There are many talented barbers, hairdressers, and nail technicians who are skilful at what they do. When they make hair or handle your nails, you will not want to leave their salon. But, the unfortunate thing is they struggle to get more sales. It is one thing to be skilful and talented; it is another thing to turn your business into a profitable venture. At this point, I’d love to iterate that marketing isn’t meant for affiliate marketers, or any b2b company, it is for everybody. Without the right marketing strategies put in place, your salon business will crumble even if you provide the best service in your vicinity. The idea is to create a memorable experience for your clients while also making money. In this guide, I will highlight thirty proven marketing ideas that you can implement to start attracting more new clients and grow your beauty & salon business.
Beauty & salon marketing strategies:
Let’s take a look at 30 effective salon marketing ideas that can help you secure more clients.
1. Enable online salon appointment booking
Booking salon appointments is an effective salon marketing strategy that every hairdresser should employ. A statistic shows that 35% of salon customers prefer to book their appointments online. With this in place, your salon will save the cost needed to run administrative appointments manually. All you need is good salon software that can help you manage appointments. Introducing online booking into your salon business is a powerful way of growing your business. Make sure you place the online booking feature on visible areas of your website and social channels.
2. Email marketing strategy and salon newsletter
Email marketing will help your clients keep abreast with what is happening around your saloon. Sending new and existing clients’ emails can be a great avenue for promoting your business and building a relationship with your clients. Make sure you add a bit of a personal touch to your emails so your clients are sure they aren’t talking to a robot.
3. Set up your salon on social media
Once you have your salon up and running, setting up social media channels for your business should follow. And you can try the social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc. are popular platforms to create an online presence for your business. Social media for business works differently; you will require salon marketing strategies that will work for your salon business to help you attract a new audience. A good practice is to first offer informative content about your niche before sharing your promotions on social media.
4. Ensure salon branding
Branding is a means of communicating your salon business to your customers. Branding encompasses a lot of things including your salon logo, colour, marketing strategy, and so on. Branding your salon business will make people understand your uniqueness and the value you provide.
5. Run Facebook ads
Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, boasting around 2.9 billion monthly active users. A statistic reveals that 20% of all Facebook users have made a purchase based on the ads they saw on their feed. You can consider running Facebook ads for your salon business as a means to boost traffic and sales.
6. Run Google ads
While Facebook is the largest social media platform, Google is the most widely-used search engine. Using Google ads for your salon store will help you find a targeted audience and strategic partners to extend your business scale with ease.
7. Partner with the salon influencer
Influencer marketing is gaining popularity in recent years. That is because this form of marketing is effective. Influencer marketing involves paying a popular personality in your niche to promote your product, service, or brand. As a salon business owner, look for the best beauty influencers to help you generate awareness of your service on their social media channels. Your budget will determine the type of influencer you will hire. Irrespective of your budget, your least target should have 3,000-30,000 engaged followers. You can either pay them or give an incentive to promote your salon.
8. Combine leveraging seasonal events
Leveraging seasonal events will help you get the best result from your marketing endeavour. It is common knowledge that salons get the most traffic during seasonal events. People want to look good for the next event. As a savvy entrepreneur, you want to promote your business the most during seasonal events, including:
- Black Friday & Cyber Monday
- Halloween
- Christmas
- Father’s Day
- Mother’s Day
- Valentine’s Day
- Easter Weekend
You can add a contest to get better results. For instance, you could organize a dance competition a day before the main day. Some people use discounts but I only recommend that for professionals.
9. Offer add-on “express” services
Add-on services are additional services that your salon will offer already booked clients. This strategy requires little or no additional time as you’ll be providing the services during already booked appointments. Offering add-on services can immediately increase your profit. Let’s say you run a hair & beauty salon, some ideas for add-on services are:
- Hair-care treatment
- Anti-aging hand mask
- Volumizing hair treatment for a thicker-looking hair
- Nail art add-on
- Nose wax service
- Hair colour glossing service
- Scalp peeling treatment
10. Create a client loyalty program
Once you have clients who like and trust your service, you can offer loyalty cards to give them the extra service, discounts, or free samples as the encouragement for coming, such as the simple loyalty program could give your client a free cut after five paid cuts. The loyalty program will improve the relationship between you and your clients, and increase the reacquisition possibility.
11. Introduce the “recommend-a-friend” scheme
When a client likes your service, they will willingly recommend your salon to their friends, neighbors, colleagues, and loved ones. While this is a sure way to build loyal clients, you want to be intentional about it. The recommend-a-friend scheme is a strategy that involves incentivizing your existing clients for recommending their friends.
12. Send product samples
Product sampling involves giving your clients your product sample to try. The idea is to allow them to buy from you after testing the product. Make sure you implement this method only when your customer has agreed to buy from you; else, they may not buy after sampling it.
13. Re-book salon clients during the visit
This is a simple yet effective salon marketing plan. It works by asking your client when they wish to schedule their next appointment. Booking your clients immediately after offering a service will improve their visit frequency and commitment level. They are unlikely to visit your competitor after booking an appointment with you. Your job is to remember to follow up and send reminder messages so they will not forget their appointment.
14. Salon tour video for your salon’s social media and website
Videos are a great tool for marketing. Studies show that videos have the highest engagement rate among other marketing avenues. As such, investing in videos can be a salon marketing idea to boost sales. By investing, I don’t mean for you to buy expensive cameras. A good smartphone can do the trick if you know how to edit photos very well. Take a salon tour video displaying your office, equipment, and how you offer salon services. After which, you can upload this video on social media for people to see what stuff you are made of. Include tags and share your location to attract local clients to your salon.
