Reviewing your Salon Business for the first half of 2018

Hello, how’s everyone enjoying this gorgeous sunshine?! What an oh so fabulous Summer we’re having! Saying this, how has business been for everyone so far this season? We’ve heard mixed thoughts from our clients, with some saying it’s been so much quieter than the average Summer. However, some have said that this year has been great for up-selling their retail products, as more and more clients are looking for something to lock moisture in to their hair and skin with this dry spell!

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:

Dig down in to your sales even more. Look at your most popular retail products and see if there is a purchase correlation for these. Excess overstock is one of the biggest wastes in many businesses, as you purchase stock from your suppliers upfront and granted you will get the majority of your retail product at cost price! However, if you fail to sell all of this in a significant period of time, it is then almost a wasted investment. Especially with the way the beauty and hair industry are evolving, there is always something new on the market. So, by evaluating what you have therefore sold in a certain period of time and working out what is it that you have sold the most of, you can then forward plan for your stock purchases in the next 6 months. This is to not only save you money but to improve your storage-management too!

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!

Salon Tracker x

When should you post on your social media?

Did you know that there are over 3.196 billion people active on social media! That’s 42% of the world population! Obviously, your main focus would be those in your local area, but social media has all of the tools to ensure that you are approaching your target audience. It is important to make sure that you are posting on a number of different social media platforms, however the time you post could massively impact how well your tweet does and how many people it reaches. There are thousands of articles out there that go into when the best posting times are, but don’t worry you’re going to go to go searching through them all, I’ll do that part for you!

Instagram

There are two factors that can influence the best time to post; the day and the time. From doing some research I found that in the UK the best days to post are on Monday and Thursday, with Sunday being the worst in terms of engagement. The best times to post are between 8-9am, probably because this is when most people are travelling to work and 5pm when a lot of people will be leaving work, surprisingly, 2am is also one of the best times to post 🤷‍️.

Instagram in particular has some great tools out there for businesses that allow you to see what your best posting times are. By making your salon Instagram a business account you will also be able to access these tools, giving you a better idea of when your best posting times are in order to ensure you are receiving a high engagement.

Facebook

Facebook is probably the most used social media platform by salons, its not often hat you will search for a salon and a Facebook page not come up (if you’re reading this as a salon owner and don’t have a Facebook page I would highly recommend making one). In terms of the best posting day for Facebook, Saturday and Sunday have the highest engagement, along with Thursday and Friday also having a relatively high engagement. The best times to post are 9am, 1pm and 3pm, 3pm giving you the most clicks and 1pm giving you the most shares.

Similar to Instagram, Facebook also has analytics allows you to view all of your likes, reach, visits, people – basically it sums up all of the information and data that your page is receiving and puts it into groups and summaries for you. This will allow you to target your posts towards a specific age group or gender, which will further allow you to improve your Facebook posts.

Twitter

For a lot of you I would presume that you don’t have a twitter page for your salon, but for those of you that do the best days to post are on the weekend, with the best times coming at 12pm, 3pm, 5pm and 6pm. The peak time seems to be Wednesday between 5-6pm, again I think this is because this is when many workers are leaving their offices.

By finding out the best posting times for you and your salon, you will be able to increase your engagement, and hopefully this will also result in an increase in customers! Once you figure out the best time for you to post on your social medias you will be able to post your offers during these times to ensure that they receive a higher number impression and reach your target audience. I hope that this will help you improve your social media and increase the engagement and impression you are receiving on your posts.

Salon Tracker x

Top 5 Beauty Buys

I can’t believe we’ve gone through June already! For the end of this month’s blogs, I’m going to invite you to try 5 beauty products I’m obsessed with! I will briefly explain each product and describe exactly why I love it so much. Whilst we’re just entering summer 2018 there couldn’t be a better time to prepare for healthy, glowing skin. I’ve loved experimenting with different types of makeup and skin products so this week’s blog is right up my street! Everyone loves having tanned glowing skin and sitting in the sun, just make sure you stay protected!





