Last Minute Up-selling and Easter Promo Ideas

Easter is arriving later for us this year, but this is a brilliant benefit to all you salon owners as you are in the height of spring and we all know that this is a great time of year for business. The mild weather begins, there are all the May bank hols approaching and many clients have got their late-spring holidays booked, so they’re looking to you for their pre-holiday pampers!

You may have read our post a couple of weeks ago where we looked at spring marketing advice. This week we’re going to discuss last minute promotions for your Easter campaigns, including retail up-selling!

A great planning technique for the Easter period, especially when it is later in the year, is to take advantage of upcoming events that are happening around the same time. One that’s always a winner is wedding season! Lots of people arrange their weddings from mid-April through to October, and so what a great way to tie-in your Easter discounts for those whose weddings are soon approaching? You’ll be tying 2 event discounts under one, saving you money in the long run – winning!

And it’s like we always say, if you are going to discount then national holidays are a great time to do so, as everyone will be holding some kind of promotion or event. This way you’re not differentiating yourselves from competitors as the ‘salon that discounts’ as everyone will be! Try to tactically discount though, for example promote your least popular or really expensive treatments, to improve their desirability a little.

Spring is always a good time for clients to freshen up, maybe they perhaps go for a new lighter style and experiment with the latest trends. Create something as simple as an E-Newsletter or an SMS marketing campaign that you can use to advertise your latest Spring-services to clients. Maybe add a link to your Instagram page or website to showcase your client testimonials, or your service gallery to entice clients even further.

And furthermore, SMS marketing is extremely important and useful in itself aside from just reaching clients with newsletters. SMS is an instant and direct way to communicate with clients throughout the Easter and Spring period, whether this be for event notifications, info on a new product, to advertise a new discounted service or even simply just to wish your clients a ‘Happy Easter’. A little message often goes a long way and therefore planning SMS marketing in to your Easter campaigns is definitely something that we would recommend.

We’ve always said that we believe that the key to excellent retail sales is how the products themselves are presented. Think about it, if you go in to a clothing store, you see an outfit displayed on a mannequin that you may never have looked twice at before - but you then go out of your way and find that particular top, or pair of trousers for a second look. Similarly if you go in to a Supermarket, you see a messy isle of confectionery, with no prices displayed and only a few lone products remaining on the shelves. This scenario would be off-putting, and therefore this is why the visual presentation of your products is key to the success of add-on sales. Ideas that we have include:

· Gift Table – Highlight your products on a table display, maybe with gift decorations, some fancy Easter accessories and ensure that these are in the direct eye-line of your customers when they are entering and leaving the salon.

· Festive Décor – I recently visited a hotel and they had lots of really simple Easter trees with little self-decorated eggs as baubles scattered around the communal guest areas. For me, this was a really lovely touch as it made the place feel really welcoming and homely, so much so we stayed for a couple of drinks in the guest lounge before eating out in the City. From that personal experience, I would definitely recommend some festive detail, it’s definitely true that atmosphere improves consumer spending habits, as I have fallen straight in to the category recently!

· Promote your Best Sellers! Run a report and see which of your retail products are really selling well, make sure that these are primarily displayed above all other products, as the likelihood is that the buying patterns of your customers are likely to be similar and this way you will hopefully sell more of that particular range.

· Give promo discounts to those who are willing to leave a bit of feedback! For example, you could create some mini feedback cards, offering clients the chance to give you feedback in 1 sentence. That way it is a quick-fire easy process, and then in return you could offer the client a little Easter treat, such as a retail product mini or even just some complimentary sweets. What’s in it for you? – If the client likes the samples, they are likely to come back and purchase the product in its actual size, and you have also bagged yourself some free mini-testimonials in the process. Great for if you ever need some snappy quotes from existing clients for any promo-materials!


So if you needed a bit of last-minute inspiration, we hope these little pointers help you to really push those sales this weekend and through in to Spring/Summer. It really is true, the more you invest in marketing in your business, the higher the return of that investment will be. And some marketing techniques may work better for some business than others, so use this Spring to A/B test a couple and if you find some strategies work better than others, you know to implement these in to your seasonal plan for next year!


Happy Easter! 

Salon Tracker x