Muscles, man waxing and moustaches... the life of a metro-sexual male!

The main things you need to know about the male health and beauty market…

“Male grooming might not be the biggest market, but it’s definitely the fastest growing as it becomes much more acceptable for men to care about how they look” (John Vial- Fudge Creative Director). Beauty and health salon owners, generally, tend to target their treatments toward the female market because females tend to spend more time in the salon. However, we can see from all kinds of beauty, health, fitness and tanning products that it is becoming more acceptable for men to undergo treatments and, really take care of their self-regimes. Now more than ever, with the acceptance of this, men represent a key target market for health and beauty salons in pursuit of a better self-image. This is largely derived from the celebrity market with plenty of celebrities discussing how they clear spots, prevent wrinkles, tan their skin or build muscle.

So what are the basic facts you need to know?

In a survey of 2,000 salon goers, male salon goers cited concern over physical appearance as the main reason for indulging in treatments, in contrast to women, who said feeling good was more important. Therefore, services and products aimed at the male market should focus, articulate and appeal on the aesthetic benefits to further appeal to men.

How can I sell my products?

Men tend to use basic functional products, such as face washes and slap on moisturiser balm after a shave. They tend to be less convinced on the benefits of more complicated products from a good brand. Unlike females, men usually look at the immediate benefit in buying a product rather than the brand. Therefore, if he can sense it is a good product, he will indeed go on to purchase. Demonstrating the effectiveness of moisturisers, anti-ageing creams and serums may be the key to achieving sales, especially as men may feel reluctant to purchase these products in a retail environment. Therapists should take special care to explain which products they are using during treatments and how they work to male clients. Salon Tracker allows you to capture and store client data, including purchase history, making it easier to up and cross sell products in the future.

The purchasing power of female clients...

Women represent important purchasers of men’s products. Therefore, by offering a range of men’s lines in your salon you can tap into the market by cross selling to your female clients. If your clients have developed allegiances to a particular brand the chances are they will be persuaded that the men’s range is just as good. Again, providing samples for their husbands and partners to try could help overcome male conservatism towards beauty products.

How we can help...

Salon Tracker is a salon management software package which allows you to store, track and communicate with customers in one easy-to-use system. We can gather information on client history so you increase your retail sales and chance of a returning customer. Call us today on 0113 350 8230 for your FREE trial and watch how we improve your business!
 

Instantly improve your business!

Increase Customer Loyalty

Loyalty of customers is vitally important especially during difficult economic times. Your best immediate sources of additional profits and increased business are your existing customers. They know you, they trust you, hopefully they've enjoyed doing business with you, satisfying the experience is key to maintain customer loyalty. 

It is normally five to ten times easier to get an existing customer to buy from you again than it is to get someone to buy from you for the first time. Salon Tracker can help you with this by simplifying the process of capturing, storing and organising client data. Salon Tracker allows you to store all client details in one place, such as hair type, colouring history and even how your client takes their tea, allowing you to personalise your service. Knowing client information allows you to tailor your service to individual clients ensuring they receive the ultimate service experience, consequently heightening customer loyalty. Every client is valuable and important, even if they only visit twice a year, this can be shown through remembering them which is made easy with the use of Salon Trackers record system. 

Improve Marketing Campaigns

SalonTracker allows you to target your customers direct, fast and low cost with the use of the inbuilt sophisticated SMS marketing suite. As the system stores clients purchase history and personal details it allows you to market to them more effectively. SalonTracker allows you to create a contact mailing lists from your client database using any criteria you want, for example you may want to target irregular customers with a 20% off promotion in order to encourage a repeat visit, SalonTracker software will allow you to select these clients from your whole client base rather than offering the discount to all customers and losing a large percentage of the profit. This feature will help you target your clients more effectively and reduce the wastage associated with the one deal fits all campaign. 

Run Effective Advertising

It is essential that you measure the response to all of your advertising in order to evaluate whether or not it represented a viable investment and to shape your future investment decisions. SalonTracker’s advanced business reports will enable you to compare monthly/weekly sales and service figures allowing you to distinguish whether you campaigns have increased salon visits and most importantly your profits. 

Utilize the Power of the Internet

Businesses can reach a vast audience online quickly and more effectively than traditional marketing methods and online booking has fast become an essential feature for businesses in these modern times. Providing online booking will help increase you’re booking rates as it will enable your clients to book in their own appointment 24 hours a day regardless of whether your salon is open or not. In a bid to drive as many customers as possible to your appointment book SalonTracker’s online booking service will also integrate with your Facebook business page, meaning the cost of buying and maintaining a website will not be essential in order to take advantage of our online booking service. Facebook sees over 600 million people logging onto their social media account daily, therefore providing salons with the perfect framework to target and secure client bookings.

It is also important to use email marketing effectively; many businesses still do not collect the email addresses of everyone who contacts them. Every time a business fails to capture someone’s email address they’re turning down the opportunity to contact them for FREE, for weeks, months and years ahead. Once you have Email Addresses – use them! You can use email to thank people for their business, make them a special offer, give them a free article or report, send a newsletter, recommend a product or service they may be interested in, ask for referrals, share some news that may be interested in or ask why they’ve not done business with you.

Have your 14 day free trial of SalonTracker and see for yourself how it can instantly improve your business.

COMPETITION WINNER!

We are very pleased to announce our winner:

BEVERLEY FLOYD @ CAPITAL BEAUTY, PORTSTEWART 

The winner of our ‘Enterprise’ Software Package Competition. 

Thank you to all of you who have entered our competition and we have some exciting news for all those who have taken part very soon…

Please keep checking back for further information! 

The Salon Tracker Team! x

Party of the year!

