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!

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