How to sell more salon retail with an online shop
The beauty services you provide to your clients are an essential part of their self-care routine. Hair and nail care, skincare and waxing, tans and new lashes: all of these things help your clients to feel confident and proud of the skin they’re in.
If lockdowns in 2021 are affecting the ways in which you’re able to provide these services, you can still reach out and provide essential products to help your clients keep up their own self-care: by selling your products online!
I’ve spoken to some beauty business owners who make up to 50% of their monthly revenue through product sales, so we’re not talking about a small amount of extra money. If your clients can access your products easily, this can greatly increase the revenue you’re bringing in. You simply do not want to miss out on this opportunity to make more money, and branch out in your business with new skills and a great way to scale up.
Today I’m gonna show you some super-effective ways to sell your beauty products online, especially if you’ve got an online shop where you’re selling. Some of these ideas can also work if you’re just selling on-off products to clients through PayPal or Venmo as well. These things will work for you, and I’m so excited for you to start trying them out.
#1: Sell the right products for your clients’ needs
Okay, so let's put this out there first and foremost. This one is the foundation for all the other tips I'll share. Not so much a creative way to sell online, as the only way to have success selling online: you need to make sure you're selling what your clients actually want.
This might seem obvious, but you would be surprised at how many business owners don’t take the proper steps to do this properly. The last thing you’d ever want to do is invest time and resources into setting yourself up to sell online, advertise your online shop, and then....hear crickets because what you’re selling isn’t what your customers want. Yikes!
Think about what makes your brand so appealing to your client base. Do you promote vegan, cruelty-free, clean products that your clients feel good about using?
Do you market to the spunky and daring, or maybe to the more spiritual side of your clients?
Whatever it is that makes your beauty business stand out for your customers, make sure your online shop is selling products that align with that - the products that you know will line up with your clients ideal price range, interests, and personal care needs.
You are the expert, first and foremost, so your clients will respect your opinion. You can choose the products you love and believe in, but make sure to touch base with your audience to get their feedback on what else they want and need to buy from you.
Now obviously social media is the easiest way to get instant feedback on this. Put up a post on Facebook and Instagram, asking your clients what they want to buy from you. Ask them questions to get them thinking about their needs, or ask them to choose which products they like best from a choice of a few.
You can also send an email survey out to your list to get a better sense of their needs: ask them about their dry hair and skin problems, how they practice self-care, and what they’d love you to sell to help with these things.
Once you’ve got this valuable feedback, you’ll be able to develop a comprehensive list to serve your clients needs!
#2: Create educational content about the products you offer to show your audience why they need them
You already know how to do this - you’ve probably done it in your salon a thousand times. Your client asks a question about how best to deal with a common beauty issue, and you have a product in your shop to solve that problem. You bring them the product and tell them how it works, why it works, why you love it - and the client is sold. They trust your expertise to guide them.
This works the same online. You can start the same conversation by showing off the various products you sell in your shop in an educational video.
Create short, fun and punchy videos about your favorite products to educate your audience. Tell them why you love each one, what you use it for, why it’s the best choice of many others like it. Explain a common winter skin or hair issue, and point out the products you’re selling to solve it.
You can also use your favorite products in tutorials to educate and sell at the same time. Share your daily skincare/haircare/nail care routine, and show off your favorite products for your routine (including, of course, the link to your shop to buy each!)
Educational content is the perfect way to entertain, teach, and sell your online products. You’ll have a heck of a lot of fun doing it, too!
Your clients education doesn’t stop with the video content you create. Another great way to educate and sell is in your product description in your online shop. It’s important to put highly informative and helpful content in this description, because your audience is reading it carefully to help them make their decision. Make sure to include all the product ingredients, what kind of problems the product solves, and why you love it. Include as much information as possible - this will ensure your reader has everything they need to make a decision. Remember: education sells!
#3: Invest money in online advertising for your online shop and products
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know how much I love Facebook and Instagram as an advertising tool. You’ve already captured the attention and adoration of your biggest fans on these social media platforms, so this is the most effective place to advertise your online shop and the products you’re selling there.
I can’t stress often enough how effective, easy, and affordable advertising on Facebook and Instagram can be. Imagine this: you spend just $20 on ads, reach 500 people, and make 5 sales totalling $200. Talk about a return on investment!
The best way to advertise your online shop and your products on FB and Insta is through a video. Put together a short, cute video of you holding up your favorite product for sale, and talk about why you love it. Your audience will watch, listen, learn, and click. Tell them they can get this product today in your online shop, and they’ll follow the link you share to get it. It’s really that simple! Video ads are shown to be 2 times more effective at getting clicks than text ads, according to a 2019 study. So get your cute face out there and talk about the cool products you have for sale!
If you want to get started advertising with Facebook and Instagram, but need some help taking your first steps, be sure to download my Facebook Ads Starter Kit below!
#4: Send out product samples for “try-before-you-buy” value
Sending out samples of your most popular products is a great way to say, “You should really try this - it’s that good.”
I love using samples - it’s the best way for me to make up my mind about a product with no money spent! If you have samples of your online products to send out, don’t let them collect dust in your storage space - send them to your clients! You can also send samples along with deliveries that are already purchased, as a good way to introduce clients to new products.
Send a heartfelt note along with your samples that says, “I thought you’d like to try this. I love it and I hope you do, too. I sell the full-sized version in my online shop @ [your link here]!”
Your mailing list will love this - a chance to try a new product for free, and a note to show that their beauty salon owner cares. And if they love the sample product, they’ll want to get more, and know where to get it - in your online shop!