So 2014 has some brought some pretty serious showbiz events. Our Instagram feeds have been taken over from the likes of The Met Ball, The Kimye Wedding and Fashion Week!

So in the run up months to a huge bout of showbiz events in the hair and beauty industry, we thought it would be a good idea to think outside the marketing box and look at the benefits (and fun) hosting an event can have for your business! Not only can you reach out to loyal clients but it also works in good stead to build a new following at a relaxed and fun environment. So where do you start to gain fantastic PR for a potential event? Let’s lesson into the 6 imperative ‘Party P’s’ of event planning that you are going to need...

                        -  Plan
                        -  Prepare
                        -  Promote
                        -  Props
                        -  Pep-Talk
                        -  PARTY!

Plan- Firstly it is important to understand hosting a party will not organised overnight, even if you are a socialite! One of the biggest obstacles is putting together a strategic marketing plan, guest list, delegation tasks and idealistic outcomes you wish to achieve. Are you going to work with a charity? How much will you charge on the door? Will it be in the summer or winter months? When is your peak in business? What will be your decorative theme? To organise a successful party there should be months of implemented planning and ideas in order to prepare a magnificent evening for all parties. That being said, it is hugely important to have an events team who will be prepared to regularly meet with motivation and enthusiasm.

Prepare- After planning with your chosen team, you should have shortlisted a number of venue’s whether it be an in-salon event, the local community centre or a function room at the Hilton. Each venue has its perks and can be tailored for start-up salons or well established. Preparing the venue, guest list and invites are all fundamental to the prepare stage. By the second stage everything should be organised in thorough detail even down to whether you will provide food such as fruit bowls in the summer or mince pies in the winter. Most successful salon events combine expert advice, shopping opportunities, demonstrations and little-big touches!

Promote- Promoting the event is key to create a hype about the event, so therefore should be done long before the evening. Use SMS Marketing, word of mouth, hard invites, emails, letters, in-salon promotion, raffles, reception desk print, local media print, your website or social media. There are so many options that can be done at a non-expensive cost. The aim is to show people what they could potentially be missing and this is how you will ensure a high attendance. Be creative and personal with your promotion! Don’t let this stage catch you out, the trick is to find the balance between too much and just enough.

Props- Think promotions, treatments and goodie-bags. Clients love little freebies and appreciate the generous effort behind them so use them as a main enticement. Make sure you load goodie-bags up with leaflets, promotions and offers at the salon as well as what you have at the event. Why not run a month long promotion where if people book at the event they get 40% off or a free selected treatment. This way they can see what they are gaining by booking early. Props is not just beauty, hair or tanning related. You need to think about what you might need at the event such as toilet signs, raffle tickets, badges with your staff’s name on are all important little touches which show effort and thought process and will in turn be a great reflection on the business.

Pep talk- When it comes to the event, make sure your team is knowledgeable on their individual role, what they need to do to upsell, promote and establish a reputable aura of your business. Have friends or family on hand who can point people in the right direction or get attendees to fill in a contact form so you can add them to your database. Arrange for staff to advise guests on which products and treatments will suit them and their skin tone or find out what they are looking for.  Targeted professional advice is much more appreciated than being in sales mode. Remind all staff to upload photos to Twitter and Facebook throughout the night or even get guests to tag themselves in to win a FREE beauty package worth £100.

PARTY!!!- Work hard, play hard! Network and speak with new people and friends. Enjoy the evening’s professions. Events still have an element of personality in them so this should be projected with fun giving your team a platform to showcase what they can do also works wonders for morale. Whether the evening attracts 20 or 200 people, be optimistic! Each attendee has paid an entry fee and if you follow the ‘6 P’s’ will have had an enjoyable evening so expect to see this back through your client loyalty. Even if you receive a few extra retail figures, raised money for a local charity or filled the appointment book for January, it was an all-round success.

LA Tanning FAQ's

If you offer spray tans at your salon and your solution isn't quite providing......... LA Tanning have got together a few FAQ's for their products so that you can provide your clients with the perfect bronzed glow for summer! 

Frequently asked questions to LA Tanning

1. Which solution is the best?

Different tan’s suit different skin tones and people have different preferences so it is hard to say. Our biggest sellers are the two 10% solutions, both are designed for fair to medium skin tones but one is a golden natural shade and the other is a more noticeable brown shade.

2. How many full bodies will I get from 1 litre?

Everybody is different shapes and sizes so naturally you will use more or less on individual clients. A guide to usage would be between 50ml and 75ml so you should get at least 14 full body tans.

3. Does the solution have an expiry date?

The solution we dispatch is always fresh stock. Stored correctly, the shelf life on an unopened bottle is 12 months and on an opened bottle will be around 6 months.

4. How do I store my solution?
Solution must be stored in a cool, dark area and not exposed to natural light. Always keep the lid on the bottle to avoid oxidation which would cause the solution to deteriorate. Shake well before use.

5. Does LA tan solution contain any parabens or alcohol?
No, our solutions are paraben and alcohol free. They do however contain skin nourishing ingredients such as aloe vera gel, white & green tea extracts and vitamins B3, B5, B6, C and E.

6. Does LA tan solution have a colour guide?
Yes, our tans do have a dark colour guide except our gold range which has a light colour guide to help the technician create a perfect tan.

7. Do your machines come with a warranty?
Yes, all our machines come with a 12 month warranty.

Salon Tracker COMPETITION!

If you are passing through our blog, why not take a quick 30 seconds out of your time to enter our competition to win FREE Salon Software! http://bit.ly/1liie8P

COMPETITION TIME!! 
Enter your details for the chance to WIN Salon Tracker's most premium software package for your salon usually priced at £1299! It just takes 30 seconds to input your information so what have you got to lose? 

Ready, Set, GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!