Moved salon

[Divaa]

Hi
I have moved from a salon on a main road to a health and fitness club.
It is so quiet that i have done door to door flyers, keep advertising and I do not expect to rely on hotel guests and gym members. I have not long put a banner on the main road of the hotel that has my website on it to promote the salon.
I ran a nail salon and now i am offering nail service and holistic massage service and beauty to come. Four months now still dead. Is there any ideas to what i can do more.

 

[hollydolly]

Hi there! keep your chin up! Hopefully things will get better for your business, How did you find your leaflet drop went? Did you get many cutomers from it?
Make a facebook group about your business and invite all your friends and get them to invite more friends and so on! that has worked for me, its easier to email everyone offers too!!
Offer gym members and hotel guests an offer they can't refuse! when I first started I was doing 50% off, I know its alot off but I would rather have people through the door, take abit of money and gain a potential client than sit there doing nothing!
You could offer gym/hotel staff a free treatment- as word of mouth would travel round the gym/hotel and even to their friends!
You could also host an open evening?
Get your pricelists dotted everywhere, even in the hotel rooms too
I hope this helps!
Let me know how you get on!
pm me if you want any help!
xxHollyxx

 

[Divaa]

Thankyou for your advise and i will try the face book the open evening as i have tried the others. It seems that people are drying up with money at the moment.

 

[nixnewcastle]

have you got a website yet hun? most of my clients find me by google and say they had no idea i was there when im on a main street but upstairs

 

[skymark]

Of course its not wise to rely on hotel guests, but you should certainly try and make the most of them as there are many therapists that survive on hotel clientele alone.

The front desk staff are your best friends as far as referrals are concerned (I worked front desk for a brief time when I was younger and had no problems pimping out services I was earning benefits on lol). I would give them the opportunity to earn free or reduced price treatments through referrals.

Also making sure you have the opportunity to put your business details in each hotel room would be top of the list, making sure that its a nice brochure with your information, treatment information, pictures and prices on. I spend a lot of my life in hotel rooms and always end up pawing through the brochures when bored.

Maybe the fitness centre management would let you set up a table in the lobby for a few hours on a busy day to market yourself from, give out leaflets and talk to potential clients.

 

[Divaa]

Thankyou for your response. Yes I have a website and I am always changing and updating it.

 

[Divaa]

Thankyou for your suggestion and i will be looking into discussing this with the health and fitness manager

 

[angeleyes01]

Have you checked how easy it is to find your website on google? Anticipate what your potential customers will be searching for e.g. salon and the name of the area and make sure that your salon is the first / one of the first to come up.

Have you contacted past customers to let them know the new address.

Running a special offer promotion could entice people in - everyone wants a bargain / to feel like they are getting good value for money in the current economy.

Check through other threads in the Hair Geek and Business Geek sections for ideas other geeks have come up with for free / innovative marketing. We all need to think outside the box at the moment.

I hope it picks up for you soon.

 

[Divaa]

Thankyou for your comments and I will look at the website.

 

[advetxt]

What about offering a free text alert service for potential customers. This can be added to a website,flyers,banners or any traditional method of advertising a business. All you do is add a unique keyword and a special number called a Shortcode.

A simple way to explain this is if you have watch big brother or X factor, they use text messaging as a way to vote. it says something like "text JOHN to 21144 to place your vote". Using this method can help you solve two problems. First of all it gets people to come and try your service by offer a free complementary service or a discount of some sort. And secondly you build a client database on which you can send different promotion on a weekly or fortnightly basis. This is how it can work.

Example one:

Create a banner where people pass the gym and put a headline like "FREE MANICURE" basic file and polish so minimal expense to you. The headline doesn't have to be free manicure but you need something to entice people to react t your banner advert and give a reason try your service. The main message of the ad can say something like "text BEAUTY to 88802 for your free manicure"

The potential customer send text message to 88802 and will get an auto-reply saying "Thank you for your request.Quote NAILS10 to book your free Manicure.Restriction apply.Call and book now on 02081239874."

Once the people send a text message,the number is captured and stored into a database.Because people have opt-in initially for the free treatment, you can send text alert on a weekly or fortnightly basis sending different offer and promotions which can get you up to 20% response rate compare to traditional method of advertising.If you got any questions about this system then contact me and i will be happy to help.