How to establish your new and upcoming salon

When establishing a new business within the salon industry there are a few things that you must take into consideration.

Business plans are essential when starting a new salon, you must be prepared and organised for any situation that may come your way when preparing for the launch of the salon. Things such as a grand opening should be organised to spread the word of your upcoming salon within the community, within this party you can display products that you offer as well as offers.

It is important to plan out what services will be provided within the salon, to do this you must take into consideration what treatments are most desirable within your target market/audience. As the owner of the business products and services you supply to your clients should be under constant review as trends are forever changing therefore people’s preferences of treatments will vary dependent on the season and the trends throughout the year.

One major aspect in promoting your newly established salon is your social media presence. It is important to have a business account on a variety of different social media platforms so that you are able to reach out to a range of different clients. To be able to retain and attract new clients you must ensure that you are constantly posting on each of your social media accounts, posting at least twice a day as a minimum on each account at the correct times during the day. For example, most individuals check their social media pages during their lunch break at work and on a night after work therefore it would be logical to post at these times of a day as people are more active on their social media accounts. The times may change dependent on your client basis taking into consideration factors such as if the majority of your salon clients are full time stay at home parents. The content you post is of high importance especially when you’re a new salon, content such as before and after images are a great way to promote the upcoming salon as clients love to see the process you make. It allows them to build a confidence bond between the client and your staff member as they have been made aware that the staff are very much capable.

For your salon to be able to develop a solid client base it is important that the customer experience starting from when the client enters the salon, walking into reception to when they pay for the service and leave must be impeccable. This means that the environment must exceed customer expectations in terms of cleanliness and decorativeness as clients are more likely to recommend your salon to friends when they have been built a personal relationship with the staff members within your salon from them providing an excellent service (including aftercare) and interacting with the client. Word of mouth is essential and helps to spread awareness of your salon and its services.

There are many ways in which you as a salon owner are able to maintain the high quality of care you are providing to your clients whilst promoting the business to the best of your abilities. Asking clients for reviews including how in their opinion their experience at the salon could be improved this allows you to constantly enhance the quality of your services and customer experience. Doing this will provide your salon with a higher chance of repeat clients when you add value to their service and experience. After each appointment it is essential for you and your staff members to always offer to schedule the clients next appointment to prompt them into returning. 

When starting a new salon owners like to offer discounts to entice customers to the salon. There are variation of different discount methods that you can use to entice clients to book at your salon such as referral discounts and start up offers.

These are just a few tips on how to establish your new salon within your community, follow our blog updates every week to learn the tools you are able to use to promote your business and maintain a strong client basis.

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Unknown Beauty Hacks you just need to know!

We've had 16 months since the start of the pandemic to now and i'm sure you have found out lots of little beauty hacks to get you through all 3 lockdowns. I've pulled out some of the best ones that have been tried and tested by us girls at Salon Tracker and we think they're too good to not share!

Castor Oil.

If you haven't already purchased a bottle of castor oil then you need to get one immediately! Castor oil is rich n fatty acids, Vitamin E and Proteins which is the best recipe for rapid hair growth. This can be applied to your scalp over night in a shower cap to avoid it going all over your pillow then washed out the next day for hair growth. Or it can be applied to lashes and eyebrows for growth too. Tried and tested by myself, after having lash extensions applied for months I didn't have many lashes left and what I did have left were short and brittle. After 2-3 months using castor oil on my lashes every night my lashes were long and thick again and received many compliments about them!

To get your hands on your own bottle, click the link below!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08BYTT88F/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Green Tea Bath

Green Tea is known for the many benefits it has when you drink it... but how many of you knew that a soak in a green tea bath is also really good for you! Green Tea baths can help reduce muscle pain and reduce redness of the skin. Known for the great antioxidants it contains it has also been said to have anti-aging effects as it helps your skin to recover from environmental elements. You can simply use green tea tea bags in your bath or you could try purchasing a green tea infused bath salt and see which you prefer!

