Whichever it is for you, either way, we’re already half way through this year already, can you believe that! It’s officially less than 6 months till the next peak season, Christmas! So, this week we wanted to discuss how you can evaluate your last 6 months of business and how you can use this evaluation to plan wisely for the upcoming half of the year!
Now, for a new business or if you have started out in the last 2 years, these 6 monthly checks are absolutely essential, as your business will change more and more in the first couple of years. And also, if your business is going to survive, you need to make sure that you get off to a great start in the first 18 months, for your revenue to be sustainable enough to get you established in the market and to start turning some profit around! Those of you that have been trading a long time, it’s always good to monitor your progress and run business analysis on a regular basis. So, let’s have a look at how you can review the first half of your year and what you can do to ensure that you are just as, or even more successful this next half!
Sales Progress:
The main one, sales. As they are the sole contribution to your business turnover and of course, your lovely profits – the ultimate aim of the game! So, if you’re a current user of Salon Tracker, we have several sales reports that you can use and run for each month, in order to track your best sales periods and also identify where you may have been quieter. Similarly, we also have sales by day and hour charts, enabling you to analyse these figures even more closely, by looking at which days of the week are your busiest and then also your peak footfall times of those days. If you don’t currently use Salon Tracker, no problem, use your current reporting tools and accountancy software to gather the same monthly sales figures, to give you a rough idea of when you are busy and when you could perhaps use a bit of a sales-boost!
Once you have recognised your peak and quieter times, you can then start to plan appropriate promotional strategies to implement going forward, to ensure you increase footfall during your less busy hours. A method that we have seen that has proven to work for some of our clients is running a: ‘Happy Hour’ or a ‘Bring-a-friend’ campaign. Market these to your clients via SMS or social media and then after say 3 months’ time, run the same monthly reports to marry up whether you are now making more money during those times that you had identified to be quiet. Then, work out how much it has cost you to run that campaign, including the discount you are offering on your usual RRP’s. Then, if the sales revenue outweighs the marketing cost and you can see a positive return, you know that the campaign was worth it!
Retail Sales:
Social Media Following/Engagement:
Facebook is the new Google, especially in the salon and retail industry! It’s just a given now, you must be active on social media in order to become established. We’ve found through research that a lot of salon and retail clients research a company on social media and look at their Facebook reviews before deciding whether to use their services. It is therefore so important that you have an active business profile on social networks and that these are regularly updated, to ensure that your content is always current.
So, how do you track your social media progress? The majority of social networks now have their own analytics reports, with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter all having their own insights, where you can track follower rates and your engagement over certain time periods.
And so, similarly to what we have mentioned to do with your sales tracking, it’s the same with your social media. Run the analytics reports for each of your networks, for say the first half of this year, and then do the same for each month of the year too. From this, you can then identify what times of day you got the most engagement, so for example post likes, comments and shares. This information allows you to recognise your popular social media patterns, so you know when you should be posting in the future to get similar, if not better results. Another good insight to look at is your following. So, identify how your social following has grown and whether there is any correlation between your posts and then your follow rate. From this you can determine which times of day and when in the week you should be sharing posts, in order to improve this following even further for the upcoming half of the year. Another good idea would be to request testimonials from some of your loyal clients, as positive and genuine feedback on your social networks also contributes highly to your following and client retention. Your business needs to be transparent on social media, to attract the attention of people that may not have seen you yet. You can then run these same social insights just after Christmas to see whether anything has improved for you!
Measuring Targets:
For those of you that read our blogs regularly, you’ll know that back in Jan we posted a couple of blogs about establishing your salon and also planning for the New year. (You can re-catch those here if you want to refresh your memory >>> https://bit.ly/2CKpsl3 and https://bit.ly/2L89Nk2)
So, now we’re half way through, to refer back to those previous posts; we discussed setting yourself some targets and reviewing these perhaps quarterly, or half-yearly. So, now is the perfect time to review your progress of those! Have you met your targets, or are you any closer to achieving your annual goals? If so, fantastic! However, if you find that you’re a little bit behind where you want to be, use the analysis of your sales to look at peak times to take advantage of and run some fresh marketing campaigns around these time-frames.
Staff:
Do you have regular reviews with your employees? As much as we discuss tracking your sales, it’s also just as important to see how your staff are getting on, as these are the next most important factor to the success of a business. You can’t generate or manage your sales without your employees and so it is essential for you to ensure that staff are happy and comfortable in their job role. A happy workplace = more motivated staff and this contributes to your sales progress. The more you review your staff, praise and thank them for what is going well, but also give them feedback on areas for improvement; this allows your employees to recognise their value within your workplace. But not only that, it also contributes to improving on their own personal development. If you invest in your team, they will invest in you. Another thing to think about, when was your last team night out? If you haven’t had one in a while, plan your next staff social, as it’s always good to get your team together out of the work environment to boost morale!
We hope that this post will help you to evaluate your recent business performance this year and get you in good stead for the remaining half. However, if there is any other way in which we could help you please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our lovely marketing team, who are always on hand with some top tips for you! Catch them on 0113 350 8230 or at info@salontracker.co.uk. Happy planning and enjoy the rest of your Summer!
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