Utilising Facebook within your Salon Business

Facebook was founded in February 2004, so almost 14 years ago. From my personal experience, I remember starting to use the platform properly around 2008-2009, as at the time that Facebook launched, there were other competitive social media sites that were still extremely popular, like Myspace and Bebo to name a few. However, for today’s younger generation, they probably won’t even remember a time without it, and as the social world carries on advancing, Facebook is one of the essential social networks that every business needs to have an up-to-date profile on. Simply because, it could be almost detrimental to your company if not. Facebook is the new google. It is one of the first ports of call when people are checking companies out now, and especially in the salon industry. If your business is no where to be seen, it’s almost as if you’re not legitimate or don’t have that online presence for people to be able to identify your current reputation with the public.


But it’s not even just about reputation, Facebook has so many useful tools that can help to enhance your business and also, make it more profitable. And that’s what I wanted to discuss with you today.

Some of you may be aware that we offer 3 different software packages, in which our Enterprise package offers all of our online features. Within those online features, we have specific Facebook tools that we have created to make booking salon appointments simpler, and more convenient for your clients. However also, this reduces the amount of salon calls and messages that you receive day-to-day, as clients can go online and make appointments for themselves. Here’s a bit more info below:

Facebook Appointment Booking

Our salon software has the brilliant feature of ‘instant online booking’, this meaning that our online booking service doesn’t require therapist approval before a booking is confirmed. Instead, the software is clever enough to read the calendar for any appointment gaps, and then advertise these online to your clients. Another great tool, clients will also have their own unique login for your online booking, meaning you will instantly know which client has booked the appointment, and that client also receives a more personable service. So, how do we input this on to your Facebook page you may ask? We create an online booking widget, basically adding a ‘online booking’ tab to your company page which then directly links to your salon’s online booking portal (in which we create all of this for you too, so if it sounds complicated don’t worry).

Your software will then identify when this booking has been made on Facebook by simply showing the logo in the top right corner of the appointment box – a great feature as this way you can keep an eye on how the online booking tool is working for you.

So not only does this improve your company’s services on your Facebook page, it also helps with your booking management as the client can take control of making their booking, and you just carry out the service after the booking is made. Simple.

Facebook Review Requests

Next tool, review requests. One of the biggest reasons why people check out a company on Facebook before making a decision whether to use its services is the feature of ‘real reviews’. Not testimonials on your website that you may have hand-selected carefully – Facebook reviews are pure reviews, typed by the customers themselves and there is no approval stage. So, whatever they have to say about your business is public on your company profile for everyone to read. Which we know, this can be a bit daunting initially as you are not in control of what your clients are going to say. But this is a good thing, and even if you do on the off-chance get that little bit of negative feedback, this gives you chance to act upon this review and improve it. Sometimes, negative reviews actually add to the authenticity of a brand. If all reviews were continuously 5 * perfection, this would be great but, where does that leave your room for improvement and where do you go next? We all know that in the real world, you can be the best of the best, but somewhere, somebody else wants more or will find something else that would be worth improving. But this is worth improving to them personally, obviously everyone is different and this is where Facebook reviews are really key, as it offers your brand the chance to receive genuine feedback, as diverse as people opinions may be. And so, we have built in a tool that allows you to request a Facebook review via text to your customers, to gain that feedback and improve your online credibility.

SMS Marketing Directing to Facebook

Obviously if you have a company Facebook profile, you require a good following in order for this platform to take effect. And so, we have a custom SMS marketing tool allowing you to create campaigns to promote offers, new product lines and any other material that you wish. This including, being able to send an SMS message with links to any specific website, so for instance your Facebook page URL or company web page. Therefore, a great idea to get your following off to a good start could be to create a salon competition. Give people a reason to go and follow your Facebook page. You could create a text highlighting the competition, and for your clients to enter they simply have to ‘like your Facebook page’ and comment their name on ‘said Facebook post’? Our marketing team in-house are also more than happy to book a little training session with you, to create these marketing messages and help to come up with some competition ideas with you.

Facebook really is a platform that is essential to the success of all current businesses. As we mentioned, if your competition is on there but you are not, you could be missing out on lots of sales opportunities. But not only that, it’s such a great tool for marketing to your clients and as we have discussed the potential integrations that we can offer, this could really help to make your salon life easier.

As always, we would love to give you a demo of these features, and you can then trial our software free for a fortnight. We also throw in 50 free SMS messages for you, so you can trial a bit of marketing too! So why not use those to trial the Facebook competition idea? Communicate with your clients!

For your free trial, simply call a member of our lovely sales team on 0113 350 8230 or leave your details at http://bit.ly/RGeGVd.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Salon Tracker x

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!

