Welcome back to the second part of my series on gaining and retaining more clients! As you recall, I left you with some homework from Part 1; your first steps were to define your target market or avatar and then“find” where your target market is both physically and digitally. I hope you had some fun with these first two steps and now you’re ready to jump into Step #3: Get Clients Excited and Step #4: Ensure Clients Return. If you missed Part 1, you can catch up here; otherwise, let’s get started!
Step #3: Get Clients Excited
After you’ve created your avatar and connected with them, nearly every potential client will visit your website before they buy anything from you. Think about your own habits—would you see a new dentist without visiting their website first? Probably not, and the same advice holds true no matter what industry you are in! Because every potential client will visit your website, it needs to be beautiful, easy to use, and offer something unique. In 2018, all your competitors have beautiful websites, so you need something that sets your business apart from the others and gets your clients excited to do business with you. For my salon business, our little something special is a survey called Meet Your Stylist.
Meet Your Stylist is a psychologically-savvy survey that lives on your salon’s website and matches potential clients with the top three stylists at your salon who are the best fit for them. After all, who doesn’t like taking a survey about yourself?! As the owner of Be Inspired Salon, I needed a way to set my salon apart from the competition, get clients excited, and start building relationships with future guests, and Meet Your Stylist does all of this! If you are a hair salon, you need to check out Meet Your Stylist! I promise it will transform your business.
I know many of you reading don’t own hair salons, but the same principles behind Meet Your Stylist apply to your business. Let me explain. I was recently on Neutrogena’s website searching for a new face wash, and found myself taking a survey to find the skincare routine right for me and had a $2.00 coupon emailed to me. Boom! They connected with me, personalized my experience, captured my email address, and got me excited to purchase from them!
Personalized surveys and recommendations are everywhere! For instance, let’s say that you own a vitamin company. Maybe your website could offer a survey that gives clients product recommendations and encourages them to book a consultation with you. The possibilities are endless; you just need to give your potential clients the right tools and information to get connected and excited!
Step #4: Ensure Clients Return
In the salon industry, new client retention rates are pretty low. In fact, the national average, new client retention rate is about 30%. That means only 3 out of every 10 new guests will return for a second time! I don’t know the statistics for your industry, but retention is something we should all focus on to grow a strong business! Once we get a client to do business with us, we need to make sure they continue to do business with us. So, how are you going to do that?
For my salon business, retention is another problem that is solved by Meet Your Stylist! By matching clients with the right stylist the first time, I know that the guest is going to have a fabulous experience and want to come back. Let’s think about the vitamin store example from earlier. If this new client didn’t take their pre-visit survey, he would have simply walked into the store and purchased a product he thought was right for him. Then, a few days later, he started having adverse side effects, stopped taking the vitamins, and never returned to the store again because he thought the business was selling ineffective products. On the flip side, if this client purchased the right vitamins for himself the first time, I bet he would continue to come back for more! See how that works?
Beyond getting it right from the start, my salon focuses on prebooking clients for their next visit. Essentially, the stylist is helping the client make a reservation for their next visit. Instead of hoping that the customer will take time out of their busy schedule to call and make another appointment, we set it up for them to ensure they come back again. For the vitamin store, the sales rep could work with the customer to determine when their product will run out and set up a time for them to come back to the store and restock. This sounds pretty simple, but it will have a huge impact on retaining new clients!
You may have heard the Tony Robbins quote that success leaves clues. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just put together the pieces that I have laid out: Step #1: Define Your Target Market, Step #2: Find Your Target Market, Step #3: Get Clients Excited, and Step #4: Ensure Clients Return. I hope you take the four steps from my playbook, add your own creative twist, and achieve massive success! If you have any questions on the four steps, please connect with me! I can’t wait to chat with you!