£24.50


My first Best Beauty Buy is Mac Studio Fix Fluid from the Mac store in White Rose shopping Centre. Whilst looking for a reasonably priced foundation, after trialing and failing multiple drugstore brands, none were lasting long enough as a full days makeup. I decided to go more high street and this was a great choice! The consistency is very light, a brilliant base layer, a little goes a long way with this product and so it has buildable coverage. The finish of this foundation is matte so it’s extremely good at controlling oily skin and it’s formulated with SPF 15, perfect for the summer time! I usually use a beauty blender to apply it but it works well using a soft brush. Mac do various shades of this foundation suiting any skin tone and if you’re not sure what suits you, the staff are more than happy to help and give you a skin test!

£12.99


One product what will really give a glowing summer look is a bronzer, for an extra tanned sparkle, a shimmer bronzer looks the best. Most makeup brands do various types and shades but one I really enjoy using is the L’Oréal Glam Bronze La Terra Sun Face Body Bronzing Powder, quite the mouthful! This bronzer is very light and smooth not making your face muddy, its also tinted with light glitter. I use this with all my makeup looks and even on days when I don’t wear any foundation. It brightens up your face and doesn’t take much product to do so. Since this bronzer is in a super big pan, it also works pretty well as an eyeshadow, for those 5 minute makeup days…





£5.00


Another top beauty product of mine is eyebrow pomade, everyone thinks that re-drawing eyebrows take the longest in a makeup routine but using a creamy pomade makes the entire process a lot quicker and easier to do. I use Revolution Pomade in Medium Brown which I bought at Superdrug. I apply it with a small angled brush and brow setting gel over the top. Pomade is great in the summer because it dries as a sort of powder, it doesn’t smudge or run in the warm weather and the gel on top holds it in place. I would really recommend this product to anyone who usually does their brows every day and doesn’t want to get them permanently tinted. Definitely to someone who is just starting out in makeup. Practice really does make perfect but the end result it’s worth it!





£2.99


This next beauty buy is a product perfect for when you’ve just woken up, straight after a shower and certainly after a long day of wearing makeup. Clean & Clear blackhead clearing cleanser which i buy from Bodycare is definitely one product I couldn’t live without, I use it multiple times a day! This cleanser I discovered about 4 years ago and I’ve used it ever since. Its formulated to remove all the dirt, oil and dead skin cells that gets trapped in your pores. It works on removing blackheads, even soothes pimples and controlling your skin to prevent impurities coming back.





£5.95


The final beauty is a brilliant product for your skin, Nivea Men Sensitive Post Shave Balm which was £2.65 on sale from Superdrug. Now I know what you might be thinking… what? This is a men’s product! This balm is a very thin consistency, works to cool and sooth inflamed skin (as when men have shaved) and dries super quickly. It works as a brilliant moisturizer for under makeup and acts as a primer, it forms a slick consistency making any face products run on smoother. I also discovered this product a few years ago whilst looking for a moisturizer suitable for sensitive skin, one that would comply with the rest of my skincare routine and thin enough to moisturize before applying any makeup. After watching multiple YouTube tutorials I decided to try this one out and I’m so glad I did!


Let us know if you’ve tried out any of these products and how they worked for you! Follow us on twitter: @SalonTrackerLtd and Instagram: @SalonTrackerSoftware


Salon Tracker x

Feature of The Month: SMS and Appointment Reminders

For June’s feature of the month, I’m going to explain how quick and easy it is to contact clients through text messaging! 

Whether you own a tanning, hair or beauty salon, text messaging can be used by any business of any size and to your advantage. This feature is undoubtedly the most commonly used and effective method of marketing for salons, it is extremely important for a growing business to know how to use SMS and encourage clients to return back through the doors of a business.

So why use SMS?

Here are some statistics to put this in to perspective, over 5 billion out of the 6.8 billion people in the world now own a mobile phone, around 75% of that number have their phone to hand and 90% of text messages sent are read in under 3 minutes, making it the quickest way to contact someone. A lot of people may be thinking that email is just as effective and it’s free, the same with social media, which unfortunately isn’t true. Emails only have a 20% read rate and more often than not they are disregarded or moved in to a junk mail inbox.

