National Hairstylist Appreciation Day 2016!

It’s that time of year again, the day that is celebrated nationally, recognising the hard work and commitment of all the great stylists out there – its National Hairstylist Appreciation Day! For those of you who followed our news page last year, you may remember that we shared our top 21 points that we need to thank our hairdressers for (and if you didn’t catch that, here’s the link http://bit.ly/1Ag8zqh ). This year, we’ve opted for something a little different. As National Hairdressers is celebrated on April 30th each year, we thought that we’d post a little earlier this time, giving you guys some ideas as to how you can celebrate it in the salon and also, use it to promote your business as well! So, here goes…

Appreciation Day Event

The great thing about this year is the national day falls on a Saturday, which is brill in terms of the custom that you would have in on a weekend and also, a fab day to host an event! Advertising your event is also easy, for all of you who are already on Facebook, create an events page which is free to do and list the details to all of your followers. If you have salon software, send out a bulk SMS or email campaign, for a small price you can target hundreds of clients and see the return across the weekend. If neither of the above apply to you, you have always got the traditional paper marketing method, send out postcards to your clients’ addresses, places like Vista print usually have great deals on and it’s often nice for a client to receive something through the post- as it’s quite a rarity nowadays!

Event ideas; you could have a champagne reception for all clients on arrival, with a non-alcoholic equivalent for the kids and some sweets or cupcakes? You could do a re-booking offer, where if customers re-book that day they receive a small discount on their next appointment. Or even run a ‘specials list’ across the weekend, where certain treatments are a cheaper value for ‘one weekend only.’ They are just a few ideas but obviously, you guys will know what has worked well for you in the salon before so National Appreciation day is another excuse to throw another fantastic event!

Goody Bags

A way to recognise the celebration and also, a way to 1. Make clients feel valued and 2. Promote your own treatments & retail products. Some of the beauties of salon goody bags are that you can hand out product samples to prompt clients to buy next time and also, include vouchers or money-off coupons to persuade them to book further treatments. You can get gift bags personalised for a small cost on eBay or on paperbagco, which not only makes the bag feel more luxury, it also increases brand awareness.

Rewards

For any salons that currently have a reward or loyalty scheme, why not create a one-off reward for clients based on the national event. It could worth as little as £5.00 or 10% off. The message could be something like; “We’re celebrating national hairstylist appreciation day & we’d like you to join us…book before <whichever> date to receive £5.00 off your next treatment?” If you push something like this to clients, especially those of you who currently have a mobile app or an SMS marketing feature, you are likely to see return pretty quickly as the message will be received instantly!

Competition

Always a great one to generate brand awareness and a bit of fun between clients. Set up some rules that clients have to abide by to enter, for example it may be £1.00 to enter their details, then all the money generated you could put towards the winning client having a treatment or perhaps vouchers for somewhere- good for any of you salons that team up with other local businesses in the area. Alternatively, you could host a free competition, by adverting this on your social media sites and getting clients to take part by commenting their names below. Another great idea, to boost some team morale, why not host a little competition between you and your colleagues? Up the price of entry a little bit, say £5.00 and depending how big your salon team is, contribute some of the money towards a team night out and the rest towards a little gift for the winner!

Happy Hairstylist Appreciation Day, we hope you have lots of fun celebrating! And to our own hairdressers…here’s to you, thank you!

Salon Tracker x