Yes, these are unprecedented, uncertain times— we’re sure you’ve heard it a zillion times by now.
Think about it…
In January you may have been planning a new location for your business and by March you are exploring kerb-side pick ups and other alternate ways of upskilling yourself and running your business amidst this chaos.
The tricky part? Your business strategies have changed just as fast as everything else!
How do you navigate these turbulent times?
How do you adapt?
The answer to this question is by getting creative!
Yes, you read that right.
If you’re a barber, spa, salon or wellness business entrepreneur, your best chance at keeping afloat (apart from getting fast funding) during the COVID-19 crisis is by getting creative and using the available resources and means to stand out and generate revenue from your clients.
Not sure how? Well, let’s learn from 15 Booksy customers who are using creative and astonishing ways to engage, book, and generate revenue during this crisis.
Hop on to explore ideas that you can apply to your business—we’ve got something for each one of you.
Virtual consultations are a big hit if you’re a business that can leverage this channel as an opportunity. The expectation is to practice social distancing during this time and virtual consultation fits in perfectly — minus you or your client physically being present for a session. If you’re an entrepreneur in the wellness industry, there are numerous ways in which you can use virtual consultations to book clients and follow up with those who may have stopped therapy mid way due to this crisis.
The team at Postpartum Wellness Centre based out of Boulder in Colorado, have found unique ways to engage with their clients— mothers, parents and couples— during this testing time. Not only do they offer support to their client community through 1:1 virtual sessions, but they’ve also been using the down-time to host virtual support groups via the Zoom app as well live streams on Instagram to extend a helping hand to their clients in need.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-p2jT_AkgN/
The focus of PWC Boulder during this time has been clear—to use technology in a way that it boosts the bottom line. Needless to say they are doing a commendable job of it.
That being said, virtual consultations aren’t just for wellness businesses—it can very well be used by entrepreneurs in the beauty or hair industry. It can be used to offer 1:1 skin consultation, makeup tips, hair tips, styling tips…the list is endless.
Don’t have a laptop or work computer handy to dive into virtual consultations? It’s time to adapt and roll with it. Yes, you may not have a swanky set-up at home, but the core idea is to get connected with your clients in a professional way and a device shouldn’t come in your way. All you need is a decent internet connection and you’re all set to engage with the client from anywhere
Pattie Freeman, a Booksy user and the owner of Arizona Hypnosis has been using Facetime and Phone based consultation to stay in touch with her clients who need help with various therapies and are unable to attend it in-person.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9-XbT4lD__/
Facetime consultations are a simple, effortless way to stay connected with clients and offer your services without jumping the social distancing norms. If leveraged well, it works as a great channel for small business entrepreneurs in the wellness and consulting industry.
If you’re looking at delivering value to your customers and making a sale without selling hard, webinars can be a channel that you can experiment with during this time. Webinars have a tremendous potential to engage your clients and show your expertise and earn from it.
A fine example of this tactic is used by Synclair Lashes—a Booksy customer, who is hosting a webinar to teach fellow lash-preneurs business strategies, lash tech do’s and dont’s and much more.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2poeYHAjE/
If you’ve got a skill that you can share with fellow clients or entrepreneurs, webinars can help you immensely. The process of setting it up is very easy with plenty of free tools and resources available at your disposal.
Let’s accept it—video aversion is a thing and haunts many of us.
A lot of your clients may love seeing you in person, but may get overwhelmed at the idea of a virtual session that’s video based. This is especially true with clients who prefer in person sessions more than a video based session such as older clients or clients who aren’t too tech savvy.
Inducing anxiety is not what you want, in fact you want your clients to feel their best even when situations around are grim. You want to help them stay well and that’s where phone based consultation can come in handy.
If your business has an active presence on Instagram (or Facebook) this is probably the best time to leverage the ‘live’ feature to attract and engage clients.
This may not be an instant channel to generate revenue, but it does provide you with an opportunity to pull people and enhance visibility for your small business overall.
TracHouse—a beauty salon in Connecticut, for example, uses it to share tips and tricks around lace closures, frontals, wigs and types of lace with their clients.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-wn5ugHght/
All you need to do is get a little creative with ideas and how you use this channel.
One of the most interesting and engaging ideas that we’ve seen around are virtual online tutorials. Olivia Smalley, a Booksy user seems to have mastered it.
Olivia who’s a hair entrepreneur and a coach has been using Instagram—where she has over a million followers—to share insightful hair hacks with her followers which includes her clients too.
This is a smart way of building a personal brand and getting visibility with media, prospective business partners and new clients.
Olivia isn’t alone when it comes to sharing insightful content with her clients. StyleByKey, a braiding business and a Booksy customer, has found an innovative way of using online tutorials and generating revenue through it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-6-PqBn3an/
Her sessions are intimate with 6 or less clients where she teaches them the art of braiding. Each session is conducted through Zoom and clients need to pay in advance. She also ships supplies, if her client needs to use it during this live online session. Now that’s some smart marketing, isn’t it?
A few Booksy users have benefited from house calls during this time of crisis—especially the barbers. This way they’ve not been able to book clients and maintain minimal contact, but also generate some revenue.
However this is a tactic that should be used only if it’s permitted by local authorities and follows the COVID-19 protocol of hygiene and social distancing.
