Back to School Prep!

So, you’ve probably all already been soaring this summer with sales and are getting ready for a busy upcoming couple of weeks trimming kids’ hair before they go 'Back to School', but is your salon capitalising on this busy month as much as it could be?  Here at Salon Tracker we’ve come up with a couple of preparations that you can consider in the weeks running up.

Mums are always on the lookout for deals around the Back to School period, it’s a hectic time, not to mention expensive replacing all the uniforms, stationary, lunch bags, sports kits...you name it!  Therefore the better your offer and the more advertised it is, the higher the chance of you receiving that clients custom.  However, you have to be careful not to jeopardise your salon sales also.  Like we always say, you don’t want to be renowned as the salon that always does the ‘cheap deals’ as clients become accustomed to that and are then reluctant to revisit when prices return to their normal increased range.

Competitor research is therefore a good tip to help you here, have a look round at local businesses and see what kind of selected offers and events they are hosting around Back to School to help you to get a base of the prices and what is already out there. This also enables your salon to differentiate against this and bring something unique to the table.

Little things to take in to account when planning for Back to School are the styles that kids may want...and also their mind frames!   Let’s face it, the average 6 to 7 year old boy isn’t going to be too hot on going to the salon with his mum for a hair trim when the rest of his mates are on the street playing footy!  So, make sure you have sweets in, you maybe have a little freebie kids product for while they are waiting and some books or magazines!

Another great idea would be to get photographs of all the trendiest haircuts & styles for youngsters this summer, both boys & girls, and create a flip book of those so that the kids have some inspiration before they have their treatment.  A great idea is to look at celebrity role models for youths, as media figures tend to massively influence younger children & teen styles, so you need to make sure that you are fully in the know of the latest young fashion icons!  Read up on a couple of 'on trend' beauty treatments that celebs are adopting at the moment, i.e. the manicures that they are having or popular eyebrow shapes and again you could equally create a look book of these for further client inspo!

In terms of offers, 9 times out of 10, unless a client is in their late teens, most kids will come to the salon with their parents and therefore you could come up with some family deals for those!  For example ‘all under 16’s treatments are half price when a parent has a treatment.’ Or you could do 25% off with siblings, where parents of 2 or more children can get 25% off of each child’s treatment.   It depends what would work best for you in the salon, they are just a few ideas for you to think about.

So, be open to a bit of change and have a think about the possibilities that we have mentioned, take in to account which ones would work best for you in maximising your salon to its full potential this Back to School season. 

Salon Tracker x

Whether you have our Salon Software or not, here are reasons why you should always re-boot your Salon Marketing!

Typically, summer time is a great time of the year for salons in terms of business so reflection isn’t always necessary- or so you may think. Salon owners tend to see a lot of consistency with clients in this season due to holidays and events, which is great, but as we all know a successful entrepreneur is ALWAYS one step ahead of the game! This is where we step in….

Back in January almost every business had some sort of New Year resolution, most likely including the will to build and expand their business, usually via some form of marketing calendar for social, blogging and general business activity. Even though the summer holidays tend to be refreshingly active, there is still a huge requirement to continue your business plan for the quieter months. It also gives you a great chance to update your calendar with a more current viewpoint surrounding popular retail products and treatments.

When business is in full swing, we are all prone to neglecting marketing a little bit but you need to remember the typical buying cycle is a lot longer than 1 month. You might win a like on social media- it’s what you do with it from here that counts. Are your social accounts engaging enough? Do you receive high ROI from them? If not, you may need to reflect because social media is a great way to win new customers and also retain them. A great way to do this is use your Salon Software for reviews. Salon Tracker allows salons to send a text to a recent client to request a review to post on Facebook. What’s great about this is that salon owners can share this review and use it for a great example of social outreach.

Another thing to think about is your team. Are they promoting themselves in order to win their own clients? A great way to build your salon business is to have the best of the best and most desirable stylists. However, the only way this can be done successfully is if your staff have incentive and have reason to recommend your salon to people. Business is all about give and take. Have you thought about delegating staff members some time on your social accounts? This is a great way to offer some personality to the business and ensure your clients are connected and engaging with your team.

