If you own a salon, then you need to be aware that there are a million of you doing the same business. Success as a salon owner requires you to stand out from the crowd. Whether you offer barbing services, mani-pedi, nail care, or mobile salon service, the best hair salon promotion ideas can help you boost booking. And in this post, I will show you how to attract more new clients and grow your salon business with these salon promotion ideas.

The salon business is a profitable venture that comes with a lot of thrills and experience. It takes a lot of time, effort, and risk to establish and grow this sort of business. This is because before people can trust you with their hair, nails, and overall look, they need to first be convinced that you have the skills and expertise to care for them. Successful salons use small business promotion ideas to grow their customer base and stay ahead of the competition.

What makes a good promotion?

Before listing the best social media promotion ideas for your salon business, it is important to highlight what makes a good promotion, so you don’t end up wasting your marketing effort. Successfully selling products or services require a unique ability to entice customers or clients. And this can be done via promotions. Promotion is crucial to creating a sense of urgency in the minds of consumers. Ultimately, good promotion aims to influence a buyer’s purchasing decision. In this section, I will show you what makes a good promotion.

1. Setting a goal: What do you want to achieve with your promotion? Do you want to sell off old stocks? Do you want to attract new clients? Do you want to increase your revenue? Answering these questions will help you build a successful promotional campaign that will keep your business on track.
2. Great deals: A good promotion should look appealing and irresistible to your clients. They should see the deal or discount and feel they are gaining more than you are.
3. Timeliness and consistency:Effective promotions are timely. Successful salon businesses offer promotions at certain periods in a year. But, when it comes to promotions for new clients, it should be consistent and not time bound
4. Clear client target:A good promotion prioritizes its target audience. Instead of wasting time trying to reach every Dick and Tom, effective promotion is streamlined to reach mainly those who stand to benefit from them.
5. Consistent overall brand story: The promotional materials need to be consistent with your salon branding. Everything must be consistent with your brand story from flyers to social media posts, imagery to colors, messaging to business cards.
6. Financial responsibility: Just because your salon is offering a promotion doesn’t mean you should lose or break the bank. Promotion requires strategy; no matter what percentage discount you are offering, it should not be at your own lose.
7. Choosing the right promotional strategy: Once your goal is outlined, you will need to map out an effectivebusiness promotion ideas strategy that will reach your target clients and convert them into buyers. I have listed eight hair salon promotion ideas to boost booking in the last section of this ar Keep reading!

What are your goals for promotions?

Now that you know what makes a good promotion, what are your goals for promotions? Promotion goes beyond attracting new clients and retaining existing ones. It also encompasses the following:

• Boost product sales
• Increase your salon’s presence
• Promote new products
• Activate dormant clients
• Improve customer satisfaction
• Improve brand visibility
• Build your clientele
• Retain existing and loyal customers
• Make your brand stand out from the competition
• Market a new service or new equipment
• Improve referrals

Understanding your goals is crucial to developing effective salon holiday promotion ideas. This way, you can identify your target clients, reach them, and build a successful salon brand.

Marketing tools to boost promotions

Before we dive into the different salon event promotion ideas, let’s talk about the marketing tools and initiatives that can help to make your promotion more effective.

1. Use salon software to book appointments and reservations

Salon software is highly beneficial for booking appointments and making reservations. People fancy making an appointment at home than waiting in a long queue before getting what they want. There are different kinds of salon software out there; look for the one that best suit your business and budget.

2. Yelp

As a salon business owner, leveraging Yelp is a sure way to boost booking. What is Yelp? Yelp is a social review platform where businesses upload photos, address and respond to customer reviews. Salon businesses often offer a discount (e.g. 10% off) to clients who check in at their studio for a session.

3. Social media

Any business owner without one or more social media accounts will miss a great deal of opportunity. The world is going global, and so should your business. The likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are indispensable tools for promotion.

Grow an audience with Facebook: Known as the social media platform with the largest audience, Facebook offers numerous opportunities for hair stylists. As a salon business owner, you can leverage Facebook to:

• showcase your work
• share all your reviews/testimonials
• target audiences with upcoming birthdays and offer them personalized messages or discounts
• build a fan base

Enjoy all of these features (and more) for FREE.

