When a customer sits in your chair for the first time, likely they had a journey to get there. 

In the business world we call this the customer journey. The Customer Journey is the path your clients take from becoming aware of you and your salon to a recurring client to referring other people.  

So what is the  journey that your customers take all the way from prior to booking to deciding to come back. How are customers coming into your business? What are you doing you keep them happy and loyal!? How can you use your current clients to convert new ones?

There are 5 steps in the customer journey; Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty and Advocacy.

1. Creating Awareness

The first step in the customer journey is getting customers aware. How do you get people to learn about your salon?

• Do you have marketing?
• Do you use social media?
• Do you attend events?
• Do you have business cards?
• Do you have partnerships with local companies?
• What are the things you do to keep awareness around your business?

2. Client Consideration 

Now that the customers are aware, we want to think about how to get to the next part of the journey, which is a consideration. 

You got them to a website, now they’re in the consideration zone. So what can we do to enhance the consideration to push them through to the next step to commit to coming to your salon?

Here are some ideas: 

• Highlight your stylists
  • A short bio
  • Rate, and service specialties
  • Past client reviews
• Offer an online tour
  • Just a really quick tour of what the salon even looks like, the atmosphere and all the things that they’re gonna get. 
    • Add some photos and videos of your previous work and your salon.
• Education on the type of services you do 
  • This is a great place to highlight the type of pricing you use in your salon.
    • Ex. Hourly Pricing with product usage cost calculated with SalonScale
    • How you like to conduct consultations  
• The mission and the values of your business.
  • Be transparent with potential clients
• A form right when they hit the website. 
  • Ask them a little bit about themselves and what they are looking for

The Key To Filling Your Books – Waitlists!

If you have people that are coming to your site and they are all looking for the same service and you get them all to input their emails. You will have the emails of people who are interested in that type of service, this gives you the opportunity to connect with them. We like to call this person a hot lead which means someone is highly interested in your service and has a high potential of becoming a client. hint-hint: a waitlist! 

Then let’s say you notice that your books are getting slower. Well, you have specific prospective clients who have expressed interest in your services that you can contact. You’re able to reach out to these potential clients as you open your books! Or maybe you’re running a promotion on a popular service, you can curate an email and blast it out to them and share. I’m doing a promotion on balayage and blowouts, for X time – Click the button below to save your spot! 

Another way to capture potential clients is posting openings on your social media. This is a way to capture clients who’ve been thinking about booking in with you of a specific service based on the time opening you have. If you’re a salon owner, it’s something you can promote on the stylist and the salons channels.

3. Conversion to Client

Once you have the new clients considering your salon, it is time to get them to book in! When it comes to this it’s your ideal customer. This person has come through all these different streams and they are ready to be your customer.

Once you have that new client book in, it’s important to ask how they heard about you. If this person tends to be your ideal client, then you’re able to attract more clients like them though the same way. Let’s say they saw you on Instagram through a friend-of-a-friend who followed you and saw that you had a color opening and chose to book in. This is a sign that posting on Instagram and sharing opening works for you!

Tip: When you have more full books, you’re also able to consider if you should have a price increase too.

4. Client Loyalty

When clients come in, they get services done, they go to check out, this is an opportunity to get your client to pre-book. If you didn’t book them in, this is a leaky funnel. That’s okay, but it’s important to remind your clients that your books fill up quickly. But they can message you when they’re ready or whatever your preferred booking method may be.

There’s a few things you can do to keep these customers constantly coming in and even at higher value. Tell the customer, “You know what, next time you come in, I think we should add highlights, and possibly a bonding treatment.” This should be related to what was discussed earlier in the clients consultation. So the next time you come in, your bill’s probably gonna be another $10 to $20… Let’s go ahead and book that today.” or “In order to maintain your color, I recommend we book in for a tone for 7-8 weeks. Would you like to do that?” or “Can I book you in, my books fill up quickly!”

5. Advocacy (aka Referral)

The fastest way for you to build business is word of mouth. And if you add a social element to it, it’s like 10 times faster. You could offer a discount or create content around clients sharing their experience at your salon or an image of their hair to their social media profiles. Also, you could do a monthly contest for clients who share their hair images too. This contest could be money towards their services.

After the clients appointment you can also send them a survey. 

Here is an example of a survey you can give to new clients to fill out:

• How did you find out about our salon?
• Was your appointment scheduling process easy?
• Did your stylist meet or exceed your expectations with the end result?
• Do you feel the services provided were worth the money you spent?
• How likely are you to return to our salon in the future?
• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?

The next step would be an ending screen with a referral link, that they can send to their friends. Offer a discount for them and their friend if they book in.

Conclusion

Gaining and more importantly keeping clients in your salon is crucial to the success of your business. With these steps you can better attract and convert clients into loyal clients that help you attract new ones; and the cycle continues. 

Download our Customer Journey For Clients In Your Salon Worksheet Here!