's a way that you can use it personally, but when we're looking at how we're using this for business, these are the types of things that I was doing, and I'm always making sure that I'm using that Atto Content creator right there. So once I trained chat, the more that I trained it, the more that I gave it feedback when it was giving me a good response or a bad response, the easier and the better that it got. And it also gave me that confidence that the content that I was creating was uniquely mined. So here's what happened when we really started to use it strategically. Number one, our blog output skyrocketed, which meant better SEO and more organic leads. Right. So we're going to get into this in a little bit here. But the way that spas are getting leads is typically social, which in our industry is 99% of the time going to be Instagram search, SEO, Google, or referrals. And so if we want to look at those three different ways that we are getting leads in a way to really increase our search is through blog post, through consistently blogging. Okay, the other thing that we noticed, we were able to streamline our content creation. So whether that's emails, blogs, social post, they all start from one piece of content. So, for example, if we write a blog, then maybe that blog. We're also going to be able to create an email about a blog or the social post about the blog. We're actually even training ChatGPT to generate our podcast, show notes, emails and blogs simply by scanning the transcript of each episode. It is unbelievable. Now, it's not perfect, but I would say the output is about 85 to 90% there. And it just keeps getting better and better. So when I do a podcast episode, this podcast episode, for example, I'm going to take this transcript, I'm going to upload it into chat, it's going to give me a summary, it's going to give me the kind of first draft of our email, it's going to give me social post. And then I use my marketing manager, my copywriter to refine it, to read through, to make sure that it makes sense. But I know, you know, reading through something and refining is a heck of a lot faster than starting from scratch and kind of staring at that blank page. So the time savings and the financial savings are huge. And that time savings is key because that allows me to focus on additional lead flow channels. And what I'm going to get to by the end of this episode is the lead flow channel that I feel is most essential here in 2025. All right, so let's get into how you're going to use this in your spa. So, as I mentioned before, lead flow comes from three primary sources. So we're looking at social. And when I say social, that is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, you know, whatever, YouTube, whatever you're using for social. And we have both organic and paid ads. Now, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be referring to Instagram because I know most of you out there. That is your primary platform. The other place that we're getting lead flow from is Google. So this is your search, this is your website optimization. People naturally finding you when they're looking for facials near me or Botox near me or microneedling near me, whatever they're searching for with your city name, if you're coming up on that first page, they're going to be able to find you, see your reviews, head to your website, and hopefully make a appointment. The third way is referrals. And when we think of referrals, we're typically thinking of word of mouth from our existing patient base or client base referring their friends. Well, I want to take this a step further. I want to be able to really control this word of mouth, because again, if you don't have those existing patients in the first place, which we're typically getting from Instagram or Google, how are we going to have them refer? So we've got to have a way to get more people in on the regular. I also put strategic partnerships into this referral category, which is huge. So we'll again, more on that a little bit later in this Episode now, having a diversified approach of lead flow, when I'm talking about lead flow is super, super important. We don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket, so we want leads coming in from all three. So let's just start off with Instagram. Okay? We're going to look at paid ads, organic. When it comes to social, Instagram is a key player in spa marketing, especially when it comes to paid ads. And paid ads were life changing for me. They helped me build my email list, they helped me grow, this podcast helped me generate millions in revenue. But here's the thing. I would never rely only on ads as my only lead source. And for me, it was a big wake up call. When There was the iOS 14 updates, and you know it, ads like the cost increase, they just weren't working the same. This, the iOS 14 updates was when Apple allowed its users to opt in or opt out of tracking. That was a very big, big thing for the marketing world. Okay, so imagine if you're running ads, you're getting, you know, maybe you're getting 20 new patients or clients every single month, and then all of a sudden your Facebook account gets hacked or it gets disabled, which we're seeing a lot right now, because there were some pretty big updates to meta's advertising policies. And so sometimes accounts are getting shut down or disabled. Incorrect. Well, if that is the only way that you are getting leads into your practice, that could mean hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for you in lost revenue. So I was actually just having a conversation with someone who's in this exact situation. Her ad account got shut down. Again, not uncommon. You know, she could have been doing everything right and there was just some sort of glitch that got her shut down. And now she's having to spend time and energy, you know, getting that reinstated. But she was trying to figure out how to get new leads through Google or some other way. So again, while we use ads, we believe in ads, we recommend that you use ads. It is not something that we want to steer clear of. It's an absolutely essential, important part of your advertising strategy. We want you to use AI to help support that, to help streamline that. Okay, so we've got a chatgpt prompt for you here. So write three variations of an Instagram ad for my spa that