January business blues

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effie

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2012
Messages
781
Reaction score
2
Location
Hampshire
I started my business last year, first on friends and family etc and then around September slowly started advertising. Then in October/November stepped it up.
I'm listed on lots of free sites, use facebook,pintrest and many more! yell, gumtree, google adwords etc and the list goes on and on, i have a website be it simple and so far ive had 0 yes a big fat 0 new clients and no phone calls :confused:

The small clients base i do have are all very happy with treatments and all help me by giving out cards when people complement on nails or tan etc yet i still get no enquiries.

i'm home based and so far have invested over 6K and to be honest i'm out of cash to invest any more :grr:

Do i continue to plug away or give up ?
I love what i do and get great pleasure, i know it takes ages to build a good client base but really no inquiries in over 4 months!! is that normal ?

i run comps and deals from time to time and have even offered free treatments to local companies in return for handing out some leaflets and nothing!!!

ive a couple more routes to try but with a £0 cash flow i'm temped to give up.

what shall i do ?

I cant even get my likes up on facebook

I live in a good area
i'm not over nor under priced
I'm not a chav lol i'm a almost 33year old mum of 2

i'm ready to scream

why do people who are untrained, offer cr*p treatments and nail get inundated with booking and i get nothing

my treatments offered so far are

Waxing
Manicures
Pedicures
Minx
Gelish
Tanning

i want to add more this year money permitted but am i wasting my time and money ?

i would like to do

Courses -

Tinting
EE
Ear candling
body wraps
Make up ?

services to add -

swarovski pedicure
Callus peel
widen my range of nails by doing more affects ie foils, additives etc

Any tips please ? other than the business thread on here as i read it time and time again

Rant over ..........Sorry!!
 
It's hard this time of year. I don't have any magic answer but thought how about a loyalty card or an 'introduce a new client' offer?
 
I'm in the same boat & it's so disheartening ): I moved to a new area & re-opened my home salon in September and I have had *drum roll* ....... 1 client for a spray tan! I'm hair and also do extensions but I'm just not getting the clients. I've done pretty much everything on Lynne's thread aswel. I don't want to give up tho. Keep going & hopefully things will get better! :) xx
 
Oh poor you, I really feel for you. You can't give up though! I rent a couple of rooms within a hair salon. I get a lot of clients through the hair clients, are there any hair salons near where you live that you could put treatment lists in etc in return for promoting their salon? Maybe you should think about renting a room within a well established hair salon maybe 1 or 2 days a week if they allow it? Till you build things up a bit? It must be hard to get new clients when you work from home, as your not getting any passing trade. My clients love the fact they only need to come to one place for all their needs.

You could also contact all the local high schools in your area with package deals for proms. You should do this now as girls start thinking bout dresses etc around jan/feb time and they want everything booked in advance. They want nails, tan, make-up, brow waxes and lashes and some even get trials! No joke it's like a wedding! I find a lot of girls who came to me for prom end up being a client for life! If they like what you do they trust you as they have normally never had any beauty treatments done before. Then their mums wanna try you out too.. Then their mums friends etc etc!

Hope that helped a wee bit. Try to stay positive it's not easy but it's amazing doing what you live everyday!
 
It's hard this time of year. I don't have any magic answer but thought how about a loyalty card or an 'introduce a new client' offer?

Thank you for your reply

I already offer % off new clients for waxing, loyalty isnt something i do yet as i would like to when i have more than family/friends as clients

I know its a bad time of year and hard at the start but this hard ?? no phone calls at all :eek:
 
ok first things first, new businesses take approx 2 years to get off the ground so dont worry,

stop offering free sets of nails it gets you nowhere! offer discounted nails if you want but you need to at least charge for products used. dont add more treatments until you have a bigger client base and are at least earning regular money.

as a mum you are in a great place, mums at the school.....make sure your nails always look fab and not something plain but something that is eye catching even if just on your ring fingers, then people will notice and you can strike up a conversation and hand your card over

everything else your doing is right you just have to keep plugging away. use this quiet time by doing some nail art colour wheels, keep up the free advertising and once you get a few new clients and they reccommend you you will get busier and busier xxx
 
Thank you for your reply

I already offer % off new clients for waxing, loyalty isnt something i do yet as i would like to when i have more than family/friends as clients

