How to Deal With Quiet Periods in Salon

With a lot of clients strapped for cash after the recent festivities, January is often a quiet month in salon. We understand how stressful it feels to have an empty appointment book. If you’re looking for ideas to help pick things up during quiet periods, here are some of our top tips.

Re-booking is key

Year round, re-bookings are important to maintain business stability but it’s never more crucial than during a quiet spell.

A great booking system is perfect for managing this. Most will send out an automatic reminder to your client prior to their appointment, meaning no shows are a thing of the past. We know a lot of our stylists love the free software Schedul, but you can head over to our Facebook Collective Group and chat with fellow stylists about their experiences with this and other systems.

Have a cancellation policy

So, you managed to re-book your clients to ensure you had appointments to cover the quiet period, but how do you prevent them from dropping out? Set up a cancellation policy that can come into action during both quiet and busy periods when you need to keep those spaces filled.

Taking a partial or even full payment upfront reduces no-shows and leaves you with something in the bank if they do. Plus, with cash tight in January, it might actually help out some of your clients to pay in advance!

Again, feel free to head over to our Facebook Collective Group and ask others for advice on their cancellation policies if you need a little bit of inspiration.

Market correctly

An obvious way of getting more people through the doors is to run a promotion. However, make sure it’s targeted to the time of year to get the most benefit. To help your clients kickstart their ‘new year, new me’ resolutions, run a promotion to encourage them to transform their brows or experience a HD Makeover.

Run flash offers that encourage clients to book in before missing out. A good example is ‘the first five people to call and book an appointment today receive a free product’.

A promotion we’ve seen work really well in salons is to redeem part of the cost of a retail purchase off their next treatment. For example, purchase a Browtec and receive £5 off your next treatment. It’s great as this month’s treatment is paid in full, you get an additional retail sale and your client still gets the benefit of a discount.

We don’t recommend you run treatment offers for longer than a month or back to back deals as you’ll end up devaluing the hard work you put into your treatments. Plus, clients will have a sense of urgency to book while there’s a limited time offer.

Use social media

Social media is a great way of driving appointments when things are on the quiet side.

A trick that often works is pretending you’re quiet because of last minute cancellations. This gives your clients the perception you are busy and that there’s an urgency to book.

Don’t forget, our Marketing Hub is filled with images and videosfor you to share to keep your pages fun and engaging.

Take advantage of retail sales

When your days aren’t as full as usual, you need to make the most of the clients you get in. That’s why retail sales are super helpful. When doing a HD Brows treatment, take an extra few minutes to show your clients the products you’re using and give them your top tips for filling in regrowth areas. They’ll appreciate your advice and will trust your product recommendations. You can read up more on the importance of retailing in your salon here.

We know that quiet times can feel tough, but we’re always on hand to offer you support. Not only can you read our advice here on the Marketing Hub, the Facebook Collective Group is an invaluable resource. Feel free to post any questions to the group for tips from fellow stylists, or send us a private message.