Intro:
Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist, like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer. Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists. I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist podcast.
Britt:
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva, and this is, I think, the third Small Business Saturday podcast I’ve recorded. We recorded one way back in time, probably in 2019, something like that, recorded another one in 2022, and now this one’s being recorded in 2024. And the reason why, if you go back and try and find those episodes, they are retired. So if you find them in the depths of the internet, maybe, but we’ve pulled them from the regular podcast feed because when you look at something like Small Business Saturday, there is a timeliness to it, and I want to talk about where we are right now, where our economy is, where the market is, where consumer behavior is, and what I think that you should be doing likely 2024 or 2025, maybe into 2026, to maximize impact on Small Business Saturday.
So even if you’ve heard of Small Business Saturday before, a lot of people are really shocked by the history of it. So I want to start right there. So Small Business Saturday was born in 2010. It’s still relatively new. It is 14 years old. I think this is its 14th season this year, and it was actually created by American Express. So American Express, when I say that, we think of the credit card company and they are essentially a lender, which is where the credit part comes from, but they’re also a huge proponent of local small business. It’s something they’ve always advocated for, they’ve done fundraising for. They’ve been very outspoken in the idea that small business is the backbone of the American culture. And so in 2010, I want you to think about what the world looked like in 2010. I joined the industry in 2007.
I remember 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 very well because up until this point, that was our last recession here in the United States. And it was called the Great Recession. And that recession came because a housing crisis. So we watched the mortgage crisis happen, if you were around for that. People were losing their homes. We were seeing foreclosures at scale, and the trickle-down effect of that was, yes, unemployment went up, layoffs went up, a lot of what we’re seeing right now. What we’re not seeing right now is that foreclosure component that we did see in 2007, 2008, 2009, ’10, ’11, ’12. However, we are in a season of recession. All of the indicators are there. I started talking about this recession in 2002. Finally, economists at scale started recognizing it. This year, we are in it, and this is why I think it’s such a timely time to be talking about Small Business Saturday again, because when you look back at the history of it, it was born as a way to support local small business during the last recession that we had.
So I want to read you this quote I found about the efforts. It says, “In 2010, Main Street USA was feeling the effects of the recession and card member spend was down. Unlike other card companies and banks, American Express has a network of direct relationships with merchants and consumers, and leaned in there to support its efforts holistically.” So what American Express did was notice this trend in spending being reduced. Now, what I will say that’s different about that, that last recession and this recession we’re walking into now is we’re actually not seeing a reduction in spend necessarily. We are actually seeing an increase in debt amongst Americans. What we are seeing that is different this time around is that people are still spending, they’re just getting more particular about how and where they spend. They’re more discerning. People are still spending, but they’re being really picky.
The value has to be there. They have to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. Those are phrases we’re seeing tossed around more often. So what a lot of salons think to do whenever Small Business Saturday comes up is what? What comes to mind if I’m like, okay, we’re going to do something, we’re going to celebrate Small Business Saturday? Retail sale. And that’s often what we lean into. We think, okay, Small Business Saturday, we’re encouraging consumers to shop small, which means go into your local small businesses instead of placing an Amazon order or going to the mall or something like that. Instead of buying from a large chain or a large distributor, support the local mom-and-pop shops in your area. So our natural instinct as a stylist or a salon is to say, retail. That’s what I had to sell to those people. Now, let me tell you about the stuff we tried to do in the salon so that I’ve tried a lot of stuff.
We definitely tried leaning into the retail side of things and we did it a couple of ways. One of the ways that I think naturally we think to do it is retail promotion. So let’s say all hair care is 20% off on Small Business Saturday or all styling needs are 30% off or everything is 15% off. Whatever you decide to do. So then, okay, people come in, let’s say they stock up, that’s great. So you’re going to make more retail money in November, but generally speaking, it’s not going to actually increase the revenue produced as a whole because if I come in November and I buy two bottles of shampoo and two bottles of conditioner and two bottles of my favorite thermal protectant, that’s great. But I’m not actually increasing my spend with you, I’m prolonging my sales cycle because now instead of buying from you here in November and then needing to stock up again in January or February, I’m buying now for now and for January, February.
So now I likely won’t buy retail from you again until the springtime. So the problem when we do retail sales promotions like that is now you’re offering a discount and you’re simply lengthening the sales cycle, not necessarily selling more. Now, if you were to do a retail promotion like that and the verbiage changed, and the verbiage is no longer stock up and save and it’s come on in and try something new, you can try that, but you can probably even tell by the intonation in my voice, I’m not a fan of it. It’s not the direction that I would go because I want you to think about it for yourself. Let’s say it wasn’t… we weren’t talking about a hair salon. Let’s say we’re talking about a cupcake shop and they were running a promotion for Small Business Saturday, and on that Saturday you could go in and try a flavor you’ve never tried before for 30% off.
