Salon

6 Easy Steps to Be Resourceful During a Challenging Time

6 Ways to Stay Productive

Business that can adapt and be flexible during difficult times are the ones who will thrive – sure it may be a roller coaster ride but with little to no options it’s time to take action.

This is a pivotal time for hair and beauty salons, having to rethink the normal strategies and to plan in ways you have never had to in the past; almost like a chance to re-start and create the changes you have always wanted. The current climate gives an opportunity for a good time to change and grow, to re-build in a way. The Hairware Beautyware System provides many ways to manage your entire business, staff performance, wages and STP, targets and client retention, marketing and over 100 sales reports allowing you to analyse every inch of your business.

Take the opportunity to book in with a Hairware Beautyware Educator for personalised refresher training, or set up an auto marketing and client loyalty system. HB educators can also provide you with ideas and strategies on how to utilise the database to achieve the goals you want.

Book a personal refresher training session with a Hairware/Beautyware educator today.

#1. Stay Connected

With the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the state of your business, it’s important to remember to ask for help when you need it. With dedicated support at Hairware Beautyware, contact our supportive customer service team for any queries concerning the online booking system, to help you get the most out of your software. Now is also a great time to set up remote connections so you can continue to work on your business from the comfort of your own home.

#2. Maximise Visibility

Connect with your customers during this difficult time using a variety of digital methods. You can utilise SMS and email marketing to communicate VIP/Loyalty programs as well to highlight product sales for your salon. It is also a great time to create a strong presence on social media to help increase awareness and engagement and grow your following.

Read our blog on the Top 8 Social Media Tips for Salons.

#3. Set Up New Features

Set up features in the software that you may not have used before including client loyalty and VIP programs, client card accuracy, auto-marketing, cashbook and financial budgets, and much more.

Our CRM (Customer Relation Manager) allows you to select and market to your clients with thousands of combinations to choose from, utilising SMS and email in a less intrusive manner.

View the full range of Features Available here.

#4. Clean Up

Spring is here, and it’s a great time for a ‘spring clean’ of your software. Get ready to welcome back clients with an optimised system. Our recommendations include cleaning up your database by purging and merging clients, remove unnecessary and unwanted retail and professional stock items, as well as cleaning up operator names and details.

Review your old discount and services codes and removed any that are no longer valid. Did you know you can use the Creep adjust function to easily change service and stock pricing – if you’re looking how to do this, simply view the video here.

#5. Implement Staff & Salon Goals

A great way to motivate and reward staff as well as keeping track of their performance, is to create goals. You can utilise the target function which will allow you to track their figures on a daily basis, giving you the opportunity to encourage and support them to reach their goals.

Remember to create easily measurable goals with clearly defined outcomes or deadlines. Establish different targets for services and retail and provide staff with tools they need for success.

#6. Self Care

This COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased stress and anxiety for everyone, especially business owners. It’s imperative to look after yourself and practice regular self care. Make sure you look after your mental and physical state – balance out your day during lockdown and be mindful to space out your appointments upon returning. Help to avoid future burnout by practicing mindfulness now so those habits begin to be a part of your everyday routine.

We’re Here To Help

Don’t forget our amazing support team are here to answer your questions, provide support and assist you get the most out of your software to help your business succeed.
To get in touch, simply call us on 0800 438 663, and select option 1.

Support

5 Top Tips for First-Time Salon Managers

5 Top Tips for First-Time Salon Managers

Salon Management Tips for Running a Successful Business

Running a beauty or hair salon for the first time is both exciting and nerve-racking. Embarking on a new adventure as a massive dream is being achieved while finding your feet around new responsibilities. It is important to follow your vision while taking the salon to the next level. However, your employees and clients are also a factor you need to consider and put first, as they are essentially the core of your salon. We have gathered the top tips for first-time salon managers. Learn what to make a priority for your new venture.