Reduce No-Shows

Setting appointment reminders and online booking confirmations not only gives your clients piece of mind, it also dramatically reduces no shows up to 90%. As the most common reason for missed appointments is people simply forgetting and getting mixed up with times, clients value communication. It allows businesses to see who has confirmed appointments, which saves you valuable time, not having to chase down customers. This brings me to my next point…

Entirely Personal For The Client

Confirming appointments with customers on a busy schedule can be very difficult, clients will appreciate being able to reply at their own leisure, meaning that missed phone calls or leaving voicemails can be avoided. If your salon uses Salon Tracker Software, there is an SMS suite where multiple clever features make the entire process a lot easier. It is very useful during a salons busy period as most messages can be automated and set to send hours, even days before. Text messages can be completely customised to each client which is why we encourage Salons to attain as much information as possible. The software can also track the messages sent, alerting you with a notification when an SMS has failed!



Creating the Perfect SMS

Using the software Salons can personalize the entire SMS, a very interactive feature for a business. When writing your own message it needs to be short, sweet and concise, easy for clients to understand. When sending out an appointment reminder, address the customer by their first name. Text messages are available for preview, all you have to do is send it to your own number to see if your message is right and everything is spelled correctly. It’s always good to have an opt-out option at the end of the text or even set it so there’s a no reply service, to save yourself time.

Here is a template of an automated text…

Hi <<Forename>>

You have an appointment booked at <<Salon Name>> with <<Beautician/Stylist Name>> on <<Date>> at <<Time>>

Please call <<Company Tel >> to cancel your appointment.


An example!

Hi, Louise

You have an appointment booked at SalonSpa with Maia on 01/08/2018 at 11:00am.

Please call 0113 350 8230 to cancel your appointment.


So drop your customers a quick text and keep them up to date!

Just make sure you have enough texts, here at Salon Tracker we sell 1000 SMS credits for £50 or try out a FREE demo and trial with 50 SMS credits to try out the feature for yourself!



If you have any further questions or would like any more information on Salon Tracker SMS features, don’t hesitate to call us on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk

Salon Tracker x

Salon Tracker's Top Tips to Achieving Successful Father's Day and Summer Marketing Campaigns!

Less than 1 week to go until Father’s Day, and just a few days left until the first official day of Summer! This year is going fast, right? So, as we step in to Summer, we thought we’d offer you our best ideas to put you in the right direction for a successful season.

There are lots of events and areas that you can use to market your salon over the Summer period. Obviously, as just mentioned the next main one we’ve got coming up is Father’s Day. But then not long after we also have School and College Proms, University Graduations and Weddings to cater for, all of which are typically planned for during the Summer months.

Events such as these are great over Summer. As they can be targeted to both male and female audiences of all ages, you have such a large market to reach out to!

As Father’s Day is however the closest, let’s focus on this first. Essentially, barbers are going to capitalise on this the most being a solely male industry, however there are ways that multi-sex salons can also get the benefit, see some of our best ideas below:

- Run a Dad-Daughter/Son pampering day, or family spa package. An easy way to advertise to all family members, a great opportunity for those of you that offer lots of types of services at your salon, you can come up with some great family deals.

- Up-sell your gift vouchers and get some personalised Father’s Day ones made, with themed artwork. This way your clients aren’t then having to go out and buy extra cards suited to Father’s Day to hold the voucher in, you are saving them a job!

- Retail hamper packs! This is especially good if you usually sell a lot of retail products and you have clients that have their favourite buys from you, as their children are likely to know this and hopefully purchase them as gifts! Visuals are key in the upselling of retail products. So, to persuade people to buy, create a present table within the salon to make your products more aesthetically pleasing!

- Salon Tracker’s favourite - offer a gift-wrapping service! This is such a nice little add on for anyone buying Father’s Day gifts and such a simple, easy way to make a profit. Charge £1.50 per wrapping service and you’ll definitely see a 50% profit margin if you buy your gift-wrapping materials cheaply.

