Increase Salon Suite Retail and Service Sales with “Hot” Summertime Marketing Ideas
THOUGHT PROCESS
When school is out, vacations, reunions, special celebrations and many other client occasions mean there are unique opportunities for Salon Suite owners to increase both service and retail sales.
ACTION STEPS
Align your Salon Suite’s services and retail with the activities that tend to crop up in client’s lives during summer months in order to increase sales, introduce your Salon Suite to new customers and ensure that your clients look their best at all of the occasions they attend this summer.
5 Salon Suite Marketing Tips for Summer Months
Normal schedules are often up-ended during summertime months. Children are out of school, vacations interrupt work and home life, wedding and family and class reunions make everyone want to look their best, the sun is out, graduates are preparing for their next move, and so on. Since it’s not “business as usual” for your clients, changing things up in your Salon Suite marketing could help you attract new clients and increase retail sales.
1. Offer a Suite of Wedding Services
Booking one wedding might mean a full day, or even more than one day’s worth of client appointments as you help the bride, bridesmaids, mother-in-law and mother of the bride, flower girls and other attendants with hair and makeup on the day of the wedding. You can expand on this suite of services by offering groom, groomsmen, father-in-law and father of the groom, ushers and ring bearer haircuts to be done in the days just before the wedding, ensuring that everyone in the wedding party will look their best.
In addition, you can increase retail sales by ensuring that members of the wedding party who need styling products to complete their look have the right products. Think about creating a bundle package where mini or full-size retail styling products are included with services. In addition to styling products, items such as hair accessories, clips, lipsticks, eye shadows and nail lacquers could also be bunded in package pricing or sold as add-ons.
2. Get Vacation Dates in the Books
Our last post talked about overcoming client objections to rebooking including an appeal to the client’s fear of loss; e.g., fear of losing their appointment slot. If you are going to be traveling for personal or professional reasons this summer, it gives you another organic way to get clients to rebook, so they are assured of an appointment time before or after your vacation.
You should also check with clients to find out whether and when they will be traveling during the summer and pre-book appointments for them before their vacation. Once again, you’ve introduced the idea of pre-booking on a regular basis and you have also assured them they will look their best when they’re traveling this summer.
3. Blow Out and Style Occasion Options
Your clients may also have special occasions happening in town when they want to look their best. Offering a blow out and style option on the day of an event not only ensures they will look great when reuniting with old classmates, family members, friends or colleagues, it also means they will be adding an extra appointment in between their regular appointments. Since you won’t be cutting or coloring their hair at these appointments, they’ll still need to come back at their regular frequency.
Blow out and style appointments can also be offered to new clients or give you the ability to reach out with a special offer to people who are visiting your city to attend special occasions. Take a copy of your blow out and style appointment offer postcards or flyers to local hotels for placement in guest common areas or rooms for the summer.
These appointments are another time where you may be able to increase retail sales by bundling styling and finishing products along with services. In the case of people who traveled to your city, make this even more appealing by offering mini-sized retail products they can take with them if traveling by plane.
4. Sun, Sand and Surf
Many of your clients will be spending more time outdoors during summer months. From Salon Suite retail impulse buy items like sunglasses, mini aloe vera, fun or full-size sun screen and lip balms with sun screen, to the hair and skin care products they need to protect themselves from sun damage, summer should be the season of retail!
Use email and social marketing to educate your clients about the products they should be using during summer months. Bundle sun products together or offer them as service appointment add-ons.
5. Children Are Out of School… For Now
Have you heard the saying what goes up must come down? In this case, while children are out of school for now, they’ll soon be going back. Even though it seems like summer has just started, now is the time to plan your Salon Suite’s back to school marketing. In addition to haircuts kids need before school starts, you can also think about selling product kits that are ideal for kids going off to college.
Normal schedules are often up-ended during summertime months. Children are out of school, vacations interrupt work and home life, wedding and family and class reunions make everyone want to look their best, the sun is out, graduates are preparing for their next move, and so on. Since it’s not “business as usual” for your clients, changing things up in your Salon Suite marketing could help you attract new clients and increase retail sales.
1. Offer a Suite of Wedding Services
Booking one wedding might mean a full day, or even more than one day’s worth of client appointments as you help the bride, bridesmaids, mother-in-law and mother of the bride, flower girls and other attendants with hair and makeup on the day of the wedding. You can expand on this suite of services by offering groom, groomsmen, father-in-law and father of the groom, ushers and ring bearer haircuts to be done in the days just before the wedding, ensuring that everyone in the wedding party will look their best.
In addition, you can increase retail sales by ensuring that members of the wedding party who need styling products to complete their look have the right products. Think about creating a bundle package where mini or full-size retail styling products are included with services. In addition to styling products, items such as hair accessories, clips, lipsticks, eye shadows and nail lacquers could also be bunded in package pricing or sold as add-ons.
2. Get Vacation Dates in the Books
Our last post talked about overcoming client objections to rebooking including an appeal to the client’s fear of loss; e.g., fear of losing their appointment slot. If you are going to be traveling for personal or professional reasons this summer, it gives you another organic way to get clients to rebook, so they are assured of an appointment time before or after your vacation.
You should also check with clients to find out whether and when they will be traveling during the summer and pre-book appointments for them before their vacation. Once again, you’ve introduced the idea of pre-booking on a regular basis and you have also assured them they will look their best when they’re traveling this summer.
3. Blow Out and Style Occasion Options
Your clients may also have special occasions happening in town when they want to look their best. Offering a blow out and style option on the day of an event not only ensures they will look great when reuniting with old classmates, family members, friends or colleagues, it also means they will be adding an extra appointment in between their regular appointments. Since you won’t be cutting or coloring their hair at these appointments, they’ll still need to come back at their regular frequency.
Blow out and style appointments can also be offered to new clients or give you the ability to reach out with a special offer to people who are visiting your city to attend special occasions. Take a copy of your blow out and style appointment offer postcards or flyers to local hotels for placement in guest common areas or rooms for the summer.
These appointments are another time where you may be able to increase retail sales by bundling styling and finishing products along with services. In the case of people who traveled to your city, make this even more appealing by offering mini-sized retail products they can take with them if traveling by plane.
4. Sun, Sand and Surf
Many of your clients will be spending more time outdoors during summer months. From Salon Suite retail impulse buy items like sunglasses, mini aloe vera, fun or full-size sun screen and lip balms with sun screen, to the hair and skin care products they need to protect themselves from sun damage, summer should be the season of retail!
Use email and social marketing to educate your clients about the products they should be using during summer months. Bundle sun products together or offer them as service appointment add-ons.
5. Children Are Out of School… For Now
Have you heard the saying what goes up must come down? In this case, while children are out of school for now, they’ll soon be going back. Even though it seems like summer has just started, now is the time to plan your Salon Suite’s back to school marketing. In addition to haircuts kids need before school starts, you can also think about selling product kits that are ideal for kids going off to college.