Maybe you’ll try the jamoca almond fudge cupcake if that’s your bag. But if you’re like, I just like the sweet vanilla, you’re probably not going to do it. And that’s the same thing when we do promotions in the salon where we’re like, well, come on in, everything’s 30% off and you could try something new. They’re probably just going to buy that sweet vanilla cupcake because that’s what they like. They’re not going to try the jamoca almond fudge that you’re trying to shove their way because it’s not what they’re looking for. So even though you know that some incredible moisture mask would be great for your client and now it’s 30% off, maybe you should try it. That’s a bit of a hard pitch, especially in a season like this. You can try it. I don’t think it’s going to be overly successful. So what I think when you do a retail promotion like that is you’re simply lengthening the sales cycle.
So the other thing we tried in the salon is we said, okay, scrap that. We don’t want to lengthen the sales cycle, buy hair care for your friends and family for the holidays. Now, I will say I definitely, like, a good girlfriend of mine had her birthday earlier this year and I gave her just a bag of hair care stuff I thought she’d like. She loved it, but the relationship she and I have is she’d been asking me for months. “My hair is frizzy, what should I do?” She was already craving it. So when I gifted it as a gift, it felt good. I’ve also given hair care as gifts before and watched people be like, “Oh my gosh, thanks.”” It doesn’t always feel like a gift. So the idea of trying to get people to buy hair care for their friends and family for the holidays is a bit tough.
So I’m not a fan of doing the retail side of things for our industry for Small Business Saturday. Now, retail promotions for Small Business Saturday are encouraging consumers, customers, to come in and buy physical products, works for your local toy shop, it works for your local bakery. It works for your local clothing boutique because what do they sell? Physical products. What do we sell? Where does the majority of our revenue come from in our industry? Services. We are a service-based industry. So when you look at Small Business Saturday, really the way to maximize it for the long haul is to increase our services. But the natural way to look at that is be like, oh my gosh, okay, so discount my services on Saturdays? No, we as an industry have to get out of the mindset of everything requires a discount, but that’s so the natural inclination, right?
I create a promotion, it means discounts. No way should you be discounting anything on the Saturday, one of the last remaining Saturdays during the holiday season. It wouldn’t make any sense, right? The other thing we don’t want to do is just encourage this onslaught of clients one Saturday out of the year. That doesn’t work either. So what is it that we should be doing? I’m looking at two different campaigns that I think could work really well for you. One I’m calling Give Back and one I’m calling Create Buzz. The Give Back campaign is something I’ve talked about for years. It’s the thing that worked the best for us in our salon when we were looking to create Small Business Saturday campaigns and promotions. So I know that it works. I’ve seen it work with thousands of salons across the country. The Create Buzz concept, I think it’s interesting for this year and this season. It’s not something I’d necessarily always do, but it’s an idea that I want to pitch you all in case you want to be curious about it.
So I’m recording this podcast Fall of 2024, Small Business Saturday this year happens to be November 30th, 2024. Small Business Saturday always hits the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So you know how the Friday after Thanksgiving is Black Friday? Small Business Saturday is the… the next day, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and then what’s called Cyber Monday lands the following Monday. So it’s kind of like a four-day shopping extravaganza. So here’s the Give Back campaign that I know for certain works well. Step one, don’t make this about you. Small Business Saturday is meant to be a time of celebrating this local small business owner. If there’s something I have learned about marketing, especially in the service-based industry, it’s more about community and connection than it is about self-promotion. Self-promotion makes us feel uncomfortable, and it’s a really difficult way to build a clientele. Serving, giving and reputation-building is something we can really leverage on Small Business Saturday.
So in this give back campaign, it’s not directly about you, it’s indirectly about you. What I want you to do is think of three to five local small businesses staffed by target market clients. So it could be a local coffee shop, it could be a restaurant, hopefully not a chain restaurant, more of an independently owned restaurant, a local shop you love a local bakery like I just talked about. Something that we always celebrated was our local spas, like day spas, like massage aesthetics, things like that. Because for us, our target market clientele when I was in the salon was primarily women, although we… I mean, we really did have a very mixed clientele, but primarily women, and it was an age group of probably, I want to say like 30 to 55. And we did cater to a higher income level, and so that type of demographic was spending time at the local day spas.
