SWING INTOSUMMER

This way to summer success! ›

with ourDESTINATION PROFITABILITY GUIDE

estination Profitability

Summer is upon us! Break out the sundresses, shorts, tank tops and flip-flops!

If you’re managing one of the thousands of spas and salons out there located in a popular vacation spot, then you’re surely gearing up for another busy season. Your seasonal clientele are probably awaiting their chance to get away to your location while your local clients are settling into a more relaxed schedule. Either way, your business has a great opportunity to ramp up while your custom-ers rest, relax and recreate.

Just think. All that sun-parched skin, nails and hair is a veritable treasure trove of opportunity! So, how do you juggle the demands of your business while you’re trying to accommodate existing clients, entice new ones from a seasonal market, and get them all to come back? What if you’re also dealing with pop-up businesses that compete not only for the seasonal clientele, but for your regular customers?

We recommend you focus on three main areas that will help you make it through a busy season and profit from all the fun in the sun. In this guide, we’ll give you tips on how to:

Let’s get started! 2

Get the most out of your staff coverage, bookings and pricing.

Take advantage of creative marketing methods.

Nurture customer relationships and retain clients.

D

ime Is a Precious Commodity

One of the most challenging aspects of managing any spa or salon is maximizing and optimizing your staff coverage, bookings and pricing. To do this, it’s important to remember that you’re sell-ing one precious commodity and one commodity only – timeslots. This concept of selling your timeslots goes hand in hand with optimizing your staffing.

So, you may want to start by assessing where you are today. What are your slowest periods? How can you staff those times and find ways to entice your customers to fill the book during those hours?

One of the best ways to do that is to use a business management software that can help you track employee schedules, bookings, and customer profiles, as well as give you tools you need to plan inventory, manage email marketing campaigns, simplify your point of sale and use social marketing in conjunction with your website and social profiles.

Once you’ve completed your assessment, you’ll want to take a look at how you can optimize the use of your staff. This is important because labor costs continue to be the single largest expense item for spas and salons.

3

T

Establish black-out periods when no staff vacations are permitted. Your assess-ment will inform which weeks these are.

Expand the staff schedule and ask them to work longer hours during peak periods. (You might want to include this in the Employee Handbook so they know this when they’re hired.)

Adjust working hours to cover the book and spread your labor costs to better fit your business’s needs. As the spa manager, you need to designate when the staff works so you have coverage throughout the day and week to optimize your book.

Establish a list of freelancers for massage or skin-care services. You can call on these professionals when you find your salon is fully booked (a good thing!) and you need extra help. These service providers can also help you when a member of the staff does have a day off.

Assign less experienced employees to basic services (while they’re learning more complex treatments) and save seasoned staff for more involved services. (This is a strategy you may want to use if your salon or spa is well-known for its specialty services and books a lot of them.)

We understand that summer staffing can be super challenging. After all, your customers aren’t the only ones who want to take a vacation! To overcome this, you may need to rethink how your ser-vices are delivered and who delivers them. A few strategies to consider are:

Once you’ve planned for staff coverage, how do you fill the book during the week, particularly during those less “popular” hours?

4

The simple fact may be that most of your clients – vacationers or not – want a weekend appoint-ment. However, you still need to employ some creative ways to get them into salon at other times. You might try:

Offering your customers specials, upgrades on a service, or a discount if they bring a friend. A friend discount would be ideal since it would result in two ap-pointments instead of just one.

Experimenting with some dynamic pricing. Say you have a service that’s usu-ally priced at $85 on weekends. You might consider offering it on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at a discount. Clients intuitively understand that certain services are more expensive on the weekends – those services fall into “prime-time pricing,” if you will. So, offering them the same service at a discount during the week may just be enough of an incentive to lure them into your shop, enabling you to fill some calendar gaps.

Promoting follow-up bookings. Customers will appreciate the reminder and the advanced planning a pre-booking gives them. This also accomplishes a dual marketing goal – it not only helps fill your book, it also commits them to repeat business at your establishment. Even if they have to change the appointment at a later date, it’s still easier for them to reschedule than to make an entirely new appointment.

5

etting Their Attention

Attracting vacationing customers can be quite challenging, especially when you need to balance that task with serving the needs of your current customer base. Here’s where it’s important not to lose sight of the value of creative marketing methods.

Surprise, Surprise!

To a large extent, your service offerings are going to be driven by your locale. But there’s nothing that says you can’t mix it up every now and then – especially if you’re dealing with a combination of out-of-towners and local clientele.

