Rethinking the Referral - How to Get Your Salon Clients to do Your Marketing FOR You. Part I - In Ch
Unless you have a very tight niche, most of your clients are probably not finding you through a generic organic search and the referral is still a high ranking form of T.T.M.Y.M (things that make you money).
I'm going to go over two ways to rethink a referral - in person and via social media. We're going to re-think, not re-invent the wheel. Let's just optimize a technique that is already being used to generate a ton of business for people.
In person Incentive -
One technique I've used that had solid success when building my client base was a product giveaway. I would offer the referring client as well as the new client a free product. I liked this for several reasons:
A free product has a higher value to the client than cost to you. How do I mean?
Say your offer is for a $25 deep conditioner, vs 20% off a service -
On a $120 service 20% is $24.00 - x's referring and new client = $48. That's not terrible but that's $48 to acquire one client.
If you offer the referring and the new client the $25 product instead, it will cost you about $28 for 2 products, but still give each client a $25 value. You're giving the same monetary value to your clients, for HALF the cost to you.
Depending on the product line you're using, the cost will vary and the potential to offer even more value might present itself.
Having done this is my own studio several times, here are some guidelines I would suggest using, or considering.
1. Consider a minimum price point for eligibility - "all new clients who get a cut & color" "with a service value of $x or more" or set or for a specific service. You don't want to be giving away a $25 mask to somoene who books an eyebrow wax. Give people rules or a lot of them will try to take advantage. Not fun to hear, but it needs to be heard so you can head it off at the pass.
2. The referring client can pick up their reward product at their next paid visit. They need to come back and have another service with you to cash in on their reward.
3. Pick just a few products that you know most of your clients need or would like and let them choose from only those. you can always make exceptions, but keeping it simple will streamline it.
4. Once you pick the products for the promotion, you can talk about them on social media to generate interest.
5. After a few posts or videos just discussing the product and why you like it, then you can add the "how you can get this product as a gift from me" etc.
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