It’s all very well having a Salon Business Plan. But if that plan doesn’t include specific details about how you’re actually going to find clients, then it isn’t worth much as a plan. 

Here’s a great example of how to ‘put a salon business plan into action’.

George and Kim Astropalitis were in a quandary. Their Chroma Hair Studio business in Highgate Hill, Brisbane was faced with a huge opportunity, but they just weren’t sure how to capitalize on it.

A salon in the next suburb had gone out of business. George had a hunch the failed salon might possess a very large database of past and present clients, since it had been operating for many years. But how to get hold of that database? And what to do with it if he did?

The answer to the first question was simple. He just called the owner, and asked if she’d like to sell her client list. Clearly unaware that the real value of any business is ‘in the list’, she agreed to sell the client roll…for basically lunch money, a few hundred dollars.

But what now? George signed up as a Client Attraction System member, and with the guidance of our Facebook Group, got to work on a carefully-planned strategy to wring as much value from the new database as possible.

First, creating a special ‘hidden’ page on the website and then, developing a series of email and SMS messages directing the target market to that page.

Within two weeks, Chroma Hair Studio had nearly ONE HUNDRED new clients. And that’s just the start. Here’s George on video, describing what happened, and how they did it.

To learn ideas and use proven, ready to download marketing templates like George, learn more about the Client Attraction System

Read the interview:

George: So a salon in our area, regrettably, you know, these things happen and they close down. We were able to contact the previous owner. And we were able to buy her database, her computer and database list of clients on.

We’ve taken that and we’ve imported that into our, our Point Of Sale software system and we’ve started a series of campaign with, with Greg’s guidance in terms of offers and how we should structure things.

And we’ve got a series of email and SMS happening and that’s going out to the previous clients of that salon that closed down.

Greg: And what results have you had so far from that, George?

George: Yeah, pretty good, um, what we’re going out by email and SMS at the same time. We did our first round of all sending out about 10 days or so ago. And in that first round we booked around 80 clients looking for appointments with us. And of course, we’re trying to do all the right things internally and you know, get the re-bookings right and get them returning again. And we’ve just, today, done our second round of marketing and again that’s via email and SMS and the phones are running hot again this morning. I can see that in terms of people filling in online forms, and in the first couple of hours this morning, we’ve got 15 or 18 forms (filled in) for us to call people back and book them in. And the girls informed me that the, the phone has been running off the hook again at the actual salon where people ringing to take up the offer and book appointments in.

Greg: And so what are the numbers you bought a database, you paid a few hundred dollars for a database of how many clients?

George: Ah, so look, they had 10,000 – about 10,000 people in the database, not sure how up to date the database was. I suspect some of that was quite old, may be irrelevant, but nonetheless, it still gives us another name or number that you can reach out, that you can, you can, you reach and make contact.

Greg: And how many do you think you’ve reached out and actually made contact with?

George: In terms of the people who’ve rung and made appointments, I’d say that we’re approaching 100 or past the hundred mark. So you know, that’s a hundred new people coming into our salon from a couple of marketing campaigns.

Greg: And a hundred people at say, $1,000 a year each if they stay on?

George: Yeah it’d be nice to keep them as a regular. You know what we’ve got to get ourselves a benchmark of what we’d like to retain of those people are but yes, certainly if we retained a hundred of these people as a regular client, yeah, it would have to be worth $100,000 or $150,000 a year to the turnover of the business.

Greg: So, the process you went through was you set up the offers on your website and then you emailed the client base you SMSd them with links to that page on your website?

George: Yeah, we created like a hidden page on our website. We had the offers on there, we had a video that you recommended we do, and that actually has gone really well. So we did an invitation, a welcome video and then of course, we just used the link to that secret page on our website and that went into the SMS’s and the email. So they were clicking through essentially going through our website and then from there they could either fill out a form or they could just give us a call. Salons and spas close down every day, every week, all over the place.

Greg: So what would you recommend people try to contact those former owners and, and perhaps look at buying their databases?

George: Oh yeah, look, uh huh yeah, buying this database with kind of an off the cuff thought for us, it’s not something that we really considered as a strategic marketing ploy, but based on what we’ve seen already yeah if your thing. Yeah, if you’re seeing a hair salon or beauty salon in your vicinity closing down, it is definitely worth contacting that, that previous owner and seeing whether they’re willing to sell you their client database. It’s definitely been a positive outcome for us.

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