Business tips for mobile hairdressers and salons
Hairdressing is a competitive industry, so ensuring you stand out is essential if you’re going to make your salon or mobile business viable. Building a reputation for providing a great hair colouring service makes fantastic business sense.
Here’s why: colouring requires a high level of skill and expertise, making it the perfect service to show off your hairdressing skills.
Did you know?
Research shows 46% of Britons visit a salon to have their hair coloured professionally, and increasing numbers are choosing the convenience of a mobile hairdresser for their colour treatments. The average woman spends nearly £10k on hair colouring in her lifetime*.
How to set yourself apart
Clients are more likely to return to your salon or make repeat bookings with your mobile business if you build a strong reputation as a specialist in a particular field. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create a well-rounded service offering for your clients. Becoming a specialist enables you to build a reputation as a leader and expert. It also gives you a focus for marketing and PR.
Expert advice
Get into the mindset of your client. Ask yourself what they expect from their colour service based on their age, hair history and personal style. Your clients look to you as their hairdresser for your honest opinion on what shade of hair colour would suit them, uplift them or transform their image. After all, who doesn’t want to look amazing and totally revitalised after a visit to their hairdresser?
By focusing your marketing activities on being a specialist, you can talk authoritatively about how skin tones and hair colours work together and the latest fashions in the colouring world. All major beauty magazines do this, but how many journalists have your level of experience, training and customer knowledge?
Education is key
Investing in the right education is vital for your business. It’s up to you to ensure that you – and your stylists if you’re an employer – are effectively trained in the most innovative hair colour trends, accompanying styles and colour formulas in order to set yourself apart from your competitors.
Bespoke consultations
Identifying your business as a leader in the field of hair colour will have an effect on the kinds of clients attracted to your salon, as well as the perception of your salon’s name, or the professional image of your mobile business. But there’s no escaping the fact that customer service plays a significant role in maintaining and growing any beauty business. Bespoke consultations allow you to combine specialist knowledge and great customer service to further enhance your good reputation. A separate consultation also allows you to patch test where necessary.
While it’s usual to offer new clients a bespoke consultation, offering them to existing clients can also be rewarding. It shows you’re not taking their custom for granted; that all clients’ needs are important to you and that you’re constantly developing new ideas for their next look. It’s this level of attention to detail that increases customer loyalty, rave reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations that in turn boost business.
Best sellers
Salons Direct has revealed its top five best-selling colour brands:
- Koleston Perfect
- Majirel
- Topchic Tubes
- Igora Royal Fashion
- Wella Colour Touch
And despite the current trend for unusual hair colour, the top five shades are natural:
- Koleston Perfect Intense Dark Blonde 60ml
- Koleston Perfect Intense Medium Blonde 60ml
- Koleston Perfect Intense Light Blonde 60ml
- Koleston Perfect Dark Blonde 60ml
- Koleston Perfect Light Blonde 60ml
*source: nice 'n easy
Original article featured in Vitality magazine September/October 2016 issue