15. Operate your TikTok account
In 2021, the TikTok app was rated the most downloaded video app in the world. That should inform you of TikTok’s popularity. TikTok is an online platform for sharing short videos. Create a TikTok account as a means to increase your audience base. Engage your audience by uploading short videos on daily activities within your salon. Be consistent at what you do and see your salon boom in a few months.
16. Salon SMS campaign
Do you want your hair market salon & store to boom this year? Leverage SMS! According to Gartner, SMS messages have the highest open rate (98%), not even email marketing or social media boast this feat. SMS is a fast way of getting users’ attention; you cannot unsubscribe from SMS. However, the idea is not to constantly bore your users with SMSes, your salon should apply SMS marketing in special circumstances. Start by researching for SMS software or tools in your country that can send automated messages. You are sure to improve your salon’s customer service.
17. Instagram stories
By now you must have created an Instagram business account for your salon. This alone won’t guarantee a sales influx; you need to take advantage of Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a great place to run short-term salon promotions for free. Before using Instagram stories, ensure that you have attached your salon’s website link with Instagram. This way, Instagram users will be redirected to your website to check out your service.
18. Run your salon’s website
All these tips & tricks will be useless without owning a website for your salon business. A website is a platform that showcases what you do in your traditional store on the internet. Your salon website ought to be alluring, fast loading, updated, and responsive for mobile & laptop users. Since you are in the beauty industry, it makes sense to leave a great first impression on visitors and potential clients. If you cannot write codes or use website builders, you can hire a professional to design a stunning website for your salon business. People will not just be attracted to your salon but they will trust your business.
19. Carry business cards
While other forms of marketing are carried out via the internet, using business cards is strictly offline. A business card is a traditional marketing strategy that is still effective. Create a stunning business card with your company name, address, telephone number, email, and website on it. This allows you to share with people around you and land new clients.
20. Use the most relevant hashtag on Instagram
In addition to posting on Instagram and using Instagram stories, implementing hashtags on Instagram can be a game-changer. Hashtags are popular search terms that people use to search for posts, products, or services on social media. It is like “keywords” in websites. Using relevant hashtags will distinguish your salon from the rest of the world. Millions of people are searching for different services daily, but you don’t need to reach out to the entire world. With the right hashtags, you can focus on potential new clients who are interested in what your business offers. Hashtags take the form #MichiganSalon, #SalonInMichigan, and so on. A good practice would be to add a long list of salon hashtags, containing your brand, city, and services.
21. Ask clients to leave reviews
Client review is crucial to getting more clients. Around 65% of shoppers consider reviews before making a decision. If you want your hair market salon & store business to flourish, you will make sure to accumulate client reviews. If you offer professional services, be confident to ask your clients to leave a review. Tell them to be transparent and not fake any review. A 5-star review would be a booster for your business while a low rating will motivate you to do more. The more positive reviews you get, the more clients you will most likely attract.
22. Get your spa or salon listed on online directories
Online directories are people’s guidelines when searching for a business. If you want to get new clients, your salon needs to appear on popular online directories like Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook.
23. Use retargeting ads
This is an online marketing beauty salon that will increase your conversion rate. Not every visitor ends up patronizing your business, but with Facebook retargeting ads, you can redirect them back to patronize your business.
24. Host parties at your salon
Hosting parties can be a great way to get the word out to your neighborhood. You can as well consider doing something for charity occasionally. This is a great opportunity to raise your salon's brand awareness in the community. And show that you are interested in public service or other things that will enhance the goodwill of clients during the operation.
25. Run a contest in your salon
Running a contest in your salon on social media sites can get you a handful of new clients. People love freebies, so running a contest will give you ample opportunity to advertise your salon.
26. Capitalize on holidays & special events
People want to feel valued during holidays. One of the ways to make your customers feel as such is to give them discounts on holiday or create a special event for them during the holiday. Since you run a salon business, you can offer a little extra service (e.g. get a free cut after washing) to loyal customers during Father’s Day or Halloween, etc.
27. Always promote gift certificates
In addition to offering discounts during the holiday, promoting gift certificates can be a great way to attract new clients. It is as easy as offering a free $5 gift card for every $55 gift certificate purchase. Clients are most likely returning with someone else on their next visit.
28. Offer referral discounts
You can also work with local businesses to give each other referrals. In other words, if the dental office next door has a customer that is looking for salon services, they can let the individual know that if they use your salon, you will give them a small discount.
29. Add service pages and keywords to your salon’s website
The benefit of driving organic traffic is enormous but you need to initiate it. How? Through keywords. Since you own a website, adding a service page that describes the services you offer would be a great idea. It informs potential clients about what your business offers without stressing to place a call to get the details. Another important step to take on your salon’s website would be to run a blog. This is where you will post articles related to your business. Ensure to include rich keywords in your articles to increase the chances of visitors finding your salon via Google and other search engines. The interesting part about optimizing your salon website is that it is completely FREE.
30. Build your salon business plan
I’m sure you are excited to have a list of salon marketing ideas that can help you boost your sales. But that’s not all. Building a business strategy that would be right for your salon is crucial. You don’t want to invest time and money and not get anything to show for it, do you? No. I recommend you create a salon marketing plan that covers your business vision, mission, goals, budget, sales strategies, SWAT analysis, and everything needed to keep your business growing. This way, you can monitor activities and track successes or failures.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these thirty salon marketing strategies will help your salon attract more clients and eventually increase sales. We recommend that you choose the salon strategy that works for you; this doesn’t take too much time. You are probably applying some of these salon marketing ideas but it’s not just working. Simply, read through to see where and what you are missing. Remember, no matter how beautiful your salon is, you will never get enough clients to make you succeed if you fail to market or advertise.
