Growth for a salon business could mean increased revenue and profits, a promising clientele base, productive employees, the latest trends, and a good reputation among others. If you are focused on growing your salon business, your growth strategy needs to be aligned along with such metrics. But did you know that technology at the center of your growth strategy can be a big boost for the growth of your business? Well, digital transformation is among the key drivers in the exponential growth that the beauty industry is experiencing currently. This is to say that if you leverage the available technology, you are only setting up your salon business for success. That being said, here are 5 ways that technology can come in handy in your salon business growth journey.
- Streamlining processes
There are dozens of processes in a day for salon businesses. You may need to do client scheduling, resolve complaints, do a sales report or restock the retail section of your salon. With so much to do, some processes might be forgotten or done inefficiently. As a result, you waste time and lose money, employees are overworked and clients unhappy. Technology can help you overcome this challenge by automating repetitive tasks and digitizing time-consuming processes for better organization and efficiency. This can be made possible by investing in salon management software that integrates several business processes such as hair salon online booking, POS, inventory management, and employee management among others.
With an online scheduling tool in place, clients can book appointments online at their convenience. They book a stylist of their choice, cancel, rebook or make changes without the help of an assistant. Such a tool also sends reminders to reduce no-shows and follow-up messages to keep clients engaged. In addition, an integrated tool can help you generate real-time sales and inventory reports and send you to reorder notifications for products. This frees time for you and your employees, allowing you to focus on important tasks.
- Growing your customer base
Customers play a vital role in the growth of any business. Thus, it is paramount to work on building strong relationships with your customers. Moreover, it boils down to improving customer interactions and providing excellent customer service. Technology provides numerous ways to do this in order to keep existing customers as well as attract new ones to your business. Here are some suggestions:
- Use social media to connect with your customers and market your business
Besides posting pictures of your work on your social media profiles, there is so much more you can do to place your business in the eyes of your target audience. You can:
- Post valuable and SEO-optimized content to educate your audience on different matters of beauty
- Use paid Facebook ads to target clients within your locality
- Hold live events on Twitter and Facebook to create a buzz around your brand
- Encourage your satisfied customers to post photos and videos of your work to attract new customers
- Pin your work on Pinterest with a clear description of your target audience. Pinterest has a way of making your pins visible to your target audience
- Use technology to improve communication with customers
Customers want to be able to communicate with your brand in a way that is most convenient for them. You can enable this by providing options for effective communication. Multichannel communications solutions such as text, email, social media, and chat expand your availability and increase convenience. What’s more, you can use these channels to keep your clients up to date with what is happening in your business such as offers, events, products restocking, and more. In addition, customers want instant answers to their queries including outside business hours. You can ensure that they find the right answers by using chatbots or pinning an FAQ on your website and social media profiles.
iii. Offer more ways to buy
Your customers are highly connected and they expect the same from your salon business. By offering them innovative ways to buy and pay for your products, you are creating meaningful connections at a deeper level. You can provide a multi-channel shopping experience by embracing social selling such as Twitter E-commerce, contactless payment such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and loyalty points.
- Personalize their experience
Your management software is an invaluable tool in providing customer data that helps you understand your customers’ behavior and needs. You can use this data to offer tailor-made solutions all the way from targeted communication to personalized service delivery.
- Employee management
Your salon is as good as your employees. Your employees are the main touchpoint for your customers. If you are to have them offer their best to your customers, it is paramount that you keep them happy and engaged. You can do this by recognizing and rewarding top performers, offering training for career advancement opportunities, creating a positive working culture, and paying their salaries on time. How can technology help in all these?
- With a good management system, you can automate employee management to track employee performance. You can use the reports to identify employees to reward. What’s more, you can use the reports to offer feedback on areas that need improvement. In addition, you can integrate your payroll into the system to ensure timely and accurate salary payments.
- You also need to keep in mind that your employees might have limited time to follow training while at work or others might not get it the first time. You can record training sessions and have them available to your employees around the clock. This way, your employees can learn on the go or during their free time.
- Building a positive culture is important, and taking it online can enhance this further. You can build employee relationships by having them take part in challenges that bring them together on social media.
- Building a digital presence
In this digital era where your customers’ lives revolve around smart mobile devices and being online, having an online presence is crucial. However, it is one thing to be available online, and a totally different thing to be seen by your target audience. Thankfully, technology can help you in both.
You can set up your digital presence by having a website in place, listing your business in popular directories such as YellowPages, Google My Business, and Yelp as well as establishing a presence in popular social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Pinterest. However, you need a robust strategy to rank higher in the search engines.
Here are some useful tips for improving your ranking game:
Encourage your clients to leave positive reviews on directory sites that your salon business is listed. The better you are rated, the higher you will rank on search engines.
Use social media and your website to share valuable ideas, tutorial videos, inspiration, and expert advice that will engage users. Remember to use popular keywords and hashtags in your posts. In addition, up your salon aesthetic game to make your salon instagramable, and invest in a quality photo and video capturing technology to help you create good quality pictures and videos.
- Use technology to stay informed
For you to make key business decisions, you need to know how your business is operating in every aspect. Moreover, data analytics reports help you to stay on top of your game in running your business. On top of having management software in place, you can use a robust accounting system to help you in managing and track your finances. If your sales aren’t integrated into the online booking software, you can think of an integrated sales system that combines a POS, eCommerce platform, and inventory management tool. This way, you can track sales done in the shop and online as well as have inventory reports that will inform your decision-making.
Conclusion
Technology provides endless opportunities to grow your salon business. So, don’t remain stuck in the traditional ways of doing things. Tech-savvy salon businesses are already a step ahead in customer requisition and retention, employee management, marketing, and more. If you are to keep up, be proactive in finding ways that technology can be helpful for your business.