How to Promote Your Salon by Avoiding Discounting and Make More Money

OK, let me say firstly that I generally don't recommend "discounting" as a way of promoting your salon or spa. It can pull in some extra clients in the short-term, but they are often "price-shoppers" who are looking for bargains and may be difficult to convert to long-term clients when they have to pay full price.

Of course it can work as a way of building your business. But, more often than not, it doesn't.

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A far, far better way to promote your business is by constructing a fantastic offer. An offer with the primary aim of increasing the price and building fantastic value to the client at little or no cost to yourselves.

Why is this better?

On three fronts:

1. Cash. Lets say you offer 20% off. You do, say, 10 treatments at £50 each. That's 10 x £50= £500. Less 20% that's £100. So you're now putting £100 less into your till. Now, with the offer, you increase the treatment in price to £55, have extras for the client that cost you £3 and you sell do the same number (10). Now you've got 10 x £55 = £550 in the till at a total extra cost of £30. So, with a discount you're losing £100 and with the offer you're gaining an extra £20!

2. Expectation. People may put off their treatments waiting for you to discount. Where as with the offer you make money so it really doesn't matter!

3. Exposure to new treatments. With an offer you can guide people towards treatments that they normally wouldn't have. The result? They just might book in for another treatment!

Having said that, if you really must discount, here's a quick tip -

Tell them the value, not the percentage.

So, don't say "15% off with this coupon", instead say "£5.00 off with this coupon"
Why? Because it's more specific, and therefore more memorable. People scan adverts and leaflets very quickly, they see thousands of them every day.

If you say "15% off" it means they have to do a mental calculation to work out what that figure would mean to them - and many won't bother! If you say "£5.00 off" it's much easier to imagine. They can see what's in it for them much more easily.

We've tested this, and found that it holds true even if the actual value (e.g. £5.00 off) is less than the percentage value (e.g. 15% off converts to more than £5.00 saving).

A word of caution -
If you do run a similar concept, make sure your vouchers are only redeemable against treatments valued over, say £25 - you don't want folk cashing in their £5 vouchers on a £7 treatment! Also make sure the vouchers have an expiry date on them.

And if you're running the discount in several places (leaflets, vouchers, a newspaper advert, etc.), make sure you put some sort of number, or other mark, on the different vouchers so that you know which client came from which source. That way, you can keep track of what results each advert/leaflet generated, against what it cost to run it.

How to Promote Your Salon by Avoiding Discounting and Make More Money

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