Business Planning for SS/20

Nearly through the first quarter of the year already! So now is definitely the time to start looking in to planning for the next season, as days get longer and nights get lighter – you want to ensure that your business has a Spring/Summer strategy in place to work towards.

This is also a great time to reflect on the last quarter, to also see where you are against the targets you set yourself for the past 3 months, and how business has been since the New Year. It’s also a good time to measure success against where you were this time last year, and see if you’ve had any improvements. A lot of businesses find that this is also the perfect time for a team night out, to boost staff morale and keep the work place atmosphere up! Quarterly reviews are also a great time to implement any changes that you feel necessary for the salon as we head towards Spring/Summer – maybe it’s a good time to refresh retail ranges and also improve the salon aesthetics in time for the new season.

So, first of, what can you capitalise on during the next few months to create some PR and social media marketing coverage. The first big one, in a couple of weeks, is Mother’s Day; on Sunday 22nd March this year so it’s around now that you need to start pushing your Mother’s Day offers so that your customers are aware of this on time. What are you thinking of doing this year at the salon? Common advertises include, ‘Mother and Daughter Pamper Days’ or ‘Family treatment days’ – especially if you are the owner of a spa or gym. You can create a family wellness package so that sons and daughters can take their parents to celebrate Mother’s Day together. You may even want to do a little complimentary fizz with all services booked in the week leading up to, and week after Mother’s Day, to make the client’s service seem a little more luxury!

Next up, Easter! Falling this year on Sunday 12th March, you’ll always find that clients want their ‘bank holiday pamper’ in time for their night out. So, this is prime-time for salons, so now may be a good time to push your service packages, for example; if you are a hair and beauty salon you may want to do an ‘Easter Bundle’ consisting of a couple of mini beauty treatments and maybe a hair style? These can then be pushed on your social media channels and can also lead to an ‘Easter Styling Competition’, where you could ask any clients who have had any seasonal treatments to share these online, tagging your salon, to then be entered in to a competition? This gets people shouting about your business, improves online engagement & promotion, whilst also making a bit of fun for the clients too!

Speaking of Bank Holidays, the Easter weekend is closely followed by Mayday and Spring Bank, in which this year the first May Bank Holiday actually falls on a Friday, which will contribute to the amount of clients looking for their Friday night style-up! It’s also a great marketing technique to promote the change in Bank Holiday date, as believe it or not there will be a lot of your clients who are still unaware of the Bank Holiday change, so make sure you get in there first to get your calendars booked up. You might even look at running a ‘Bank Holiday Beauty event’ which you could advertise to clients to attend with friends and family. If some of the client’s friends haven’t been to the salon before, this then helps with your salon reputation and WOM promotion, by creating a fun event for everyone to talk about.

Following all these Spring events, we then head in to Peak Wedding Season and also Proms & Graduations too, so you definitely want to start marketing your special packages early Spring, as lots of salons will be pushing similar promotions and so you want to make sure you are at the head of your game. Especially in the tanning market, we know this can be quieter over June/July and so this is a great time to boost spray tans and safe tanning over Summer! If there are quieter weeks for you, this could be a great time to push your salons blog, getting your staff members to write some Spring/Summer articles to boost your salon awareness. These could be anything from Summer wedding styling, to new seasonal products that you are going to be offering. This then creates some PR around your salon to be able to push online through your blogs and also share on social media, in the hope that this is re-shared/posted by people who follow your salon social networks.

Once you have planned for all of the above events, it may then be good to set yourself some new targets for the second quarter, taking you to the end of Summer, in order to track business performance based on Q1 to Q2. By doing this planning, you then allow your business to measure success before you head in to the Autumn, and shortly after that the Christmas period, so it is your Summer months that really set you up for the second half of the year. Towards the middle of Q2, around May/June time, this is a good time to check-out and plan for Autumn events, just as we are suggesting you do now for Summer, to get you in good stead for each season.

Finally, get yourself a company planner, that maybe even your employees can contribute to too. Plan in sessions to analyse business measurements and also some sessions to chat to your staff about business performance and how their work is impacting your growth. Make sure to do regular reviews with employees too, as the more your staff understand about your business the better this is work team morale and also this helps to boost motivation if employees have clear goals to work towards.

Hope this has given you a few pointers to think about, and of course as always if you want to chat to a member of our sales and marketing team for a few extra tips, we are always on hand to help you with any marketing tools, or simply to offer further advice on using our software functions! Look forward to hearing from you and helping you to boost sales this Spring/Summer!

Salon Tracker x