Attn: Smart business minds, pls share ideas on ways for us to promote our “hair cuts for kids” salon?

Hi all,





My wife and I own two franchises of barber shops that offer haircuts for kids. Both are struggling, but we believe that w/ a little creativity and help, they could be profitable.





My wife and I have other jobs, but we do work part-time at the salons. More importantly, we are committed to spending more time to help the business grow.





We especially need help in marketing. Any great ideas?





Also, do any finance whizzes have ideas on what we should be analyzing in our QuickBooks? I’ve heard that we should be tying financial and operational data together to make decisions, but we’re not sure what to look at.





Our shops are in the Midwest.





Any ideas are welcome. Thanks in advance.





Rick %26amp; Harriet VenusAttn: Smart business minds, pls share ideas on ways for us to promote our “hair cuts for kids” salon?
Kelly e had some great advice! Flyers and coupons are great to promote your business. Moms love coupons. Think to yourself who your target audience is. Kids, yes. But who holds the cash and really cares if their kids bangs are too long? The parents. More importantly the moms. (because dads like scissors.) So where do you find moms? Grocery stores! Ask to put up flyers or put coupons at the check-out. Or take an hour and pass out coupons to people that walk in and out of the store. Wal-Marts, K-Marts and Targets are good places too.





Have you thought about putting up a myspace page for your business? Myspace creates tons of traffic. You can browse for people in your area that have kids. And when you find them, send them a message inviting them to try out your salon. And once you find them, you can invite them to become friends on your page. Send out bulletins with coupons attached. (repeat business!)





I dont know exactly where you are in the midwest... but check your area to see if you have mom to mom sales. Its a place where moms get together to sell and buy baby clothes and items. You could pass out flyers there. Place ads on craigslist.com (dont forget to pick state and closest city on the right side. home page takes you to san francisco.)





Try putting ads in the local newspaper or sending out mailings. Check the town hall. When I lived in Ohio our city put together a calendar with coupons from local businesses.





Hope that helps! Good luck!Attn: Smart business minds, pls share ideas on ways for us to promote our “hair cuts for kids” salon?
When I worked in the Pizza industry, we use to promote ourselves by giving away free small pizza's to kids who won spelling tests, read so many books in a week, had no sick days for the quarter, etc. This was a small pizza w/ 1 topping for free, no other purchase necessary. But it got the parents in our door and 95% of the time other items were ordered with it. With yours, since no adult cuts, just offer the free hair cut or 50% off cut or a small service you offer for free. This way it gets the parents familar with your place, location, style, and at least 50% should return for the next haircut.





If you have a web site, trade banners/ad's with other local companies. Maybe even swap ad's with a big name adult salon in town. Doubt they would want to do kids and you don't do adults, but you both do hair, great partnership of swapping off customes yet never effecting each other as competition. I do cosmetic work on high line autos now, and I do this swap with local body shops. As my work is a waste of their time and their work is beyond me, we make a good couple.





Talk to local papers, coupon stores, advertising outlets and talk to the owners/managers. See if they have kids, if so, off a swap of services to pay for the ad's. I use to do this for the used car magazines. I would come do service to the mgrs car and in turn I would get 2 weeks of my ad in the book. Many like to swap work for work or service for service. Back during my food days, we'd swap pizza for McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc. Mgr's attitude is... '; not my money, why not trade? ';





Sponsor a kids soccer, t-ball, softball team. That way the parents are more familar with your business name. Sponsorship normally is a fee of $40 and then uniform shirts, bout $150. And if they win, a $100 meal of pizza and ice cream. But customers do lean towards those that assist in the community. I have noticed an increase in business when I have trophies on my wall from local teams to when I don't.





Offer free cuts to all the kids in a local up coming play or musical. In return, be able to put your business name, logo and something like ';cuts compliments of'; on a sign and put it on a artists stand off to the side of the stage. Free advertising for a free service. Talk to the school or theater teacher.





Call up the local girl scout troops and offer them space in front of your store to sell their cookies. Again, connects parents to where you are, let alone now you have all these girl scouts as customers.





Get items in the business that are geared to the kids. Ask kids what they would want. Magazines, small hand held games or puzzles, coloring books, etc. Make it so they want to go to your place. McDonald's put a simple cheap toy in a happymeal and look at how many parents run there cause the kid won't shut up bout wanting that toy. Use same thinking for you. Maybe even give away a cheap 50 cent doll or something. Can find many items like that through dollar stores and wholesale outlets on web to keep costs down.





