When used correctly, coupons are friends of the beauty salon. How to avoid the annoying mistakes that the leaders of beautiful business are so afraid of? What good can you learn from coupon programs?
To begin with, it is worth defining the term "coupon program".
The coupon program is a large discount program, the participants of which can be, on the one hand, consumers of goods and services, on the other hand, suppliers of goods and services. At the same time, the consumer pays not for the product / service, but for a coupon that gives the right to a significant discount (up to 90%), provided that the person who bought it uses it within a certain period. And the supplier who provided the product / service on such conditions receives from the organizer of the coupon program a certain percentage or amount of remuneration as compensation for such a large discount. Thus, this tool conventionally divides the 90% discount between the consumer of the service / product and the supplier of the service / product. If the person who bought the coupon for some reason did not use it, and its validity period has expired, then the income from the sale of the coupon remains with the organizer of the coupon program.
Coupons are a fairly new phenomenon for Ukraine; they have been massively presented on the market for about two years. However, they have already managed to cause a significant resonance among business owners who took advantage of their proposals. Very often, the one who went through this, speaks negatively about the coupons and the customers who are served on them. What is the reason? Consider the example of a salon business.
The main negative consequence of the use of coupon programs in a beauty salon is considered to be a general reduction in the price of the price list (price list). How does this happen? A client who comes with a coupon for a 70% discount on procedures gets it for real. That is, the salon receives, say, not UAH 200. for staining, and 60 UAH. The client, who once felt that such a miracle is possible, will definitely look for the same conditions or wait for discounts from your salon. And the owners, following the lead of such clients (professional marketers have long defined them as “discount collectors”), make the same mistake - they try to beat the coupon programs with their own discounts and promotions. Moreover, the desire to contemplate a crowd of customers in your salon goes beyond reasonable limits. and over time, the average check (the average amount of money left by the client for 1 visit to the beauty salon) becomes so small that the owner would not dream of this even in a nightmare. As a result, the client base of the beauty salon is filled with discount gatherers, who, in their turn, in a nightmare did not see the real prices in your regular price list, so they only bite into promotions with “insane” discounts. Well, then the owner "polishes" his mistakes by changing these same prices in the regular price list downward.
So, it turns out that no one knows how to use coupon programs correctly. To understand how this is “right”, you need to feel that coupon programs are not “new cruel rules of life”, but a tool to revive demand during periods of “dead seasons”.
Let's imagine with you: a beauty salon, January is the month, in December there was an exuberant demand for services to "improve the appearance before the holidays", and now the masters sleep in their workplaces, it is empty, a single phone call causes a living spark of joy in the eyes of the administrator and the masters , everyone rushes to the telephone receiver in anticipation of a miracle, and from there one can hear: "Is it possible for Larisa Ivanovna?" the administrator's answer: "You probably made a wrong number" and everyone returns to their empty workplaces.
It is sad. It is sad not only because the low season entails, according to the optimistic scenario, a small profit, according to the pessimistic scenario - a negative financial result for the amount of employee salaries, rent, utility bills, etc. First of all, it is sad for your masters. Never forget that these are creative people and dreamers for the most part. And even if this is not always good, because we all know that the creative nature often gets carried away. But in the case of the low season, it plays into our hands. Why? The answer is simple: because being at work, that is, having a constant flow of clients, they are able to harbor illusions about the upcoming receipt of a large salary, about the growing professionalism right before our eyes, about how highly you rate him when you see how much work he does. daily.
It remains to figure out how the coupon programs and the illusions of the masters are connected. In a completely unexpected way, but nevertheless absolutely obvious. The coupon program, even in the low season, is able to attract a lot of customers to the salon. And let them belong to the collectors of discounts, let them pay us 60 hryvnyas. (here we should not forget that for each coupon used, we still owe a certain reward from the organizer of the coupon program), let them come to us with this coupon only once ... But nevertheless, it is in our power to make it so that instead of the sound of aimless paging through magazines in a hairdressing salon in the hall there was the usual noise of a hairdryer, rustle of foil for highlighting, such a familiar smell of hair dye, and in the massage room - relaxing quiet sounds of music, and in the beautician's office - such a pleasant beeping / buzzing of cosmetology equipment. Then your expensive rental (or even your own) square meters of a beauty salon will not be idle, electricity will not be wasted. And from collectors of discounts, it is imperative to pick up a questionnaire with filled in reliable contact information, and if there is an opportunity, then also present them with a card, preferably a bonus one (but more on that in another article). The e-mail of the discount collector is important to us, as a secret agent, his mission, because it is the very key to his heart, with the help of which the organizer of the coupon program influences him. After some time, perhaps in the next off-season, we will want to surprise him with our own author's promotional offer. And there are techniques that allow you to serve the collector of discounts absolutely at a regular price so that he sincerely believes that he has received his cherished 90% discount. A mobile phone is like a first and last name, it must be in the customer base (at least just for the convenience of finding a client in a program for a beauty salon, some of these programs support such a search).
At work, we somehow came across a beauty salon that uses the fact that customers willingly come to be served with coupons in the off-season, also as a basis for the growth of professionalism of the masters. The flow of clients is large. All of them are serviced for very little money, so the desire to make claims is minimized (keep in mind that there is not enough argumentation for claims, because such a client himself agreed to dye his hair for 60 UAH, this is not like crazy money). Therefore, there is a very good reason to improve the qualifications of the masters simply by the number of clients served, or, as they say, "get your hands on".
And one more important detail regarding the use of coupons in a beauty salon is correct calculations. Why is it important? Often the organizer of the coupon program sets the condition for the sale of not one procedure at a reduced price, but, for example, three at once at the price of two of those that are more expensive. In such cases, using standard methods, and even with a large flow of customers, it will be difficult for the administrator to navigate how much money the client has to pay, and it is even more difficult for the head of the beauty salon to calculate the salaries of employees fairly and accurately.
Quite often, there are cases when for the procedures provided by the coupon master, not his standard interest is charged, but a certain fixed amount of money from each such client. In order to calculate this, you need at least the following information: for which coupon offer, how much hryvnia you need to pay to the master, how many customers specifically for each coupon offer visited the salon during the salary period. It is possible to obtain even this data on paper or from spreadsheets, but this, firstly, is very long, and secondly, it is not always error-free (in spreadsheets, an error even in one character is a reason to perceive the same thing as two different entities ). As a result, the master waits for a salary for a long time, and receiving it and comparing it with his own expectations, he may find discrepancies and be completely disappointed. In such situations, the manager is greatly helped by the software for the beauty salon. Now there are already interesting offers with attractive prices and functionality that allows even such complex calculations as in the case of coupon programs.
So, let's summarize. What are the benefits of coupons for a beauty salon, provided they are used correctly. The first thing that is important is the busyness of the craftsmen and their lack of the feeling that it is time to look for a new job - there are no clients here. Second, these discount gatherers are still better than the absence of customers during the low season (this way you can go at least to break even, or "zero"). And thirdly, it is possible to improve the qualifications of craftsmen on the volume of services provided, which is also easy to provide using coupons.
The only thing to remember is that coupons should be treated sensibly, without fanaticism and should be used only when there is an urgent need for it. And in no case should your own regular prices be reduced.
ISMIe