If you’re in the business of owning and running a hair salon in the modern world, it’s almost certain that you’ll come up against some form of competition at some point in your career. Fortunately, there’s a way to sustain a successful business and beat your competitors at their own game. Your first step is to go through hair salon market analysis reports and find out what your competitors are offering in the industry. This article will give you a comprehensive guide to conducting market research for hair salons.
Step 1:Identifying Your Customer Base
The first thing you should do is figure out who all your customers are. If you’ve been in business for a few years, you’ll have a pretty good idea of your customer base. If not, this is the perfect time to start. Who all your customers are will largely depend on what type of hair salon you own or operate. For example, if you’re a high-end salon, then your customers will probably be women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who have disposable cash to spend on beauty products and services. On the other hand, if you own a sports barbershop, your customer base will likely consist of male sports fans aged 18-35 with a range of disposable income who’ll be willing to spend money on haircuts and hair services.
To figure out who your customers are, you simply need to survey them or ask them questions about themselves and what they expect from you as a hair salon owner. Email them and ask them a few questions such as how frequently they visit your hair salon, how often they purchase products and services, what types of products and services they find most useful, etc. This will likely reveal some important insights that can solve some problems on your end.
Step 2: Researching the Competition
Once you’ve found out who all your customers are, it’s time to research the competition. The primary thing you’ll want to research is what your competitors are doing to attract and retain customers. This could prove to be a bit tricky since you probably shouldn’t just call up or email your competitors to ask them what they’re doing right or wrong. You can, however, do some investigative work to figure it out. For example, you can conduct your market research by visiting your competitors’ websites, looking at their social media pages, etc., and trying to find out what they’re doing to attract and retain visitors. From there, you can analyze the data for patterns and determine what kind of marketing strategies you should incorporate into your own business.
Step 3:Assessing Your Business Finances
After identifying your customer base and researching the competition, it’s time to assess your business’ finances. If you own or operate a high-end salon and don’t have a lot of customers, then this is probably one of the most important things to do. In fact, it should be done regularly as part of your business plan.
Essentially what you want to find out is whether or not your business can afford the strategy you’ve devised for attracting customers. For example, if you’re offering discounted hair services to new customers as part of an effort to attract customers, then your business may not be able to afford it unless you decrease some other expenses somewhere else in the salon.
Step 4:Developing a Marketing Strategy
If you’ve done the above three things effectively, then you should have a pretty good idea of what your business can afford. It’s probably time to develop a marketing strategy that will help attract as many new customers as possible and retain them.
The first thing you should do is draft a marketing plan and make sure it aligns with your goals for the business. This requires careful thought and analysis on your part to ensure that it’s both feasible and beneficial for the business long term. You’ll also want to develop a marketing budget to know how much money to spend on marketing.
Step 5 Implementing Your Marketing Strategy
After you’ve drafted your marketing strategy, it’s time to put it into action. Start implementing your strategy on a small scale to see how well it works. For example, if you’re offering discounted hair services to new customers, then the first thing you should do is give discounts to only a few new customers and measure how much those people end up spending over time. If they end up spending significantly more than the regular price of your services, then go ahead and start offering discounts to more new customers.
With the right marketing research and strategy, you can beat your competitors at their own game and win over new clients. It all depends on how effectively you execute the above steps to ensure that your marketing strategy is beneficial and feasible.
