How to Promote Your Salon Business Without Giving Discounts!

With thousands of hair and beauty businesses opening every year, and the overall beauty market shrinking in real terms, it's no wonder people are turning to whatever means they can to promote their businesses. Let me convince you today that there is a way beyond discounting. Hello, hello, hello my salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your Queen of Salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are we as we march towards the end of the year? I hope you're reflecting on a successful 2024, or perhaps it's been a little bit bumpy, let's be realistic, no one's had a smooth ride of it, and I know that there are lots of you out there feeling just a little bit dejected, and lots of you who are just worn out, and I'm telling you now that you're not the only one. There are so many people out there feeling completely overwhelmed, and actually, I don't think you're overwhelmed. I think you're just tired out. It's been years since we had an easy ride of it, and my goodness, those of you that have been in business for more than four or five years, don't you look back on those as the golden years of business? Wasn't it so much easier pre-pandemic? Things have been tough for a very long time now, and it's a real test of your fortitude and your resilience, but you're still in the game. Your Uncle Phil's still got your back. We can do this, guys. But today, I want to talk about what seems to be the default when it comes to salon promotions. So many people think the best way to get themselves busy is to offer a juicy discount. Now, I'm not like other coaches in lots of ways, but I'm not like other coaches in that I think there are certain circumstances when it's okay to discount your services. And I know lots of coaches will tell you never to discount, never to discount, but I think that it's all right to discount if you're shifting client behavior, then I think it's okay to offer a discount. So if you've got somebody who's a lost client, and they've decided to build loyalty elsewhere, and you're trying to tempt them back in to shift that behavior back into a spending pattern with you, I think a discount's okay there. And I think there's certain other circumstances when a discount is all right. So, for example, when you're building your case studies for a new service, then I think a discount is perfectly in order. However, so many people think that promotion equals discount, and a promotion doesn't have to be a discount.

And lots of times when I'm talking to salon owners about their marketing plans, I say, what promotions are we running this month? And they'll say, oh, I'm not offering any discounts. Well, that's not what I said. What I said was, what are we promoting at the moment? And a promotion, or even an offer, is just like a magnifying glass. It's bringing attention to a certain service or group of services on your price card. That's all a promotion is. There may well be a discount in there, but there doesn't have to be in order for it to be an effective promotion. So why are so many people anti-discounts? Well, there's a few reasons why discounts can be quite dangerous. The first is, when you set your prices, assuming you set your prices properly, my darlings, and I know that's a big assumption, but when you set your prices, you will have covered your costs, your fixed and variable costs, and also built in an element of profit in order for you to hit your business goals, in order for you to hit the personal goals that you have. When we discount our services, all of those fixed costs and variable costs still have to be covered. The only place a discount can come from is, listen to me ranting, you're getting me all riled up now, darlings. But the only place a discount can be covered, the only place that money can come from, is your profit margin. So every time we're discounting, the only thing we're doing is reducing our profitability. And at the end of the day, we're all in this to turn a profit. Even if you're a charity, a charity needs to make a profit in order to distribute those charitable donations. So eating into your profit is counterintuitive. It's taking you further away from your business goals, further away from your life goals. More than that, though, I think we need to look at what's happening psychologically with our customers when we offer a discount. If you're attracting people through a discount, you're attracting people who want a discount. You're attracting bargain hunters. You're attracting people who are shopping on price. And I don't think that's a great place for us to be. I would much rather people were shopping on the experience that you're delivering, your level of expertise, the quality of your services, rather than the prices that you charge. And I've said this before, and it bears saying again, my loves, unless you're the cheapest in town, they're not coming to you for your prices anyway. So I don't think discounting attracts the right people. More than that, though, I think there is an anchoring exercise which goes on. Let me explain. When you discount a service, it's very, very hard to justify charging more for that service later on.

And all you need to do is look at laser hair removal. This is exactly what's going on right now. We're seeing it play out in front of our eyes. It's going to be almost impossible to charge full price for laser hair removal because, firstly, it's a service which is very hard to differentiate as a new customer. But secondly, so many people have been offering discounts for so long now that a customer sees the 50% off package or the full body 997 deal as the norm. We have anchored that service at the new price, and that can happen with any service in your business. So if you decide that you're going to offer, I don't know, a full head of foil highlights for 45 quid, it's going to be really hard to charge more than 45 next time round because we've anchored the perception. We've anchored the value at a much lower level. So we want to steer away from discounts. So come on then, Uncle Phil, you've talked us out of discounting. What else is it that we're supposed to do in order to make a profit and keep our columns full? Well, the first thing I want you to start doing is leaning into your expertise because people will pay more for an expert. And even better than that, they will travel further for an expert as well. So start to put one service or one group of services to one side as your absolute area of expertise. I'm not suggesting you start crossing lots and lots of things off your price card and specialize in one thing, though it's a perfectly valid strategy and lots of people make lots of money doing it. But what I'm suggesting is even if you're offering a huge range of hair or beauty or aesthetic services, have one thing that you stand head and shoulders above the rest. For myself, in my hair salon, it was colour correction. So, yes, we offer all the balayage services and I was a foil demon. I could bang in a half head or four head of foils in the blink of an eye, my loves. I was a there was smoke coming off the end of my pintail comb. Let me tell you, I could push foils in. So and they were nice and close to the root as well. But when it came to colour correction, if you'd really balled it up at home or if you'd gone on holiday and your hair had gone green in the swimming pool or if you'd been to a salon that completely misunderstood what you were asking for and you came out with something you weren't happy with.

