How to Utilise Quiet Periods in the Salon

This time last month I’m guessing you were rushed off your feet, and now maybe not so much... For many of you, January tends to a quieter month where sales can be quite slow, so this is where you need to use all the marketing tools you can to ensure that you’re still generating those sales. January also gives you the time to re-evaluate your salon, this could be by updating the pricing, looking at new services and retail products you might want to introduce, giving the walls a fresh lick of paint and just reflecting on the last year to see what you could do even better!

There are multiple approaches you could take in your quiet periods to really boost those sales: 1. Aim to get new customers in 2. Reward you most loyal customers 3. Target those that haven’t visited your salon for a while 4. Refer a friend.

Aiming for New Customers

Obviously, you’re always wanting to get new customers in, but you might not always have time to sending out marketing campaigns and really push to get those new customers in your salon. And January gives you the perfect time to do this. Social media, as we all know, has become one of the best places to market your salon on, especially Facebook, as it gives you a free platform to post all of your offers and campaigns on. An example of a campaign that you could run would be a discount of their first visit, for example you might offer £10 off or 30% discount, whatever you feel most comfortable offering! This is a great way to get new customers into the salon, who doesn’t love a discount?

Rewarding Loyal Customers

Seeing customers return to your salon over and over again has got to feel rewarding, so why not reward them in return! With Salon Tracker there is a great feature in the marketing suite which enables you to filter out your best spending customers, you can filter this to your best 10, 25, 50, however many you want, you can filter it for the past year or past couple of months, it’s really up to you. You will then be able to send out a text message to your best spending customers, an offer you could reward them with would be:

“Hi <<Forename>> Thank you for a great 2018! For your amazing loyalty we would like you offer you 50% off any treatment in January. We hope to see you soon! <CompanyName>”

Customers That Haven’t Visited in a While

How many times do you think you’ve only seen a customer once or twice? Or maybe you haven’t seen them for a few months? Well, why not entice them with an offer to try get them back into the salon. Again, are marketing suite gives you the ability to easily filter out which customers haven’t had an appointment booked in the past x amount of time, this could be the last 3 months, 6 months, the last year. There is also already a pre-filtered SMS message with this that you can quickly alter to fit what sort of campaign you want to send out. The message on Salon Tracker is:

“Hi <<Forename>> You are missed! All appointments booked before [ENTER DATE] will receive [ENTER DISCOUNT] discount.  <<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply

So, with this you can enter in whatever discount you want, or you can just delete the pre-filtered message and write in your own, again its completely up to you!

Refer a Friend

Did you know that 1/3 people come to a brand through a recommendation! This is a huge area that you should be targeting, as it proven to increase your client base and these customers will often have a higher retention rate, especially if they come through a loyal customer that loves your salon. It is important to decide early on what sort of offer you want to give for someone referring a new customer to your salon, and I would also suggest that you track your campaign to see if customers are returning once they have been referred to your salon to see if it is worth the extra effort. This again is a campaign that can be sent out directly from the Salon Tracker system. I would suggest only sending out the refer a friend campaign to your most loyal and highest spending customers, as if you send it out to someone that has only visited your salon once you will be less likely to receive anything from it and it could also tarnish your reputation. With the filters on Salon Tracker you can ensure that you only send out the campaign to those you want, by selecting, for example those that have spent more than £200. The message that is ready made on the system is:

“Hi <<Forename>> Special offer on [ENTER PRODUCT/CATEGORY/TYPE]. Bring a friend along and receive the 2nd treatment free! <<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply”

If you are wanting to send out a different campaign offer you can just change the message to suit the offer you are wanting to use for your refer a friend campaign.

I hope that these few different marketing approaches to the quieter periods in January have been of help to you. As I mentioned though, January isn’t just about trying to improve and increase your marketing, it is also a time to get some jobs and tasks done that you might not have had chance to do for a few months whilst you have busy. So, make sure that you use this time to not only think of new ideas and campaigns that you could offer, but to also get on top of any of those boring jobs you don’t want to do!

If you are a customer of ours and need any help with the marketing suite on the software, then please don’t hesitate to call 0113 350 8230 or email us at info@salontracker.co.uk and someone will be there to help you out! We do offer a free demo and 2-week trial of the software where you will receive 50 free marketing texts, so you can test out a marketing suite!

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