So instead of trying to hit those clients, what we would do is we would celebrate the staff of those businesses. So like I said, coffee shops, restaurants, bakeries, spas, local clothing, boutiques, that’s what we’re looking for. All local small business, okay? What you do is you want to find spots with at least 10 team members if you can. If it’s a smaller business, they’ve only got a team of four, but you absolutely love everybody there, celebrate them. I’m not saying don’t do it, but you want to get the most bang for your buck. So if a business has 10 or more team members, it certainly helps. Then you’re going to create a budget for how much you can dedicate to this marketing and promotional campaign, which is what we’re about to create together. So for some of you, you’re like, I don’t got the money. That’s fine.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to fund it forward, and I’m going to tell you how to do that. Some of you do have a marketing budget. The more of a marketing budget you have, the splashier you can make this. But even if you’re like, Britt, I have nothing, you can still make this work. So if you have a small budget, let’s say you can dedicate, and for a marketing campaign, this is a small budget, like 200 or 500 bucks to something like this, that is a small marketing budget. If you can put that together, you can create gift bags or gift baskets to give back to the team members that we’re going to be celebrating. I’m going somewhere with this. Just listen up for a minute. And what we’ve done in the past is a small travel size shampoo and conditioner hairspray, something like that, like a little trio in a clear cellophane bag.
That’s cute. What you don’t want to do is just put candies in a bag. I don’t know about you, but when I get a… I’m doing air quotes right now, gift, and it’s like two pieces of chocolate and a hair tie with a business card in a bag, it reminds me of when I was growing up, it was very common. It’s still a marketing thing, but you don’t see it as much, door tags. Do you know what I’m talking about? I can remember walking home from school and there’d be like three door tags on our handle and it was like coupons to go see the local yogurt shop, but it was a throwaway item. When we spend a bunch of time creating… I’m doing it again, gift bags, but what you throw inside is less than the value of a dollar, you’re wasting your money and the client’s time and creating literally a throwaway item. If you’re going to do… And that’s why I’m saying a small budget for something like this is 2 to $500.
If your budget’s 50 bucks, skip this gift portion and fast-forward to where I’m going to talk about the kind of paying it forward piece. If you’re going to do a gift, actually make it a gift, not a bag of candies, okay? It’s just if you do the bag of candies angle, it’s going to come across as like, I’m going to use the word precious, but almost not even. It’s going to come across a little bit awkward and uncomfortable, almost like you’re trying too hard. So if you don’t have the budget, then don’t do this portion. But if you can allocate a couple hundred bucks to this campaign, travel size shampoo and conditioners, mini travel size hairbrush, really beloved. You want it to be something that would be something somebody would say, oh my gosh, I definitely want to keep this. I’ve seen those pocket foldable hair brushes, the kind where the bristles pop out, but you can throw it in your handbag, those are really popular.
So things like that really work. Just make sure it’s something useful. The other thing we want to include is the pay it forward piece. Now, even if you don’t have the 200 to $500 marketing budget, you’d still do this part. What I want you to think about is what kind of financial incentive we can offer that would make these coffee shop team members, day spa team members, bakery team members say, you know what? I’m going to make the leap of faith and I’m going to go check out Seva’s salon. Would that number for your target market clientele be 20 bucks? Would it be 25 bucks or would it be 50 bucks? So often we say like, oh, $10 gift card, $20 gift card. I don’t know about you. If somebody gave me a $10 gift card to go get my color and cut done, it’s not enough of a push for me.
I know that’s barely going to take the edge off. It’s not enough. If you’re going to do this gift card campaign and it’s truly Small Business Saturday, and you really are doing this as a give back to those who work in local small businesses, which we know local small businesses have a low, small profit margin. A lot of those people are not making a hundred thousand dollars a year working at the local bakery. If you’re truly doing this with the best of intentions, you want to grow your business, but you also want to give back, a fairly generous gift card for somebody to try your services for the first time is absolutely what I’d include. So even if you can’t afford to do the small travel size products, the travel hairbrush, whatever, you’re going to create these gift cards towards coming in to see you for the first time.
You can print them out business card, the size on Canva or Vista Print, something like that. I like to do plastic gift cards. There’s a resource for that. If you look in Thriver Society resources, if you’re a Thriver, I’ve got my plastic gift card resource I like to go to, but however you want to do it is fine. I would have it be a printed item. There’s still plenty of time for you to have that produced if you’re going to run this campaign. And you’re going to want to give those out as well. Then on Small Business Saturday, you’re going to go to these local small businesses you’ve chosen and you’re going to walk in and say, Hey, my name is Britt. I’m the owner of Seva Salon. We’re about two blocks down. This Small Business Saturday, we are celebrating local small businesses in our community.
We have chosen Shep’s Coffee Shop here as one of the businesses we’re celebrating, and I’ve got here in my pocket 10 $30 gift cards for everybody on your team to come in and get their haircut done with us whenever they’re ready, and we look forward to working with your team. There’s no strings attached. We just want to get back to you all. We absolutely love your lattes or whatever it is. Literally just give them love and be like, hope you guys have a great day. It’s super simple and they’re going to be left jaw dropped, like, are you kidding me? Hopefully there’s even some people in the shop watching you do this, like bonus. How great would you, your salon, you as a stylist, look doing something like that? That’s like a mic drop moment, like damn, you’re literally just giving back to us? Yep, that’s all I’m doing.
