2023 is on its way, meaning now is a great time to look at your business and create a plan for the upcoming year. Here are some tips on how to get started!

Make a plan to achieve your goals

As the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a dream. Setting goals are great to focus your time and energy, but if you don’t create a strong plan to track your journey towards that goal, you’ll likely struggle to reach it.

To create a plan, you first need to determine your overall vision. Where do you see your business in one, two and even five years? Then, reflect on where it’s at now. Look at every aspect of your business, from staff to the physical location and design of your space, does it all align with your vision? You’ll want to use your salon software to run reports so you can see where your business is from a financial perspective. This will help you identify your starting point.

Once you know what your starting point is and where you want to be, identify two or three goals that you’d like to achieve to get you closer to your vision. Break those goals up into a series of tasks or projects; for example, if your goal is to grow the number of staff, you need to ensure you’ll have the client base, the physical space, and the income to support hiring another stylist.

Now, all you need to do is create a timeline for those tasks, add them into your calendar to create deadlines, and you’ll be off to a great start to the year.

Utilise the power of marketing!

I’m not just saying this because I’m a marketer… but marketing is an incredibly important tool for any business, especially in the beauty industry. In saying that, there are some things you need to be careful of when creating a marketing plan for the next year and the future.

Gone are the days of a typical monthly promotion; some people believe that specials every month can be detrimental as clients may intentionally not book at your salon and wait to see what your next special is. You want to use marketing tools effectively; use them when you need to boost something, but not too much. Instead, focus your efforts on a few special times a year. Maybe you want to celebrate the anniversary of your business opening with a special gift to all clients who visit that month to increase bookings, or maybe you just want to boost the relationship between your clients and the team by showing some love to your staff on the salon’s social media when it’s their birthday.

Another approach is to focus your promotions and specials on your quieter months. If you find that your appointment book is fully booked in December but empty in January, create a special for January. Give it to all your clients booked in December when they leave, to incentivise them to rebook with you the next month! Just make sure you track the results of these marketing campaigns to see if it’s actually successful.

Also, make sure you utilise the power of your salon and spa software. Your software should allow you to set up automated marketing messages, so you can “set and forget” many types of marketing like Happy Birthday texts, or messages prompting them to rebook if they haven’t done so in a certain number of weeks.

Teamwork makes the dream work(place)

Everyone knows that achieving goals by yourself can be hard but having a team helping you along the way can make the world of difference. Your team will be more motivated and productive when you all work towards a common goal and when they fully understand how they can contribute to making it happen.

When creating a business plan or deciding on what to do for a promotion, include your staff in those discussions! Making them feel included helps create an open and honest environment, that boosts the culture of your team, invites creativity and fun into your workplace, and allows your staff, no matter how new they are, to be heard.

Finally, remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was your salon! It takes time to create a great workplace, and while you cannot expect success immediately, you will get there with a powerful team to back you, an organised marketing strategy, and a strong plan on how your business can be the best it’s ever been in 2023.

Kamrin Hira is a Marketer at Kitomba Salon and Spa Software.
To learn more about how Kitomba can help you, visit: www.kitomba.com.

This article first appeared in the November-December 2022 print edition of Professional Beauty.