5 ways barbershop owners can save money without sacrificing customer experience.

Every pound that you save is a pound that can be reinvested into your business. However, it’s important to make sure that you don’t sacrifice customer experience while cutting costs. So how can you reduce expenses while keeping your customers happy? Here are five ways to do exactly that..

Does this scenario sound familiar:

Customer books an appointment. They forget about it and don’t show up. You are now left with an empty slot in your schedule.

You are in the service business. Time is money. And missed appointments mean lost revenue. You can’t let this go on.

Fortunately, this problem is easy to solve: invest in an appointment scheduling software.

An app like that should allow customers to:

• See available slots online.
• Book their appointments online.
• Cancel their appointments online.

And, most importantly, it should send them an automated reminder on the day of their appointment.

You may be surprised how effective appointment scheduling software can be at reducing missed appointments.

Also, customers tend to appreciate the reminders, so it’s a win-win

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a checklist that tells you how to do a particular business task.

You may want to consider creating SOPs for:

• Opening and closing your barbershop.
• Cleaning and maintenance.
• Managing the inventory.
• Each service that you provide.
• Handling finances.

It makes sense to optimize these tasks, then turn them into SOPs.

This may seem weird at first, but the reality is that without SOPs, we all make a ton of small errors that add up to a lot of wasted time.

And, once again, time is money in this line of work.

Inventory is a major expense.

Even seemingly insignificant price differences will add up to a substantial amount of money over the lifetime of your business.

That is why it makes sense to do everything in your power to get the inventory you need for the best prices possible.

And don’t be afraid to negotiate. You may find that suppliers are more open to it than one might expect. You won’t know until you try, though.

Just make sure that before you do, you learn the basics of negotiation.

You can start with the book “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss.

Marketing may seem overwhelming.

It was easier back in the day when pretty much all you could do was put flyers into people’s mailboxes.

Now there’s SEO, there’s social media, there’s paid advertising...

Well, the goods news is that it’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of barbershop owners feel just as overwhelmed as you do.

This means that investing in learning online marketing can give you a tremendous competitive advantage. But where should you start?

You can search for “barbershop marketing”, but you are unlikely to develop a solid understanding of online marketing that way.

Do this instead:

• Read through Taylor Pearson’s list of best marketing books to build a foundation
• Read through Backlinko archives to learn about search engine optimization (SEO).
• Read through Sumo archives to learn about a wide variety of online marketing topics.

Once you have done these three things, you will be light years ahead of an average barbershop owner in terms of marketing knowledge.

At that point, you should be able to create and execute a marketing strategy, evaluate the results, and make adjustments as needed.

And yes, getting there will require time, energy, and perseverance. But you should see this as an investment in your business.

Or would you rather keep burning money on haphazard marketing efforts that never seem to work?

FYI...

If you don't have enough time to figure out online marketing, let us manage it for you!

Contact us today to start a conversation about our pay as you go marketing services.

Attracting new customers isn’t enough. You need to retain them.

That’s why you should relentlessly look for ways to improve customer experience.

Here are some ideas:

• Create a pleasant environment in your barbershop.
• Show genuine interest in your customers.
• Offer a free service on their birthdays.

You can also look at barbershop reviews online and discussions in relevant forums to better understand what your customers are looking for.

Be prepared to go that extra mile to provide excellent customer service. 

After all, it’s your regular customers that keep your business afloat, so it makes sense to show some appreciation. 

You should never sacrifice customer experience in an attempt to cut costs. That would be penny-wise and pound-foolish. 

You can reduce expenses with the right software, better business management practices, and online marketing knowledge.

Don’t be afraid to invest in these three things. It will pay off in the long run. And the long game is the only game worth playing.