I know its a bad time of year and hard at the start but this hard ?? no phone calls at all :eek:

Yes but maybe you could give your current clients a voucher that entitles BOTH them and their friend a % off if their friend is a new client? X
 
Oh poor you, I really feel for you. You can't give up though! I rent a couple of rooms within a hair salon. I get a lot of clients through the hair clients, are there any hair salons near where you live that you could put treatment lists in etc in return for promoting their salon? Maybe you should think about renting a room within a well established hair salon maybe 1 or 2 days a week if they allow it? Till you build things up a bit? It must be hard to get new clients when you work from home, as your not getting any passing trade. My clients love the fact they only need to come to one place for all their needs.

You could also contact all the local high schools in your area with package deals for proms. You should do this now as girls start thinking bout dresses etc around jan/feb time and they want everything booked in advance. They want nails, tan, make-up, brow waxes and lashes and some even get trials! No joke it's like a wedding! I find a lot of girls who came to me for prom end up being a client for life! If they like what you do they trust you as they have normally never had any beauty treatments done before. Then their mums wanna try you out too.. Then their mums friends etc etc!

Hope that helped a wee bit. Try to stay positive it's not easy but it's amazing doing what you live everyday!

I will be promoting for prom at my daughter school asap and i'll enquire at other local school too

i was thinking of offering 2 tan ie trial and for the prom for £30, my normal price is £20..what do you think?
 
Also I think it would be very beneficial for you to do semi-permanent eyelash extentions. They are one of my biggest sellers and the repeat custom you get from them is like nothing else! Once the clients get their first set of lashes they want more and more. That means appointments every 2 weeks for top ups. Lashes are so noticeable as well, if your good at them people will always comment on them, I have had so many people come to me because they have seen them on my clients it's crazy! I mean literally stopping them in the street to ask where they got them done! (hope that didn't sound big headed of me, not intended, I just mean they are so eye catching and they are BIG business right now) they will get you lots of clients trust me :) then once you get them theough the door for this you can start pushing what other treatments you offer. Also print out leaflets of special offers and post them to all the houses nearby, I got great feedbck from doing this, better than radio or newspaper advertising and it was the cheaper of the 3 xx
 
also get in touch with your local schools and ask them about pamper evenings and events that you could get involved in as well as local scout groups etc and send vouchers to them for them to raffle off xx
 
I will be promoting for prom at my daughter school asap and i'll enquire at other local school too

i was thinking of offering 2 tan ie trial and for the prom for £30, my normal price is £20..what do you think?

Yeah something like this, I think I did make-up, spray tan and shellac for £45. It would normally have been £60. It would be really good if you could get some make-up training, as the girls won't want to go to different salons for all their stuff as they won't have time on the day. They will want a one stop shop. This is whe liaising with hair salons could help you too, you could advertise each other as the girls will need hair ups etc. proms are big business!
 
ok first things first, new businesses take approx 2 years to get off the ground so dont worry,

stop offering free sets of nails it gets you nowhere! offer discounted nails if you want but you need to at least charge for products used. dont add more treatments until you have a bigger client base and are at least earning regular money.

as a mum you are in a great place, mums at the school.....make sure your nails always look fab and not something plain but something that is eye catching even if just on your ring fingers, then people will notice and you can strike up a conversation and hand your card over

everything else your doing is right you just have to keep plugging away. use this quiet time by doing some nail art colour wheels, keep up the free advertising and once you get a few new clients and they reccommend you you will get busier and busier xxx

I don't offer free nails, even my mum pays her way lol i say no being my mum but she insists lol

There are several mums already at the school in our line of work so i don't like to tread on there toes but i do try with the parents in my childs year group

My nails are always done, i even wore my flip flops for as long as i could last year so my feet were on display, i did get comments but along the line of "you must be freezing" :lol:
 
Also I find that doing really good nail art, Rockstar etc and adding pics to my Facebook page really helps, people always end up wanting it and booking in I also get lots of booking with lash extentions when I upload before and after pics xx
 
Yeah something like this, I think I did make-up, spray tan and shellac for £45. It would normally have been £60. It would be really good if you could get some make-up training, as the girls won't want to go to different salons for all their stuff as they won't have time on the day. They will want a one stop shop. This is whe liaising with hair salons could help you too, you could advertise each other as the girls will need hair ups etc. proms are big business!

