Your go-to guide on how to establish your new Salon in the best way

We know that opening a new Salon can be challenging at the best of times, in fact so challenging that it is a proven fact that roughly 1 in 3 small business fail within the first 2 years of opening. Which is exactly why we have come up with our very own Salon Bible for all you newbies out there. Something you can rely on to guide you through to an exciting, successful Salon!

First of all, you need to make sure that your salon looks the best it can be; inside and out!

This doesn’t necessarily mean splashing the cash on luxurious interior décor but instead, especially in the beginning; focus on the cleanliness and marketing of your new salon. A mistake new salon owners often make is spending their needed cash on overly-priced luxurious furniture which can be bought later on when the salon is well established and booming with revenue. As for the outside, make sure it's always clean of litter and make use of free marketing by advertising what you offer on posters in the window. Top tip - Make offers and lots of them in the early days of your Salon opening. This will entice clients in and encourage re-booking to keep the revenue flowing! In the beginning; limit your budget and spend it wisely. Have a look at the cash you have available to spend on establishing the salon and set a reasonable limit for each important factor. Remember, you need to spend a large amount of the budget on the marketing of your new salon because if your possible clientele aren't aware that you even exist, how will you generate a sufficient revenue? And speaking of marketing, make sure you prepare in advance for the opening of your Salon and begin to promote it at least 3 weeks prior to opening.

A marketing plan is fundamental to a successful salon.

Essentially, a marketing plan for the year would be ideal. However, if you’re running out of time, create a marketing plan for quarterly periods. For example, Jan-March and April-June etc. Make time behind the scenes to really work on these marketing plans and ensure there are no gaps. Once you’ve completed your marketing plan you will feel much better and prepared walking into your salon on the official opening day. You can find tips and tricks on how to create the perfect marketing plan here - http://ow.ly/m4AW30hFhhF.

Work on it, not just in it.

Leadership is the very foundation to heading for a successful salon. You need to lead the way and guide the salon through the good times and the bad times. A common error in Salon Start ups is thinking you constantly need to be in the salon and do the most work inside of it. Wrong! Yes, being in the Salon and being familiar with the clients is important as it helps with customer retention but what goes on behind the scenes is what keeps your Salon running! What I’ve found and what the majority will agree with me on is the fact that I tend to find a Salon with active social media pages presenting good content will always be more trustworthy than a Salon that doesn’t. “Good content” includes a variety of posts, blogs, tips, competitions, offer advertisement along with well-advertised opening times, updated price lists, and services that the Salon has to offer. Additionally, reviews play a big part of your social media compilation. They give potential clients an insight into the quality of service you give and places a level of trust into the business - meaning the more good reviews you get, the more clients you will get! Our system provides a feature allowing you to link your Facebook review page directly to our marketing section, entitling you to send automated text messages with a friendly reminder to review your Salon 2 days or so after their appointment.

We understand that all this may be a lot to take in, but once you’re on the right track and your business is booming… all the effort you’ve put in to ensure your Salon is successful will seem minuscule!

Perhaps booking onto a management course will help you get a better understanding of what it takes to be a successful business owner or a cheaper method of doing this would be to shadow a salon owner for a day, take notes and ask if you could occupy your time with some of the owner’s main responsibilities of running the salon and ask for some feedback afterwards. Lastly, speak to lots of new and old entrepreneurs and ask them for tips and advice, what they would have done differently and what they did successfully. Following all this you should be good to go and well on your way to establishing your Salon in the very best way possible!

Good luck!

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