And that’s the point of this campaign is, yeah, hopefully a handful of those people do come in to see you, and they do use their gift cards to come get their haircut, and they do carry around the travel hairbrush. Definitely. We want those things to happen, but if nothing else, you’re building your reputation. That’s what I think Small Business Saturday is all about in a service-based business. Now, I want to throw another kind of fresh idea your way. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this one before as it relates to Small Business Saturday. What you can do if you want to do something that really incorporates your existing clientele, because the campaign I just gave you does not to incorporate your existing clientele, right? It’s about reaching out to new potential clients. If you want to incorporate your existing clientele, please don’t ask them to buy anything from you.
I think it’s the wrong approach given the economy, given that we’re service-based industry. I think the more it feels like push, push, push, sell, sell, sell, discount, discount, discount, I think we lose the magic of it in the relationship business that we’re in. So instead, what you can do is throughout the month of November, let your clients know you’re celebrating Small Business Saturday all month long and you want to give back to your clients while celebrating the success of the business that you’ve built. And throughout the month, any guest who shares a photo of you with them, think selfie style, think fun, relatable, not here’s an after photo of my hair. Like, I would actually change the dynamic of this a little bit and have it be a little more human. So ask them as they’re leaving, do you want to participate in Small Business Saturday with me this season?
If so, I’m going to take a selfie of us together. I’m going to send it to you, or you can take it on their phone, whatever. If they post it on their feed or in their story tagging you in and sharing just a little blurb about why they love working with you and tagging your salon or tagging your professional Instagram handle, options for what you can give back to them. Option number one is a $10 service credit. Option number two, enter to win a gift card for a thousand dollars in services. Holy cow, that’s a lot of money. I know. I know. But I want you to think about it like you’re going to be entered to win a hundred dollars gift card. I’m going to be honest, I probably wouldn’t do that for you. For the chance to maybe get a hundred dollars gift card? That’s a tough sell. For the chance to maybe get a $500 gift card, I might be motivated.
For the chance to get a thousand dollars gift card, I’d definitely be motivated. So if you’re like, I don’t want to give that much away, I want you to think of it differently. You’re not giving away. This is the cost of marketing and it’s expensive, and I totally get it. You don’t have to do it like that if you don’t want to, but I do think for a campaign like this, there needs to be some kind of mutual win, and I think the mutual win for the clients, especially in the market that we’re in right now, is either a guaranteed savings or a potential significant savings. Now, let’s go back to that $10 service credit I was mentioning. Why didn’t I throw the option out of, share this selfie of us and get a free conditioning treatment? For a couple of reasons.
One, I’m not a huge fan of giving services away for free. The other thing too is the value of your in-salon conditioning treatments is likely more than $10. I understand it does not cost you $10 to buy them. I understand it’s the most profitable service you have in your salon. Run the math on that. I guarantee that it is. The reason why I would rather you do a $10 service credit is it gives you sales leverage. So what you could do is, let’s say Sophia does it. She posts the selfie, you make a note in her record or you DM her back and be like, thank you so much for the tag. Next time you come in, show me this DM, I’ll give you your $10 credit. However you want to track it is fine. You could either leave it in the hands of the clients to remember or you can make a note on her record.
It doesn’t matter to me how you do it. When she shows you that $10 credit, you can then be like, yay, we can use that today. Now, I got to be honest with you, we can certainly just use it as a discount off your usual cut and color. However, I noticed you are having some winter dryness. Super typical. I’m seeing it with a lot of my clients right now. I do have a hydrating treatment we can do on you today. It’s $25, but it lasts six weeks, and I think it’s going to shorten your styling time. It’s going to elongate the time between how often you need to get your hair cut. You sell them on the benefit, and now you’re upselling this client instead of taking the hit. Now, some clients are going to say, no thanks, I’ll just take the discount. That’s great because what that client did for you is they promoted you to their entire network of friends and family, and that’s priceless exposure.
So I think personally, it’s still a win. I think often when we say $10 service credit to all of my clients, not all your clients are going to do it. Let’s say 40 clients shout you out from the rooftops. That’s incredible marketing power. Now you have guaranteed $400 in service discounts, sure, but if you only gain two or three new clients because of doing that, it’s still going to be a huge landslide victory for you, financially. So just throwing a couple of ideas out there your way. The biggest thing about Small Business Saturday is I want you to make it about giving back to your community and giving back to your clients. I do believe we’re in an industry that’s very much all about reciprocity, because we are in the relationship business, the more you give, the more you earn.
And this Small Business Saturday, I want you to really think about how you can love on others in your network and in your community, love on other small businesses, and I think you’ll be amazed at how it all comes back to you too. As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building. And I’ll see you on the next one.
