New FREE Webinar Added; How to Prep Skin for Peels in Winter

New FREE Webinar Added;
How to Prep Skin for Peels in Winter

Explore the reasons why Winter is an ideal season for peeling treatments and discover effective strategies for encouraging your clients to book a series of peels during this time. As the Summer sun fades away and the skin has had ample time to recover, Winter provides a window of opportunity to undergo a series of peels with minimal risk.

Since there are lower UV levels during the colder seasons, it is optimal for recovery. You can indulge your client’s skin with radical regeneration without risking their beautiful skin, allowing them to enhance the texture, clarity, and overall appearance of their skin.

Date: 2nd May (10am)
Location: Zoom
REGISTER HERE

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Expand your Knowledge & Update your Skills with our FREE Skin Education Webinars!

Led by our exceptional trainers, these hour-long webinars are designed to provide you with a wealth of knowledge about new skills, techniques, client handling, and more – all things that will benefit both your therapists and clients.

During the webinars, you'll have the opportunity to learn more about special topics, key ingredients, products, and aesthetic devices that can transform the skin, as well as therapist tips and tricks that will help you provide even better care for your clients. Whether you're interested in chemical peels and facials or want to learn more about the latest aesthetic devices for treating even the hardest-to-treat skin concerns, our webinars are the perfect way to expand your skill set and learn first-hand from industry professionals.

In addition to providing you with invaluable education and training, our webinars also give you the chance to get answers to your burning questions as you'll be able to interact with our friendly, expert trainers to get the information you need.

Time: First Tuesday of every month at 10am (EST)
Cost: FREE!

The webinars are held live via Zoom, but they're also recorded and available for viewing later if you can't attend the allocated time slot. So, whether you're a busy salon owner or a therapist looking to improve your skills, you can benefit from our skin education and training webinars.

Re-Watch Our Previous Webinars!

CONSULTATIONS

SKIN BARRIER FUNCTION

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MORE UPCOMING WEBINARS!

Targeting Specific Skin Concerns
6th of June

Learn from our education team on how to target specific skin concerns by creating a completely customizable and tailored treatment protocol for every skin that walks through your doors. Our educators will delve into some of the biggest skin concerns such as Ageing, Pigmentation, Acne, Sensitive Skin & Redness, and take you on a step-by-step journey on how to successfully treat them.
REGISTER HERE

Treating Pigmentation
4th of July

Pigmentation is a skin concern that plagues many Australians as they age; in this webinar, we will delve into the variety of treatments and products that can help you tackle pigmentation & its varied types for your clients. Whether your client’s excessive pigment is caused by sun exposure or internal factors like ageing or hormones; we have put together the best treatment protocols to help you treat them.
REGISTER HERE

Acne Targeting Treatments
1st of August

A condition that impacts up to 85% of Australians at some stage in their life, this topic we delve into what it is, what causes it, and more importantly; how to successfully treat it. From varied treatment approaches, right through the ingredients clients are using in their at-home skincare routine – we will teach you how to treat all acne-impacted skins.
REGISTER HERE

6 Reasons Why Salon Owners Should Keep their Teams Well Trained

At Professional Beauty Solutions, we know that in order for you to compete in the changing retail and service environment, while also attracting and retaining great team members, you must offer them the opportunity to learn, grow and get better at their profession.

A business should never be idle in their work and nor should the development of your staff, who are the key asset in driving your business forward. Systematic team training is essential in helping this ongoing skill development, without question.

However, this can often be a worry to business owners and managers, due to its perceived ongoing cost to the business. Once you look past this and recognise the importance of keeping up-to-date, there are a number of reasons why ongoing staff training can be beneficial to the business and should be made a top priority. Implementing a quality training plan will not only improve your clients’ experience, but can drive team fulfillment, which studies show improves productivity and profitability. Employees know more knowledge brings more to the table, and your business will reap the rewards.

Take a look below at 6 top benefits of ongoing staff development.

1) Keep Up with Industry Changes

The beauty industry is constantly changing, making it so important for a business to progress and evolve continuously to avoid being left behind. Beauty trends and protocols change endlessly so it is also vital to make sure your business is keeping pace with the latest trends and techniques through constant monitoring of your environment, and ongoing team training.

