Most beauty businesses begin as one-person operations, growing slowly and steadily firstly with the opening of premises, and then with the addition of extra staff and an expanding range of services.
Over time, however, this organic growth can reach a plateau, and it can be difficult for owners to know how to move forward. In these cases, it is often not advisable to try and expand but to streamline and improve the business operation. If you are running a beauty salon and are looking for ways to improve and grow, here are four steps to a more efficient beauty salon that might help.
1. Encourage your clients to pre-book
Studies have found that only 30% of first-time customers will return to a salon, even if they are happy with the service they received. By encouraging customers to pre-book their next appointment before they leave the salon, a salon can drastically improve its customer retention rate.
If you are currently leaving it up to the customers to call the salon when they want another appointment, they will probably leave it until the last minute to book. This makes it less likely that they will be able to book a convenient appointment and more likely that they will go elsewhere.
Or, consider investing in salon management software like Vagaro or Square, which allows customers to easily book appointments online at their convenience, reducing the chances of losing them to competitors. When it comes to choosing between Vagaro vs Square, it’s important to consider their specific features and functionalities. Vagaro offers robust scheduling and marketing tools, while Square provides seamless integration with its point-of-sale system, allowing for easy payment processing.
2. Enable online booking
Many salon owners find that their staff spends a lot of their day taking calls, manually booking appointments, rescheduling them, and calling customers to confirm. It’s an important aspect of your operation, but it can be made more efficient. By moving to an online booking system, you will free up your team’s time and make it more convenient for customers to manage their own appointments.
You can also incorporate appointment reminder software that will automatically remind customers about an upcoming appointment. If a customer cannot make the appointment, it will encourage them to reschedule so you can offer the time to another customer and reduce the losses caused by no-shows.
3. Embrace SEO and digital marketing
It’s not uncommon for beauty salons to be wary of digital marketing. After all, it takes time to build up an online presence, and a lot of business comes from word of mouth. However, in today’s digital world, it is no longer an option to avoid digital marketing.
When a person is looking for a salon, they will turn to search engines or social media platforms to find it. They will check online review sites to check that your salon has a good reputation, and they will visit your website to see if you ‘look’ like the kind of place they want to trust with their hair, face, or body. Click here for a beginner’s guide to digital marketing.
4. Keep training your staff
Of course, you could become a digital marketing expert and set up a streamlined online booking process, but if your staff is not trained well enough, your progress will be slow. Staff training should include not just practical training in the services you provide but also IT-related training that will ensure they are able to use your software efficiently, customer service training, and other professional development courses that will enable them to give the best performance possible.
Training is usually most effective when delivered in stages on a regular basis, rather than trying to cram everything into one day.
Interesting related article: “What is Digital Marketing?“