Now, moving on to Proms, Graduations and Weddings: a lot of prom-goers may have got on the bandwagon early and already have their treatments booked with you, however there’s always those last-minute clients that will be looking to book, so this is the perfect time to catch their attention! As for Wedding and Graduations, these happen all through Summer, with Graduations being mainly in July and so here’s some further ideas to get booked up: 



- For those of you that sell multi-treatments,

this is a great opportunity for you to put together some little packages to market to your clients. For example, for Prom you could do a little ‘Prom Prep’ package, inclusive of 3 mini treatments; so, a facial, lash & brow tint? Or, if you offer hair and beauty, you could do a Summer pamper pack, applicable to all events, inclusive of: highlights, brow tint, spray tan and nails? Just a couple of ideas for you, as through research we’ve found that people go to separate salons for their brows, then nails and then their hair treatments - so if you can offer all these treatments together then this is much more profitable for you. If you however are solely a hair, or just beauty or a nail bar, why not look in to partnering with your surrounding salons, or mobile technicians who offer different treatments to you, to boost each other’s business throughout Summer? 



- Party packs for Bridal Parties or Graduates, where every member of the group comes to the salon for a treatment together on the same day. It’s up to you how you create these packs, whether you offer a small discount for booking a bulk treatment in volume, or whether you just create an experience instead with free complimentary refreshments throughout the day. It depends on past promotions what will work best for your salon, you may even wish to do a combination of the two. Advertise these packs on social media, through an SMS/email campaign or even traditionally by using little flyers through the doors of your local village!

- Run a competition on your social media channels. It could be something as simple as ‘Like, comment and share this post for the chance to win a Summer pampering package.’ Not only does this give one lucky client the chance to win a service pack with you, it also helps to boost your brand awareness, by sharing your online social network among many (hopefully) potential new clients. However, before running an online competition, it’s vital that your social media pages are up to date and full of photos of your work before you share it. You’ve got to think, your social networks are essentially your salons online portfolio, therefore ensure that this sells your business well before it reaches a wider audience. 

- If you offer online booking, promote your client base to use your booking app by sharing the link with them either by text, or a social media post. Use your latest Summer offers, whether these be discounts or new treatments, to prompt those clients to make a booking with you. However, not only does this improve your booking rate for Summer, it also notifies any clients that weren’t already using your online service that they are now able to book appointments 24/7 using their phone!


We understand that throughout Summer this is generally the busiest time for you at the salon and so if you’ve not had time to think about your marketing then hopefully a few of these little tips will help to ensure that you maintain your Summer success. And hopefully contribute to filling any of those potential last-minute gaps that you do have so you are remaining profitable all season long - Good luck!


Salon Tracker x

Why a Competitor Analysis of Local Competition is Essential

If there’s only your salon in your local area then you’re rather lucky, but I’m guessing for most of you there’s a few other salons nearby? You may not always think of doing competitor research for any nearby salon, however it is something that you could really find beneficial to your business. By competitor research I don’t mean walking past all of the salons nearby and trying not to stare too hard but getting a close enough look to pick up some details. Well I mean, you could do that as a starting point, but there’s a lot of better ways that you can gather your research…

Who are they?

The first port-of-call would be to find out exactly who your competition is. The easiest way to do this would be to just do a search on google for salons in your local area. Once you’ve got a list of all of your competitors, you can begin collating information about them, and really start defining who will be your direct competition and who is sort of your secondary competition.

Social Media

Nowadays most salons will use social media, especially Facebook, and this is the perfect place to find out all of the latest news about any of your competitors. This could be their latest deals, any new services, reviews, photos, events, pretty much anything you need to know can be found on there. You could draw inspiration from their posts or their services, they might offer something you’ve never heard of so it might be a good idea to start offering it if its something that you could provide. Perhaps you see that they’re doing a deal on something that you also offer, you should try to match it or even beat it to try get more customers in. The main con of social media is that this also means that if you use social media for your salon, then I would guess that your competitors are also looking at your page, so if you decide to promote an offer on your social media pages then there’s a good chance that they will see it and want to offer something similar, if not better.

