It’s pretty obvious that you need to be careful when setting up your salon pricing strategy. The competition is tough, and you need to understand the balance between the services you offer and the prices you set for them. Continue on reading for our main tips when it comes to salon costing!
Competitive Edge
As with any business, the most important thing to consider when setting up a pricing structure for your salon, is your competition. Spend time visiting other salons in the area and taking note of what they’re doing – write down the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each of them. Work out how much they charge per minute of treatment, taking into account the facilities they have to offer and their range of treatments and products – this will give you a benchmark to work with.
What makes you unique?
Take your unique qualities into account. Do you have parking? Are you open longer hours? Are your staff more qualified? What is your treatment range like? Knowing what your strengths are over your competition is not only important for pricing, but it’s a key marketing tool that you can use to highlight why clients should come to you and not another salon.
Costing
Always include the cost of products used and therapist time in your calculations, to make sure you are still working within good profit margins. If you are offering a free gift to a client who books a certain treatment, or a discount for a block course of treatments, don’t forget to take this into account too. Sometimes product suppliers can help you with a promotion on a particular treatment, so always ask them.
Dangers of Discounting
If you’ve already calculated your margins and set up your pricing structure, try not to give further discounts on your treatments. What you don’t want is to build up a database of discount customers who hold off on booking treatments until you give them money off. Instead, it might be worth factoring in a loyalty scheme when you’re initially working out your pricing – what you want to do is drive repeat custom, not recruit bargain hunters!
Online Pricing
The problem with a fixed price list is that it’s just that, fixed. Many salons are now opting to have a hard copy of the treatments with blanks in on reception, so that they can slip an insert in with updated prices when they need to. But another solution is to feature your price list on your website – this can be changed any time you need it to, and it’s a great space for showing your special offers.
Find this useful? Click here for more Salon Management tips.