Cold Water Face Wash

Simple yet effective - a cold water face wash! It seems to be our instinct to wash our faces with warm water rather than cold, probably because it is more comfortable like this! But unfortunately warm water on our face opens up our pores and can increase the likelihood of bacteria getting in them and causing breakouts. Cold water keeps your pores closed whilst allowing your face to be cleaned of bacteria with a cleanser the proper way, therefore reducing the amount of breakouts! A cold water face wash can also be quite refreshing, especially in summer!

Powder Lashes

Wanting a fuller lash but not wanting to splash out on lots of different mascaras? Try applying a coat of mascara then dusting your lashes with some translucent powder whilst the coat is still wet. Then apply another coat of mascara and notice a huge difference! You can also use baby powder as an alternative to the translucent powder, just make sure you don't get it in your eye!

The never ending perks of vaseline

Vaseline is an essential when it come to keeping your lips moisturised but it has many other great uses too. It is a great reliever of dry skin and has healing properties on things such as scratches and cuts. Vaseline can also come in handy if you have forgotten your makeup remover, simply apply a little bit onto your eyelids and wipe off with a cotton pad to remove any mascara or eyeshadow! Vaseline can also work well as a more natural form of highlight to top off your sleek makeup look - forget expensive highlighters and make room for Vaseline!

Hair Spray for the win

All women all over the world know how frustrating baby hairs can be when we are styling our hair, even more annoying when you pin them out of the way with a bobby pin and less than an hour later its already slid out! One hack I have come to know is spraying your bobby pins with hair spray before you put them in your hair. This gives them a bit more texture and grip and allows them to stay in your hair all day! 

Rice isn't just good for eating!

Using Rice Water on your hair is a popular hair growth hack all over the world but its not something that everyone knows about... soaking hair in rice water is a cheap yet effective method of turning your hair from dull, dark and dead into long luscious locks. Simply follow the below instructions to make the rice water:

- Take 1/2 cup uncooked rice

- Rinse thoroughly

- Place rice in a bowl with 2-3 cups of water and leave to soak for 30 mins

- Strain the rice into a clean bowl and retain for your next hair wash!

When it comes to next washing your hair simply shampoo and rinse your hair, poor rice water onto the hair and massage into hair and scalp. Leave on for 20-30 mins then rinse thoroughly with warm water! Do this 1-2 times per week and watch the results shine!

These are our top 7 unknown beauty hacks, why not let us know how you find them or even better, tell us a new unknown beauty hack?

Salon Tracker x 

Utilising Pinterest for your Salon

When running a salon, social media is one of the most useful tools on offer. Pinterest is one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, with over 416 million monthly active users, but it is often overlooked. Here at Salon Tracker, we believe that Pinterest is useful in so many ways, such as: finding inspiration, showcasing your work and selling your retail products.

Finding Inspiration

Pinterest allows you to create mood boards which you can tailor to your own needs. You are able to search for pins, which are photos that people have uploaded, and add these to your mood boards. Not only does it suggest the current trends to search for, it also allows you to choose your own searches, for example ‘summer nails’. This will bring up lots of different pictures to browse through and you can then pin these to your mood board to refer back to. Once you have added a few pins, it will then also bring up similar images that you be interested in. It’s a fantastic tool for keeping on top of what is trending at the moment.

Not only is it useful for finding inspiration for your treatments, but it is also useful for the interior inspiration for your salon. Whether this is a full salon makeover or simply a bit of seasonal décor, there is bound to be ideas on Pinterest that you can use.

Promoting your company

Another way in which you can use Pinterest to benefit your salon is that you can create ads. These can be done in a few ways such as a quick ad, which is a one-off payment that pushes one of your pins to a wider audience. Another way is campaign creation which is a more in-depth way, in which you can set daily amounts you wish to spend advertising.