Sell your specials fast on Instagram: Your audience is most likely previewing short videos on Instagram as you read this post. Instagram is flooded with short but informational videos that can make viewers stay glued to their screens. Most people go to Instagram for inspiration on the next haircut or nail polish to use. If you can record your clients and upload beauty tutorial videos on Instagram, you will attract new clients to your salon. Take advantage of Instagram Stories and hashtags to take your salon to the next level.  

Offer flash sales on Twitter: Twitter is the go-to app to promote reach out to your target audience. Simply send out a tweet, “$15 haircut for the first two people willing to drop by our salon within 6 hours. “

4. Offer referral discounts

Once people like your service, they will not hesitate to recommend their friends, family members, and loved ones. Good promotion would give a little bonus to clients who refer others. It could be as low as $10 off their next visit or a thank you note.

5. Go local – take advantage of your community

I’m sure you are passionate about your salon business, so writing your unique story and outlining your schedule for the year shouldn’t be a problem. The thing is local papers love local stories. Once you discover a beauty-related topic that is relevant to your community, you can reach out to local papers and magazines to have them write about your brand. Great salons do this, so you too can adopt this PR opportunity.

8 hair salon promotion ideas that boost bookings

Owning a salon is a great achievement, but becoming a creative marketer can increase your revenue. I’ve pulled together a list of eight proven salon promotional ideas that will profit your salon business.

1. Make your salon visible on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP)

Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex offer search engine functionalities, but Google is the most used search engine. Any business that wants to appear visible on search engines must set up Google Business Profile. When people type “salon near me” on Google, your business will show up among salon businesses in your area. However, getting your business registered with Google Business Profile is just the beginning. There are other search engine promotional ideas you can use to make your salon website rank at the top. They include:

• Search engine optimization
• Keyword research
• Backlinks
• Quality of your content

Ranking your salon on search engines can take time to achieve. Most salon business owners hire a search engine optimization specialist for this task. If done right, you’ll have new clients discovering your hair salon without you even thinking about it. Awesome!

2. Hire a salon Influencer

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective social media promotion ideas that is gaining popularity by the day. It is replacing traditional methods of advertising rapidly. No wonder big brands are hiring influencers to help promote their businesses. An Influencer is one who has a large following on social media and can convince them to buy a product or service they promote. By posting a picture or video of transformational hair color on their social media account, they can drive traffic to your salon. The drawback of beauty Influencers is that they can be expensive to hire those with high social media followings. But for a salon business, sourcing the best local micro influencers (people who live in the area and have 3,000-30,000 engaged followers) is a pocket-friendly alternative.

NB: Before hiring a beauty influencer, make sure you verify the number of active followers, user engagement, and post frequency.

3. Client loyalty programs or punch cards

Looking for real estate promotional ideas that work for nail salons? You can try rewarding your loyal clients. Customer loyalty is highly important to any business, but salons can easily take advantage of it. Like referral discounts, it is important to reward your loyal clients to keep them coming back. This can be achieved by having a loyalty card your clients can get punched or stamped each time they visit. The rewards for loyal clients can range from free products or services to a discount off products or services.

4. Email marketing

Email marketing is a simple yet powerful marketing tactic that can help you stay in touch with clients. You can reach out to your clients via email to schedule appointments, announce new products or services, newsletter updates, discount reminders, and remarketing lists on Facebook. While email marketing is by far the surest way to keep in touch with existing clients, it is more valuable to capture new leads (people who are not yet your clients. By setting up a successful email campaign on Facebook, you can attract new clients. Email marketing requires using an email service provider. You must have heard of MailChip, Aweber, Constant Contact, etc. These services offer numerous features (including synchronization with Facebook) that anyone can use to capture new leads without any foreknowledge.  

