When a picture really is worth a thousand words

Yesterday I had the opportunity to chat with a local photographer for a few minutes at the graduation open house of my nephew. In just a few minutes of conversation, I was reminded of several reasons why it would be beneficial for any business to partner with a photographer, but especially beneficial for professional beauty industry professionals.

They can work with you on photo shoots for use in advertising, attend and photo-document customer and corporate events, photograph your work for use in marketing and press releases, provide you with photographs to help you create your own catalog, look books or marketing calendars, help you make employee I.D. badges or child I.D. cards—and more.  In return, you can be a source of cross-referrals for them by giving them marketing access to your customers and referring people to them for weddings, graduation, family and holiday pictures and other photo-worthy events.

But for those in the professional beauty business, there’s a way that you can use an inexpensive digital camera to add value for each and every customer, every day, that will also help you develop customer loyalty and stimulate referrals. You can turn a picture into ‘a thousand words’ and into profit, too!

How? I’m glad you asked!

After you’ve turned that client around so that they can see the back of their hair and they have pronounced themselves happy with your work, ask if you can take their picture. Why? You have just conditioned, cut, styled, color or otherwise transformed their hair; in theory, you’ve either given them a new look or you have at least put their hair into their favorite, familiar style. They may never look this great again—at least until their next appointment!

Take their picture and ask if you can e-mail them a copy or upload the photo to Facebook and tag them in it so that they can download it, use it as a head shot or social media profile picture, share it with family and friends, and so on. If possible, use a simple graphic design program to overlay a digital signature (your name, salon name, city/state, phone number or website over a corner of the photograph so that a signature becomes a permanent part of the photo.This holds true for those who provide manicures, pedicures, makeup, waxing and skin care, too!

Taking a picture of your work at the end of each appointment gives you some key opportunities:

• It gives you a reason to collect the customer’s e-mail address and update contact information
• It gives you a reason to follow up after every appointment by e-mail, which gives you the ability to: thank every customer, personally, for their patronage, extend a special offer, provide product knowledge, make a suggestion for their next appointment or give them date and time options for rebooking, to ask for referrals or extend a referral offer
• It gives you the ability to add value to your services by providing the customer with a lasting, visual memory of the appointment that they can use to connect with family and friends (which in turn may also lead to more referrals for you) as well as professionally, should they choose to use the picture as a headshot or for social business media.

And beyond the ways in which you can use a simple picture to cultivate great customer relationships, you can also use the photos yourself to create a digital portfolio or a look book. You can keep client photos as part of your client files in addition to your notes so that when they come back and ask for what you did ‘last time’ you have more than memory to go on. You can use the photos to develop employee skill/technique training and product knowledge education exercises. 

One picture, definitely worth a thousand words, and maybe much, much more! 

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