promotes, and I'm put in brackets what it is that you're wanting to promote. So signature facial membership, new client offer. Now, one of the tricks with your prompts is when there's those brackets, the more information, the better. So you can let chat know. This is a signature facial. Here's what's included, here's who it's for, and then we add after the brackets. The tone should be warm, inviting and focused on relaxation. Include a strong call to action to book an appointment. So we are going to continue to refine and refine and refine our post, but that can be the starting point. Okay, now here's another one. And this is from our good friends over at Successful Ads Club. This is the place to learn all things ads and it has to do with Meta's new ads policies. So the prompt starts off with I need you to analyze my website for potential compliance risks with Meta's new advertising restrictions for 2025. Please evaluate the following and I'm not going to read this whole thing because it's pretty long. There's section one, Content Sect, section two, User Data Practices, section three, Event Tracking, section four, Messaging and Targeting. And then each of those has its own instructions and then there's a report at the end. So we are going to. We actually have a freebie for you guys with 26 chat GPT prompts for spa. You can download it at the bottom of this episode. It's going to have all that there. So if you are like scrambling to try and write some of these down, fear not, we have these for you. But let's, you know, for the sake of time and your listening pleasure, I'm not going to read out the entire chat GPT prompt for that one. All right, so let's move on to Google. All right. And SEO website optimization. Something that happened for me that I noticed that was probably one of the first things that made me feel old was that my neighbor across the street who is like 13 or 14, said that only old people use Google every all the young people are using Bing. And I was like, what? Who uses Bing? But you know, times are changing and I don't think that that's a call to action to shift over to Bing, but I think that it is a possibility that Google is not always going to be the end all be all. Maybe it is. I'm still sticking with Google. I believe in Google. Google has been great for me, but I want to keep my mind open to other search engines if things shift. Okay, so for now, Google is still the huge lead driver. And so what we want to do is make sure that we are showing up in the map section. We want to make sure that we are on page one of results. And now if you've noticed, there's even these AI generated answers right up there at the top. So there's a summary and then there's an AI generation. So how do we show up up there? Well, for us, we've worked with HLM to optimize our website for SEO. We are also paying for SEO, but AI has been a game changer in our strategy. And this goes back to those blog posts. So the more that you're regularly updating your website with relevant content, the more that that gets posted to Google, the more that your website is getting updated, the more that Google says, hey, this is an active website. This is, you know, somewhere where I'm going to continue to go back. So SEO takes a little while. It's not something that happens overnight. And we've been working on this for a little while now. And actually just last week or it was actually about two weeks ago, we had eight new leads reach out via our website in one week. These are people who are not on our email list and had found us through search. So that is incredible. That for me says, okay, our blogging is working. The updated website that was optimized for for SEO is working. People are starting to find us through search. We are already ranking on the front page. We're actually number one nationally for a couple of our search terms, which is really exciting. That's taken a lot of work, but we're now starting to see the results. We're starting to get the benefit of all of that work that we put in. So now I have lead flow coming through ads and I have lead flow coming through search. That makes me feel good again. I am someone who likes a stable, secure business. All right, so I've got another ChatGPT prompt for you. So generate a thousand word blog post optimized for SEO on include whatever you want. You can say best skincare treatments for aging skin and then you can include the skincare treatments that you offer at your spa. You can make it educational, engaging and formatted for easy reading. Include relevant keywords for search visibility such as and what you want to do is include your city name, all of that so that you're coming up in search for that. Okay, so again, posting blogs consistently tells Google that your website is active, valuable and deserves to be on page one. So the more visibility that you have, the more potential leads. Now we like to post weekly and if you're like, well, how am I going to come up with 52 topic ideas? Well, start by coming up with the 10 questions that you get asked most in spa and ask chat to come up with a list of blog topics around those 10 questions. All right, you can start there. So we're freeing up time, we're freeing up money by using chat to help with our marketing and our content. So what do you do with that time and money? How do you benefit the most out of it? Well, my thought is that you need to get out in your community. I always tell our students, be the mayor of your town. And I don't mean like actually run for office. I want you to be out there getting involved. Especially because right now, trust is low, skepticism is high, and consumers crave real human connection. Think about how you're engaging with other businesses. So that means more than ever right now in 2025, you have gotta be attending chamber meetings, you've gotta go to networking events. These networking groups like BNI you've gotta go to. There's all different types, right? Ask chat for the networking groups in your area. Showing up at charity functions, building relationships with local business owners who serve the same audience, positioning yourself as the go to esthetic expert in your area. And the reason for this is because no algorithm change with social can change or take away the power of human to human relationships. All right? Relationships open doors. Relationships create