Apr 24, 2009
The most successful branding you can ever do is let people know what you stand for.
I was recently lucky enough to tour New Zealand where I got to meet and train salon owners throughout the North Island. During one of my training sessions I was asked about branding. How do we develop a brand then market that brand once it is established?
My reply was to ask every salon owner present to quickly tell me what makes their salon different. What was their belief statement about their business? You can imagine (as you are wondering what is your own salon’s point of difference), not one owner could quickly state what was the essence of their business. Some quoted that they were the best, others mumbled that they were results orientated, but no-one could clearly define what it was that made their salon special and have it roll off the tip of their tongue as a practised statement of belief.
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Dec 24, 2008
Everyone is talking about the economic downturn, how could you avoid it? Pictures of doom and gloom for the retail sector fill our television screens. It has everyone worried. As small business owners many of us are concerned about the effects a recession would have on our income. That’s natural. But not many salon owners know exactly what they can do to “recession proof” their businesses.
Basically, the ideas I am going to provide here are the same tactics we should employing whether we are approaching a recession or not – It’s just more pertinent in difficult economic times. I teach that there are two major areas we need to concentrate on when times get a little tough. The first is to cut back on some of your costs. (I know what you are thinking – easier said than done!) But cutting back significantly on costs could simply mean doing things a bit smarter, not necessarily making wholesale changes to your business. It certainly means putting some time and effort into maintaining a healthy, loyal data base so that less money needs to be spent on attracting new clients through expensive advertising.
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Dec 19, 2008
Everyone accepts that Christmas is the one true crazy season for the beauty industry. There aren’t enough hours in a day and even if there were staff are worked to maximum capacity. In years gone by I have written about marketing ideas, displaying Christmas stock and preparing your salon for this wonderfully busy and profitable period. But this year as we start to think about our Christmas planning, my thoughts have turned to how we can prepare our staff for the inevitably hectic weeks of December.
Every year salons contact me with problems concerning staff just before the Christmas rush. And every year I wonder if there had been more planning and concern for the staff member’s needs would the problems have occurred in the first place. Many of our team are just not well enough prepared for the deluge of customers, lack of breaks, no days off, longer hours, new stock lines, special deals, time constraints and greater demands placed on them. Consequently many find it difficult to cope, necessitating time off or not being able to maintain the high standards expected in the salon.
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Nov 25, 2008
As a specialist consultant in small business management, one of my primary areas of work is in the field of marketing. It is also where I see the inexperienced salon owner spend and waste unnecessary money. Very few one - off marketing exercises bring in huge dividends or create long - term customer loyalty. However, when a number of easy to implement, effective, repeatable systems are adopted, the sum total of each of these smaller profit centres can be significant. Therefore the majority of a successful salon’s marketing effort should be in the implementation of systems to attract more business and create more profit, so I thought I would explore a few of these ideas in this article.
Marketing 101
The first logical way of making more money in a clinic is to attract more customers. Sounds simple enough, but there are actually two different types of customers that we need to work on. The first and easiest group are our past and existing customers. Here our strategy is to retain clients and establish on-going repeat business. The second is to attract new customers to our business through various forms of advertising.
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Nov 21, 2008
I was recently running a marketing workshop for salon owners where I declared that two of my preferred forms of marketing were to write letters and get on the phone. I went on to do a cost analysis on each of these methods of contacting clients against radio, newspaper advertisements or letter box drops and it was clear that letters and phone calls are a great, cost effective form of keeping in touch with existing clients.
As my seminar progressed, we discussed the types of letters and phone calls I utilise. The area that most interested participants was the need to follow up clients.
It seems very few salons bother to follow up both new clients and customers that have purchased a product or tried a new service. And they should!
Yes it takes a bit of time, but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs or time considerations.
Here’s why:
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