Here are some tips to help you with that:

6

G

SPAS SALONS

Add higher demand summer services like waxing, sugaring, peppermint pedis, cool cucumber treatments or fruity polish.

Try offering an add-on hair treatment such as keratins to help your clients reduce frizz.

Try renaming or adjusting certain spa services to give them more summertime appeal.

Upsell conditioning masks during the shampoo service to deeply condition hair, help protect it from sun damage, and rehydrate it.

Combine a basic facial with mint or cu-cumber at a packaged price.

Suggest and use sunscreen products while you’re styling to help protect hair from fading, and display those products at the front desk. Visual reminders at check-out help boost retail sales.

Think about adding some extra-affordable options to your menu to attract new guests and keep existing ones interested.

All of these are good strategies. But there’s one more that will give you surprising results – totally rearranging your menu.

Most spa and salons have a tendency to list the cheapest services first – and then spa and salon managers are disappointed when their profits grow more slowly than they’d like. Instead of taking that approach, put your most frequently requested services in the back of your menu. Don’t worry. Your customers will look for what they want, but they’ll have to look through some of your other services to find them.

Think about it. How often have you strolled through the grocery store to discover they’ve rear-ranged the contents of the aisles? Although you may feel a tinge of annoyance at this, how many times have you also stumbled upon something you didn’t know the store carried?

Use the same concept with your menu strategy. You’ll be pleasantly surprise by how it pays off!

One Hand Washes the Other

Cultivating relationships with local hotels and complementary businesses can be a win-win for everyone.

Hotels are always on the lookout for a quality spa or salon it can refer to its guests. If that spa or salon is your business, you get a new client who, if you nurture that relationship throughout the year, may return to your business when they visit again. It definitely makes sense to participate in a concierge referral program.

Of course, courting concierges to send you referrals requires building a relationship with them. Ultimately, you have to assure them that their guests will have a great experience and demonstrate that you appreciate their referrals. Over time, you can become a trusted resource for them by re-maining flexible enough to accommodate short-notice requests or customized services.

Other local businesses that sell complementary services or merchandise are a tremendous re-source as well. Is there a surf shop, a clothing store, or a shoe outlet near you? Forming relation-ships with these business managers could lead to a display in their store for your spa or salon while you publicize or refer their stores at your business. These relationships could be something as simple as an exchange of posters or flyers.

7

Social Media Still Rocks

By now, you know that social media outlets are not only here to stay, but they’ve become the de facto method for communicating in today’s world – personal and business. Although we’ve talked about these before, we can’t emphasize enough what a valuable resource they are – especially when you’re trying to attract new customers and retain current clients.

Here’s how some of the main social media platforms can help your spa’s or salon’s marketing efforts:

8

Facebook is great for visual media. Posts with photos or videos typically have higher engagement than just text or links. You may want to consider giving your Facebook fans access to exclusive information and rewards.

Instagram lets you show off your work. Posting before and after photos, images of impressive work, and videos of stylists in action should all be part of a salons or spa’s Instagram strategy. You should also encourage customers to tag your busi-ness using the “Name This Location” option. That way, their friends know exactly where they got that awesome haircut or great facial!

Pinterest lends itself to salon use. Inspiration boards can be a great way to post photos of your products and services that drive traffic back to your website. En-courage individual stylists to create their own boards under the salon’s business account, and display them on tablets or phones during consultations.

Twitter is perfect for distributing news, and is great PR outlet for reaching editors and media personnel.

It’s Time to Go Mobile

No one thinks more about the need for a pedicure than when they’re sitting on a beach looking at their bare feet. With your own, branded mobile app, your customers can book that pedicure ap-pointment with you the second they think about it using the one device that never leaves their side: their phone. The world has gone mobile, and that growing mobile landscape is transforming the spa and salon industry. If you’re not using mobile technology already, this summer may be the time to take the plunge. There are several reasons why you should consider this:

Mobile technologies and online booking tools can help generate revenue by giving customers 24/7 access. Clients can book appointments anytime, anywhere – which may also cut down on the number of missed appointments.

Mobile payment processing simplifies checkout and differentiates your business. Adding mobile devices to your business operations makes it easier for your clients to check out. With roaming registers (for example, an iPad/iPhone with a mobile card swiper), your clients can pay for their services and book their next appoint-ment all from the comfort of a stylist’s station.

