The Modern Grapevine

The advent of the internet, then social media, has forged an intelligent beauty consumer—one who is on top of the latest trends, who researches product ingredients herself, and who always has an eye out for a value-added service or product.

For salons like Hello Gorgeous! with five locations in South Jersey, frequent promotions have been instrumental in increasing client frequency after guests started stretching their appointments during the Recession.  The salon’s Facebook page has been key in alerting clientele to new promotional offers on services and products. 

“We have at one or two new promotions per week, and between Facebook and the email marketing we do through Demandforce, we really get the word out,” says Lisa Fiorentino, who owns the salon company with her husband Tony.

For example in late August, Hello Gorgeous! had a back-to-school special where clients could purchase either a Malibu C Crystal Gel Treatment or an Olaplex Restructuring Treatment for $10, less than half off the normal charge of $25. In addition, the salon was launching a special gift card promotion, and they were alerting clients that the salon would be closed over Labor Day

“People are much more likely to look at a promotion on their phone that they were to read ads,” Fiorentino says. “Social media has really shape the buying behavior of our client.”

To keep promotions running smoothly, Fiorentino holds a marketing meeting every
Wednesday. In attendance are managers representing each location as well as the salon’s retail specialist. Together they detail future promotions, and managers take the information back to the teams.

While email and social media have created in-the-know clients, Fiorentino discovered those clients sometimes were one step ahead of the salon’s stylists. With more than 200 employees across five locations, Fiorentino was finding savvy clienteles were questioning stylists before they had read the details about the promotion on the breakroom wall.

“Communication is the key to a successful promotion, and the first time I heard a stylist say she didn’t know what was going on, I just grimaced,” Fiorentino says.

The Hello Gorgeous! closed Facebook group allows employees to get the details on the salon's promotions.

Discussing the problem in a recent marketing meeting, the group decided to institute a closed Facebook group, open only to employees of the salon, to offer staff immediate details on pending promotions. Fiorentino believes 90 percent of her staff are frequently on Facebook, and the remaining stylists still find out about promotions through meetings and bulletins in the breakroom.

“It’s been wonderful,” Fiorentino reports. “Now, managers and stylists are in the loop as soon as we design a new promotion. Our stylists love to be ahead of the curve and be the first to tell their clients about value-added services.”

For more management solutions for owners and managers of multiple locations, visit ISBN’s website at salonspanetwork.org.