Showcasing your work

As well as being able to save other people’s pins, you are able to create your own and share your work. You are able to upload a photo, which you can then add details to, such as what products you have used, and you can also link your website to the pin so that if they click the pin, they can be linked directly to your website. When posting, you have the option to post now or post at a later date so that you can post at times you know that people are more active.

Other image-based social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter do not have a very long post life, meaning that the posts do not stay on peoples feeds for very long. Pinterest however has a much longer post life and can see businesses getting leads up to 30 days after an initial post.

 

If you don't already follow us on Pinterest already, go give us a follow @salontracker and check out the different boards on our page for some inspo!  

If you have questions, feel free to drop us an e-mail at info@salontracker.co.uk or call us on 0113 350 8230.

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Things from the lockdown that are here to stay!

Hi everyone, hope your salons are still keeping busy throughout these Summer months! How are we in August already?! Quite scary how much times flying and that your salons have been re-open for almost 4 months! We’re so glad that things seem to finally be going back to some normality, even though there is still a bit of a new normal, we wanted to run through some changes that salons have made throughout the lockdown and which of these have perhaps proven to be beneficial for the future too.


Appointment Only Salon

Before the lockdown, quite a lot of our salons offered a walk-in service, especially in the tanning and barber industry. Following reopening, a lot of salons had to operate as appointment-only, to ensure that social distancing was adhered to and for the government track and trace programme. However, for a lot of businesses that began running this way, they realised that for marketing purposes it’s much better to offer an appointment only service, as clients this way have to register to make a booking as a pose to just walking-in. So, this is brilliant for data capture and also client retention, as you can re-market to these clients to remind them to book their next appointment. It’s also brilliant for reporting purposes, as you can also see which clients are re-visiting and also what your most popular treatments are with certain age groups or demographics!


PPE/Sanitising Station and Screens

Even though the mask-wearing requirement has now been dropped by the government, a lot of our salons have opted to keep this requirement for the time-being, to ensure maximum safety within the workplace for both employees and customers. As the months go on and hopefully, as we begin to see the end of the pandemic, even if many of you decide to then stop the mask wearing, a few salons have said that they will ensure sanitising stations stay around the salon and also will keep their Perspex screens up at reception. These are just simple safety tools that will help to protect staff and clients in general and just improve the overall hygiene within the salon!


Online Registration and Online Booking 

Throughout the lockdown, we saw our biggest uptake in upgrades to online booking and for clients to register online. The biggest advantage of this, it saves employees time and clients are then in control of making their own bookings. But not only that, it also means that if customers can register online, they can do this using their own devices and therefore this just stops overcrowding at the main reception desk, plus the sharing of pens & registration desks. Which all improves client safety whilst saving time and improving organisation in the salon too.

Digital Disclaimers

Most of our salons have terms and conditions that clients have to read and agree to before they are able to have a treatment. However, a lot of salons used to provide a paper copy of this to customers to keep as a reference of the salon’s t’s & c’s. Throughout the lockdown, we saw many businesses opting to have these added to their online registration page, or as a PDF link within their salon app, or simply as an email link, to stop the handling of paper documents during this time. But again, not only does this improve client safety, it also allows the salon to go paperless, saving on resources and meaning the client can now access these documents digitally on their phones or tablets!


App Ordering 

For some of our salons, especially if they are in hotels, many have coffee bars or cafés attached on their premises. So, throughout the lockdown, some of you were offering app ordering as a takeaway solution. Now even though these premises are allowed to re-open properly, many of you have said you will keep the app ordering and QR scan at tables for online menu viewing, as this not only again improves hygiene, it also saves on paper menus and client queues at the till area! Many of you also operated as a card-only business throughout the lockdown, with a lot of businesses still operating this way until we know that the pandemic is over, to stop the multi-handling of cash.