Website

Take a look at your competitors’ websites, you should be able to find out a lot of information on here as you would be expecting them to want to showcase their business. Not everyone will have a website, as social media seems to be taking over, but its always good to try and find them. Look at what they’re doing well and if there’s anything that you could take from them to replicate on your own website or just on your social media.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Once you’ve done your research on the website, social media and just through google, make a list of all of the strengths and weaknesses that your competition offer. From this you will be able to see what you could be doing better or what you should try stay away from doing in your salon. Also think about how you can beat their strengths to make sure you stay ahead of your competition.

The last thing you want is for one your customers or potential customers to go to one of your competitors down the street instead of visiting your salon! I hope you can use these tips to help collect some information about your competitors and begin to create some sort of strategy in order to make sure you stay ahead of the competition.

Salon Tracker x

Do you use social media to it's full potential?

The average hair and beauty salon loses between 10 and 25% of it’s clients each year. To put that into perspective, after 3 years, that’s half of your client base gone…

Which is why it is essential to consciously attract new followers on a regular basis. Unsure where to start? Carry on reading to discover all our useful tips.

Content

Don’t fall into the trap of using your social media pages as a billboard with the sole purpose of advertising what your Salon does and any offers you have on. Yes, it’s a good platform for it, but followers soon get bored of the same content every day and this is where you lose your followers - Not what you want. Identify your market and what content they will enjoy viewing. As a Salon owner, your market is potential clients and current clients. Quotes, tips, client transformations, news in the industry and trends are all a good start for a followable account such as Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram

Instagram is an essential account to have for your Salon. Using a business account to register allows you to have access to an important tool called “insights”. You can see a chart of the gender, age range, top locations and the best times and days to post your content on. On-top of this you can post Instagram stories and live stories which will more often than not notify your followers that you have posted – bonus! Furthermore, Instagram gives you the option to add polls to your stories giving it an interactive, engaging element, allowing you to see the results which can be beneficial if thinking of adding a new product line etc. 

Make your Instagram feed at least 80% pictures inside of the Salon. This can include showing off work you’ve done such as a manicure or hairstyle, or pictures of the salon with seasonal themes you’ve implemented along with pictures of the outside of the Salon and your valued staff members. The other 20% of your feed can be creative. Quotes are always a great hit, offers you have on that are only valid with a code (this means they can only use the offer from following your page) and pictures showing         condolences to unfortunate events and current news.

Tip: Tag used products such as L'Oreal and O.P.I etc as well as following their accounts to gain a business relationship.

Give-aways

Create a social media incentive. Offer prizes or discounts for everyone that shares your page such as 10% off or a free product. Similarly, raffles are always a good hit and tagging friends in your page works a treat too. Nobody would turn down a freebie for a quick share of your page - it’s simple!

Make use of your Instagram and Facebook stories to offer exclusive discount that can only be used if they show the story and follow the account. This way you can monitor and track your online traffic all in one!

Be interactive

Follow back clients that follow you and like their stuff, this way you can gain a customer relationship and develop loyalty to your Salon. Also, following useful accounts such as Salon Magazine will help develop your business and brand name as well as finding interesting content for your own feed.

Respond to client queries/ shout-outs and be quick about it! Not only does this satisfy your existing clients, but if potential clients can see that you’re efficient at replying then they will already get a good impression of the way your business goes about thing’s and therefore choose to follow your account and visit the Salon.

Retweeting, liking and sharing of useful content are all features that are a blessing in disguise for your Salon. Not only for your social media presence but to get your brand name out there too as every time you retweet something your name will appear in that list which everyone can view.

Listening to what your client wants

If you wanted to go that one step further to satisfy clients and attract new ones, consider a tutorial page where you can demonstrate different looks and how to do them. Videos are a highly interactive element of any social media page, especially if it is something your clients have requested. Whether you decide to do these live on Instagram or posted on a channel such as YouTube your videos will catch the attention of new and current customer’s and will get people talking about how useful they are. Furthermore, they’re free!

These are just a few useful tips you can use to gain more followers on your Social media accounts, try them and see for yourself! 

Any questions or queries? Call 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk and we'll be happy to help!

Salon Tracker x