new opportunities. Relationships generate referrals. Relationships are the start of strategic partnerships. Relationships are the the reason that strategic partnerships thrive. And these relationships can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in new business. All right, so try this ChatGPT prompt. Write an introduction email that I can send to a local business like a yoga studio, hair salon, or wellness center to explore a partnership. The goal is to offer value, introduce my spouse services, and start a collaborative conversation. Now, when you're building authentic relationships and not transactional relationships, right? We don't want to be like, I think LinkedIn kind of got this reputation of all those, like random spammy post that just felt very transactional. For a relationship to be fruitful, you have to show up from a place of service, from a place of giving, to learn about other businesses, to frequent other businesses. You've got to give, give and give and give and have no expectation to receive. All right? You want to build a personal relationship and also a professional relationship. They overlap, guys, they overlap. So it's really, really important to have a strategy around. How am I going to show up? How am I going to provide value? What can I do to help others grow? And then it naturally happens that others help you as well. Okay, so friends, AI is here. It is not going anywhere. The spas that adapt, that embrace new strategies and stay ahead of the curve, you're going to thrive. This is going to be amazing for you. This is going to be a record breaking year. But at the end of the day, AI is a tool just like any other piece of software. It is how you use it that will make or break your business. And if you're not, if you're not using it, there's a lot of other spas that are going to be light years ahead of you. All right, so here's my challenge for you. Start using ChatGPT to streamline your marketing. Try the prompts that I shared today and look at how much time you save. Now remember, we've got the link that you can download those 26 prompts below this episode. Download those, use them, test them, refine them, train your chat yourself. Don't rely solely on social media SEO for your leads. All right, We've got to really take control of our referral relationships. We've got to really start to build local community. Right? That is the strongest way. When I ask someone what's the best way that they've built their business, how do they do it? They're always going to say word of mouth, right? Word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth. So why don't we take that and expand upon it in a deeper way? Well, I mean, the reason is everybody's tired, everybody's busy, everyone's overwhelmed, right? So the thought of going to a chamber event or putting yourself out there when you're, you know, I know for me, I don't like to be in a room with a lot of people. I, I just don't. And it can be uncomfortable, it can be scary, it can cause anxiety. But you've got to figure out how to connect. What are the ways that you can connect that you can build relationships? If you don't like being in big rooms, there's ways that you can do it where you can find connections and just go for a one on one coffee, right? Like there is a possibility for every single business owner to do it in a way that works for you. All right? You've got to get out in your community. Now again, I know copying and pasting is a heck of a lot easier than transcribing from this episode. Many of you are listening while you're driving or you're working out. So again, we created that free download for you that has 26 chat GPT prompts that you can use in your business to help with lead flow, to help with marketing, to really streamline those other two areas of social, of ads, of SEO so that you can get out there and get in your community. Okay, now we've got the link right below this episode. Or you, you can go to our Instagram, do aesthetics. We're gonna have a pinned post right up there at the top where you can just comment, chat, and we will DM you with a link to get that freebie. Thank you guys for listening. I will see you next week with more strategies to help you build a profitable spa.
Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast
Episode Summary: SMME #424 - How to Use ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Lead Flow & Future-Proof Your Spa Business
Release Date: March 10, 2025
Host: Daniela Woerner, Licensed Aesthetician, CEO of Atto Aesthetics, and Founder of the Growth Factor Framework Program
In episode #424 of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast, host Daniela Woerner delves into leveraging ChatGPT—a powerful AI tool—to enhance lead generation and ensure the sustainability of spa businesses in an ever-evolving market. Daniela shares her personal experiences, practical strategies, and actionable prompts to help spa owners integrate AI into their marketing efforts effectively.
Daniela opens the discussion by acknowledging the challenges spa owners are currently facing:
“If you feel like it's getting harder and harder to attract new clients... you are not imagining things. It is harder, but it's not impossible.” ([00:30])
Despite these hurdles, Daniela emphasizes that overcoming them is achievable through strategic transformation.
Daniela underscores the massive impact of AI on both business operations and daily life:
“Today ... I wanna pull back the curtain and share exactly how we're using ChatGPT to streamline our content, optimize our lead flow... and focus on building real human to human connections.” ([00:30])
Daniela provides an in-depth look at training and utilizing ChatGPT to align with her brand:
Choosing the Right Version: Recommends the paid version of ChatGPT at $20/month for superior output quality.
“The paid version is $20 a month. It is so worth the $20 a month for the just incredible output that it has.” ([00:30])
Training the AI: Involves uploading brand-specific materials such as podcast transcripts, blog posts, brand style guides, and more to ensure content uniqueness and voice consistency.
“I was simply uploading transcripts from my podcast episodes... and I was also always prompting it to only use my content as a source.” ([00:30])
Utilizing Sidebars: Personal and business-specific sidebars enhance ChatGPT’s utility.