Salon Tracker x 

How to create the right New Year's Resolutions

The New Year is all about resolutions and setting goals for the year ahead. While most people start with the obvious ones (eat healthy, exercise more, save money), by the time January comes to an end many realise that other priorities have crept up on them. This results in resolutions are discarded and put in the back of their minds. Setting goals and a strategy for your salon business is essential for growth and motivation. It is important to visualise your goals and decide what direction you really want to go. However, this can be overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. Trying to achieve too much at once can backfire and therefore it is important to identify what you are hoping to achieve throughout the year. Setting resolutions for your business is a great idea, but it's all about the right resolutions so that you won't fall into the trap of trying to achieve things that are sheer impossible.


An action plan is therefore a terrific idea to start with. Here you can note down your hopes and plan over the next months. You should look at previous years and identify what went well and what didn’t. This will lay out your foundation and to identify improvements. 
Did you struggle to attract a young clientele, for example? Maybe a social media campaign will do the trick. Or maybe you struggled with no shows, resulting in revenue loss and therefore you want to look into Salon Software and appointment reminders. Creating an action plan helps to identify any of these areas. Why not sit down with your managers or the whole team to get everyone involved and to show them that you value their opinion and contribution. A successful salon is more than just marketing. Good customer service and ambiance can equally be important and therefore remember this when creating an action plan.
To help you even further we have compiled a few things that can help you in the right directions with your New Year’s resolutions:


Know your goals for the year and prioritise accordingly

Make sure everyone is on board; therefore, January is a good time for an annual or quarterly meeting with everyone.

Here you can discuss the upcoming year and identify what went well the last few months but also any problems and come up with solutions.  
Often, hearing from staff and managers can be a good way to look at situations differently and maybe even address issues you weren’t aware off before. Getting everyone involved gives staff members the opportunity to speak from their own experiences. This does not have to be boring, why not get some drinks and snacks for everyone and make it a social but productive event. If you want to combine it with an annual awards ceremony then do so. Activities like that are always fun and motivate staff members to achieve goals throughout the year.


How can you be different from the others?

Have you ever identified your unique selling point? Why should customers choose you over others? Defining what makes you different and how you can show that to customers in order to attract them can be crucial for your performance. To determine this will make you stand out towards your competition. In order to achieve this you need to understand your ideal clientele. Find out what they’re after to adapt ways to please them.

Really can’t think of anything?

Is there anything you can learn instead or invest in? Maybe a new machine or treatment no one else is offering in the area. However, do your research to find out if an investment will be profitable. You don’t want to spend money just to find out that there is no demand for it. If you want to start on a smaller scale then simply create offers that are too hard to ignore or focus on excellent customer service with a little extra. Often small changes will work wonders already.


Testing

As mentioned above, we were talking about an investment that makes you stand out. If you want to try out something new do it when it’s quiet. January is a good time for that. You can see what is working and what isn’t. Drop what is not working and move on. Why waste valuable time on something that isn’t profitable for your salon?


Managing more efficiently

Anything from finances to marketing can be managed. That’s why many salons are investing in salon software at the beginning of the year. Not only does it save you time on day-to-day salon management it also helps keep track of spending’s and takings. Having an electronic booking diary is great for putting all your appointments in one place without losing track of them. If you are looking for special features such as online booking or an app for your customers to use, then why not make it a priority to look into the investment.
Move away for paper clutter and go digital!

With that said, we hope some of the tips come in handy and it gives you some ideas for the New Year. As always if you have any questions let us know via phone, email or Social Media.


Salon Tracker x

A New one just begun!

Hello, and Happy New Year! Welcome back, we hope you all had a fantastic festive holiday and spent quality time with family and friends.

But now let’s get back to business, ready to take 2018 with both hands and get off to a successful start! We can’t wait to get started with helping you guys to improve your salon management and boost those business sales, let’s do this!

So, for those of you that have been following our blog for some time, you may have seen our post not long before Christmas, about a few marketing ideas that are helpful for Jan. We know that this can be an extremely quiet period for salons, and so if you’ve got a bit of spare time now, this is the time to plan and make use of some essential marketing campaigns. If you haven’t had chance to look over our advice yet, here’s the link again below:

http://bit.ly/2CKpsl3

A New Year is a great time to start refreshing your marketing ideas, maybe arranging some fresh décor or accessories in the salon and also, reviewing your product ranges too. However, marketing aside, you also need to ensure you’ve got a full yearly plan for all areas of the business, as once the salon starts to busy up again it’s always good to have something to refer back to in times of need.

So, to help you we have put together some tips and advice on what you should be including in your 2018 action plan, to ensure you guide yourself and your employees successfully through the year. We’re gonna’ post this on the blog tomorrow afternoon, just to give you a bit of time to get back in to work and review the Xmas period, so keep posted on our news page for the release of that!

