Now let’s start with your website, which should be:

• Visually appealing - Are images clear, bright, and show an accurate representation of your salon and services?  
• Informative - Do you provide the information your potential client seeks such as service menu, pricing, stylist information, contact information, salon policies, etc.?
• Easy-to-navigate - Have you organized all the information on your website in a practical fashion that allows someone to find what they’re looking for quickly?
• On-brand - Does your website speak to the preferences and needs of your ideal client and what you can deliver for them?
• Direct with calls-to-action - Do you make it easy for your client to book with you on every single page of your website?

 

Then you have Facebook and Instagram, which if your business is anything like mine, is where the majority of my clients discovered my services.

Before posting anything on your social platforms, I suggest having a checklist for yourself (that you can later pass on to a salon coordinator) that asks the questions:

• Does the image portray my brand adequately and in an aligned way with my website and physical salon?
• Is the message clear and am I telling the story of my salon that resonates with my ideal client? I
• Is it promoting something we love to do, thus driving forward our business goals and initiatives?
• Have I placed a watermark on my images?
• Do my images look visually cohesive?

 

In regards to that last item of visual cohesiveness, when I opened my Swish Salon in 2015, I took every after photo against my brick wall.

Soon enough my pictures became recognisable to the public, but when other salons in the area began posting the same thing, I changed my background to a green wall and eventually to my branded salon banner from Secret Salon Society.

When every image or post you produce is created in this way, you’ll see that your feeds look branded, visually cohesive, and you’ll set the expectation for your potential clients that, “If I go there, I can expect to walk out looking like that.”

 

Day of Service Phase

Now let’s assume your website and social platforms have effectively resulted in a confirmed booking and skip ahead to the day you deliver the service.

This is the phase that will either make or break a relationship with every person that walks through your salon’s doors. At this point, your client has already researched you, stalked you, asked their friends about you, and you’ve created an element of “know, like and trust.”

Now it’s the job of you and your team to knock their socks off and deliver!

When I did my flight attendant training (I won’t mention how long ago), we were taught a phrase that has stayed with me throughout my life, “To your customers, it’s not just another day.”

In other words, you do the same thing day in day out, smile and say “thank you” a million times a day, but to the person in your chair who maybe only gets their hair done once in a blue moon, this isn’t something they do every day, and they’re putting their faith in your abilities.

That’s why we need to treat every client, every single time with the same care, genuine interest and attention to detail as if they were a brand new client.

If the first phase is the first impression, this is the impress phase where you have to wow your client to keep them coming back.