It’s a new normal in the business world as every business owner keeps pace with the pandemic.
Going forward, the success of starting or growing your beauty, hair and nail salon, spa, and barbershop business during this post-pandemic period will heavily depend on your ability to attract, convert, and retain customers.
In this detailed salon guide, you’ll discover industry-informed findings of things to do and things to avoid to help you strengthen your client base and win more online appointment bookings for your business.
You’ll be better set to convert first-time customers into returning clients, retain existing ones and attract new ones. As you run your business efficiently, you’ll serve more clients and grow your business revenues.
Barbershops and beauty salons deal in hair and cosmetic treatments to their customers – both men and women.
Some of the businesses in this industry offer all services under one roof while others specialize in a specific line of either men or women covering skin care treatments, nail salons, and hair salons.
Salon and barbershop services include artificial tanning and skincare beautification, pedicure, manicure, waxing, haircuts, and hairdressing.
The hair salon market size in the US: $39.5bn
Market growth size for hair salons in the US: 28.7%
Despite the pandemic effect, the salon industry is still promising. If you’re in the salon or barbershop business of any category, the numbers are in your favor. It could be time to advance your business growth.
Grow your salon business client base and you’ll grow your revenues
To start or grow your beauty salon, barbershop, or spa business you should pay close attention to the process of acquiring, converting, and retaining customers.
Tip: It’s easier for your business to retain existing customers than acquire new ones.
The market segment you’re targeting is interested in learning more about your business before they engage. A business website gives you the space to provide key details to motivate your prospects to convert.
Hire a website designer to set up your salon business website or do-it-yourself. Content management systems like Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress can help you to quickly set up your website.
Improve your existing website using the checklist below to ensure it has all the essentials to convert your prospects into customers.
Plainly outline the services you offer to your prospects and customers. Whether your salon offers full or specialized services, remember to highlight specific services like tanning and skincare, pedicure and manicure, haircuts, and hairdressing.
Keep your pricing for your services transparent. Prospects and customers should know the cost of your services to help them make quicker decisions. The pricing model that works for most salons and barbershop business is where you indicate pricing for individual services and for group services.
Include your business email, phone number, Google map location, business hours, and a quick contact form that clients can fill out whenever they want to reach you. Customers trust businesses they can easily contact.
Allow your customers to self-book their appointments online with an automated appointment scheduling app for beauty salon and barbershop businesses.
Why use an appointment scheduling tool? Dedicated tools like our appointment reminder scheduling software:
Tip: Check ready text message samples you can customize to send to your salon and barbershop business clients.
Start connecting with your customers by providing useful information about your business and your team. This is your opportunity to introduce your team to your customers. If you’re the business owner and have an inspirational story about your salon or barbershop, share it in brief.
Include your Facebook and Instagram links on your website so web users can easily access your business on social media.
Feature the best pictures of your salon and barbershop. Share photos of how your salon, spa, or barbershop business premises look like. Include group photos of your team and while at work – if you share photos of your clients ensure you seek their consent.
Testimonials are endorsements by other people recommending your business to others. Reviews are customers’ expression of their experience with your services. Great reviews can instantly earn your beauty salon or barber business more clients. People love checking business reviews.
Create or update Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about your salon and barbershop business. Use the FAQs section to organize a collection of valuable information about your business. It’s a strategy to connect with your target audience boosting conversions by helping them make a purchasing decision.
Your salon, spa, or barbershop staff work directly with your customers selling products and services. It’s an in-person engagement – where people serve people.
Investing in your staff rewards. If they offer a great service with friendly customer skills, then they can help you attract new customers and retain existing ones.
Building your staff can secure your business against losing employees and consequently, customers.
New inexperienced staff may feel intimidated by senior and more experienced staff. Build an environment that supports growth so they can enhance their skills and feel they belong.
Keep your staff updated with the latest trends in salon and barber business products and services to keep pace with the competition. You can conduct an in-house training or hire an expert to help them update their skills.
Underpayment is a major killer of employee morale. Ensure you pay your staff a competitive remuneration depending on the state you live in and the standard or class of your business.
