London has many querky salons, and in one of them I am a customer. I could visit my salon every week, but I don’t. In fact I wish the salon was more active in salon marketing and sent reminders every week what could happen to my hair if I let it grow without professional redesign, not to mention fading colours and winter damaged hair texture if I miss my once every 4weeks salon appointment.
And because I am busy to think about keeping hair at salon best, I only visit little quarky salon once every 8-10 weeks, when really I should be sitting there at least once every 4. That means my hair looks less than its best, and salon misses an opportunity to take double of cash than it should, or about missed opportunity of £50 (per average appointment I miss)x 6 (missed appointment every year) = £300.
And if my salon has 100 missing clients like mine, than the salon really loses £30,000 in opportunity cost every year, and all this is because salon owner has not figured out how to make the most of existing customers contacts…
Is it as easy as it sounds pocketing extra £30,000? Let’s take a look
Nicky Clark might be spending hundrieds of thousands in advertising, but as a small town salon owner spending just a few hundrieds in paper advertising, online ads or media commercials might put you under a lot of financial pressure until…and if you see return on investment.
Or you can spend virtually nothing to guarantee full appointment books day in and day out.
Instead of spending a huge fortune on mass advertising in attempt to aquire a new customer, invest a small fortune on the sales efforts to initially contact, identify, and locate prospects to sell your services.
Once you have a customer base, you can then have the most cost effective way to directly access the best source of future business for your salon. All is required from you to use your logics to make the most of your existing customer database.
Your customer base is a group of individuals who have purchased in the past from you. Use the same reason why your customers bought your services from you in the past, and offer same reason once more. Most salons do not work existing customers list at all. Instead they spend most their efforts going out, spending time, energy and more money try to aquire new customers.
Satisfied customers like to come back, and they must be led by you. By that I mean they want to send you cheques every month, but it is up to you to expand the effort, the energy and strategy to lead your customers back into your salon.
Contact customers by letter, post, phone or even in person, and make a compelling reason WHY they must try your services… again and lead them to take action right now. Concentrate on the bottom line, let’s face it, everyone wants to look gourgeos and sexy in a new haircut, so get right to the point.
Offer customers exclusive and one time only offer to reintroduce to your business again. You can find plenty of ready to use sample letters in our website. Educate about the benefits of timely hair cut and why now is the best time to visit salon again. Offer bigger insentive than they would normally expact, free cut when they colour, or half price one time only offer.
It may cost you initially $100 to aquire new customers, but you see, it will only cost you $0.5-0.7 to send a direct mail to keep them coming back. Or even less to call, text or email customers.
So next time you are thinking to blow out your marketing budget aquiring new customers, think of making the most from existing ones.
