It's easy to crawl slowly out of winter and into the month of March with a sense of lethargy, but we can’t let that carry over into our work lives (or New Year’s Resolutions). Spring should be a season that spurs promise, growth and opportunity, and in the spirit of that, we bring you Money-Making March: a time to create momentum and harness it to drive sales, revenue, and overall business success.
This guide, powered by six of Vagaro’s premium features, will help you run effective promotions and marketing campaigns that help lead to overhauled profits this month. So, without further ado, let’s dive in.
1. Gift Card Sales Help Your Profits
American consumers purchase billions of dollars in gift cards every year, and they are often the most requested gifts1.
So, we suggest taking advantage of that this month (and, really, every month). Ordering gift cards through Vagaro is easy, and each gift card comes branded with your business’s logo and colors, making it your easy answer to a pocket-sized advertisement.
We also want to point out another often-overlooked gift card fact that every business should be aware of:
Many customers forget to redeem them.
Yes. Up to 46% of them, in fact, forget to ever cash in on their gift cards, according to certain data2. That’s nearly half! Americans, collectively, walk around with over $20 billion in unused gift cards in their wallets & pockets3. Maybe they bring us luck, or something? Anyway, that’s a lot of money for you in unused gift card breakage. Breakage income, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, is the amount of money from gift cards that a business estimates will never be redeemed. In other words, free money, which is the best kind. Who leaves free money on the table? Certainly not you.
2. Stock Your Online Store (E-commerce)
People love the convenience of online shopping, and e-commerce sales are only going to grow, worldwide4. Perhaps the biggest benefit of e-commerce is that you can sell while you sleep. That’s making every hour of Money-Making March count. With the Online Shopping Cart feature enabled, Vagaro’s Online Store lets you sell just about anything:
- Products
- Services
- Classes
- Packages
- Memberships
- Gift Cards
- Seasonal Bundles
That’s a pretty extensive list and stuffing your store with everything may overwhelm or confuse customers. Our advice is to lead with your bestsellers. You can easily figure out which products and services sell the most by running corresponding Sales Reports in Vagaro.
Always include high-quality images in your online store. Vagaro has a subtle but powerful feature that lets you remove the original background of these images for one that is more professional, giving your store the uniform look and feel of a major online retailer.
Additionally, use detailed product descriptions that are SEO-optimized—meaning they include phrasing that people will use to search for these products online, increasing the likelihood that your store pops up in local search results. If you have the search engine optimization chops, great! If not, Vagaro AI can handle that for you right from inside the app.
Of course, don't forget to...
Actually, just check out these 5 best practices for stocking your online store.
3. Daily Deals
Daily Deals are flash sales that drive revenue, help you expand your client base and convert new customers into loyal ones. They are also an effective way to move slow-selling products from your inventory, launch new services at a discount to get people interested, and—perhaps most importantly—generate significant profit in a short amount of time.
Vagaro’s Daily Deal generator is incredibly easy to use and enables you to deploy branded, eye-catching deals with next to no instructions required.
We simply suggest that when making your Daily Deal, you remember to:
- State clearly what your deal is offering
- Add a little personality to your description
- Check for spelling & grammar mistakes
- End the discount amounts with the numbers 0 or 5 (15% instead of 16%)
- Avoid abbreviations (ex. “4 U") or filler characters, like a string of asterisks
- Don't include the link to your booking page, as it is already linked in the Daily Deal
There’s a bit of an art to all this wheeling & Daily Dealing, so if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, setting pricing or anything else, check out these 6 tips for the perfect Daily Deal promotion. This easy-to-follow guide covers how to ideate and structure a deal, pricing and promotion strategies, and everything else you need to know.
Additionally, since Daily Deals are connected to your Reports dashboard, remember to use analytics to measure the performance of each deal. It’s a way to ensure profitability by figuring out where/how your deal may have gone flat, or how to make a particularly successful one even more lucrative for you next time.