I was the guy. I was the one who could fix that for you. So I had that one area of expertise. Now, did I discount those colour correction services? Not on your Nelly. In fact, my colour corrections, well, all of my colour services were top end prices anyway, but my colour correction services would make your eyes water, my love. Because I was the expert, people will pay more for an expert. More than that, they will travel further. So it means that you're tapping into a broader market. It means that you're tapping into a clientele beyond your village, your town, your region, even. People will travel a lot, lot further to see an absolute expert on something. So lean into the expertise that you have. You don't even need to do any training on this. I know how well trained you are. I know you take your services seriously. I know your standards are high. All we're doing, because we're promoting, remember, is just putting a magnifying glass over those particular services and saying, this is me. This is what I'm about. This is the service I'm an expert in. Next up, instead of discounting, let's add some value. So there are times when we have to put an offer together. There are times when we have to get people's juices going and we have to really tempt people into the salon to take a particular service. And if you're looking at lots and lots of white space, I feel your pain. Lots of people have different times of the week, times of the month, times of the year when white space is a big problem and utilisation is low. We've got to do something to fill those spaces. So what can we do if we're not discounting? We pile in the value. Now, the one thing I will say, and what I don't like hearing, is when we're putting services in there with a high perceived value, that to me feels like a trick. It's got to be high value, proper high value. It's not the perception of the value. It's that it is actually a valuable product or a valuable service that we're pricing in. But the interesting thing is a lot of the things that we can price in have a high value to your customer, but cost you very, very little. And the example I always give is when we come to facials. So let's say you have a nice express facial. I call it a fluffy facial. Well, we're not really tackling the big problems that are going on with people's skin, but it's a relaxing process. It's a really good deep cleanse and exfoliate and it's going to send them on their way with a certain amount of glow. For us to upgrade that to a luxury facial or a VIP facial or a bespoke facial doesn't cost you very much.

There might be an investment of time. There may not. It may not be a longer service at all. And because we're not adding extra product, we're swapping out products. The extra cost to you is very, very little. But the value to the customer can be immense. So that's an example of how we can add value for the customer without increasing your costs. So bundle in extra services, upgrade services, and put together something really tempting. Make sure it's scarce, though. And this is the biggest problem I see. Something isn't valuable if I can get it today, tomorrow, next year, next month, next week, even. If I've only got five of those particular upgrades available or I've only got five of those particular packages on sale, it has a much higher value to the customer and it drives people to make a decision now. So put some scarcity into your short-term marketing to get those tills ringing. Finally, I want you to focus really hard on managing the reputation of your business. Now, I know that you have a good reputation. You wouldn't be in business very long if you didn't have a very good reputation. But what you don't want to be is your town's best-kept secret. That means investing time and energy into making sure your customers are raving about you, that we have a recommend a friend program in place, but also that we're hustling to get those five-star reviews. So you want a mechanism in place for recommend a friend. Personally, I don't do recommend a friend all year round. I find it very hard to maintain the energy across an entire year. But a short-term recommend a friend program can work really well. So I do mine across a month. I do mine every August. And it works beautifully and has done for a lot of years. But if you've managed to keep recommend a friend working all year round, then keep at it. Keep at it. But keep consistently asking every single customer for recommendations. Birds of a feather flock together. If you've got one brilliant customer, the chances are good that they will know at least one or two other people they could be recommending to your salon. But also have a mechanism in place for collecting those reviews. So at some stage of the customer journey, and particularly the new customer journey, we want to be asking for a review. Whether that be at the end of their first visit, whether that be at the end of their second visit. But at some stage, we want to be asking people for a review and make it easy. So lots of people now have QR codes in their salons.

That the customer can scan while they're sat in the chair or waiting in reception or just paying their bill. And they can quickly knock off a quick five-star review for you. And I've seen salons putting things in welcome packs and new client packs to ask for recommendations and referrals, but also to ask for those five-star reviews as well. And I've seen salons going from five or six reviews to hundreds of reviews, not quite overnight, but certainly in a very short period of time. Of course, make sure we're responding to reviews. Even the negative ones deserve a response, not a defensive one. This isn't time to go tit for tat and turn into a huge conversation. But just to respond politely and reassure people that you take complaints very seriously can do huge amounts for your reputation. No one expects to see 500 five-star reviews. I want to see that you get one or two one-star reviews, but I want to see that you take it seriously, that you respond professionally as well. So that reputation management needs to be a strong pillar in your business. Honestly, over the next 12 to 24 months, I see that overtaking a lot of the pillars that we have in place as far as marketing is concerned. So there we have it. My three tips on promoting your salon without discounting. What have I missed? What are you doing to promote your services to your existing customers and new customers that I haven't highlighted? Reach out and let me know. My email address is at the bottom of the screen, phil at buildyoursalon.com. I'd also love to be interviewing you about your journey in the salon industry sometime in 2025. So reach out, share your story with me. Let's have a quick chat and see whether you would like to jump on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Just seven short days until the next episode. And until then, take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.