2) Be in Touch with All the Latest Technology Developments

As new technology and techniques are being developed all the time, running a one-off training session is no longer sufficient. Regular training needs to take place to ensure that staff are using all the latest technology comfortably and to its full potential. Keep tabs on the media and experts around you for hints of what is yet to come in the industry, from skincare to LED therapy.

3) Stay Ahead of Your Competitors

Standing still can kill your business, so by making sure your staff are constantly advancing, you will continue to move forward and remain competitive within the marketplace. When your team has excellent knowledge of ingredients and their impact on the skin, they won’t just sell more, they will instil more confidence into your clients and improve their results with their ambitious outlook.

4) Maintain and Advance Employee Knowledge and Skill

Although one-off training may be provided to new employees, it’s important that training continues to help develop skills throughout their career. To retain knowledge, skills need to be practiced and refreshed on a regular basis so elements are not forgotten. As famous author and speaker Jim Rohn said “repetition is the mother of skill,” so, follow-up training will make a huge difference to your clients’ experience and your bottom line.

5) Increase Job Satisfaction Levels

Through continued investment into your team, employees will have a heightened sense of job satisfaction, improving their motivation towards their work. This reduces employee turnover and increases productivity significantly, which directly improves the profitability of your business. Clients love consistency and a high staff turnover will also impact your client retention. Keeping your team upskilled also prevents competitors from taking away your best employees.

6) Attract New Talent

All businesses want to have the best therapists, those who propel themselves forward towards a great, productive career. With ongoing training, not only will you gain better staff retention, but the business may also attract better talent from the start, giving the business a good image – a key feature many people look for within their job search. As you can see, ongoing training is important not just to employee development, but to the success of your business.

What you present as a leader of your team, drives the attitude and inclination of your staff to push harder and be better. At PBS we are passionate about your success which means we are also committed to providing our salon partners with comprehensive training across all our brands, both product knowledge and treatment training, as well as business education to help your business become even more profitable and successful.

Surviving After Lockdown

If the original lockdowns of 2020 are an indicator of business after lockdown, the question isn’t “how to survive after lockdown”, but more critically “how to survive the lockdown you currently find yourself in, and inevitably, the next lockdown”.

We are not in a recession as such, we are however in a “restriction”, which means that if you are restricted from trading and sales are down (sometimes catastrophically), once these restrictions ease, we are seeing businesses (especially in our industry) rebound very quickly.

So, I will offer some rules that have served me well over the past several decades from starting, buying, building, and selling businesses, to surviving a global financial crisis, major industry disruptions, fierce competition, debilitating international currency fluctuations, a tornado that destroyed our office & warehouse, and now a pandemic!

Business is like a gladiator sport and invariably we will all face more than one COVID sized calamity in our lifetime and there won’t always be government support. Survival is an obvious prerequisite to facing another day and following are my rules for surviving and thriving during the difficult times, especially when others around you are giving up.

Rule 1

Take Charge! I wanted to say take responsibility but thought that might trigger a negative response in some readers. “I’m not responsible for COVID, I can’t be responsible for the government’s decision to lock us down!” Well to take charge of your business and your life you need to take responsibility for how you respond to any given situation and blaming others doesn’t help you. Remember, nobody ever wins a blame game. So, of course you’re not at fault in this situation and you aren’t responsible for this pandemic, but you are the only one that can respond to the events. If you wait for someone else, wait for government support, or wait until the virus ends, you could be waiting a long time, not to mention, waiting longer than you can afford to wait.

Rule 2

Know your compelling Competitive Advantage. If you want to survive in business, you absolutely need to offer your clients something that nobody else can. This point is critical even when we’re not experiencing a crisis. When times are good and business is flowing in easily, that is when industries can get ultra-competitive, and it is someone else doing it better than you that cripples your business. So really knowing what it is that you can do that none of your competitors can is the key to making your business invincible.

Rule 3

Ensure you have a Profitable Business Model. I am absolutely baffled that so many business owners don’t know how much profit they make on each treatment, on each retail sale or over any given period. They don’t know what their break-even point is, and they haven’t given serious thought to how they should price treatments so that they can actually make some money. Your ability to earn a profit and retain a portion of those earnings so that you can survive tough times is critical. Imagine being profitable enough to weather the invariable storms that arise and being able to take care of the people around you when they do.