Build the Salons Morale

One of the essential steps for becoming a good salon manager is gaining the employee’s trust and respect. Open communication is vital, listening to your employees’ requests or suggestions and actively taking them on board will make them feel respected and appreciated; this will be reciprocated back to you. Encourage regular meetings, including both individual and team meetings. Your employees can’t read your mind – communicate everything to them. Whether it being positive or negative information, your employees need to understand both aspects of the organisation. Without constructive criticism/providing room for growth, your organisation will not succeed to expectations. Finally, make it enjoyable, keep your meetings interactive and make the workplace fun. If your salon employees enjoy coming to work, it will show through their clients and overall salons’ success.

Utilise Customer Complaints to Your Advantage

An area that can make or break your salon management is what you do with customer complaints. Do you take them on board? Do you log them into a system? Do you communicate the area for improvement with your employees? No matter what the customer or employee complains about, you must follow a procedure to address what has occurred. As a salon manager, you can occasionally have your guard up and turn a blind eye to issues within the salon as you believe it is perfect, as it’s something you have worked so hard for. However, complaints enable you to develop your systems or actions in areas you didn’t know were an issue, thus taking your salon one step further to succeed.

Take Time When Recruiting a New Employee

Taking your time and getting to know a potential employee is vital when recruiting a new member. You need to assess if their values align with your salon’s. Will they fit in seamlessly with your other employees? How much experience do they have? Why are they leaving their other occupation? Did something go wrong, or are they ready to take on a new venture? Getting to know a potential employee on a deeper level is extremely important, as you do not want to get a few months down the line and regret employing them as this can costs thousands of dollars. Take your time at the start, and you will thank yourself in the future.

Aligning Your Budgets and Targets With Your Vision

As a new salon manager, you need to wrap your head around budgets and targets. Going through past reports will help you understand what areas cost the greatest amount and what did not. From this, you will comprehend how the financial plans should look in the future and use past reports as a benchmark for comparison. In addition, conduct weekly reports to assess if you are on the right path to achieve your targets thus, you can adjust any areas if needed. Finally, incorporate your vision for the salon and its future into your current budget and targets. This way, you can begin to guide the salon in the right direction while keeping your finances in line.

Automate Your Salon

Incorporate Hairware Beautyware Salon Software into your business. This system will enable you to manage all the time-consuming accounting and managerial tasks easily. It will help take the pressure off you on the backend so you can turn your focus to other areas that need attention. HB Salon Software also includes outstanding features that allow salons to develop the service side of their operations, such as client-tailored VIP loyalty or client booking confirmation services. Click here to learn how HB Salon Software can help you take your new salon to the next level.

It’s time to chase your goals and create the life you’ve always dreamed about. Take on your new role as salon manager with pride and enthusiasm with these top tips to help you get there. Build up the salon’s morale, utilise customer or employee complaints to your advantage, take your time recruiting a potential member, focus on your budgets and targets, automate your salon with HB Salon Software, and finally, enjoy the experience. You worked hard to get here, and it’s time to put it all into action – Good luck!

8 Social Media Tips for Hair Salons

8 Social Media Tips for Salons

Do you work at a salon and find your social media platforms dry and not driving traffic? Level up your hair or beauty salon with these top social media tips. Social media is an essential marketing element to engage and connect to your targeted audience on a deeper level. If you’re not getting the results you want, continue reading for tips to attract more customers and engage users using our top social media hacks.

Social Media Marketing for Salons

Know Your Target Audience

The key to successful social media marketing for salons is knowing your target audience and understanding what drives them. Consider what age group, demographic, region, your audience’s interests, and possibly interests. Once you have developed this knowledge, you can produce content and create posts that directly target your audience and which you know they’ll engage with. Further, it will assist your salon in targeting your Facebook Ads correctly and reaching many people interested in your service. Understanding your ideal audience, and different audience types will not only help with creating content for Facebook and Instagram, it will also help if you deploy Facebook or Google advertising.

Produce Valuable, Engaging Content for Your Salon

The key with social media for salons is to remember the social platforms true purpose – social platforms weren’t created as sales platforms, the content you post needs to be engaging, interesting, aspirational, informative, educational – do you scroll Instagram and like posts because they are telling you to shop, or because you find the posts interesting?
If you continually produce the same mundane content each week, your followers will get bored and gradually stop engaging with your account. It’s important to keep them interested by providing valuable content that stays on-trend within the industry.