So it seems that the technological advances have really proven to be beneficial to our salons over the past few months, as many of you are opting to keep your online features and appointment-only way of operating. We’re so glad that the last few months have been busy and successful for you and if there are any further promotional tips that you would like help with, our sales and marketing team are always on hand to help you. Just give us a call or drop an email to info@salontracker.co.uk and we’d be happy to book a free marketing session with you.


Not a user of Salon Tracker yet? Simply head over to www.salontracker.co.uk/freetrial.aspx to get your free 2-week trial of our software! See how we can help you to further boost your salon business!


Salon Tracker x

Our New Dojo Payments Integration

We recently introduced our new Dojo Payments Integration into Salon Tracker making it even easier to
take your card payments. Since COVID many of our customers have seen an increase in card payments rather than cash, so we wanted to make this as easy and seamless as possible.

There are so many benefits to the Dojo card machine: serve your customers quicker, get paid faster, protect your income and there’s no long term commitment. The biggest benefit of all is being able to connect your Dojo machine straight to your Salon Tracker Software. With the integration setup, the payment amount is sent directly to your Dojo card machine making it so much easier for staff when taking payments, especially when you’re busy! Here’s just a few advantages the Dojo integration could bring to your salon:

Reduces Staff Error

A significant benefit to utilising our payment integration feature is that it massively reduces staff payment error. As staff will no longer have to manually enter the payment amount onto the machine, this will help to massively decrease staff error as there is no chance of the wrong amount be entered on accident.

Security

Similar to the reduction in staff error, the integration also helps to make your payments more secure. As the payment amount is automatically sent through to your payment terminal, staff members are unable to change the amount once it has been sent from Salon Tracker. This means all your reports on Salon Tracker should match the receipts from your payment terminal, as staff are unable to purposefully or accidentally change the amount the customer is paying.

Reduces Customer Waiting Time

As the amount is directly sent through to your Dojo machine, this will also help to reduce customer waiting time as everything will be seamless from when you confirm the payment on Salon Tracker.

The Dojo machine itself without the integration with Salon Tracker is perfect for keeping track of your salon, using their app allows you to see real-time insights, receive push notifications, view trend analysis and look at specific transaction details! Dojos slick new design means the terminal looks perfect in any salon, and the new touchscreen feature makes it so easy to see and use. If you are interested in utilising all the benefits of this integration don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230 or via email on info@salontracker.co.uk and we will be happy to discuss this with you.

Salon Tracker x

How you can use Social Media in your Salon!

Social media is everywhere these days, from Instagram to Facebook to Tiktok. There are many ways you can use social media in your salon to stay up to date on recent trends, to show people your work and also to attract new customers. We know that this can be a little daunting if you haven’t done this before so I’m here to share my best tips and tricks for you to use social media for your salon.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms at the moment with over one billion active users sharing and viewing content each day. One of the best ways to utilise Instagram is to use this as a way to share pictures of your services, whether this be bright colour jobs or some before and afters of clients when they get their services done. Sharing the treatments which you do in your salon on Instagram means customers, both existing and potential can see what you’re capable of and this may persuade them to book an appointment with you. Hashtags are also very useful on Instagram.  Every time you post you should use different hashtag depending on what you’re sharing a picture of. For example, if you’re posting a picture of some nails that have been done in the salon use hashtags like ‘#nails’ and ‘#nailart’ this will mean your posts are more likely to be viewed by more people, even if they don’t follow you.  Finally, the last way you can use Instagram in your salon is the stories feature. Posting stories are a great way to keep your customers updated on what is going on in your salon and also as they only last 24 hours you don’t have to keep them on your feed, Stories are also a good way to do things such as ‘flash sales’ as they’re only available to view for 24 hours you could do a deal on a quiet day for example ‘Today Only, Buy a 30 Minute Course and get a Free Sachet of Tanning Lotion’.