4. Get Featured (On the Vagaro Marketplace)
You finished setting up your business on the Vagaro Marketplace, right? There are many benefits to having a Vagaro Marketplace listing, from heightened visibility and an additional client booking point to Daily Deals, which we just covered. An important one to take advantage of, especially for businesses trying to maximize revenue in a shorter timespan (a specific month, let’s say...), is the Get Featured option.
For $10/mo., getting featured lets your business jump the line, so to speak, on the Marketplace and in the Vagaro app. In other words, you will be one of the first businesses that customers see when they search for businesses and services in your area.
If you’re a Vagaro user who has never utilized this handy hack, simply enable the Get Featured setting:
- On a phone: At the bottom of the screen, More → Settings, and then under the Marketing heading, select Get Featured.
- On a tablet or Pay Desk: At the bottom of the screen, select Settings, and then under the Marketing heading, select Get Featured.
- On the Web: At the top of the screen, select Settings, and then under the Marketing heading on the left side of the screen, select Get Featured.
- Then, select Try it Free. This feature is free for the first 30 days, after which a monthly fee is required.
From there, it’s easy to submit a Get Featured request, which can be approved within a day. Of course, requests can also be denied just as quickly if certain simple guidelines aren’t followed. If you’re new to Get Featured (or if it’s been a while), simply follow these best practices, and your business will be ahead of the pack in no time.
5. Text Marketing Promos
It’s no secret that people spend a lot of time on their phones, and that text messages see very high open rates5, making text promos particularly effective revenue drivers. Periodic text marketing promos are also great for client retention and for reeling in the clients you haven’t seen in a while.
Try to tie seasonality, holidays or special events into your promos and special discounts. It’s true that, outside of St. Patrick’s Day (Spa Hangover Promo, anyone?) and the onset of Spring (“Spring Into [fill-in-the-blank]!”), March can be a tough month for promo themes. However, that doesn’t rule out common, tried-and-true moneymakers like refer-a-friend, or birthday promos. Vagaro’s automated text marketing software enables you to segment your campaigns by client, ensuring that all those March birthdays receive a special promo text personalized with their name at the very top. Punctuality and personalization are keystones of a great business/client relationship. So, make use of this feature.
Oh, and those Daily Deals we covered? You can, and should, text them to clients. Make sure your text messages are brief, with a link to your website, booking page, or Daily Deal. We don’t advocate haphazardly bombarding every client on your list with texts at any time of day. Refer to these 10 text marketing best practices before you kick off your next campaign.
6. Run A Commission Competition
A little competitiveness is nothing new to this month, is it? So, dust off that poster board, break out the markers and get your employees ready for some March (Commission) Madness! An in-house competition centered on commission is a fun and effective way to stoke productivity and revenue by incentivizing staff to earn more of what they’re already working hard for: commission.
Running such a competition first requires software with employee payroll and commission features, which, as it happens, Vagaro offers. You’ll also need to establish a commission structure. Will you count commission based on product sales as well as services? With Vagaro, you can do both, in addition to classes, if those apply to your business.
Once this is squared away, remember to:
Monitor Performance: Implement systems to track and monitor employees’ performance throughout the competition. This could involve regular check-ins, progress reports, or real-time dashboards. Real-time updates of employee commission can be accessed in Vagaro’s Reports.
Communicate Progress & Results: Keep all participants informed about their progress and the overall standings of the competition. Regularly communicate updates, leaderboard rankings, and any changes to the competition rules or incentives.
Offer A Good Reward: What you choose to reward the commission champ is up to you, though it should be something worthwhile, like a nice cash bonus or gift card. Motivation is key.
Will Money-Making March be a one-off for getting your business out of a slump, or will it become a yearly event that sets the pace for you and your staff? The truth is, no matter what time of year it is, sparking productivity and revenue at your business doesn’t take an entrepreneurial genius, just some planning, a little creativity and all the right tools at your disposal. Vagaro can help with that. Start your FREE 30-day trial and experience how you can turn every month into a major money maker!
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