“My husband actually has one that helps him come up with his morning workouts... when we're looking at how we're using this for business, these are the types of things that I was doing.” ([00:30])
Daniela highlights several key advantages gained from integrating ChatGPT into her marketing strategy:
Increased Blog Output: Enhances SEO, leading to more organic leads.
“Our blog output skyrocketed, which meant better SEO and more organic leads.” ([00:30])
Streamlined Content Creation: Facilitates the generation of emails, social posts, and podcast show notes from a single piece of content.
“Whether that's emails, blogs, social posts, they all start from one piece of content.” ([00:30])
Efficiency and Cost Savings: Significant reduction in time and financial resources spent on content creation.
“The time savings and the financial savings are huge.” ([00:30])
Quality Assurance: Daniela maintains high-quality content by refining ChatGPT’s 85-90% accurate outputs with her marketing team.
“It's not perfect, but I would say the output is about 85 to 90% there.” ([00:30])
Daniela explains the importance of diversifying lead sources to mitigate risks associated with relying on a single platform:
Social Media (Primarily Instagram):
Organic and Paid Strategies: Essential for visibility and lead generation.
“Instagram is a key player in spa marketing, especially when it comes to paid ads.” ([00:30])
Google (SEO and Website Optimization):
Search Engine Visibility: Ensuring the spa appears on page one for relevant local search terms.
“Google is still the huge lead driver.” ([00:30])
Referrals and Strategic Partnerships:
Controlled Word of Mouth: Leveraging existing clients and building partnerships to increase referrals.
“Strategic partnerships ... crucial for sustained lead flow.” ([00:30])
“We don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket, so we want leads coming in from all three.” ([00:30])
Daniela shares specific ChatGPT prompts that spa owners can use to enhance their marketing efforts immediately:
Instagram Ad Variations:
“Write three variations of an Instagram ad for my spa that promotes [signature facial membership, new client offer].” ([00:30])
Compliance with Meta's Advertising Policies:
“I need you to analyze my website for potential compliance risks with Meta's new advertising restrictions for 2025...” ([00:30])
SEO-Optimized Blog Posts:
“Generate a thousand-word blog post optimized for SEO on [best skincare treatments for aging skin]...” ([00:30])
Free Resource: Daniela offers a free download of 26 ChatGPT prompts tailored for spas, accessible via their Instagram.
“We have a freebie for you guys with 26 chat GPT prompts for spa... download it at the bottom of this episode.” ([00:30])
Daniela delves into SEO strategies that have yielded tangible results:
Consistent Blogging: Regularly updating the website with relevant content signals to Google that the site is active and valuable.
“Posting blogs consistently tells Google that your website is active, valuable and deserves to be on page one.” ([00:30])
AI Integration: Partnering with SEO experts (e.g., HLM) and utilizing AI to optimize website content.
“AI has been a game changer in our strategy.” ([00:30])
Results Achieved:
“Just two weeks ago, we had eight new leads reach out via our website in one week.” ([00:30])
Beyond digital strategies, Daniela emphasizes the importance of community engagement:
Active Community Participation:
“Be the mayor of your town... get involved in chamber meetings, networking events, charity functions.” ([00:30])
Strategic Partnerships:
Collaborative Efforts: Building alliances with local businesses to expand reach and generate referrals.
“Write an introduction email that I can send to a local business... to explore a partnership.” ([00:30])
Human-to-Human Connections:
Transcending Algorithms: Relationships foster trust and loyalty, which algorithms cannot replace.
“No algorithm change with social can change or take away the power of human to human relationships.” ([00:30])
Daniela wraps up the episode with a compelling call to action:
Embrace AI Tools: Encourage spa owners to integrate ChatGPT into their marketing workflows to stay competitive.
“AI is here. It is not going anywhere. The spas that adapt ... you're going to thrive.” ([00:30])
Utilize Provided Resources: Download and implement the 26 ChatGPT prompts to streamline marketing efforts.
“Download those, use them, test them, refine them, train your chat yourself.” ([00:30])
Focus on Referrals and Community: Diversify lead sources beyond digital channels by fostering community relationships.
“We don't want to rely solely on social media SEO for your leads.” ([00:30])
Access Freebies via Instagram: Direct listeners to Instagram (@doaesthetics) for the free prompt download.
“Go to our Instagram, do aesthetics. We're gonna have a pinned post right up there at the top where you can just comment, chat, and we will DM you with a link to get that freebie.” ([00:30])
Final Encouragement:
“Friends, AI is a tool just like any other piece of software. It is how you use it that will make or break your business.” ([00:30])
Daniela concludes by motivating spa owners to take immediate action, harnessing AI to transform their marketing strategies and build a profitable, future-proof spa business.
By integrating these strategies, spa owners can not only navigate current challenges but also position their businesses for long-term success in an AI-driven landscape.