Starting up a hair salon is no easy task, it requires planning and close attention to detail. When you’ve successfully set up a hair salon business, the next step is to grow and improve it in all aspects and maintain that growth level. The sad reality is that the hair salon business is a really competitive one, slacking and not keeping up with trends will push you out of business faster than you think. You need to be constantly alert and put in the work required to remain relevant. These are a few tips to help you improve your hair salon.
1. Screening customers & Improvingyour service value
It goes without saying that this should only apply to established salons, you don’t have the right to screen customers if you are a new salon, as every customer will bring cash flow to support your business. It is only advised to carefully screen your customers when your services are booked more than 85% of the time. Do this by rejecting new booking by call only for haircuts and test the waters by increasing the price by 10%. Remember, you will lose approximately 10% of your customers, but in return you will find you have more time to provide higher grade service such as hair dying, hair extensions, etc and have a better clientele base which ultimately leads to an increase in earnings.
The fundamental idea behind screening your customers is that it upgrades your business model from one that provides basic services to numerous customers at a relatively low price to one that caters for highly specialized services for few customers at a higher price.
2. Provide more expensive service or products
Every hairstylist has a limited amount of time daily, for example a hair stylist can work for eight hours daily. If you keep providing the same service it is impossible to make increase your income, but if you provide more expensive service/ product, your income will be greatly increased. In addition to increasing your income, providing more exquisite service does wonders for your reputation.
Bear in mind that not everyone of your customers will be willing to accept or patronize expensive services, so don’t get your hopes up too high. Even for the people who don’t accept the expensive services, it also helps your because they would compare the price of your expensive services with the ones they patronize and be of the impression that the prices are competitive.
3. Create a referral program
It’s common knowledge the best advertisement is always positive words from customers. A strong relationship between you and customers will bring much surprise to you often, a customer may bring 3–5 customers to you easily. Such customers will have great trust in you because of the recommendation of friends. Create a program where if a customer refers a friend, both of them receive a discount, a free product or services. I guarantee you’ll be seeing new faces in your salon daily and the snowball effect will be amplified day after day!
4. Start “Frequent Flyer” Program at Hair salon
Frequent flyer program is not only appropriate for an airline. Trying to use it at your hair salon will be simpler. People with prepaid access for a certain number of visits will receive more discounts, free gifts or VIP service. This will motivate people to become your frequent visitors, and hence have access to the wonderful features of prepaid access. Many salons have gotten incredible success from the plan.
5. Leverage your reputation
For salon customers who come for hair service many times a year, a good number of them are family or close friends with the salon owner or hairstylist, it is a strong relationship which makes it is easy to provide more service or product for them. We find an increasing number of hair salons sell their own brand of hair extensions in the salon or online shop. If you want to venture into this, you should first try to sell at the salon and observe how your customers respond. If your customers have a lot of faith in you, it is easier for them to buy a product recommended by you. Many of them find it quite difficult to tell apart the quality difference between brands, your position as a trustee professional on it can greatly influence their purchases. Selling hair extensions or related hair maintenance product at your salon will not take you much time, you just need to use your knowledge and give personalized recommendations.
As a wholesale hair extensions supplier Umihair has partnered with many hair salons and provided them hair extensions with customized packing. All of their income has been greatly improved. Some of them even grow their business to provide hair extensions for other salons. Some salons set up a hair extensions shop online, it becomes a better business model to earn money while sleeping.
6. Leverage your knowledge
Leverage your knowledge on hairstyle, hair maintenance, hair dying, hair extensions or hair fashion to become a leader. You can work with salon training schools, record tutorial videos and sell online, share the profit with them. It bring you a steady stream of cash when sleeping or working. Another way to achieve this is by having a small number of apprentices who pay for teaching them at your salon while you work.
7. Leverage your network
Video marketing is considered the best method to attract attention to your business. There are so many videos you can make at a hair salon, for example hair styling , hair extensions, hair texture or hair dying and so on. Every video on youtube is accessible 24 hours a day, most importantly it is free. Your video channel at youtube will bring more valued customers to your shop. The youtube channel can connect your shop to the online world, it can drive thousands of people to buy products from your shop. It will be an incredible alternative source of passive income.
Another good platform for this is instagram, pictures and short videos can be posted there.
8. Turn once- service into subscriptions
Subscription is widely used in marketing, do you think it can also be used at a hair salon customer service? Yes It can. Provide valued information, tips, tricks, promotions or discounts to your subscription customers, it will deepen your salon impression and gradually convert passive customers to loyal ones who can’t leave you any more. This is a long term process, remember to take your time and be patient.
9. Identify a niche and dig in
Specialization always leads to more loyal customers and a better reputation. Nobody wants to be styled by a “jack of all trades and master of none.” Identify a niche you are especially skilled at and build your brand around it, customers are more likely to trust a specialist.
Applying these eight methods will lead to a growth in your business and more earnings if done properly and consistently.
