Effective Ways to Utilise a Quiet Period in the Salon

Over the past few weeks, we have discussed ways in which to capitalise on Christmas, how to promote in the lead up to it and also how to reward your staff during busy peak seasons. What a contrasting time January is, where business is much quieter and actually you may need a few marketing tips to generate sales in a time where they’re not as guaranteed as they were back in December.

And maybe this isn’t just a time to create sales & new customers, this could also be a time to refresh your salon interior, update your services list and even re-evaluate your company prices. Competitor research is key here to understanding what else is on offer to your clients in the surrounding area and how it is that you can compete with these businesses.

Back to restoring those sales. Rewarding your loyal clients is a number one priority here, as many of them will have spent quite a lot with you over the Christmas period and may be feeling the back-lash of their Christmas spending throughout Jan. But, a great market space for you to sweep in with some promo materials that number 1 - make the client feel valued and number 2 - fill those start of the year calendar gaps. If you are a current software user of ours, great, as you can use our marketing suite to filter out your best-spending clients from November & December. You can then have a look at those clients’ history logs to see what it is they were buying from you over the festive period and also what services they purchase from you regularly. This provides you with an indication of the types of offers that you could promote, especially if there is a pattern with certain popular services. Something like "20% off <certain treatment> before 31st Jan would work, or "visit us in Jan and get your next booking half price"? Throw a little freebie sample in there and this is sure to boost some sales!

VIP event nights are another great way to re-attract clients, and also another way to increase your customer database if you recommend that clients bring along a friend. The aim of the event could purely be to sell as many retail products as possible, and you may offer a couple of treatment tutorials or mini-services throughout the night. Whichever it is, by creating something as a ‘VIP’ event, this instantly makes a client feel rewarded for their custom with you and also elevates their client status by referring to them as 'VIP', as it creates reason for them to hopefully keep spending a lot more with you in the future.

Now we’ve talked about clients that visit you a lot, but what about clients who you haven’t seen for a while? Maybe this is a good opportunity to reach out to those customers and try to get them back-in, especially as in Jan everyone’s social calendars are a bit quieter and we are all in need of a bit of a pamper-month.

With the Salon Tracker marketing suite, you can search for your customers that haven’t visited you in a while with our targeting filters and then maybe it is that you come up with a welcome-back offer to persuade them to revisit? This initially might be something as simple as offering them a free consultation and then 10% off their next booking if they come for a consultation in Jan. These mini 15-20 minute consultations then fill up any smaller calendar gaps that you may have, get some older-faces back in the salon and equally, to an outside view, make the salon seem much busier as well.

Running back over refreshing your salon décor, not only does this create uplifting energy for staff by having everything renovated, it also gives you something to talk about on social media - think of it as a little FREE PR technique. You could write a blog post about 'why you chose to renovate the salon', or simply shout about it on your Facebook & Twitter feeds; “head down to <salonname> to see our beautifully new decorated salon”. Post some Instagram photographs of it, throw a little Champagne/Prosecco reception in there and you’ve created yourself some PR and an event out of it!

Finally, reward the staff! You and your team will have worked extremely hard and around the clock over Christmas, and so what a lovely way to recognise everyone’s achievements during January. Organise a team day out, an evening meal or even just a fuddle at the salon. Team morale is the core of a business and therefore using your quieter months to boost this is a great way to keep your staff, as well as your clients, happy.


Salon Tracker x

PS...we're exhibiting at Professional Beauty London! To register for your FREE ticket click here http://bit.ly/2jBRDdb