According to the latest data from IBISWorld, the beauty industry revenue in Australia reached $7 billion and it’s growing steadily every year. This means that your beauty salon has a reasonable chance of success. However, if you want to increase your profits from this business, you’ll need to use different tricks. The beauty industry is extremely competitive, so you have to distinguish yourself from the competitors to gain an advantage on this market.
How to Boost Profit from Your Beauty Salon Business: 4 Tips to Try
1. Launch a referral program
If your salon doesn’t have a referral program yet, you are losing a lot of money. According to Nielsen research, a customer referred by a friend is 4 times more likely to make a purchase. However, for a beauty salon business this particular advantage goes much deeper.
On the average, a lifetime value of a referral customer is 16% higher, and beauty salons run on repeat business. The best thing is that this kind of program is very easy to launch. You simply need to offer a discount to your current customers and the friends they refer to your business. You should ‘refresh’ this service by running occasional referral campaigns via social media. You should also use this strategy to encourage sharing of your salon’s important posts.
2. Boost the level of luxury
One of the most effective ways to increase the profitability of your beauty salon is to increase the number of new customers. Upgrading your salon will help you with that as people are attracted to luxury and comfort, especially if those come at a reasonable price.
Simply put, your goal should be to enhance the interior of your salon making it look like a luxurious spa retreat. However, you need to do this in a way that won’t force you to increase your rates by too much. To do this, you’ll need to hire a designer that will help create a luxurious look at a budget.
This kind of project might involve using some second-hand furniture, simple decorations, etc. Then, enhance your salon with top-quality professional details. Have your hairdressers use Jaguar scissors, install Glammar salon furniture, and use Matrix haircare and colouring products. These top-of-the-line professional items will enhance the look of your salon and make it appear both more professional and high-class at the same time. By using top-grade products at key points of your business, you will focus the customer’s attention on them, so they will overlook tiny details, like a couch that looks a shade too used to be classy vintage.
Note that by using such high-quality items, you also help increase the quality of your service, which is bound to increase your profits by default.
3. Encourage pre-booking
The main source of profit for a beauty salon is repeat business and you can boost this particular number through a very simple trick. Offer your customers to pre-book their next service right after they are finished with the current service.
At this point, your customer is sure to be a bit high on their positive emotions due to the fact that they look amazing. Obviously, they will want to look amazing all the time, so they will want to return. By suggesting that they book the next treatment, you can get them into a schedule of regular visits. You should also offer an occasional encouragement, like a small discount for those who book a few weeks in advance.
4. Become more exclusive
It might seem counterproductive, but you should consider narrowing down your targeted audience in order to increase your profits. This means that you need to choose a specific niche and focus on it more thoroughly. For example, you can establish a vegan beauty salon brand, which targets vegans, vegetarians, and everyone who cares about cruelty-free beauty products.
The benefit of this approach is that you don’t really lose the customers that come to you off the streets because they noticed a beauty salon sign. In the meantime, you get a chance to gain attention of a highly specific group and build up a base of loyal customers from them. This kind of targeting will allow you to attract and keep customers who will be ready to travel out of their comfort zone to reach your salon simply because it offers some special kind of service or environment. However, to draw them in, you’ll need to launch a massive marketing campaign focused on some niche audience.
