How to increase your business
Caroline is delighted with her award for 'Hair & Beauty Retailer of the Year 2011'
Inside Ego Hair Design in Inverness, Scotland. |
Are you growing?
By Caroline Sanderson
Hair & Beauty Retailer of the Year 2011
(the Scottish Independent Retail Awards)
Ego Hair Design is an innovative award winning forward thinking salon in the City of Inverness, Scotland. Located away from the central shopping area that’s naturally high in footfall, the salon is positioned off the beaten track challenged with making the client come to them! Salon owner Caroline Sanderson shares her thoughts with us on how to turn your salon around quickly and cost efficiently!
Caroline’s TOP 5 Pointers:
1. Niche Marketing: Don’t try and be all things to all people. Find your niche and use it to attract the exact people who want the specific thing you specialise in. Nearly all salons claim to specialise in cut and colour so why not stand out from the crowd and find a niche within that? Ie Wedding specialists. An advert with a headline’ Looking for the perfect Wedding day hair? Become a blonding specialist. An advert with a headline ’Looking for the perfect blonde hair colour? We are blonding experts’ will get you a greater response as you are speaking directly to that niche. This is ‘laser marketing’.
2. Facebook: You need to find your Facebook voice as a salon. People on Facebook are there to socialise with friends so when you are communicating use a friendly approach. You have just a few seconds to attract their attention in their ‘live feed’ so start all your posts with a powerful headline in CAPITALS and the rest must be in lowercase for easy reading. For example you can use the headline FREE HAIRDRESSING: if you were doing a buy one get one free deal for a new stylist. That would certainly grab attention. Regular posts are a must to stay in your audiences mind.
3. Refer a friend programme: If you get this right this could start getting floods of new clients through your doors almost overnight. You must get creative and make this desirable for both friend and client. I offer a cash value for every client referred of £15 plus a free condition and shine treatment. I give clients up to 9 referral cards so if they refer 9 friends they receive a value of £189 in savings. So when you say to a client “would you like me to give you £189 worth of free services to use at the salon”? You can imagine they are very excited. Much better than handing over a card with 10% discount for you and friend…don’t waste your time it won’t work!
4. Salon Website: If you don’t have a salon website in this day and age you are CRAZY! Almost everyone uses Google searches now and the main thing you must get right on your website is the home page. This is your SALES PAGE. Again you have a short time to attract attention so don’t make the ultimate salon marketing blunder, by putting your logo as your headline, instead, use your niche marketing headline again. Give them as much info as possible on the home page so they will want to click through. Don’t expect them to hang around clicking through your site if the home page isn’t interesting enough. They have easier things to do…grab them straight away!
5. FREE HAIRDRESSING: If your average client stays a year and spends £300-£400 how much are you are willing to pay for that client? You should be more than happy to give them their first cut for FREE if you are confident in your services. I use this for building new stylists. The best tip for doing freebies is to choose a client who will be seen by a lot of people eg: front of house. Make sure it’s a change they want and ask them if they will give out cards to anyone who comments on their new look, in return for a free cut and/or colour.
Significantly more people use online methods like social media to keep in touch and with Facebook’s recent announcement of creating a timeline of life events – LIKING your local salon might just bag you a new client! Think forward and think innovatively.
Caroline and her winning team
at the Scottish Hair & Beauty Awards night.
 Q Hair & Beauty Invite You to Tap Into the New ‘Q APP’
By Kain Lawrence, Director of Innovation at Q Hair & Beauty
Q Hair & Beauty has responded to the needs of their customers by making the most of modern technology. Located at North Street, Chichester, they have launched a brand new unique ‘Q APP’ specifically for the iPhone, that will enable users to view promotions and special offers with immediate effect as well as make bookings and locate the salon with the devices location GPS technology.
 Kain Lawrence, Director of Innovation for Q Hair & Beauty, tells us how it all came about.
“The new App was developed in response to an incredible 35% of subscribers to the qhairandbeauty.co.uk website Newsletters being opened by iOS technology or similar.
The whole world is turning to mobile technology. To be able to reach over 51 million people worldwide with one tap of a screen is 21st century marketing at its finest!
Users are able to interact with all social media sites connected to the salon, view photos, learn more about the team and salon in addition to posting comments and suggestions!”
Salon Owner Anthony Barnes-Smith added “It is fantastic to see the hairdressing industry is joining such a phenomenal transition and am so proud Q are a part of it, especially as we are entering our 40th birthday next year.”
The APP has been launched through itunes and is a free download (just search for ‘Q Hair’. Users can also follow the direct link from the website. Q Hair & Beauty is a keen innovator of salon treatments, services and technology, Q is one of the first independent salons across the country to launch an ‘app’.
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