 

Facebook

Facebook is another very popular social media site, especially for salons. Facebooks gives you the opportunity to keep customers updated, display reviews and communicate with your customers all in one place.  Facebook is also a good social media platform to run competitions on. For example, you could run a competition for a free or discounted service in your salon and for you customers to enter they should have to tag some friends and share the post. By asking customers to tag friends and share your post, this means that all the Facebook friends of everyone who had shared that post will see your salon. This is a really good way to get more exposure. Another way to get exposure on Facebook is by using the sponsored posting feature. This does come with a cost but you can spend as much or as little as you like on this. You can push your posts to a target audience of your choice so more people, apart from those who already follow you, will see your posts. As mentioned before, Facebook is also a great place for communicating with your customers, whether this be responding to reviews that they have left you or responding to any messages they have left you. Facebook gives you the option to do all of this in one place.

 

Tiktok

Tiktok is a fairly new social media platform which exploded in popularity over lockdown.  The basic idea of this is to share short videos of whatever you want with popular videos making it to the ‘For You Page’.  Already there are a lot of salon accounts on the platform from nail techs showing viewers the process of doing a client’s nails, hair salons showing some before ad afters and other types of salons sharing tips and tricks to views about things such as tanning safety and how to get the smoothest finish on your foundation.  This platform is very popular, especially with the younger generation with some videos reaching up to a million views, so why not get involved!

 

There are many other options for what social media platforms you could use in your salon for example twitter is also a good one but these are just some of our favourites.

If you’re not already make sure you’re following us on all out social media accounts @salontrackersoftware on Instagram, Salon Tracker Software on Facebook and @SalonTrackerLTD on X to keep up with everything new at Salon Tracker.

 

If you would like any more tips or tricks on how to use social media in your salon don’t hesitate to drop us a message on any of our social media accounts or call on 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker x

 

Salon Tracker Educational Software

Although this isn’t the end of the pandemic, I think we can all agree that stress of being constantly placed into a variety of different restrictions can now come to its end following the termination of restrictions this Monday. As business owners you are now able to make adaptions freely to ensure that you meet society’s new normality as well as being able to meet the needs of both the staff and customers.

The impact of the pandemic on Educational Salon Academies has been astronomical starting with the limit on face-to-face high-quality education being restricted to students as well as salons having to shut for a long period of time, both situations have had a massive impact on educational salons. Now that they are able to return to face-to-face education and salons are completely free of restrictions it is important that throughout the academy and salon, they ensure good hygiene for both staff and students, maintain appropriate cleaning regimes and keeps the congested areas well ventilated to decrease the risk of infection spreading. It is important that as an educational salon you maintain standards to ensure the safety of staff, pupils and customers another form in which this can take place is by having a booking management system in place to prevent overcrowding in a confined space.

Within Salon Tracker Software there is an Educational Program this program is tailored to meet the needs of your salon with a variety of different features for example we are able to alter calendar titles as well as adding duplicate calendars to assist you in arranging the different level each student is qualified to carry out. Day to day tasks is simplified through the use of our reports and charts section these features allow the financial department access to the academy’s finances throughout the salon.  Through the Siteview application the finance department are also able to collect data and examine reports to be able to monitor the progress of each student and the salon in general.

With Educational salons it can be quite busy with new students arriving and then each student training to achieve a different qualification this can often become complicated to handle. With the software you as a staff member are able to create different calendars to organise which qualification each student is on track to achieve. Features such as groups ensures that students are unable to carry out services that they are not qualified to do this feature can be very beneficial from a legal point of view. Features such as split bookings will allow the salon to book client appointments with a break in between therefore enabling the treatment time to develop this therefore enables the salon to create bookings for other clients in the gap. Additional to this there are features such as post delay which can be useful for hair treatments as it ensures that when a client from the salon books online the break between their two treatments will automatically apply.

If you are interested in having a demonstration of the software or alternatively trialling the software for a two-week period simply enquire at www.salontracker.co.uk/freetrial.aspx and fill in the required details or contact us on 0113 350 8230 and you will be provided with your bespoke educational rates.

 

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Salon Tracker X