How to Use Emotions as a Spa Branding Tool

We know that emotion is an important aspect to healing. Countless studies show that positive emotions enhance and speed healing, even overcoming more dire medical circumstances. Happiness and similar emotions contribute to longer life, healthier bodies and more youthful skin.

The olfactory system, or the sense of smell, is intimately linked to our emotional centers. Scent has a profound way of controlling our behavior, based on the memory and emotion identified or linked with the fragrance. Volatile molecules ease their way up the nasal passage and trigger immediate emotional and behavioral response through the limbic system.

Every memory and emotion has a scent attachment. So, all scent comes with emotional reaction and a resulting behavior. This can be a subtle or profound response, triggering a vivid memory, a physical alertness, a joyful inner bliss or feelings of anxiety. The response bypasses intellectual centers, meaning you don’t think about the response; you just respond. This is biology, an evolutionary survival mechanism in all life forms. That’s why scent plays such a significant role as a tool for spa therapists.

Tools for Thought

Emotion is the most consequential force in client retention. Highly charged, positive emotion may elevate mediocre treatment results, just as a negative experience or feeling may override outstanding results. Sales and marketing are all based on emotion. So, consciously or not, emotion is built into your business.

That’s why essential oils are arguably the most holistic tool in a therapist’s repertoire. Although any scent will have emotional and behavioral attachment, essential oils also contain complex, diverse and extensive healing properties. They can be restorative, preventive and address many physical functions of the body, all while delivering emotional stability and balance.

Essential oils also have metaphysical, spiritual and energetic properties. Through this combination of physical healing, emotional balance and scent memory, essential oils become a powerful tool for any holistic health and beauty practice. The power is increased when coupled with the thought, often expressed through verbal cues, of an emotional intention.

For many years, product and business marketing companies have intentionally and successfully used scent branding, the uniquely identified fragrance of a product or business. This identity is mostly subconscious. With awareness, you may find many of your buying decisions are based on fragrance, from laundry detergent to favorite foods to skin care. A scent will produce the feeling associated with that product or business.

Scent branding also triggers behavior. The smell of fried fast food creates the desire that fills the drive-through lane. A craving for popcorn comes from the scent released within the movie theatre. If the association is negative, the person is moved in the opposite direction of that food fragrance or familiar store aroma.

When it comes to spas and wellness centers, each business has an odor that is stored in the olfactory memory of every client who has walked through the doors. Anytime a guest is exposed to the fragrance of your business, an emotional association will be made or felt, often subconsciously.

This is another reason why it’s important to deliver a positive emotional experience. Through scent, you stimulate consumer behavior. The fragrance either fuels a positive feeling—and therefore a positive action such as continued visits and retail sales—or the unwelcome negative association with the consequence of aversion and the loss of a customer.

Make It Yours

Scent branding and directing the aroma of your environment is simply smart business for spas and wellness destinations. Having products designed by or for you with a personalized fragrance, ideally using essential oils, will provide a specific and unique emotional experience for guests. This can lead to great bespoke treatments, client retention, higher pre-booking rates and increased retail sales.

The branded scent can be used in environmental fragrance by diffusing, further enhancing the positive unique experience. It can also be sold as a room spray, allowing the customer to take home the positive emotion associated with your business, stimulating a desire to return.

Even if your products aren’t personalized, they will be associated with you, as the combined scents will produce a distinct aroma for your business environment (although there will certainly be an overlap of familiarity when entering a business using similar products).

Words and verbal cues also produce results, because what you say has physical and emotional impact. Carefully worded explanations create a mental image of how you will reach client desires, expected results and beauty/health concerns. These words must always be in the affirmative, addressing what is wanted rather than what is not wanted. In these words and therapeutic systems, an intention is set that will have its greatest impact when there’s a strong emotional component and an intelligent use of essential oils and scent branding.

Whatever it is you seek, you can create that result with clear intention, combined with a positive strong emotion and a scent association. Using intention, emotion, essential oils and scent branding, a program can be developed to accomplish guests’ goals: beauty, wellness and holistic health.

Emotion is a significant force, and a most effective tool, in achieving total wellness of clients’ bodies and minds—and a spa’s bottom line. 

Jimm Harrison is a master alchemical essential oil and botanical skin care formulator, consultant and educator, with extensive experience and knowledge in the science, art and metaphysical function of essential oils. Harrison has developed private label product formulation, essential oil fragrance branding, and educational content for retail and spas internationally.