Why Client Loyalty Matters More Than Ever Right Now

Doing a good job used to be enough to build a salon business. That's not the case anymore. Your clients are going to have to come from somewhere, and that means keeping the clients you have is more important than ever. Hello, my salon friends. How are you doing, mate? Alright, Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the internet with another dose of my Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Akingly well, I hope. And I am going to talk a little bit about all sorts of things today, really. But we're going to talk marketing. We're going to talk loyalty. We're going to talk about loyalty because it is more important than ever before. And I know we've been banging this drum for a few weeks on the podcast now, but I think it deserves plenty of airtime because I've kind of had a mindset shift myself. I've always felt that there was enough space in our industry for everyone to do well. And this year, I've come to realize that's not actually the case. Because what's happened is we've seen a decline in populations and certainly a decline in population growth in lots and lots of areas. But even if your population is growing locally, we've seen the number of salon businesses growing far quicker. There are far more places now to get your hair, your nails, your tanning, your laser hair removal, all of those things than ever before. Certainly in any time that I can remember. And I think that has changed the market in quite a fundamental way. Because as I said in the intro, it used to be the case way back when we set up that you could just do a good job. And if you did a good job and you've got a good reputation, word of mouth would take care of the rest and population growth would take care of the rest. And you would get busy over time. What I've seen now is the rate of new salon businesses entering the market has shot up. I mean, the barrier to entry in the salon industry is so low that we've got so many people coming in now. And also, it used to be the case that you had to make a salon business work. You had to make it pay for premises. You had to make it your living. That's not the case either. We've got a lot of people now who are in the salon industry, but not full time. They're doing salon stuff maybe two, three days a week, but also have another job somewhere else. They're portfolio workers and that other job could be in a completely different market, completely different industry. So we've ended up with these much, much smaller businesses, too. And in some ways, I quite like it. And I said this a couple of times. I like these little scrappy businesses that are bootstrapped. And I think there's a kind of vibrancy that comes from that. There's an excitement around that kind of business. But for the bigger concerns for the people that are paying for premises that are trying to make this their full time living, it means the market has got really tough and it is a zero sum game. There's only so many clients to go round. They only have so much money to spend. So even with the best marketing in the world, there's a limit to what you can earn from your local client pool. And also, I said this a couple of weeks back and we did get a little bit of jip for it. People aren't sat at home going, look at my hairy legs. Wish there was something I could do about my hairy legs. They're already going somewhere else. So your marketing now has to have teeth. You have to get it into your head that you're not marketing your salon. You're marketing your salon as a better place to go than where they are right now. The only way you're going to get a sizable number of new clients is by taking them from somewhere else. And I know that sounds a bit cutthroat and it sounds a little bit fierce. And yes, it's not leaving the ladder down anymore. But I'm afraid it needs to be that way unless you're in the very, very lucky instance where you don't have any meaningful competition. And I don't think that's very many people at all. So in these tough economic conditions, those clients are going to have to come from somewhere. They're not coming from thin air. While you're fighting for your share, guess what the other salon businesses are doing as well. They're fighting for theirs, which is why loyalty is the most important strategy that you can have in your business right now. Chasing those new clients is expensive in terms of the amount of time and effort you're going to have to put into your marketing or maybe in terms of the money you're going to have to spend on your marketing. And it's bloody exhausting. Chasing new clients is hard work. And honestly, servicing new clients is bloody hard work as well. I can remember I got to the stage and I'm sure lots of you have got to this stage where your column is pretty much full of regular clients. And it's a delight. It's a joy because you've got a relationship. They're coming to you because they like you. You like them. Everyone's happy. Everyone's doing a great job. And then you start seeing a few new clients in your column. Oh, for God's sake, I've got to go through that making friends process all over again. It's hard work filling your column with new clients. And if you're and I have a real problem when I see new clients as a performance measure, because there are salons that target their team members on the number of new clients that they're seeing. I think it's a problem. I don't think they should be seeing new clients. There shouldn't be room for them to see new clients. They should be building columns of loyal clients and getting full that way rather than chasing more and more new clients. If you've got a stylist and you're rewarding them for having lots of new clients, they must have had a lot of white space at the beginning. And that's not a good thing. I think it's a really negative measure to put into performance management. Why do we lose people, though? Why is loyalty a problem? It's the little things. There's a very famous little analogy that came not from me, I'm afraid, that we don't lose people because of a lion's bite. It's not a big thing that you got wrong. You're not out there doing a shitty job. You're not out there balling up somebody's hair or cocking up their service. You're not out there doing stuff that's dangerous or giving poor results. But maybe you've been running behind a few times too many. Perhaps there was a price increase and it wasn't really justified or there was no explanation. Perhaps clients started feeling just a little bit less valued. Maybe they're just another appointment or same as last time. That regular mentality can actually be a really negative thing. And if your clients stop feeling valued and that coincides with someone else's salon marketing growing teeth and being a little bit more fearsome. Well, sometimes that's how clients get lost. And what actually brought them back or what actually brought them to the business in the first place feels a lot less important. It genuinely costs so much in time and marketing spend to get a customer. The estimate is something like 12 times as much to get a new client as it is to retain an old client. And that's why I always think lost client marketing is time well spent. Someone starts to fall off your radar. For God's sake, let's notice. For God's sake, let's get something in their inbox or get something on their phones that says we miss you. We value you. We want you back. So that's why loyalty is more important than ever. One tool in the arsenal. Of course, it wouldn't be me if I didn't talk about salon memberships. Not going to pitch about salon memberships here. But there is a structural answer in there. It's about making loyalty systematic instead of accidental. And I've got a free download for you. Head over to queenofsalons.com forward slash links or go to queenofsalons.com and find the button that says links. There's a salon membership cheat sheet in there to help you avoid some of the pitfalls that I see when everyone's putting some memberships together. It's free. Drop your email address in. Have it with my love. So there we have it. My thoughts on loyalty and why we need to be pushing harder on loyalty. What are you doing? What have you put in place to keep people in your business rather than heading over to your competitors? Reach out and let me know. My email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen right now. Phil at buildyoursalon.com You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. Even if it's just with a little bit of gossip. Why not? Reach out to your Uncle Phil. I'd love to see your name pop up in my inbox. Also reach out if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Currently filming for December episodes for guests. If you'd like to share your story with my Build Your Salon audience, I would love to be interviewing you on a future episode. In the meantime, just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. And until then, take care.