5. Leverage SMS marketing

If email marketing is an effective salon promotion idea, SMS marketing is more effective. Here is why. According to Gartner, SMS messages have an open rate of 98% compared to 20% for email marketing. This is because SMS can be accessed without the internet. If you know this fact, then you should leverage SMS. Successful salon businesses use SMS marketing to keep their clients abreast of urgent happenings in their studios. SMS marketing becomes easier when you use tools like Square Assistant to schedule SMS automatically.

NB: SMS marketing may be a powerful salon marketing idea, but it should not be abused. Only use SMS to send urgent messages that you want your clients to see. Don’t spam them; else, you’ll end up losing them.

6. Host events

Hosting events is one of the most unique salon holiday promotion ideas on this list. Have you recently opened your salon and want new prospects to know? Then, hosting a grand opening ceremony can attract a lot of clients to your salon. Upgrading your equipment can also be a great opportunity to inform existing clients and draw new ones in. Start planning your next event now.

7. Seasonal event promotions

Generally, clients look forward to the next seasonal promotion to spend their money. Leveraging seasonal promotions is a strategy that can drive sales to your spa – every client appreciates a seasonal discount or promotion. This is because seasonal events increase the relevance of salon promotions. They are also easy to plan for especially when you highlight different service offers throughout the year. Below is a list of seasonal events you want to plan for:

1. Easter Weekend:You may promote your hair styling or make-up services in time for the Easter festival.
2. Valentine’s Day: Use this season to promote a nice array of salon products. You can offer discounts for hair dos 2-days before Val.
3. Father’s Day: Father’s Day is a good time to promote and offer discounts on hair styles for men.
4. Mother’s Day: This is a good time to promote you retail store.
5. Halloween:There are smarter ways to promote your spa besides decorating with pumpkins and all. For example, engage your community by hosting a marathon event – the winners will get free feet massage at your spa.
6. Black Friday & Cyber Monday: Use this period for clearance sales. Sell out stock at discounts to get old items off your shelf. Also, remember to contact a reputable supplier to restock these items.
7. Christmas & New Year: November, December, and January are good months to express services ahead of the festive season. It is also a good place to run gift set promotions.

8. Create a salon tour video for your salon’s social media and website

Posting tutorial videos and writing blog posts about makeovers can help boost booking. It keeps your audience updated with new trends, something they will depict to be valuable. This will foster trust and make relationship building easier. And, you know that trust is essential for a salon to be successful. When people see real value in what you offer without requesting a dime, they tend to do business with you. Start by writing a simple blog post, “How to Use a Make-up Liner Like a Pro”, on your website. As time goes on, you can introduce video tutorials to increase engagement. A video that shows you, your staff, your equipment, and your salon is an indispensable tool for any spa. Creating a video doesn’t have to be expensive; with your iPhone 13 or Samsung Galaxy S22, you can create authentic videos that will stun your audience. Or, simply hire a video creator, i.e. if you have a budget. After creating and editing the video (using Canva, Photoshop, or any other video editing tool), simply upload it to YouTube and link your salon’s website to the description. Boom! Get ready for wonders; the conversion rates of your website will increase.  

9. Use quality salon equipment and furniture

While the above-mentioned hair salon promotion ideas can help attract new clients, using the best salon equipment and furniture will help retain existing clients. Nobody wants their hair or nails or body to be handled with sub-standard combs, nail trimmers, and hair dryers. Nobody wants to feel discomfort while being tended to. Ideally, every salon owner should use quality salon equipment when attending to clients. The importance of using quality salon trolleys, comfortable salon chairs, and equipment cannot be stressed enough. This is why salon owners should source salon equipment and furniture from a reputable supplier like OmySalon.

OmySalon is a globally-recognized salon equipment service brand that is committed to providing quality and durable furniture and equipment for barber, spa, mani-pedi, massage, and skin-care businesses at reasonable prices. Visit OmySalon.com for more information.

WRAPPING UP

Now you know the secret to attracting new clients and retaining existing clients. Before you put any of these salon promotion ideas into practice, make sure you get ready to put in the work. Success doesn’t just come overnight. It requires a great deal of effort, commitment, and dedication. If you can fulfill these demands, only then can these salon holiday promotion ideas be helpful.