Ignore your competition

When things are going great, you focus on your own salon business. But when you're under pressure, it's easy to get caught up in what your competition is doing.

I know you want to be the best, and it's natural to want to stay one step ahead when the media is pumping out horror stories about the economy, telling us there is less money around.

The thing is, obsessing with your competition can be a major mistake. Instead, it's often more beneficial to focus on yourself and your own amazing salon. In this blog post, I'll discuss the benefits of ignoring your competition and why it can save you time (and your sanity!)

The Benefits of Not Comparing

We're all operating in a very crowded marketplace, so it can be easy to start comparing your salon business to others in the area. But ask any man who's been in the gym changing room: comparing yourself to others is a very quick way to feel small.

It's a much healthier strategy to focus on what makes your own salon special. By definition, worrying about what others are doing will only make you do more of the same - and in a noisy marketplace, you need to offer something unique.

Put all that jealous energy into marketing your salon to make sure that you can stand out in the crowd. Come up with unique strategies and ideas that will bring in new clients and keep the existing ones engaged.

By ensuring that you concentrate on highlighting the unique aspects of your business, such as your talented staff or gotta-have-it products, you can effectively set yourself apart from the competition and create loyal customers who value what you offer.

Continually investing in those delicious relationships with your clients is essential to any successful salon marketing strategy. This will create an emotional connection between your business and its clientele, establishing a deeper level of trust that will increase customer loyalty.

Specialise to Improve Your Salon's Performance

If you're looking to boost your salon business performance, narrowing your focus can be incredibly useful. By honing in on what has worked for you in the past, by finding the little things you do that nobody else can offer, you can cut through the noise on social media, charge as an expert rather than 'one of the crowd' AND carve out a rather special reputation too.

In my own salon, I was the queen of colour correction. I loved it. Hair gone green in the pool on holiday? Brilliant. Ballsed up a home colour? I'm your man. Naturally, I had a well-rounded knowledge of hair colour, but when it came to those tricky corrections I doubled down on building my reputation. So much so, in fact, that other salons would send their clients to me if a colour correction service was especially challenging. That meant I had a chance of turning those visitors into lovely, profitable regular customers AND it meant I could charge more as a specialist, rather than someone offering the same as every other salon on the high street.

Don't be afraid to harp on about your unique offering on social media platforms, optimise your salon website so that you rank for your 'special something', and use email marketing to reinforce your uniqueness in the minds of your salon regulars.

That doesn't mean you can't offer a broad range of services (though in the longer term, I would suggest narrowing and specialising even further) - simply that you need to be known for a particular niche.

Building a Better Salon Business

Of course, it is important to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and technologies in the salon industry. Building a successful salon is, after all, a continual journey of improvement.

This means taking the time to identify areas of weakness and making targeted changes to improve the way you do business and the customer experience.

Which doesn't sound very sexy at all.

But that doesn't mean taking your business cues from the salon at the other end of town. Do your own research, build the best version of your business to serve your customers. To be blunt, creating a carbon copy of another salon:

a) Won't work - that market is already being served, and
b) Means you'll be competing on price - which is a miserable place to be.

Worse than that, there is every chance that the salon you're copying is unprofitable - which means you're allowing an unprofitable competitor to decide the future of your own salon business. That's not only illogical - it's downright dangerous!

Final Say

While it is important to stay aware of what your competitors are doing, it’s much more important to remain focused on your own objectives. When you focus your attention and energy on improving yourself and mastering the skill of salon business, you will be more likely to achieve success.

And at the end of the day, at least you did it your way!