In order to grow your business the brightest, you need to be both building a large client-base by bringing in new customers as well as retaining your existing ones. The good news? By using data insights to understand exactly how you’re performing, you can identify what you should be focusing on next. The even better news? This is way easier than you might realise.
Here are three easy ways you can use data right now to take your business to the next level.
1. Get to know your customers
First things first - what does your customer-base actually look like today? Understanding who exactly you’re working with every day is an important first step for any business and that’s especially true for the salon industry, where getting that healthy mix of new and repeat customers is the key to growing.
Plus, once you know who your best clients are today, you can work backwards to discover your ‘perfect’ customer for long-term planning.
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Working out where your biggest opportunities for growth are. Taking a quick look into your retention reports shows you the exact breakdown of how many of your customers are new or repeat bookings across any timeframe you like.
As we mentioned before, the best way to build your business is to have a healthy proportion of new customers and returning regulars - we know that about half and half is a great benchmark to aim for (48% new and 52% returning, if you want to get really precise).
See you’ve got loads of new customers, but a low rate of returning faces? You know you need to start focusing on retention. Lots of regulars but not that many first-timers? Make sure you’re optimising your business to attract new clients instead. Not sure where to start? You can read more about the different tools Treatwell gives you to attract and keep your customers here.
2. Learn your most important treatments
Just like learning out who your clients are, knowing which of your treatments are putting in the most work for your business is a simple but absolutely key insight that lets you plan for the future effectively
That means more than just the treatments that you think your customers (or you!) like the most - it’s the ones that are bringing you in the most cash compared to their cost.
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Focusing on your biggest performers. By looking at your sales reports, you can easily pinpoint which of your treatments are bringing your business in the most money, any time. Why not push that further?
Try highlighting those key services on your marketplace menu to make them even more appealing to customers, both new and old. You can even set up smart discounts or special offers to get the most out of them - getting more bookings is all about giving your customers the smoothest possible experience.
3. Discover your best-performing channels
With Treatwell, you’ve got plenty of tools and channels to bring in business - from the booking widget and Invites to Rebook, to our massive online marketplace. It might sound simple, but just knowing exactly how people are booking with you is a key insight about your customers’ user journey - and that can help give you some serious focus when it comes to optimising the whole process.
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Learning about the booking experience for your customers. It's easy - the new sales reports give you a detailed breakdown of exactly who’s booking and where. Armed with that knowledge, you can go about driving customers in the directions you want.
Why? Well, different channels have different benefits. For example, we know that customers who book via the widgets installed on your social media pages are more likely to become repeat bookers in the future. So, ask your first-time clients to follow you on Instagram and show them how easy it is to book you again.
Your reports even show you which of your employees are performing the best and through which channels. Find out what are they doing better than everyone else, and then take that knowledge and apply it across your business. Remember, improving your business is a bit-by-bit, little-by-little affair but all those small tweaks add up to big changes.