You may think fitting in as many clients as possible is the best way to do things, but actually sacrificing one client per week to invest time into marketing may be a great way to build your business in the long term. Make sure all of your staff know how you run and report campaigns. Would a training schedule fit into your week and be beneficial? Teach your employees that marketing begins before they may even realise. Every single thing is noted and will count towards whether you can retain that client i.e. your reception desk, salon aesthetics, website, Facebook page and so on. You need to give every single client a VVVVVVVVVIP experience.

This leads us swiftly on to your salon brand, which should be continuously established as a high priority by yourself and your staff. You need to know if your clients are happy with what they are purchasing from you, so a great way to answer all of the questions above is to strip everything down and get analytical about your salon. This might be your salon name and logo, its uniqueness and consistency. If you have a really general name you may find it difficult to rank higher in terms of the search engine rankings.

Remember- marketing is so important in the long run and it needs to be maintained throughout the year to be successful. Grab the bull by the horns and let’s reboot…here’s to the rest of 2015…

Salon Tracker x

Salon Tracker Software on: How to promote Bank Holiday business!

If you are a follower & regular reader of Salon Tracker news, you might remember that back in May we posted a few promotional ideas that could be used in the salon during the lead up to Bank Holiday.

It doesn’t seem 2 minutes since we were posting that, however the August summer Bank Holiday is fast approaching and therefore we thought we’d just refresh your memory of those potential promotions!


Skin Consultation Night

On the lead up to Bank Holiday weekends, everyone wants to be pampered and looking their best, so why not have a little appointment night that gives clients the chance to have in depth skin treatments. We realise that many salon technicians now actually give their clients a skin analysis prior to booking any form of tanning or beauty treatment, normally regarding skin tone or any product allergies. However, if you expand on this a little bit and get your salon technicians involved in a ‘treatment night’, this could attract lots of clients who are unaware of how treatments and routines can improve their skin condition. Consider perhaps staying open later one night and holding 20-30 minute slots over a 2 hour period, where you book 5 or 6 clients in at a time. Your technicians could give the clients a cleansing and exfoliating treatment, followed by a lesson on how to maintain this routine at home. It is an excellent way for your salon to boost its reputation with clients and also to increase the sales of your retail products. It would be up to yourselves how you would want to price the event, maybe the consultation is free when a certain treatment is bought, or alternatively you charge a small fee which is then redeemable from the purchase of a retail product after the consultation. Make it fun with some champagne and nibbles? Just a little idea for you!


‘Bank-Holiday Specials.’

Offers are always appreciated by your clients, especially your longest and most loyal and when better to hold them than in a peak period! If you properly promote the deals on your social media portals, in your salon window and to clients via SMS, it will increase your custom levels significantly. Some of our ideas for you to think about are;

· ‘Bank-holiday Bronze’, where you could offer 10% off spray tans on certain nights of the week or off certain sunbed courses for the month.

· ‘Bank-holiday Brows’, where you could offer half price brow treatments with any other tanning service.

· ‘Bank holiday Beauty’, for those of you that offer facials, you could similarly offer a discounted cleanse and exfoliation treatment on a certain night of the week.

You may already do something similar to this in your salon and if so, have a think of how you can refresh it a little bit to capture the interest of your clients!


Beauty School Evening

Beauty enthusiasts are always keen to know new product regimes and how to apply products to better care for their skin. If you sell retail products in your salon, then why not hold a bit of a ‘learning night’, for clients to come along and receive training from your technicians on how to use some of your products. For instance, if you are the owner of a tanning salon, why not hold a night for clients to be shown how to exfoliate properly to achieve a better tan? Or if you are the owner of a beauty salon, perhaps hold a night that gives clients the chance to learn how to carry out mini facials at home.


Bring a Friend

All promotion is good promotion, and what better way to bag yourself some extra clients by using the good old ‘word-of-mouth’ method. Advertise to your existing clients that on their next visit to the salon they can ‘bring a friend’ for a free mini treatment or a discounted package of treatments. If you promote this offer to your loyal client database then you are more than likely going to receive a lot of footfall from their friends, whom essentially are new clients for you!


