The Best Way To Spend The Next 60 Days
Is it time to see if your salon is tracking to become even better in the last half of 2022? Never stop achieving and never stop learning more. This hair salon checklist is your best way to gage whether you need more “umph” or on the right track to ensure you are the best of the best now and in the future. Here are some of the takeaways to ponder:
1. Face to Face or Virtual Consultation
Why not take the time in the next 60 days to review the who, what, when and where of your business? Seek someone you trust and ask them pointed questions about growing your hair salon business. Alternatively, find a company, one that specializes in marketing and revenue growth in the hair salon business and then spend time brainstorming. Instead, the first 45-minute consult should be offered for free and so have your questions ready and some thoughts in place to review your salon’s performance and priorities.
Here is a starter checklist to stimulate your thinking:
Who are we targeting? What makes us unique? Where do we want to be in 1 year, in 5? How will we get there? When will we know we have arrived? Your questions should cover assessing your operation, strategic and tactical evaluation, your annual revenues, methods to reduce expenses, types of marketing programs/plans in the market, social media and if you have an online store, ways to improve the store’s revenue stream.
Try to arrive at achievable goals and timelines. Frequently by taking a step back and thinking of how to grow your hair salon business what emerges are new ideas and customized solutions for helping your salon grow and operate more efficiently. But the important point here is the ideas, whether generated by you or with outside help, they are original, they fresh, one of a kind ideas and customized for preciously your type, size, location and target audience of your hair salon business. This is your competitive edge.
You are creative, and you should have every confidence that you can think of creative ways in which to grow your hair salon business. If you want a second opinion, email us at support@manereview.com. We will reply, there are humans in the office.
3. Txt and Email Communications Campaigns
Because you are running a business, it’s hard to find the time to pull txt and email campaigns together. But it’s a must. In the busy times, clients call you, but in down times clients call less and new clients have to be found.
Your down times are the reason to do these campaigns. During down times, you need to coax business into your salon. If you need to determine your down time, ask these questions: Where do I see needing business? Is there a pattern during the day, day of the week or the week where I need appointments? Is it just before a long weekend or a long holiday break? That is your down time where you need to attract more business. Then begin to create a series of email and txt messages that will promote these time periods.
4. Events with Imagination
Does your hair salon host events? Have you done any at all? Whether staging your own or partnering with others, create innovative ways draw in new clients. You want to see positive results for your BIG effort. If you are committed to doing, you will learn from each event and your events will get better and better. Accept that some will be more successful than others, but this shouldn’t stop you from continuing and learning from each one.
5. Google Reviews Program and Google Profile
How do you turn your clients into your best sales people? If you don’t encourage your clients to write reviews, they may not, even when it is a 5-star experience. Ask them at the end of the appointment or txt your clients requesting they write a review. It improves traffic to your web site.
For finding dream clients and those not aware of your business, try creating a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business Page.)
6. SEO Traffic to the web site
Not all traffic is generated through paying methods. If your site is set up properly for Google Search (and other search engines), your site will be found organically (SEO) also called free search. Locate a list of SEO tactics, to numerous to list here or ask your programmer/designer of your site what they have done to optimize your web site for organic search. Alternatively, we can give you a list of what we are using to increase traffic on our website, just email us at support@manereviews.com There is a digital marketing agency, https://neilpatel.com/ who produces many, many videos on YouTube to support this and other methods of gaining users to the website.
7. Website Development
Reinvigorate what you have but if you launch a new site, ensure the framework is designed in such a way as to make it easy for you or assigned staff to add necessary refinements such as new web pages, adding new content or photos without having to turn it back over to the designers to do, delaying the modification.
Your website is your “hub” to generate business and appointments. The only thing more important to generate business is a direct call to your hair salon to book one. Otherwise, everything drives to the hub and it should be designed so that visitors to your website can quickly feel the energy and see the talent in your salon, can easily make appointments online or can quickly see the phone number to call. To see our graphic illustration of the hub and the drivers of traffic.
Go to https://mindshair.manereviews.com/engage/digital-flow-22055 or CLICK HERE
8. Training and Coaching – Train Yourself to Grow Your Hair Salon Business
Owning a hair salon or working on your own as a hairstylist, is hard at times. Sometimes we need encouragement, sometimes we need training. How much time do you set aside to improve your salon in operation, retail and marketing. How much time do you spend to improve your hair professional’s hair talents, how much do you spend to attend master classes to improve your talents? Consider where you might start to find the coaching or the training you think you are missing to grow your hair salon business. To train yourself to grow you hair salon business, see the training modules at https://mindshair.manereviews.com/category/diy-marketing-5445 or CLICK HERE
9. Social Media Audits and Administration
Social media is the number one activity on almost all hair salon checklists, in particular Instagram. At least annually, ensure that you take a fresh look at why you still use the channels you do and if there should be any reduction of channels used and/or any additional social channels that require your presence. Consider as you ramp up usage that you pay attention to the people resources that are required to feed the channels since this tactic is very labor intensive. Doing a social media audit is one way to know what you are doing successfully on your social channels and what has to be done.