We’ve got lots of exciting content coming up, including how to ensure you establish your salon in the market the best that you can and also, why Facebook is a key asset to your salon business. Also, we’ve been researching ways in which you can budget for your business this year to save money, so our January feed is all about planning for a successful 2018. Make sure you keep following our blog for all of our advice.

We’ll be back in touch tomorrow starting with our 2018 salon action plan!


2018, let’s do this!


Salon Tracker x

Another year over...

And that’s a wrap for another year! I’m sure these years are getting faster, but yet again we find ourselves at the end of December and about to begin a new chapter. It’s been another brilliant year for us, one of our busier years in fact! We’ve got lots of new faces, and that’s not just clients - we have a few new members to the team as well which I’m sure for our current customers you’ve had the pleasure of chatting to some of them over the phone these past few months.

We’ve met many of you at the Professional Beauty shows this year in Feb and October too, which was a pleasure as always. And speaking of the event, I’m excited to announce that we are again exhibiting at Professional Beauty London on 25^th/26^th Feb! We will be on stand W16, so be sure to visit us there! In fact, you can sign up for your FREE ticket now using our link below:

https://registration.n200.com/survey/3njgxhgn3h7vy?actioncode=NTWO000545GPV

The Dev team are working on a few really exciting features for the Feb show! But, for now I know you are all extremely busy in the salon so we won’t keep you, but all that’s left to say is have a fantastic Christmas from all of us here at Salon Tracker. We wish you a very happy and healthy New Year and look forward to catching up in Jan with more salon management and marketing advice to grow your business.

It’s been a pleasure, speak to you soon!

Best Wishes,

The Salon Tracker Team x

*We are closing down for Christmas on Friday 22nd December 2017. We will be back in the office on Tuesday 2nd January 2018. Should you require assistance during this time, please telephone 0113 350 8232 and leave a voicemail or email info@salontracker.co.uk*

Marketing tips to make sure you start 2018 with success!

So, after the busy buzz of the Christmas period, Jan and Feb can seem like extremely quiet months for your business. I mean, in comparison to the rest of the year they are always going to feel quiet, but after the extremely frenzied festive period, the contrast can feel noticeably greater. Still having said this, there are some extra things that you can be doing to boost your business footfall and sales a little bit in to the New year.

In the toughest months it’s all about product placement and setting the right marketing campaigns to catch your clients eye above all other competitors.

So what campaigns can you plan to kick off 2018 in the right way?

After Christmas, everyone (or so it seems) goes on a mass health kick and often adopts a fresh new look for the New Year. You see gym memberships advertised with no joining fee, everyone quoting the #newyearnewme line and so what not a better time to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of the same campaign.

How can you promote this?

There are lots of different ways to promote a New Year campaign and after Christmas everyone is looking for fresh new product ranges, sparkles are no more and it’s everything spring! However, little tip - your left-over Christmas merchandise you could flog for a discount and I’m sure they’ll still get snapped up by your clients!

Here’s what we think you should push for New year throughout Jan…

New Product Promotion

We see a lot of social media sharing, starting in the week running up to Christmas, where businesses want to start promoting their new year product lines. So, this is where we would advise that you begin. Use the common hashtags #newyearnewyou & #newyearnewlook so that when people are clicking these your 2018 campaigns will also be shown on Facebook & Instagram’s main feeds. Advertise your up and coming products, write a blog post on why they aren’t to be missed and maybe grab some testers to hand out to clients. Aside from the obvious plus point for your clients of a ‘complimentary tester’ which is always loved by everyone, this is also a great opportunity for you to grab some testimonials of your new products to push on social media for further advertising! And everyone appreciates an honest client review before trying something new.

New Year New Me

So, we’ve already mentioned starting to use the cliché hashtags when promoting your new product ranges, but these sorts of campaigns are in their volumes across Jan. So even if you do a general #newyearnewlook campaign to push your main treatments, use slogans such as ‘love your image’ and ‘self-confidence’ to promote it to ensure positivity is at the forefront of your new year merchandise. You could even then run a January selfie competition where all clients who have had a New Year makeover upload their selfie and tag your salon, and then the winner receives a prize of your choice and this could be drawn in Feb? Just a little idea for further social post engagement.

Revive & Replenish

Another great campaign to push your skin and hair care products in Spring, as you go down the whole ‘rejuvenate after the Christmas partying’ route. However, also a fab time to refresh the salon as well! Give the salon a fresh new look, or even just spruce things up with a lick of paint, some different accessories and a bit of a spring clean. You can then even use this as an excuse to promote your business on social media, by asking your followers to ‘come down and see your fresh-faced salon’?

Discounts and Bounce Back Rewards

Now, I know we usually don’t promote discounting your products and services too much, as you don’t need to cheapen down your services if you offer quality treatments and have loyal clients. However, in January we all know that everyone tightens the purse strings a little bit so a small discount or little money-off reward is sometimes necessary to get those clients spending a little earlier than they may have planned in the New year.

