Salon Marketing

This may seem as a no-brainer and I have mentioned this before but clearly not as a marketing strategy, but as giving extra value and exceeding their expectations as your customers come in to get their hair done.

When you clients come in and you take them to the sink for a shampoo, and it doesn't matter if you do it or your assistant, spend 5 minutes... by the clock on shampooing their hair. I realize it doesn't take that long but if you want to know how important this is have someone shampoo your hair for the same period of time and as they are rubbing the shampoo through your hair they are massaging your scalp. It's a wonderful world as this takes place and you have all kinds of thoughts about how great this feels and how great your stylist really is to do this for you.

This first and foremost will build incredible customer loyalty; why? How many stylists do this? I promise you that it is less than 1% of the stylist in any location, so in your town or city you just might be the only one that gives this type service which puts you in a great position.

This will also use a psychological trigger known as reciprocity which basically teaches that when someone does something extra for us we want to reciprocate back to them.

Try this for a technique to raise your prices. Explain that you will have to increase you prices but you are adding more value to the service provided. Now wait until you've already done the 5 minute shampoo and they won't have any problem understanding what you mean by added value.

I'll be willing to bet that you don't lose too many clients and you could use this extra value as a way to begin to increase your income by raising your prices $5.00 per head times how many clients you see a day/week/month.

Here's another down and dirty little secret about adding incredible value to your customers experience. Listen to them! I have and I'm sure many of you as well has experienced this, going in and explaining what you want and then walking out wondering "were they even listening to me?" I've even had stylists tell me that they usually don't pay too much attention to what is being said other than some general guidelines.

Isn't that unbelievable? This is so simple that it is a complete no-brainer. And let me say this real quickly, if you don't give your customers what they want... they're not coming back and in the economy that we're in right now most of us don't have that luxury of losing customers.