Boost Beauty Business Sales by Watching Local Entertainment Listings

How can local concert and performance listings increase beauty business sales? The first thing you might think of is attendees scheduling tanning, hair, nail, or makeup appointments. But, a local performance by a celebrity can be the key that unlocks an even larger treasure chest of sales for your business. Why? When their favorite artists come to your area, your clients may want to duplicate that look. 

Know Your Beauty Clients

Knowing your clients is always the first step to unlocking sales. Your clients may enjoy many forms of entertainment and many performers, but it's not likely they will be interested in every concert, show, or play that comes to your area. 

For example, you could have clients who are only interested in one type of music or a range of closely related types of music. On the other hand, you may have one group of clients who enjoy concert tours and other groups who enjoy touring broadway shows.

You may not have much chance to talk to your clients during a tanning appointment. But, when clients are having their hair, nails, or makeup done, or when they're having a massage, conversation can be part of the atmosphere.

You can simply ask whether they prefer plays, opera, dance, musical concerts, or other types of performances. Ask them about their favorite styles of music and whether they prefer dramatic plays or musicals. Find out who their favorite artists are. Ask them about the different looks those performers have had and which ones your clients preferred. 

Have a tally sheet ready in advance and, at the end of the appointment, have the person who served your client add a tally mark beside your clients' favorite types of performances. Add their favorite performers to a list along with the looks your clients preferred.

A loose leaf notebook at the appointment desk or a Google docs spreadsheet shared among you and your employees will do for keeping track. 

If you have clients who only come in for tanning appointments although you also offer other services, you can have a printed survey when they come to the appointment desk.

If you have a website that your clients visit regularly, you can add a survey there. If you're collecting your client's email addresses, you can send out a survey as part of a newsletter or a regular email campaign. You're more likely to get responses to an email survey than a printed one. 

If you're not collecting your clients emails, why aren't you? And, if you aren't staying in contact with clients through a newsletter or email campaign, why not?

​Study Your Clients' Preferences

If you and your employees aren't familiar with some of the performers that your clients enjoy, study them and their looks. Start with the artists' current looks, and then go back to see how those artists may have transformed their looks over time. Study how they currently wear their hair and what makeup, nail, and hair colors they use and what they used to create previous looks. 

Keep Track of the Musical Artists and Other Performers Appearing in Your Area

Watch the listings of the artists performing in your area. Who is starring in plays that are touring your area? Is there a comedy tour coming to a venue near you? 

​StubHub.com and similar ticket sale sites will have lists that you can search by city, venue, and date among other categories. 

Schedule Appointments and Order Supplies Accordingly

If you have clients who will want to duplicate the look of a favorite celebrity and you see that performer is coming to your area, you can prepare for an increase in appointments in two ways:

1. Leave booking times open to accommodate an increase in appointment requests
2. Order the supplies you'll need to duplicate the looks of the visiting performer

When ordering supplies, keep in mind that what looks best on a celebrity may not look best on a client who may want to duplicate the look. You may have to do some convincing, but try to persuade your client to adjust the celebity's look to one suited to their skin coloring.

Discussing an age-appropriate look may be more challenging when dealing with a young girl who wants the look of an adult star or an older client who wants a look a celebrity had at a younger age. On the one hand, you don't want to lose a client while arguing over an appropriate look, but on the other hand, how your client looks does reflect on your reputation for style and taste. 

Why Should Beauty Businesses Pay Attention to Visiting Performers?

Consider these statistics from surveys of beauty busineses done by Vagaro, a leading supplier of spa and salon software. After the end of the 2023 concert tours by Taylor Swift and Beyonce:

• 33 percent of the beauty businesses who responded to the survey reported a significant increase in scheduled appointments during these tours.
• 47 percent experienced a significant increase in requests for last-minute appointments.
•  64 percent of these appointments were scheduled within a week of the performance, and some were scheduled only a few days ahead of the show.
• 83 percent of the businesses attributed the increase in appoinments to the appearances of Swift and Beyonce in their area.
• 27 percent of the beauty businesses acquired new customers as a result of these concert-related appointments.
• The average age of women scheduling these appointments was 32.
• Clients scheduling these appointments spent an average of $104.
• Tanning and makeup appointments brought the highest earnings.

More than half of these clients scheduled their appointments online. About 20 percent were flying in from out of town or out of state to attend the Taylor Swift or Beyonce concerts. Some attended both concerts. 

How-to Attract Business from Performance Attendees

How did out-of-state clients find these beauty businesses? They searched online, read reviews, and researched the businesses until they found the one they chose for their appointment.

Beauty business without a website missed the opportunity to connect with these clients. Beauty businesses that didn't collect emails and that lacked a newsletter or a regular email campaign missed the opportunity to stay in touch with one-time visitors and turn them into long-term clients. 

Tracking the performers coming to your area isn't the only key to the treasure chest of increased sales. Here are others:

• A well-written survey reveals which performers interest your clients.
• Knowing that information lets you know which entertainment listings to note. Add these to your order and appointment calendars so you know when to leave open bookings and to order the supplies you'll need.
• A website and a newsletter or email campaign with content that targets the interests of your clients maintains your connections and builds long-term relationships, even in the case of long-distance clients who have flown in for a major performance event.

After all, if those long-distance clients found your website, scheduled an appointment, and came to your beauty business, you've developed a level of trust with them. The next time a major entertainer performs in your area, you can email an announcement to them. 

Don't forget to add a splash page to your website to catch the search traffic of other long-distance attendees who will want their hair, nails, and makeup done before the next major performance in your area. 

Need help with phrasing survey questions or writing the content for your website, newsletter, or email campaign? Visit the Home Arts Content and Copywriting contact page and send a message, or visit my portfolio pages to see samples of my work.
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