We particularly love the idea of bounce back rewards, in which you could start giving to all clients towards the end of December and in Jan, and this then offers them either a small percentage or little value off their next treatment in Jan/Feb? It doesn’t have to be anything massive, and you set the rules. So, for example, you might want to set a minimum spend before the reward can be redeemed, so an idea would be ‘Spend £40 in Jan/Feb to receive a £5 New year bounce back reward off your treatment?’

Client Testimonials, they can become a VIP?

Promote the message to your loyal clients of ‘Thank you for your custom in 2017, could you please help us to have a successful 2018?’ Then poach them to see if they will be one of your testimonials or case studies? A reward for them giving you a service review could be to put them in to a VIP programme. Everyone loves feeling privileged and to say that you are a registered VIP member of a company is always rewarding, so this should hopefully push for you to get yourselves some fresh new testimonials, which are great for your marketing campaigns throughout the New Year. And you could do something as simple as offering your VIP clients '10% off all treatments' or 'a % off a certain amount of a treatments', say 4 times a year? Whichever would work and still be cost-effective for your business.

New Year newsletter

Similar to the client testimonials, you often have to give people an incentive to sign up! So, it could again be something as simple as ‘10% off if you sign up’, or ‘receive a £5 voucher to use if you sign up to our mailing list?’ The great thing however about a newsletter is it provides you with not only another communicational channel to message your customers, it also brings in new potential clients that you may not have had. If you promote your salon on Facebook or Google using adverts, and push your newsletter sign-up offers on those, this is likely to improve your lead generation of new clients. Then, you can start telling your new mailing list all about your services, new products, up and coming treatments and even include a few of your (hopefully) new client testimonials!

So, we hope these little tips have helped and given you something to think about for the New year…but first, lets have a cracking Christmas and then we’ll hit 2018 in successful style! Let’s do this!


Salon Tracker x

Email Marketing and how it’s done right

Whoever says email marketing is a dead art form is very mistaken. Pretty much everyone still has an email account these days and uses it. Smart phones and other portable devices have made it possible to connect and stay on top of your emails on the go and at any time.

As a salon owner, you own a business that flourishes from customer interactions that needs to develop ways to attract new, as well as retain current clients. Email is not only a powerful marketing tool it is also free to use with many providers. The options with emails are plenty and it can be used in many ways, from campaigns to promotional emails. There are a few simple steps you need to do in order to optimise your emails, to get the most our of them.

Getting started

First, you’ll need an email marketing service such as Mail Chimp. Many of these services offer a free version up to a certain number of emails per month. These services offer plenty of different templates that allow you to create different designs to match your business. However, the key with email marketing is not to overload your customers with too many emails. Less is better will do the trick in this instance. 

Here are some tips on what content you want to be sending and how you can measure your success:

Salon e-newsletter

Why not start with a monthly salon e-newsletter. Newsletters are great to tell customers about your business and any industry news they might find interesting. Go easy on promotional material, writing too much about offers and deals can put people off and will lose you subscribers as it will come across too sales driven. If you make your content entertaining and useful to your subscribers, they will be more  likely to stay local. 

Use a creative and grabbing subject line

A lot can be decided even before your emails is opened. If the subject line doesn’t spark a subscribers interest it will go straight in the bin without giving up any further consideration about the content. Meaning, you’ve only got seconds to grab someones attention. Therefore, try to avoid words in your subject line like special | free | percentage off | reminder | £ $ symbols | ! | as they will likely trigger spam filters and subscribers also know that you want to push your products on them. Once you have their attention and they have opened your email you want to make sure to keep the content concise and right to the point. 

Keep track of your performance

Emails get open just to be deleted again or to unsubscribe. Even though in your report it is marked as success, you haven’t really achieved new clients or revenue with this. A good way to track if people are reacting to your email is to measure performance with Google Analytics. For example, you can set up different goals such as see when people clicked on a link in your email. When you set up your campaigns and you want valuable information about your customers this is a great way to do so. 

Testing can be good as well. Create similar emails and see which one is performing better so you know what clients prefer and click on more often. 

Make sure it works on all devices

(Source: Marketingland)
If you want to make sure your email is catching the reader’s eye and will be opened make sure it works across all screens. Meaning, it is important that your email campaign adjusts to different devices and screen sizes. 

You can check the exact percentage of open rates and which devices were used on Google Analytics again. Once you are aware of the most popular device you can make sure everything works according to people preferences. 

Overall, email marketing can be a great way building relationships with current and potential customer when done right. Record what you learn from customers in a database. This way you can adjust your marketing. For example, if there is a popular time people open your email then send campaigns around that time. This might require some initial trial and error testing but after a few attempts, you should have some valuable info what clients prefer. 
As always if you have any questions or need advice don't hesitate to contact us via phone, email or social media.

Salon Tracker x