The Science of Salon and Spa Promotions

Too many salons and spas treat their marketing and promotions like abstract art:

They just throw paint at the wall and see how it turns out.

But there is more to growing your customer base and brand loyalty than haphazard brand expression.  In truth, there is a science to successful promotions over time.

Key element:

Over. Time.

If you aren’t worried about long-term sustainable results, then this post isn’t for you.  By all means, take the liberal arts approach to building your business if you can handle the ups and downs that come with it.

Or, continue reading and discover the mindset that can bring your salon or spa consistent growth over time.

Approaching Promotions Like a Scientist

Remember learning about the scientific method in school?

No?  Thought so.

For a refresher:

The scientific method is where you form a hypothesis, carry out an experiment to test it, measure your results, and compare those results with your hypothesis.

Your promotions should follow a similar cycle.

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Define Clear Objectives

Defining clear objectives for your promotions gives you something to measure your results against to determine success or failure.

Create a hypothesis along the lines of, “We believe our target market will respond this way to our promotional idea”.  You can even create different predictions for unique segments of your market based on the same promotion.

Then tie your assumptions to your goals so that they are always in focus.  Otherwise, you’re likely to lose sight of your objectives and allow your execution to suffer.

Control Variables

When it’s time to carry out the experiment (promotion), make sure there are as few outside influences as possible.

Therefore, make sure that you only introduce one new promotion at a time.  This way you have a more accurate picture of how effective it actually is.  Unless you’re testing how multiple campaigns work side-by-side, you only want one new factor influencing customer behavior at a time.

Beware of other confounding factors such as time of year as well.  Obviously, some types of promotions will be more effective in warmer months, others around the winter holidays. Make sure your promotions are seasonal and timely, otherwise they are destined to fall flat.

Collect Data

If you don’t measure your results accurately, you lose the power to leverage the things you could have learned from your promotion.
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In our data-driven world, businesses are able to collect more information than ever before about their clients and potential clients.  And those who fall behind the technological curve put themselves at a real disadvantage.  

Make sure that you organize all of the information you’re able to collect about your promotion.  Include not only how your audience reacted to your promotion, but how your business reacted to it.  Think about more than just new sales.  There is always more to the picture.

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Leverage New Information

Once you’ve accumulated all the data, it’s time to leverage it.  The first step toward this end is to compare campaign results with goals.

Not only are you able to determine whether your campaigns are successful or not, but you gain the insights necessary to tweak them in the future.  Utilize data to inform your marketing decisions and you’ll inevitably see more leads and more paying customers.

At this step, be sure to look again for potential confounding variables—outside circumstances that may have affected your results.  You’ll never be able to plan for everything.  That’s why it’s so important to look back on your promotions once they have run their course.

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All that's left from here:

Put this cycle on rinse-and-repeat.

​​The more promotions you launch, the more data you get back.  

As that knowledge bank grows, you’re able to come up with new promotion ideas and refine your existing ones.

Over time, this will help you build your flow of customers month by month, year by year.
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If you are looking for a salon or spa software to help you manage all this data give us a call or fill out our contact form.

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