“Everyone is not your customer.” Those aren’t my words. They are the best-selling author, marketer, entrepreneur, and public speaker Seth Godin’s words. It’s easy to get trapped into trying to be everything for everyone. It really is. But think about it this way. As an individual, do you try to be everything to everyone? No, that’s way too exhausting, and you know that if you tried you’d lose the sense of who you truly are in the process. Running a salon or a spa is the same thing. Your best bet is to try to be everything to a certain few. Who is your ideal salon client? What problems does your clientele face? What do they trust? And most importantly, why does it matter?
Why Should You Care?
Let’s start with the latter. Why am I taking the time to write this article? Why is it so important that as a business owner, you know who your ideal customer is? To better understand this, let me make an analogy.
In the earlier days of our podcast, Phorest FM, we invited Louis Grenier, digital marketing consultant and podcaster himself to discuss the “Art Of Effective Marketing Focus.” During the episode, he argued that taking the time to pick a certain few marketing channels or tools to focus on, often enables you to create a much greater impact on clients and potential clients. He explained:
“It’s not necessarily only about focusing on one or two, or two or three channels. It’s also focusing your strategy, focusing on one goal, one objective. So to go back to it, exactly as you said, everybody has problems. Information is everywhere, you have Wikipedia, you can read any blog on any topic. If you want to disagree with somebody, you just have to type what you disagree with and you find articles that agree with you and disagree with the other.
There are so many tactics out there, so many growth hacks, or anything like this that will tell you what to do, it’s impossible to follow every single tactic that you learn, that you hear for, or that you listen to. That’s fine if you feel overwhelmed, everybody else feels this way.”
– Louis Grenier, Phorest FM, Episode 24
The thing is, it’s essentially the same with clients. The more you scatter your efforts in trying to get anyone and everyone through your doors, the more of the disgruntled, the deal hunters, the disengaged, the I-expect-the-moon-for-the-lowest-price type of clients. On the back of Gloria Murray’s recent contributions, “The True Costs Of Opening A Salon That Will Thrive” and “What You Need To Know Before Buying An Existing Salon”, finding out who you want to appeal to is crucial for the long-term profitability of your salon or spa. It helps you build a stronger brand identity too. And that’s not something you should overlook.
10 Advantages Of Better Understanding Who Your Customer Is
- You will be in a much better position to tailor your salon’s client experience to your clientele.
(Click here to read more on client journeys.)
- You will find it easier to craft and target your marketing messages because you will be able to picture someone you’re talking to.
(Click here to listen to Louis Grenier’s podcast episode on Phorest FM.)
- If you have a blog, you’ll be able to write educational content that can help solve your ideal salon client’s problems.
(Click here to get ideas for your first blog post.)
- You will have a better idea of what retail products to stock.
(Click here to download the Salon Owner’s Ultimate Guide To Shaping A Retail Culture.)
- You will see an increase in loyalty.
(Click here to read more on building a successful loyalty program in the hair & beauty industry.)
- These same customers will recommend you to their friends and colleagues.
(Click here to find out more about referrals.)
- They will buy from you more frequently.
(Click here to read more on more client retention strategies.)
- You won’t have to fall back to discounting tactics.
(Click here to read about our current salon growth initiative, #30Days2Grow.)
- Your brand will become stronger, gain in reputation.
(Click here to read more on building an online reputation.)
- You will become more profitable. Need I say more?
Ironic isn’t? By narrowing who you’re targeting, you can actually run into much more profit. This brings me on to my first question: “Who is your ideal salon client?”
Click on the image to get more information, and follow @phorestsalonsoftware on Instagram to make sure you don’t miss out!
Defining Your Ideal Salon Client Profile
In most cases, you’ll see the rule of 80:20 apply here. There’s a strong probability that twenty percent of your clients are your “ideal salon clients.” Again, according to marketing expert Seth Godin, an ideal customer is one who:
- Wants your products/services
- Has the ability to pay for said products/services
- Can purchase your offerings (meaning, a 10-year old can’t buy salon treatments, so there’s no need to target that demographic).
From there you need to write your mission statement on a whiteboard and ask yourself a few questions:
- What does your salon or spa do best, what are your business strengths?
- What problem are you trying to solve for clients with your treatments and products?
- Do your customers relate to what you offer? (“Yes, that’s totally for me!”)
- What do these clients have in common?
A good exercise you can do is list your top 20% of highest spending clients (if you use Phorest Salon Software, you can generate a “top spenders” report). What do they have in common? Look at age, demographics, gender, choice of service or retail product, location, type of job, pattern visits. To get to know your customers and identify your ideal salon clients, you could also run a survey (see more on this here). You could ask them questions like:
- What is their number one problem that keeps them up at night?
- How much money do they have to solve it and are they willing to spend it in your salon/spa?
- How did they hear about you?
- What makes them choose you over another salon?
- How do they define value?
From there, you collect the answers and start working on bringing to life this “ideal salon client.” You could even give this fictional person a name. It makes it easier to relate sometimes. Who is “Erica”? How old is she, what’s her job title, her goals and challenges? What’s her story? All this information will help you define your marketing strategy, what you stock and everything else I listed in the previous section. And if you have 2 or 3 strong profiles that come out of the survey, that’s okay too!
Download this printable sheet, fill it out and pass completed copy along to your team. It’s important that they also know who your mission serves best.
Based In The EU? Make Sure You’re GDPR Compliant!
By May 2018, under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) it is going to be mandatory for EU-based salons to collect, house and protect your clients’ personal data and information securely, but also, to be the utmost transparent about how it was obtained. You will be required to provide a clear audit trail as to how you collected it. Failure to comply with this legislative requirement could cost your business thousands – or worse; you could lose your business altogether. To learn more about GDPR and make sure your salon is ready for it, head over to www.salongdpr.com and download our latest eBook!
Got feedback? Let us know either in the comments below or tweet us @ThePhorestWord! (Pssst. We’re on Instagram too!)
Thanks for reading! #LetsGrow