10. Staff Reviews and Recruitment
Ask yourself: How do I motivate the staff and get the best results? How do I identify “indispensable” staff and protect them? How do I minimize the “bump” from anyone’s departure?
What is available to you to develop a culture within the salon aligned with your priorities and goals. What kind of communications is needed to assist you in interacting with your staff. Do you or have you used surveys or questionnaires that empower you to routinely review your staff, establish goals and objectives, determine incentives and performance metrics.
11. Industry Dedicated Jobs Board
Use a dedicated salon job board from sites like manereviews.com, to see jobs or post job opportunities. The job board enables you to define and describe the candidate(s) you are looking for. In addition, the jobs posted to the board provide you a frame of reference for what others are looking for in candidates as well as who is out there looking for a position. Check out https://manereviews.com/jobs to get started. or CLICK HERE
12. Automated Appointment Software
Clients say this is a game changer. Easily accessible on your website, software reconfirms appointments by txt or email in real time, reschedules or offers cancel options by the client. A final confirmation is included along with a link to a destination of the salon’s choice (website, social media site, landing page etc)
Also ensure the booking software you choose provides options to set the alert associated to your confirmations (a day, 2 days, or 3 days before the appointment) In other words do your communications for appointments allow you time to fill a canceled appointment or refill the spot opened due to rescheduling, for example?
13. E-commerce/Shopping Cart Software
This is a hands-off way to increasing passive revenue. Once set up, your clients order online, avoids processing fees and increases sales directly from the salon’s web site. Either you manage or an outside party does, but you should locate a service where you keep 100% of the revenue.
An e-commerce platform empowers you to showcase products to your clients for which you can inform and educate them on their benefits, types of hair appropriate for, seasonal applications, and so on. Furthermore, you can take an order for a product you need not keep in inventory and then simply purchase in response to customer orders. In addition, there is every opportunity to take advantage of the public trend to order online and pick up on location. Every opportunity to have a client visit your salon and engage with you creates an opportunity for an appointment for services.
14. Marketing Plan Development and Implementation
In a post pandemic environment so much has changed with the public's habits and priorities. Today a successful salon needs to take into account whether people are working from home or office or both (this affects appointment frequency and timing that in turn affects your staffing). You need to take into account people's use of online tools for appointments and general communications, reviews, social sharing, what hair services are predominant currently, how frequent customers may book appointments - all these things underscore the benefit to you to create a marketing plan and determine what you need to say and do, and when, in order to effectively ensure a continuous flow of customers.
15. Revenue Review
Are you getting the most out of what you do? The questions may be simple...when did you last review your services and pricing, are your retail sales what they should be, have you done any promotions lately, do you bundle services and products, do you offer a referral incentive program to your regulars, and so on. How often do you look at every "touchpoint" in your salon to determine whether there are revenue opportunities you are benefitting from or losing out on?
16. Operational Review
Do you take the time to look at how many cancellations you had in the last week, or take a critical look at time spent executing various services, or whether clients are informed and educated on the products they should be using to best maintain their "salon" experience.
By looking at every "touchpoint" a client experiences from the time they enter your salon until they leave, there is every opportunity to maximize your revenue and minimize your costs by reviewing what takes place and asking of yourself what can be done better. A regular operational review utilizing a prepared plan keeps your salon in "shape" while minimizing the effort required.
17. Customized Surveys
Embrace the technology available to you, such as https://www.surveymonkey.com/ to ask your staff and clients feedback on any of the things you'd like to know. Keep surveys short and to the point and you will experience greater degrees of participation than you anticipated. For example, inquire of clients that you haven't seen in 6 months whether their hair care habits have changed, whether they'd be interested in coming to see you for a consultation, whether they are working from home or the office, and so on. A survey is a way of reaching out and showing that you care and are interested while recognizing and respecting the information you glean from the survey. Surveys are also an indication of your relationship with your clients and staff. If you get a high number of responses or a very low number of responses - either way tells you how engaged with you your clients or staff are.
18. Management of your Customer Data
When was the last time you used your client list or made sure it was up to date? When did you last use the list for referrals? Frequently using these tactics, assures you will deliver above average results and talking to the most prospective clients as possible.
Do you have your clients' cell numbers and email addresses? Having this information empowers you to reach people in multiple ways and provides you greater flexibility in your messaging and ways to reach the people most important to you.
MANEreviews.com is a marketing communications company for the North American hair professional. For salon suite franchisees, independent hair salons and self-employed stylists, the platform and the dedicated MANEreview’s team help grow your hair salon business.