Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Make Your Summer Sales Sizzle!

Summer, Summer, Summer time!

A time for most to sit back and unwind as Will Smith sang a decade ago! For our industry it is time to heat things up!

This can be a down time of year for your sales or a great time of year for your sales! The choice is yours.

What is important to note is that now is the time to make plans so that your summer sales sizzle!

Here’s how:

Analyze: Look back on past sales trends for June – August. Go back at least the last 2-3 years depending upon the data you can collect. Review service sales trends, retail sales trends and client traffic trends. The numbers will give you a great place to plan from.

What’s Happening Now: What is happening in your business right now? What does your budget say that you need to work on during the summer? Consider whether you have new hires or people you are building as well as any new services or products you are offering?

Color It Up: Summer is always a great time to drive your color business and glossing business due to the lightening effects of the sun. Showcase this strategically in your marketing efforts.

It’s Time To Travel: Many people travel and vacation this time of year. You can and should be capitalizing on this! Offer gift certificate specials for pre and post maintenance and pampering to support their travels. You can also offer retail travel kits with travel size shampoo & conditioners include small hand sanitizers, handi-wipes, travel size aspirin and other accessories. Have fun with it!

Remember that this is a time of year when people think about taking time off. Don’t just okay vacation to everyone at the same time or you will be in for some lean months ahead. By taking the time now to get your team focused on the summer it can become a great sales period in your year and give you a great boost to build upon for the rest of the year!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Salon and Spa Marketing -TRY it and TRACK it before you TRASH it!

Recently, I met another salon owner who was struggling, like many of you, on how to get new clients and grow revenue. Although an optimist at heart she was beginning to become discouraged by her marketing efforts. Incremental growth was not enough; she needed hyper growth and she needed it fast.

We talked for quit awhile about what she had tried and where she may have gone wrong. Over the past year she had implemented dozens of marketing initiatives to gain new clients. Unfortunately she had little hard data to provide evidence as to whether or not her initiatives were working. I reminded her that numbers don’t lie and in the absence of numbers we rely on our feelings. Although valid, feelings unfortunately, do not provide the complete perspective needed for making sound decisions.

When you consider your marketing initiatives for your salon and spa remember the old saying, “different strokes for different folks”. In other words, what works for one salon or spa may not work for yours. You’ve got to be resourceful. If you’ve tried something and it didn’t work find out why, change it and re-launch it. If you attempted to get into a business through the owner, manager, front desk, etc. only to be met with a NO, then try another approach. Think about the clients you do have and find one that can open the door for you. What ever you do remember that you cannot TRASH an idea until you TRY it and TRACK it. Once you’ve assessed the success or failure of a marketing initiative then and only then can you determine its success or failure.

Most importantly, don’t make marketing difficult. Use your team to support you in developing and launching each marketing initiative. After all, they too will benefit from the efforts. Below you will find some additional suggestions for planning and implementing your next successful initiative.

  • Schedule a meeting with your team and collectively come up with ways to gain new clients. Start by asking, who is our ideal client? Where do they work? Where do they play? Where do they eat, workout, go to church, etc.
  • Then think of the ways to gain access to those clients. How can you get in front of them? What would interest them in you? Get into their minds and think about what they would want, expect and need in order to try your salon and spa over someone else’s. 
  • Create a six month plan and select one initiative per month to focus on. 
  • Track your success. Keep a binder at the front desk with a manual tracking form. Track things such as: clients name, service provider, promotion used, services received, products purchased, appointment rebooked, thank you sent, etc. The more information you collect the more you can determine if your marketing promotion was successful or not.
So remember; when determining if a marketing promotion will work for you take the time to TRY it and TRACK it before you TRASH it!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Know the SPAM Laws Before You Press SEND

Did you know there are rules govering your use of the internet for communicating with your current and potential clients? Before launching any internet marketing campaign for your salon or spa, it is very important to become aware of and adhere to the U.S. CAN-SPAM of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act). Sounds pretty severe for governing an innocent email to your clients about a holiday special, but the guidelines are pretty simple:

  • The To and From information must be accurate.
  • You cannot mislead the recipient about what is in the content of the message.
  • Recipients must be given the option of removing themselves from your mailing list.
  • Your message must be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's physical postal address.
Several software options exist to manage your e-blasts, such as Constant Contact.