Mobile technology increases the ease of adding and editing client profiles, snap-ping client photos, and tracking client history.

Mobile and remote access enables salons to run more efficiently. You can check your appointment book from your phone in the evening and make staffing deci-sions for the next day (and avoid being overstaffed or understaffed).ributing news, and is great PR outlet for reaching editors and media personnel.

9

A business management software platform that accommodates mobile booking is essential today. You may also want to consider a mobile app for your business, which can help drive more book-ings, increase revenue, and keep your business top-of-mind through a branded presence.

A mobile app makes it effortless for your customers to:

Book and manage appointments in seconds.

Check availability 24x7.

Select a preferred service provider.

Get Facebook and Twitter updates.

Click-to-call.

Instantly map your location, get directions and a lot more.

Building a Profile

Just because some of your customers may be seasonal doesn’t mean you can’t build a profile populated with their favorite services, colors and service providers. A comprehensive business management software platform can help you do this, helping you market to those customers by keeping your spa or salon top of mind throughout the year.

You might want to implement software that will allow you to send customized offers and promo-tions to customers, enabling you and your management team to effectively retain existing guests. That way, you can create incentives that are specific and targeted to your audience.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous to raise your customer retention rate by 10%, lower your overall marketing expense, or spend your marketing dollars on more internal efforts, such as beefing up your cus-tomer loyalty program, or planning a bonus or party for staff members?

All of these approaches can help you get the word out about your business. Never underestimate the power of good marketing!

10

t’s a Relationship

Even though filling your book is your underlying business goal, your first job is to shape the im-pressions and perceptions your clients have about your business so you can fill those slots. That’s why it’s so important to go the extra mile to show your customers that they are important. In this in-stance, customers aren’t as interested in any tangible freebie or discount they may receive. They’re more interested in how they felt before, during and after their visit to your spa or salon.

Not surprisingly, when it comes to the type of customer service that keeps people coming back again and again, research shows that quality matters. Studies have repeatedly shown that clients were much more likely to return to an establishment when they evaluated the service as “courte-ous, willing, and helpful.”

That makes sense, though, doesn’t it? Especially in the spa and salon industry, customers are buy-ing more than services. They’re buying an experience – a relationship. There are few approaches you can try to nurture that relationship and here’s where a personal touch can really pay off:

11

I

Reward your most loyal clients based on their purchase history. Studies show that retaining customers is much more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. By providing loyalty programs for current customers, you’re not only saying thank you, but also motivating them to tell others about their experience. Clients can easily spread the word about your spa or salon to their professional, personal and social networks, helping you grow your customer base.

Show your customers how much you appreciate them while they’re there. For example, pamper them with free beverages like water with lemon or healthy snacks.

Turn an offer into a personal gesture. Rather than a broadcast marketing ap-proach – say, an email blast – encourage your service providers and therapists to hand out business cards with a special offer handwritten on the back. This per-sonalized gesture will make your client feel as if they’ve been specially selected for an offer you’re only extending to a privileged few.

Remember the special occasions in your clients’ lives. Since you’re already building personal profiles of your clients, make sure to identify special dates and send regular customers birthday cards, anniversary cards, or holiday cards. Do this throughout the year so they think of your spa when making their next booking in your area.

Pass on information. If you read an article, see a new book, or hear about a new treatment or product that a client might be interested in, drop a note or make a quick call to let them know. Knowing what your steady patrons purchase and keeping these items in stock is a great way to remind your customers that you’re looking out for their needs.

Give your clients a voice. Although it may not be often that one of your custom-ers is dissatisfied, it’s a reality of business that you can’t please everyone all the time. Give your customers the regard and courtesy they deserve by allowing them tell you exactly what they think about your business and its services, and letting them offer constructive criticism or praise. You might want to provide feedback cards or e-mail them a quick survey to learn more about their experiences at your spa or salon.

Ultimately, using these approaches will help your spa and salon become your customers’ trusted advisor and a place they’ll want to return to again and again.

Our thanks to Barry Eichner of Barry Eichner consulting for his contribution to this Guide.

12

13

Booker can provide you with the tools to successfully assess and implement all of the approaches we’ve outlined in this guide. Call us at 866.966.9798 to schedule a free demonstration, or visit our website at www.booker.com to learn more. We look forward to hearing from you and helping your business grow!

It’s Easy to Do Business Better with Booker

www.twitter.com/getbookerwww.facebook.com/getbooker