3 ideas for growing your beauty salon without raising prices

Every beauty salon owner has gone through the hoops of building their business from scratch and establishing a name for themselves. Through hard work and dedication, you have built a solid customer base, and a few hundred fans on Facebook and Instagram. However, like the most successful beauty salon owners, you want your enterprise to continue to flourish. The automatic response most business owners have to this issue is a price raise on their products and services. Although this tactic is effective in the short run, chances are clients will be discouraged by this and your booking rate may drop. Instead, here are three ideas for growing your beauty salon without raising prices.

Sell more, charge less

A very common marketing tactic successful businesses often implement is selling more for less - and the same approach works wonders for beauty salons as well. Chances are you offer a variety of services your clients love - instead of raising their prices and scaring off customers, encourage them to purchase service packs, where they get a number of treatment sessions for less. This introduces two important benefits for your business:

• More purchases: clients that take notice of this offer will be more compelled to make a purchase.

Tip: sell unique service vouchers for a limited time only - clients will be encouraged to get theirs before time runs out.

• New, loyal clients: it is likely that customers who purchase service packs might also treat them as gifts for friends or family. This creates a dependency for the receiver, who has to go to your salon in order to utilise the service pack.

Inspire brand promoters

Although there are benefits to raising prices at your salon - nothing works quite as effectively as an effective and devoted brand promoter. Sure, with a price raise, you not only make more profit, you can easily create discounts for loyal clients or for any special occasion, but at the same time you risk losing customers that simply cannot afford to pay more. Instead of increasing prices, inspire customers to become your brand promoters - reward them for referring friends and family to your beauty salon, for leaving online reviews and for posting pictures of a treatment they had at your salon. The rewards should be anything from a gift bag filled with your most popular products, to an attractive discount. Working with your brand promoters is beneficial for:

• Well-dispersed brand awareness - clients who recommend your salon, either via social media or by word of mouth, help get the word out about your business to a broad spectrum of potential customers, thus growing your customer list.
• Stronger bonds with loyal clients - loyal customers who love your services and visit you and your staff regularly want to see your business prosper. Such customers will take your business farther than any price increase!

Tip: encourage customers to promote your brand and reward them accordingly. Booksy beauty salon software has the option for granting loyal customers regular discounts, so that you can make your best promoters your VIPs.

Encourage rebooking

When it comes to growing a beauty salon, one area is oftentimes overlooked, or at least undervalued - rebooking rates. High rebooking rates mean your business has a strong and loyal customer following, but did you know that your rates can be increased even more? More rebookings mean more growth for your beauty salon! Start by:

• Promoting multi-step services: clients who purchase services that require touch-ups are tied to your beauty salon for longer, in turn growing your customer base.
• Launching marketing campaigns - for customers that have not booked a service with you in a while, it is recommended to target them in marketing campaigns. The customer’s absence may be caused by a number of factors - they have left for the holidays, are feeling under the weather, or have decided to take advantage of another salon’s services. Send these clients a personalised message, encouraging them to book with you again. Note that in order to pique their interest, providing a value proposition is key - an attractive discount on their next service or a gift bag will do the tricks!

Tip: looking up absent clients by hand is nearly impossible, especially with so many other tasks to accomplish. Instead, automatise your work with Booksy’s Message Blasts tool, which sends your absent clients an SMS, push or email message, encouraging them to rebook with your salon.

Raising prices at your salon can improve your weekly and monthly revenue, but in doing so, you risk losing loyal customers and scaring off potential ones. Grow your beauty salon the right way and let Booksy put your business on autopilot!