Selling products that have been lying in your salon retail display (and gathering dust) seems to be a legit way of generating revenue for your business during this crisis. But you have to be smart about it since it requires shipping and logistics costs which you didn’t bear when your clients picked them in-person.
Here are a couple of ideas that you can borrow from fellow Booksy users that will help you do it the right way:
Have you ever been to Sephora and been tempted to buy product hampers instead of a single product? Ever thought why hampers attract you more? It’s because they give you the perception of ‘more.’
Bundle deals work the same way and seem more valuable in the eyes of your client. In a nutshell it means more money for you. Now, there are a couple of ways in which you can bundle your deals!
Firstly, you can bundle a product (or few products) with an online virtual session just like this one from Jeanita at Painted & Polished Salon where she offers foot care essentials with a free virtual class:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-vsz8gJZPm/
Bundle deals with product/s and virtual consultations are a win-win for both the clients and the business. Just remember that you’re sharing this information with your clients through every channel possible, just like TansByKait—a Booksy customer and spray tanning business in Winnipeg.
If you can’t club a virtual session , you can create a product hamper around a beauty service, like this one from goGlo which is focussed around cleansing and tanning:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-yAxQDnz2l/
Get creative with products and in no time you’ll have something to ship and make money from!
Another exciting way to generate revenue is selling ‘alternate’ products— products that you’ve stocked for special occasions but can’t use due to canceled events, etc.
Lashing Out Luxury Lounge is a good example to quote here. Essentially a lash lounge, the business has been retailing press on nails for clients who need to pamper themselves with them!
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-5cxoLFify/
Another way to boost revenue for your small business at this time is through affiliate product selling., which you can track through affiliate marketing tracking. This means stocking products from another product line/company and shipping it to your customers.
For example, J’adore Beauty & Tanning Studio has not only been shipping its famous home body sugar paste to its clients but also letting them order charcoal facial scrubs available and stoked in their salon.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-x7DuXgZfo/
Gift cards are a wonderful way to generate revenue even when your business may be in temporary lock-down. It’s simple—your clients can make the payment now and cash on the services when the bans are lifted.
You can get creative and create special deals, offering discounts to attract more clients. Here’s an example:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-0cLTel772/
Plenty of Booksy businesses are leveraging the gift card features available on their booking site to generate revenue.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-anNJtnE77/
Booksy has also launched the #SpreadLoveInstead campaign to help customers encourage clients in supporting their small business via donation or gift certificates.
Now, there’s a chance that you may not be able to book clients despite options available and we get it. But instead of losing hope you should focus on booking future services. One of our favorite examples of this in play is by Luis Felipe, owner and master barber at Well kept Barbershop in Long island City, New York.
Luis reached out to his client via Instagram Stories and shared a paid bingo where clients can buy slots! The winner of this bingo will be picked at random and the first winner will get 10 free haircuts. That’s not all, and the second winner will get five free hair cuts. Winners can also use it to avail their Presidential services! Now, if that’s not creative than what is?
So how does it feel looking at fellow Booksy users adapting to the changed time— inspiring right? Now that you’ve scanned the many ideas that you can use to generate revenue for your business, it’s time that we share a few quick hacks on optimizing Booksy's booking site during COVID-19.
By doing so, you can keep your clients in the loop, let them know the status of your business and accept payments without a fuss.
Use the announcement feature on your booking site and update it regularly with the most relevant communication. For example, if you’re selling products, add them under your service section. This way a client can order and pay for a product directly through your booking site. If you’ve got a paid online session or a live paid workshop, you can drop the details on your booking page and ask them to pay via Booksy.
Booksy's integrated payments gives you a way to take automatic deposits, take payments, tips and issue discounts or simply store credit card information in the system that you can process using whichever payment system you prefer, so that you don’t need to handle cash.
Booksy supports mobile working and can take client’s address details at the time of booking. So whether you’re taking a house call, or delivering products, you can set services up so clients pay upfront, so that you don’t have to worry about invoicing them or collecting payment after their session. You can add a buffer time between appointments to account for travel time.
If gift cards are the way forward for your business make sure that you’ve activated the feature on your booking page.
Whether you’re offering face-time consultation or doing a virtual session—you need to let your clients know. And that’s where the Booksy & Constant Contact feature comes in play. You can easily connect your Booksy CRM to Constant Contact’s email tool to send emails instantly, or download your client list with email addresses from the Booksy customer database.
There you have it—11 ways in which you can generate revenue for your spa, salon, barbershop or wellness business despite the current crisis. Host live tutorials, offer virtual consultation, sell product bundles and more. Quite frankly get creative and don’t let this down-time affect your business.
As they say, “no matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That’s the only way to keep the roads clear.”
And if you’re looking for an all-in-one appointment booking software that not only supports and helps you sail through during this pandemic, but lets you book more clients when the dust settles, talk to us.
Don’t you want to take a confident first step to the road to recovery without the stress?
We hope that’s a yes. And if you’re looking for a personalized plan to help you sail through, try our COVID Business Health, Revenue & Safety Health Check. Get a personalized plan that will help make more money, book more clients and prepare you, your staff and your clients for re-opening without compromising their safety.