Letter up if not get a car wrap on a vechile if not all. That way as anyone drives around, you are advertising the business everywhere.





Find a local web designer and offer a swap of services for a nice web site to be built. I am sure there are designers out there w/ kids and would swap for such a service. Make a nice, simple, yet flash web site, pictures, maybe a small game or two for kids. One, you want to look very professional, upscale, etc, so the parents feel like they are treating their kids, and you want to get the kids attention, back to that McDonald's thinking and the toy or bubble tubes or playground, etc.





On the local Chamber of Commerce? Become a member, attend a few meetings, meet a few other local business owners. Do some cross advertising, etc. I did this during my beginning days and it did pay off with contacts, leads, etc.





Are you a BBB member? If not, pay the dues and get the plaque. Without realizing it, it does make people feel more at ease with a business, specially if small and local. Shows they are serious. Some newspaper, magazine articles about you and the business framed help also, shows you are bigger or more known than they realized. This helps with that thinking of '; I have to keep up with the Jones '; and they will spread the word for you in word of mouth. My one paint shop was grown greatly by this one idea.





Depending on your location, whats around you, maybe block off a section of parking lot and make it a mini playground or skate park or inline skating area. Something the kids can swam to, a small place to hang out and play. They will relate fun to your business name. And the parents will have to bring them or pick them up, again, they see your name.





Hit up a sign store (Fast Signs) and get some of those cheap plastic cardboard signs you see in the grass on corners. Houses for sale, garage sale, new housing development, etc. Put them out early saturday morning and take them down after close on staturday. Most inspectors are not out on saturday and you can get away with doing advertising on these days w/o fear of permit violation or fines. If they do catch you, at most they will take them down you send you a letter to stop. I did this during my paint shops grand opening. Inspector is who told me about it. Signs avg $10 a piece or so. Have a haircut special. Price one week, wear your girl scout or boy scout outfit and get 50% off, etc. Again, get your name into parents heads. And make the kids feel good cause they are being recoginzed for their accomplilshments of girl or boy scouts.





Maybe have a special or sale day, have a family friend or even yourself dress up as a clown or some character. Maybe even have that character show up at local schools and hand out coupons and small toys or something as well. Just like Ronald McDonald, Little Ceasars Pizza Pizza guy, etc. I used my Pizza Pizza guy to the point I had the suit wore out.





Anyone or wife good at doing nails? Offer a free nail job to the moms while the kids get a normal priced hair cut. Be another good person to do cross advertising with. Leaving biz cards, flyers, something in each others business. Can even do this with a local pizza shop. Some will glue/tape your coupon onto their boxes for a week if you post their coupons in your store. Make up 1/2 sheet ad's at Kinko's for $40 (1000+) and then hand them over to a Papa Johns, Angelo's, Domino's. Franchise stores are more likely to do this than corporate stores. Talk to store mgr.





Think that will keep you busy for a bit. Enjoy, hope you stay afloat, so many are closing their doors during these hard times. I myself have had to shrink back to just a 1 man operation, myself, to stay afloat. Use to have 16 employees.
Hi Rick %26amp; Harriet, if you truly want high impact cost effective advertising for your businesses then I suggest you contact these people.





www.outsidepromotions.com





all the best.
Advertise in a school directory (to late this year)


offer coupons for so much off a haircut and go to local grocery stores and ask for a community board (library) Hang a flier.


On Saturdays put balloons outside and promote the kids hair cut, offer so much off first time customers and get their name/address so you can keep them in your data base or on a mailing list.


See if any schools have any upcoming events like fairs where they look for ';free'; items to raffle offer your salon services to get people in -
Frequent customer cards work great. (Let people use the same card for multiple children.) i.e. Buy 9 haircuts and the 10th is free...
Advertise in your local kids directory. Make your salon kid friendly. If you only offer haircuts for kids, paint the salon in vibrant colors, install flat screen tv's and video game systems to make the customers only want to come to YOUR salon. The salon business depends upon loyalty, as I'm sure you know so you have to do something to set yourself apart and make the parents willing to bring their children to you. You may consider implementing something for children's birthdays parties. Not sure what you could do for the boys but to attract the girls, you could start offering manicures to paint the little princess' up on their birthdays. This could bring exposure to your salon.