Rule 4

Take care of your team. That brings me to my next rule, which is to take good care of your team. This doesn’t necessarily mean paying them when you can’t afford to or putting their needs before your own and/or the customer’s needs, but it does mean understanding their needs and working towards ensuring that you and the workplace are set up to meet their needs. One thing is certain, if you want to attract amazing talent and retain your top employees for many years, you must create an environment that supports them to reach their goals.

Rule 5

Develop Effective Marketing and Sales Processes. This involves testing and measuring what you do and refining your processes. So many salons, spa and clinic owners throw their marketing efforts at the wall and hope something sticks. You cannot approach marketing or sales processes like this and expect to get results, especially during challenging times. If you understand your clients and you know what their top skin concerns are, you should always be addressing those concerns and make it convenient for them to buy from you. Your clients trust and respect your knowledge, so the only thing getting in the way of them buying from you is friction. Ensure you are working on reducing that friction at all times.

Rule 6

Be prepared for tomorrow. Like I said earlier, this isn’t the last time we will be faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Some experts say that this is just a dress rehearsal for the real pandemic! I know that sounds negative, but I like to be prepared, and the next challenge might not be a pandemic but could be equally as damaging. The difference between the businesses that don’t survive and the businesses that thrive will come down to preparation.

There are no magic bullets in the above-mentioned rules for succeeding in business, but skip any one of them and you will struggle more than you need to. If you follow these rules, they will provide you with your best chance at success, no matter what is going on around you.

Why a salon photoshoot is a great investment?

In today’s day and age – the first point of research into your business for your client is taking a look at your social media and your website. Having good-quality photos across your marketing platforms is vital as it works as a digital display of your portfolio; demonstrating your brand and visual identity.

📸 WHY YOU NEED A PHOTOSHOOT 📸

Often when salon owners start their business they use stock-standard photos on their website. Whilst this is great for kick-starting your business, stock photos can be a little bit cold, distant and lacking authenticity. On the flip side, a salon photoshoot captures you and your business at your most warm, intimate and transparent state.

When existing and prospective clients get this insider look, they instantly take a virtual step into your salon space & treatment rooms and learn the faces behind the business.  

We would suggest hiring a local photographer, take half a day for you and all your staff to come in and get shooting! Schedule this on a day that your business is closed, or blackout a few hours one day from all bookings to get the photo shoot done.

Anna, from Anna’s Skin and Beauty is a business owner and beauty therapist that truly see’s the power of a professional photoshoot..

“I have always felt that professional photoshoots are important for my business as they show case my work and the parts of my business that I want to promote. I am more of a skin focused salon and that is predominantly what my photo shoots involve. As such, I also like to create a lot of brand awareness for Image Skincare as I am devoted to the brand and I really believe in the results I achieve with my clients, so my photoshoots show this!

I also like to promote myself as my brand and show a little of my personality in my photos, that way clients feel like they “know” me, even before they haven’t met me in person. I also like to promote the fact that the salon is owned and operated by me; I do all of the treatments and the clients know that when they come to my salon, they will see me and my 23 years’ experience every time. This is one of the reasons that I feel that my business is so successful. I feel that it is important to always portray a professional and friendly image.

I also like to promote that my husband John is also part of the business, he doesn’t actually work “in” the business but he definitely works on the business.

Over the years, I have had 3 different locations for my business and each location change marked a significant chapter in my business journey as well as a business owner and a person. I have felt that I have needed to update my photos as the location has changed. It’s really important for me to move forward with a positive attitude and mindset.

Anna, Anna’s Skin and Beauty

📸 WHERE TO USE THE PHOTOS 📸

Here are the three places you should be using your photography from your salon photoshoot;

-          Social Media

-          Website

-          Treatment Menu

Credit: Turramurra Natural Beauty

📸 WHAT TO SHOOT 📸

-          Treatment photos

-          Team photos

-          Around your salon

-          Retail display

-          Reception counter

-          Waiting area

If you want to check out a great example of how amazing your own salon photoshoot can look, head to @annasskinandbody

How to make your salon social media marketing stand out!

To kick off our brand-new Salon Marketing Education Blog Series, we are starting with one of the top marketing tools when it comes to the success of your salon, spa or clinic – social media!