Most salons round here have beauty rooms within
 
Heya Hun don't give up its hard I've recently opened a salon and sitting at a about 10 grand down lol. It's hard going and I'm in the same boat with no more cash to throw at it, I have had new queries though so a few things you may have forgot;

Have you registered you business and website with google places? Google search engines and yahoo and aol?
Have you registered on 118118 telephone directories?
Have you sorted out your seo on you website? Without this done correctly your site will never be found (for more info pm me its long but needed)
Twitter? And Instagram? I have intstagram set up so the pics will be sent to my business fb page and twitter account and as fb and twitter also update each other, they send the pic across again with me only uploading it once!!! And then the best part those who have fb will be able to see the pic and you can tag yourself in it so all your friends not on your page see it and when they click like all their friends see it... So on and so forth, for the customers with twitter they can access the pic without having to have fb etc.

Also check out the link on here for promoting your business loads if ideas and tried and tested approaches, I have it highlighted to read when I have chance to sit and go through it

Business can take anything from 18 months to 3 years to become profitable if you give up now you will always be wondering but what if I'd stuck it out :)
 
I feel the same as you but I have even doing it for about 2 years and just spent a fortune on a new salon! I feel like I have tried everything but getting nowhere. My regulars ate very happy with their treatments but I just can't build my client base.
 
Heya Hun don't give up its hard I've recently opened a salon and sitting at a about 10 grand down lol. It's hard going and I'm in the same boat with no more cash to throw at it, I have had new queries though so a few things you may have forgot;

Have you registered you business and website with google places? Google search engines and yahoo and aol?
Have you registered on 118118 telephone directories?
Have you sorted out your seo on you website? Without this done correctly your site will never be found (for more info pm me its long but needed)
Twitter? And Instagram? I have intstagram set up so the pics will be sent to my business fb page and twitter account and as fb and twitter also update each other, they send the pic across again with me only uploading it once!!! And then the best part those who have fb will be able to see the pic and you can tag yourself in it so all your friends not on your page see it and when they click like all their friends see it... So on and so forth, for the customers with twitter they can access the pic without having to have fb etc.

Also check out the link on here for promoting your business loads if ideas and tried and tested approaches, I have it highlighted to read when I have chance to sit and go through it

Business can take anything from 18 months to 3 years to become profitable if you give up now you will always be wondering but what if I'd stuck it out :)

Great advice :) defo don't give up!
 
Most salons round here have beauty rooms within

Try the ones who don't have room for beauty rooms, there are loads of salons in my area who do both hair and beauty, but there are also quite a lot of small salons who don't have the space for extra beauty rooms, you could help each other.
 
Also I think it would be very beneficial for you to do semi-permanent eyelash extentions. They are one of my biggest sellers and the repeat custom you get from them is like nothing else! Once the clients get their first set of lashes they want more and more. That means appointments every 2 weeks for top ups. Lashes are so noticeable as well, if your good at them people will always comment on them, I have had so many people come to me because they have seen them on my clients it's crazy! I mean literally stopping them in the street to ask where they got them done! (hope that didn't sound big headed of me, not intended, I just mean they are so eye catching and they are BIG business right now) they will get you lots of clients trust me :) then once you get them theough the door for this you can start pushing what other treatments you offer. Also print out leaflets of special offers and post them to all the houses nearby, I got great feedbck from doing this, better than radio or newspaper advertising and it was the cheaper of the 3 xx

Nikki201
Can I ask what eyelash extensions you use and where did you do your training? I'm looking at offering these but have no idea where to start ;/
 
Last January i had an offer of buy one treatment get one half price, during the same appointment. It really took off, i was quite busy. I haven't this year as i'm going away so i'm busy anyway.

The other thing that i find works really well when i'm quiet is email marketing. All my clients put their email addresses on their consultation sheets and so i started up with those. Every month i email them with some news, if there are any special offers, etc and so if i'm feeling a bit quiet, i'll email an offer. It always brings people in. Even if they are just clients that come when i have an offer on, that's money i didn't have the day before :)

I also have a mailchimp link on my website and facebook page that lets anyone add themselves to my email list, so my client base has built up that way too.

Hope this helps xx
 

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