Salon Tracker x

How to boost your business with Social Media

Since the launch of Facebook in 2014, social media has really taken off and become one of the sole marketing techniques for many businesses.

Here at Salon Tracker, we specialise in salon management and intelligent marketing.  We are exhibiting at the Manchester Professional Beauty event this September, where we will be running demonstrations of how we use social media to help improve salon businesses.

We have introduced SMS and email marketing, that we also link up to Facebook reviews, therefore allowing customers to have the chance to leave feedback after a particular salon treatment.  The beauty of social media is that it promotes your business at a lower cost.  It is free to sign up to the majority of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  As long as you then market to clients that you have a social media page, you should start getting the following that you need to help you to communicate with your target audience successfully.

So how do you use social media to boost your business?

Once you have got yourself set up on the platforms that you believe are most relevant, it is good to plan content regarding seasonal events, any upcoming offers you may have and also any relevant media topics that are currently in the news.  Your information has to be relevant, there is no point in posting about something that happened months ago, or likewise don’t introduce an offer that will be coming out in 6 months’ time.  People are likely to forget and insignificant information will just get lost in and amongst the other millions of statuses, tweets and photos that have been posted that day! Similarly, you have to make sure that your information is consistent.  It is no good opening a Facebook account for your business, promoting it to clients, to then only post something say once a fortnight.  It has to be regular and the content has to be creative. Also, try not to post overly branded material all the time, as this can become a little tedious to your site visitors and almost makes your social media page become an elaborate news release. Social media networks should be a relaxed forum where conversations between you and you’re clients can be a little less formal and more personal.

So how do you stand-out on social media?

There are billions of social media networks across the globe, with each of those platforms collectively posting millions of times per day.  Therefore it is important that you know how to use your social networks to the best advantage for your business.  As I earlier discussed, making sure that your content is relevant is even more so important in regards to ensuring that your business stands out.  There are methods in which you can use to improve the amount of views a social media post gets.  Hashtags is the main one.  SEO is another.  Google some key words to see which are the most fundamental words or phrases that people search for in regards to the nature of your business. This way, your post is more likely to reach an individual if it contains those particular words, via hashtags or even if they are just implemented in the text of the post. Secondly, make sure you post at reasonable times where your information is most likely to be seen. Think about the daily pattern of your client database, know your customers’ habits!  Do a little consumer analysis and consider what time will they be commuting to work for instance, when will they be on lunch or do they have any free browsing time? These are all things that need to be taken into account as again you could post something really important, but if it is released at the wrong time that could too be easily missed and overshadowed by other updates.  Once you have been on your social networks for a few months, you can actually download analytics that will highlight information about past posts, including how many times each particular post was viewed, how many people it reached and if it was shared by anyone at all.  By measuring these results it will then indicate which the most popular posts were and from here you can see what time in the day these were released, to then use this information for future planning.

So there is a little bit of advice as to how you can use social media effectively for business growth.  Think of it as a free advice and tools page for your business, where you create a loyal fan base by posting creative content and imagery that will capture the attention of your target audience.  As I previously mentioned that our company, Salon Tracker, integrates with Salon Facebook pages to request reviews from consumers via SMS message, reviews are a fantastic element to also have on your social media page.  They create reassurance regarding your business to any new visitors of your social media networks, if they can see previous testimonials from current clients.

We will be showing how this works for our current clients at Manchester’s Professional Beauty North across 20th and 21st September, so come and see us at stand B35!

Salon Tracker x

Salon Software company Salon Tracker's 10 top tips on; How Salon Owners can make the best of Professional Beauty North!

Our salon software company ‘Salon Tracker’ are exhibiting for the first time this year at Professional Beauty North, however we have spectated at many previous trade shows. Here are our 10 top tips for salons that are going for their first time this year and how to maximise their time to the best potential at this year’s 2 day event in Manchester!