There are various types of content you can create, such as:

  • Utilising stories
  • Creating reels
  • IGTV videos
  • Static posts and videos
  • Educational posts
  • Quotes
  • Behind the scenes content
  • Team/culture posts

By switching up the content each week and offering various posts, users will remain interested. Further, creating unique posts will catch people’s attention, thus sharing and saving your content and ultimately boosting traffic through your account.

Engage With Your Audience

Like, comment, save, and share, are all important elements in every day activity on social media. Engage with your followers, connect with them on a deeper level. You can do this by allowing your followers to ask questions on the question box on stories, make polls and utilise other story features to engage further with your followers. You can also ask questions or rhetorical questions in captions to entice people to comment. Reply to users that have commented on your content, demonstrating to them that you appreciate their support. Respond to your direct messages promptly on your social media platforms. Set a 15-minute time frame (can vary depending on how many you are getting) every day to respond to all inquiries on your accounts. Once again, it demonstrates to your audience that you care about them; thus, this will convert into them reciprocating and showing support towards your salon. When engaging on social media, remember to also engage with other brands and businesses, it’s a great way to show support and also increase discoverability.

Stay Consistent With Your Posting

To keep your audience interested and attract new customers, you need to be posting consistently. The key with salon social media is to post regularly, think a minimum of 3 times a week. Creating a social media calendar is a valuable tool to keep on top of what content needs to be made and published. Further, using a platform that automatically uploads your posts can be a time-effective way to stay consistent. Whether you pay for social media scheduling tools or calendars, or use simple free planning strategies, remain consistent. Try to spend one or two days a month planning all your content – doing it daily can make you feel tied to social media and increase your screen time making you less productive, so having one or two days a month when you plan out your content for the whole month can make managing your social media more achievable.

Use Transformation Photos

You might already be aware, but transformation photos are an essential element to use for salons on social media platforms. It allows customers to see what has previously been done and what the studio is capable of. From simple transformations to drastic differences, transformation photos perform very well on social media. The individual in the post will often re-share the content, providing free advertising for your salon to reach more individuals. It’s also a great way to show off your salon environment, your culture and your personality.

Advertise Promotions/Running Discounts

People love promotions and discounts, no matter how big or small they are. Posting what promotions, you have running at the salon regularly throughout your social media is an excellent way to drive more people through your platform, website, and salon. It will entice new customers to step forward and try out your service if they see a promotion running; it catches people’s attention. Furthermore, advertising a significant discount will spread through word-of-mouth to reach more new customers. Remember your salon does not also have to have promotions running, you are running a business after all and need to remain profitable – but you can get creative with promotions and offers to attract a new audience.

Promote Your Team Members & Culture

An often overlooked salon marketing idea is to get your audience to know your team members of the salon. Post content demonstrating what their specialty is and photos that give them credibility. Incorporating your team into your business’ social media is also a great way to encourage your staff to help create content for your platforms. Further, show behind-the-scenes content of them working, get them to speak on your stories showing their favourite products they use, or a get to know them post. It will allow the clients to connect deeper with the staff and possibly request specific ones for their next appointment, depending on their specialty. It also helps to build and show off your brands culture and personality.

Use Relevant Hashtags and Tags

Hashtags are an important tool for reaching more individuals relevant to your targeted audience. Find your niche and research specific hashtags to incorporate. Switching in new and relevant hashtags helps you reach more users and then more followers – don’t stick to the same hashtags in every post, the way the algorithms work it will end up working against you. Try to aim for 10-15 hashtags per post. In addition, when posting content, tag your salon in the location section so that users can click on it and locate where you are immediately. Also, tagging other accounts in the photo/video will potentially promote your business further. For example, by tagging the product’s social platforms in the content, the company may see the post and engage with it or share it to their account. Finally, tagging the products in the content using the shopping element will drive customers to your website to purchase the products themselves.

Are you ready to grow your salon social media?

Grab your phone and start creating new engaging, unique content that inspires your audience. Put these tips to work and watch your social media platforms fly. Social media will help your salon attract new customers, retain current ones and create brand loyalty through engaging with your audience on a deeper level. If you put these tips to the test, let us know how you go – Good luck!

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