If you’ve got only a limited amount of samples to send out, check out tip #8 for a great way to drum up engagement on your social media accounts and your online store with your biggest fans, using the limited samples you have.
If you need more samples than you have (which is a great problem to have!), you can ask your distributor or brand reps for more. They will often send them free of charge! But if that’s not an option for you, you can make your own. Amanda Castillo from Temple Soulon keeps little glass vials on hand to fill with samples of products. So smart!
#5: Host an online workshop or online beauty consultation and recommend products for sale in your online store
If your doors are closed right now, you can still provide huge value, guidance, and education to your client base online. Quite a few beauty businesses have been running successful online skin, nail, and hair consultations through their sites with great engagement. 30 minute consultations are a great way to educate about hair, skin, wellness and more, and part of this education is talking about products. Melanie from Bare Skin Studio does about 10 consultations a month with her male skincare clients, and she averages around $150 in product sales directly from each one these consults (which adds up over the month!).
Some beauty businesses do online consultations for free, while others charge. If you decide to charge, you could offer a promotion that if a client purchases a product during the consultation, you could take that amount of money off the cost of the consultation, or another promotion to encourage sign ups. You can easily set these consultations up with Zoom, and if you want to charge for them, link to your PayPal account or online invoicing.
Another way to get great engagement and make sales in your online shop is to host a workshop for a limited number of people (to tap into that FOMO feeling!) During the workshop you can offer a fun kickback discount for the participants on the products you’re using during the workshop. The workshops can be on anything you feel will bring value to your audience: how to cut your kid’s hair at home, how to make your own skincare mask, how to read product labels on beauty products. Once again, this brings education, value, and the opportunity to make online sales together in a fun experience for your audience.
#6: Send out a private “FLASH SALE!” invite to your clients through email
This is a great way to sell a lot of products fast. Everyone loves a flash sale (ooooh, the FOMO is palpable!), and they’ve been proven over and over again to be really effective.
Send an email with a quick note saying that you want to reward your awesome clients with this surprise: a private link just for them to a flash sale, with either a coupon code attached, or an offering of free sample products for a certain amount spent during the sale.
Make it a limited time offering (“this weekend only!” or “for the next 24 hours!”), and private (“to thank you for being a part of the salon family”); your email list will love being invited to an exclusive event like this, and your products will fly off your online ‘shelves’!
#7: Use the reach of local influencers to promote your online store and products
Influencers are called influencers for a reason: they are really good at helping people make up their minds about products. In fact, 49% of people say they take the advice of influencers to help them make purchase decisions. That’s huge, and you can use the suggestive power of influencers in your area to promote your products.
Check out Instagram and YouTube to find out who has a really strong following in your area. If they often promote health, wellness and beauty in their posts, they are the perfect candidates to receive some free samples of products you offer in your shop. Reach out and let them know you’d like to offer them some free products for review on their Insta or YouTube channel. If they’re very receptive, you can bring them onboard as a brand ambassador and offer them an ongoing discount on your products and services. Et voilà, you’ve got the perfect spokesperson for your online products and offerings!
Want to get serious working with a local influencer to grow your beauty business? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing for Salons.
#8: Run a contest for your clients to review products and win prizes
Who doesn’t love a fun and engaging contest for free stuff?
This is a great way to get people talking about the products you sell, and foster lots of fun engagement on your social channels at the same time. Choose your most engaged followers and let them know you’d like to send them samples of a few of your favorite products for them to review on your Facebook, Instagram, or website - whichever place gets you the most engagement. Offer them a chance to win a gift card or a discount in your online shop for writing the reviews. Free samples, a contest entry, and a chance to speak their mind - it’s really a great opportunity for your audience to get involved and promote your online shop while they’re doing it!
@Drybar has amazing contests that promote their haircare products, while getting a ton of engagement on Instagram
#9: Create a quiz to help clients find the products that are best for their beauty needs
I mean, I love a good quiz - and I bet your clients do, too.
Quizzes are a great way to help your clients get to the root of their common skin, hair, or nail issues, as well as point them to a solution. At the end of the quiz, they’ll have learned something new about their issue, how to solve it, and they’ll get a link to your online store with the perfect product to solve it!
This is such a fun, simple, and effective way to get your online products in front of the people that need them the most.
You can build a super-cute, fun, and entertaining quiz in Interact for free! Make it funny, punchy, informative and quirky, and your clients will be moving through it quick as can be and headed to your online store to snap up the products you recommend.
Want some ideas of how to make a quiz? Read How your salon can use fun quizzes to get more clients.
#10: Make a push to get lot of reviews for your products on your online shop
Products that have five or more positive reviews are 270% more likely to be purchased! What?! That’s an insane statistic, and you need to pay attention to it.
What this means for the success of selling your beauty products online is that you need to focus on getting lots of positive reviews.
Amika does an amazing job of collecting reviews for their haircare products
You can use most of the tips I mentioned above to rangle in some really great and informative reviews for your online site. Just asking for reviews is one thing, and will work with a few people…but offering freebies for reviews is guaranteed to work a lot better. Using any combination of the tips above with a focus on getting a positive review in writing from your clients will help seal the deal when it comes to selling out of your beauty products online.
Your online shop will bring in a steady source of revenue during unsteady times
No matter where you are in the world right now, the pandemic we’re in has affected your business in some way. Setting up an online shop will give you the peace of mind that you’re still helping your clients with their beauty needs, still being able to pay your bills, and consistently scaling up your business.
It’s time to get selling online, beauty business owners! I’m here every step of the way to support you.
Xo,
Stephanie