There’s no question about it, if you’re a salon, having a social media account is a MUST. Not only is it an extremely valuable and reliable resource for engaging with existing clients, but it also doubles as a huge marketing asset for attracting new clients.

In an industry that relies heavily on word of mouth, in today’s day and age the success of salons is dependent on “word of the gram” just as much (if not more)! Social proof is vital to your business; from sharing client testimonials and before & after photos, to exciting new product releases, and everything in between.

Before we get started on the who, what, where, when, why and how of it all – here’s our #1 Pro Tip that you should never forget when creating and managing your salon social media accounts; ALWAYS have a CTA (call to action). Whether it is a “Book Now”, “Call Now”, “Enquire Today” or any other button – it is imperative that your profile has a means in which existing and future clients can get in touch with you. Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of salon social media…

The 5 Basic W’s to help you with your salon social media:

WHO
Understand who your audience is.

Understanding who your target audience is might seem relatively basic but rest assured it’s essential to each and every post that you share as a business. Never just post to fill in the feed or because you think you haven’t posted in a while. Be specific and be purposeful in who you want to read and engage with for each post. For example, one post you do might be targeted at females aged between 20-30 that are suffering from hormonal acne. Whereas, your following post might be targeted to an older demographic with sun damage concerns.

WHAT
Always be on-brand.

Creating a consistent brand that your followers can always recognise is vital the success of your salon social media. Pick a style and stick to it! That way your followers know what to look out for and know when they see a certain style of post that it’s yours, hence reducing the risk of scrolling past. Check out these Australian salon’s that create consistent and aesthetically appealing social media feeds below.

Our #1 tip to get you started, always use the same profile pictures (preferably your logo) across all social media platforms and your website.

WHERE
Use location tags.

We couldn’t recommend this more! Use hashtags and your post location to your advantage and always let your followers and potential clients know exactly where you are located from the get-go. Not only will this filter your potential clients better but when future customers are looking for a salon nearby, they may stumble upon your photo thus, your salon.

WHEN
Don’t post too much, or not enough!

The “when” refers to how often you should post, what day and what time. This details can become a little overwhelming to try and perfect, but as a general rule of thumb we recommend posting to your feed at least once, every day. Of course, if you have more to share you can but often too much can be overbearing and too little can leave followers bored and begging for more.

When it comes to specific times of the day to post, a recent study by the social media scheduling service Hootsuite showed that for cosmetics-focused personal care services, posting in the early afternoon (especially Tuesday-Friday) resulted in the greatest success.

Don’t be afraid to test out different posting times, even those that are well and truly out of the periods that you know already might know work well!

For Instagram and Facebook stories, we suggest uploading content daily to keep your followers entertained and engaged. Stories are fast becoming a more sought-after resource for consumers and they are a great means for sharing content that is a little less formal, a touch more authentic and even fun. It doesn’t have to be anything major, a simple behind the scenes glimpse mid-treatment or a post-treatment glow photo of a lucky client will suffice. 

WHY
Create a community.

Your social media account should double as your salon community space. Creating an interactive community for all your existing and potential clients, as well as your followers, is a great way to increase customer loyalty and trust. We suggest posting engaging content, such as; “What is your favourite treatment in salon?” to get your clients responding and interacting. We also encourage you to ALWAYS communicate with your followers, don’t just “post and ghost”! Instead, reply to their comments, reviews & questions consistently and authentically.

Additionally, it is also a great idea to encourage all your clients and customers to share. Whether it be an Instagram story that shows their post-treatment glow that you can then reshare or a post they’ve uploaded to their feeds of a product you send them home with – all user-generated content works great! It also works as an amazing way for potential clients to see another form of testimonial-based proof.

Head to our ‘Top 10 Salon Social Media Post Ideas’ blog to get into the “how” of perfecting your salon’s social media.

PBS Online Education Portal

We would recommend to use this time for salon owners, managers and therapists who want to take advantage of this quiet period and get up to date on all product knowledge and brand training please click the link below to our education portal link:

Accessible anytime, anywhere, the online video portal is the perfect resource for training new team members, upskilling current team members, and inspiring your team with easy how-to videos. We’re adding new resources all the time, so be sure to check back regularly!