Staff working in high-end salons in the city’s CBD would expect higher pay compared to their counterparts working downtown.
Your staff are human beings with emotions and may need someone to listen to them. Be available for your staff and give them the human support they need beyond money.
A good salon work environment should be well equipped with the essential work tools and space your team requires to work. It’s not only impacts your staff, but also your customers.
Instagram and Facebook profiles work best for salon and barbershop businesses. The idea is to focus more on social media channels where you can easily showcase your work and get your customers.
Avoid using your personal Instagram profile. Whether you work with a team or you’re a solopreneur always use an Instagram business profile for your salon or barbershop.
Using Instagram business profile:
Include all basic and essential details of an Instagram business profile. Clients like associating with and following Instagram businesses with complete and persuasive profiles.
Upload the best pictures and videos of your salon’s premises and services. Remember, you’re in business. If you’re not confident enough about the photos you take, consider hiring a professional photographer to assist you.
Appealing visuals easily attract new followers to your profile, convince and persuade them to either book an appointment or at least visit your website.
After your visuals attract a following, it’s time to persuade them to book your services by engaging with them.
Tip: Instagram is so effective for salon businesses because it has a higher engagement rate than Facebook. It’s easier, quicker, and effective for you to build your salon business and attract new audiences.
Engage with posts: Accompany your visual posts with texts to build stories that connect with your audience.
Ask questions to your audience: Questions help you know the thoughts of your potential customers. Connect with them further through the comments as you respond to their questions about your offers.
Hashtag engagements: Accompany your posts with relevant hashtags to broaden your audience reach. It’s better to use 3-5 hashtags instead of the whooping 30 hashtags that Instagram allows you.
Include your unique appointment booking link on your Instagram bio so your prospective clients can start scheduling their salon appointments with you.
Once again, as is the case with Instagram, use Facebook pages for your salon or barber business. Facebook pages are specifically customized with dedicated features you need to build your business.
Here are the core advantages you should use Facebook page for your beauty and salon business.
Facebook is the largest social client marketplace with over 2.89 billion monthly users. This makes it an ideal place in your quest for new clients.
Facebook makes you more visible. Your visibility on Facebook gives access to the clients of your competitors. If they’re looking for an alternative, then you have higher chance of winning them if you’ve packaged your profile well.
Facebook can help you target audiences that meet a specific criterion. You can show your services to people in a specific location, gender, age, interests, and many other parameters depending on what you want.
Facebook businesses page features allow you to add all information that is necessary to make a convincing first impression to people coming across your business for the first time. Ensure you optimize your business page with the guide below.
In addition to sharing a link to your website, the page options give you a powerful feature to set your call to action (CTA) where you can enable appointment booking with a direct link to your scheduling page.
By default, Facebook shows your page posts to your page followers via news feeds. This implies that whenever you make a new post about your beauty salon business, they get a notification.
As soon as they log into their Facebook account, your posts appear on the timeline of their news feed. More posts could give you more visibility and boost the credibility and professionalism of your beauty salon.
Person-to-person business recommendations are still valuable today. Delivering an exceptional service to your clients will make it irresistible for them to recommend you to their friends and services.
Here are some techniques to get referrals from your clients.
Quality services will impress your clients. Impressed clients can readily recommend your beauty salon or barbershop services to their friends and family.
The logic is, they believe you will offer the same great services to their friends and family. They want the people in their circles to have a satisfying experience.
It takes time to build trust, not just in business but, generally – in all life.
For beauty salons, you start building trust the moment a prospect starts interacting with you – when they first visit your website or come across your Instagram or Facebook profile.
After clients book an appointment, show up at your business, a satisfying experience reinforces their trust.
Clients who trust your business and business services have the confidence to recommend you to their people in their circles – family, friends, workmates, and acquaintances.
The best time to prepare your clients for their next appointment is during their visit – whether it’s their first appointment or their return appointment at your business.
If you’ve paid close attention to the sections above, then it should be easy to make your customers content enough to book you again for their next hair styling, pedicure, manicure, or any other service.
Get started with this complete appointment booking guide for salons, spas, and barbershops.