1. Sort your travel, early!

The vast majority of you will be travelling from afar so travel is a necessity for you! Consider the implications of traffic on the day if you are going to drive, you don’t want to be late and it eat into your time to speak with the industry professionals. Instead why not research into deals with rail networks, in which some actually do discounted offers for Professional Beauty attendees.  Also, if you require a hotel, many close by will also have similar deals.  Make sure to arrange it in plenty of time, it’s a popular show and things book up fast!

2. Forward-Plan!

It is important that you make a thorough itinerary for the time that you are there, whether it be one or two days.  Trade shows are busy and time is limited at each stand due to the high volume of traffic, therefore know which stands you need to visit and for how long!

3. Identify your objectives for the event.

There is obviously a key reason why you are visiting the event, however you need to establish the main objectives that you hope to full-fill whilst you’re there.  Pin-point any problems that you may have in the salon at current and decide on the stands in which you think you will most require information from.  List these then in priority order, in case of contingencies on the day!

4. Have your questions ready!

By identifying problems, you should then prepare relevant questions to ask at each particular stand, because as we earlier mentioned, the event is busy and therefore time to speak with stand representatives is minimal in some cases.

5. Be confident

Don’t be afraid to ask out of the ordinary questions and also don’t shy away if a stand looks a bit over-whelming.  You are there to get information, and people at the show are there to help YOU!  Remember that!  Have a think about which team members might be a good asset to go with you?  If you have a bold, fearless technician, then, maybe take them along as a side-kick!

6. Know your competitors

Being knowledgeable of your competitors is always key to any salon.  Identify what your competitors are currently doing well, that you’re maybe not quite reaching them with and then use this to your potential to gather research from the trade show as to how you can do better!

7. Plan yourself a couple of breather breaks in!
Trade shows can be exhausting!  You are on your feet the majority of the day, plying information out of so many different people, its thirsty work and can be a lot to take in! Make sure that you make time for a couple of short stop offs to re-fuel!  Also, it gives you chance to go over your information that you’ve gathered so far that day, and re-evaluate should anything be different to how you planned.

8. Take down notes and Contact Numbers

Your head will be bombarded with information on the day, in such a short space of time. So, to avoid details slipping the mind, make some notes at each stand whilst you are enquiring.  Also, don’t forget to take some names, telephone numbers and emails down as references, just so that you can get in touch with the professionals after the show, using the notes you have made to prompt the subject of your call.

9. Take your own business cards

You never know!  One minute you could be on a stand chatting about how to improve your salon profits, the next another visitor could overhear you and ask you about your salon business?  At trade shows, anything goes!  Everyone is there to network, it is such a sociable affair so be ready on the off chance that you could do a bit of brand promotion whilst your there!

10. Don’t forget your freebies!

It is standard, at a trade show 9 times out of 10 you come away with something free from every stand, whether it be product samples, trials of programmes or brochures.  The thing is you will visit that many brands that particular day, it can be difficult to memorise the branding of each, so the little freebies will refresh your memory.  Also, any product samples you get you could even take back to the salon for clients to try and give their feedback on before you purchased any from suppliers?

If you are a salon and it is your first time visiting a trade show this September, why not drop by our stand B35, and get a bit of information as to how salon software may work for you?  We’ll be more than happy to give you a bit off free advice!  No harm in a bit of cost-free info!  See you there!

Salon Tracker x

Salon Tracker software on why SMS marketing is imperative for salon growth

Here at Salon Tracker we have come up with the top five reasons as to how simple SMS marketing can improve succession in your salon.


1. Appointment Reminders

Whether your salon specialises in hair, tanning or beauty, the majority of your sales will come from bookings.  Text message reminders are a great way to improve the amount of no-shows, as they prompt clients to ensure that the appointment doesn’t slip their minds.


2. Tips

Cosmetic clients are always eager to know any kind of information regarding beauty regimes or tips, for example suggestions on how to grow their hair, improve their skin or pro-long a tan.  Tips can also tie in well with your salon retail products, as you can send SMS's to recommend your own stock items along with advice as to how those will benefit your client.  Another way to promote and increase retail sales for the salon!

3. Thank you 

This is a nice little gesture to send out to clients upon leaving their appointment, reminding them of the great service that they have had at your salon.  A bonus is, if those clients receive that SMS message whilst with friends, it can spur a conversation and create WOM (word of mouth) promotion for your business.  It is said that people naturally take advice from their friends over any other source and therefore any way that 'word of mouth' promotion can be generated will be extremely beneficial to all salon businesses in gaining new clients. 

4. Exclusive Offers

You may decide to do a seasonal offer throughout the summer, for example; a holiday treatment package, however your regular clients will just be used to your traditional ongoing treatments.  The quickest and cheapest way to ensure that any new offers reach clients immediately is via SMS messaging.  You can obviously also post new offers on your social media pages (if you have them) free of charge.  However the danger sometimes of just solely using social media posting for your advertising is that the message you're trying to deliver could potentially get lost in other news.  Therefore with SMS marketing, you are guaranteeing that your customer actually receives the message personally, as it is sent directly to their mobile phone. 

5. Texts that connect to social media pages

90% of people keep their phone with them at all times, whilst more than a quarter of UK women & 18% of UK men check their social media networks 10 times daily, according to the Independent.  By linking text messages to your social media pages, it will prompt customers to visit your salon's social media sites, in which you can publicise your business further.  A great feature is to generate an SMS message that invites customers to leave you a Facebook review a few days after their last appointment. Reviews and testimonials are a key feature that many ‘first time users’ of your salon will check out and take in to account, before deciding whether to use your services or not.  Therefore, the more positive feedback you can generate through reviews, the better it is for your salon sales. 

We offer an intelligent marketing suite as part of our professional salon software package, in which customised marketing campaigns can be devised to suit a particular salon.  If SMS marketing is something that you feel will benefit your business then why not enquire today at www.salontracker.co.uk or alternatively feel free to call us on 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker x

Improving Tanning Businesses with Salon Software

Salon Tracker software, whom are hosting their first exhibition at this year’s Professional Beauty, now integrate with T-Max timers.

For Salons that are struggling to manage minutes or have difficulty keeping track of how many a certain client has used, Salon Tracker software could be the answer.  Salon life will be made easier as our software promises to ensure that your tanning business runs smoothly, even in your absence!  We even eliminate the chance of staff abusing your tanning system as all minutes are tracked. So no more mysterious losses of minutes or tanning packages!

By Salon Tracker integrating with Sigma and T-max Timers, it encourages business security!  With its advanced seamless integration process, sunbed usage and all minutes are tracked from the software.  Not only does the software operate the timers, and ensure that no client is going over the duration of their selected course, it also accurately tracks the usage of each sunbed in order to produce reports that can be printed daily.   The reports will show recordings of all sunbed activity in that particular day, including the details of the client that has had a sunbed treatment, to ensure that they can’t book a tanning course for at least another 24 hours.  Ensuring that you are tanning safely as well as improving your salon management systems!

So if you are a Salon that still uses tokens, then the switch to Salon software could improve the efficiency and organisation of your business.  It also means that your salon can do away with all your paper client cards, as the minutes are tracked through the system alongside the user who has had the treatment.  The advanced calendars are a feature on the software, and they link to the sunbeds and timers.  So no more tokens, no more client cards, everything under one system!

There are many other features of Salon Tracker software to suit the tanning industry, including the ability to link multiple salons.  This essentially allows you to manage each site from the comfort of your own home, when abroad and on the move, 24 hours a day.   It also ensures that clients can’t then flit between one salon and another in any one day to cheat the system and have illegal sunbeds, as the minutes will be tracked across the board of your salon chain.

Another key to this is that you can oversee all business happenings, including cash flow, staff movements, client bookings and end of day reports without having to actually be present in the salon.  Giving you a helping hand in the management of your salons so you don’t have to worry about it whilst you’re not there!

If this sounds like it would benefit your tanning salon, why not visit us at our stand at Professional Beauty North!  Our sales and support team will be there to answer any questions that you have and we can do you a live demo of how the tanning beds would work if they were linked to the software.

Alternatively, enquire on our website www.salontracker.co.uk

Hope to hear from you soon!

Salon Tracker x