The beauty and wellness industry has grown exponentially. In US alone, the industry is now valued at USD 49 billion and is expected to grow at a healthy rate of 16% annually. While this is great news for the industry, it also means that for salon owners managing a beauty salon is becoming increasingly challenging. Therefore, in order to keep the business running they have to constantly think out of the box and come up with new and innovative marketing ideas. In this blog, we talk about the top 5 marketing tips that will not only give your salon visibility but also help you build your brand.
Creative Salon Promotion Plans
Let’s be honest. People love to win freebies, and one of the great way of promoting your salon business is to occasionally hold contests to help people win easily and then reward them for winning. Go as creative as possible with your contests. For instance, offer a free haircut for the client who gives most referrals or hold a special lucky draw for the loyal clients. Bear in mind is that better the reward, the higher is the engagement with the clients. An alternative way of promoting your salon could also be to offer a last minute deal. If on a certain, you have an open slot and a client walks in for a last minute cut you may consider offering them a small discount.
Engage in Story Telling
Trust us on this. One of the great ways to grab attention is to change the course of narrative and add a story to your product. It instantly, hits a cord in the heart and the mind. In today’s times, when more and more people would rather watch than read, visual storytelling is the way to go. Short videos explaining the procedure or showing snippets of the treatment go a long way in eliminating anxiety about new treatments and build confidence. An alternative way of visual story telling is to have your own You Tube channel. You can consider posting videos of your clients talk about their experiences at your salon, or a step by step guide for a particular hairstyle or treatment. True that creating video can be a laborious task, but let’s not forget that YouTube does have a big reach.
Manage your Online Reviews
Up to 90% of clients have confessed to having looked up online reviews before choosing to patronize a new business. As a result, it is important that you not only have online reviews but also positive ones. If your clients are happy with your service, go all out to encourage them to post online reviews. One of the ways to nudge them to leave a review is to automate the process. The salon management software can greatly help you in the process of collecting customer feedback. No sooner is the check-out processed the salon business management software prompts the clients to leave feedback. Salon management software can also help you regulate the reviews online. By keeping a track of all the reviews, the software automatically prompts you to respond to them.
Deploy Digital Marketing
Think blogging, emailing newsletters, and leveraging social media. Digital marketing tools are a great way to attract new clients. Blogging is a great way to reach out the world. Look around, and you’ll find that many renowned stylist are either blogging or write bi-weekly columns for style magazines. An alternative to blogging is sharing non sales newsletters over emails with your clients, wherein you can talk about new trends in treatments, or how to keep the blonde hair between visits etc. A non-sales newsletter goes a long way in assuring your clients that you care for them and provides them with the just right amount of nudge to make their next booking. If you’re daunted at the prospect of having to send hundreds of emails, you can easily leverage technology aka your salon business management software to help you in the task.
Not a writer? Don’t worry, consider engaging in social media. Share the achievements of your team on your business’s social media pages i.e. Facebook and Instagram. Video format usually works best. Viewers get attracted when they see smiling faces, and friendly businesses.
Exhibit at Charity Events
Rarely implemented, but a great organic way of acquiring new clients is to exhibit your and your team’s skills at charity or social events. Aside from increasing your brand visibility and showcasing you and your team’s talent, it also projects that your salon business management style is not only about profits but also about giving back to the community. By offering pro-bono services such as eyebrow shaping or a haircut at charity events, you can definitely expect to create a lot of chatter about your brand and gather potential new clients.
Run a Loyalty Program
Acquiring new clients costs ten times the cost of retaining existing clients. While this is not to discourage you from acquiring new clients, it is merely to state that one shouldn’t lose sight of existing clients. One of the ways to retain clients is run a robust loyalty program, whereby your clients know that you deeply value their association with your business. While minute details of loyalty programs are out of the context here, we encourage you to read our post on “How Loyalty Programs Can Help Increase Client Base for Your Salon Business”
Aside from the above, there are multiple other ways such as choosing to deploy paid ads on Facebook, optimizing your local SEO, listing your business on Google etc. Industry today, is leveraging technology in multiple ways to help improve marketing. Some of the salon business management software such as Zenoti, BePos, Wellyx, MioSalon have a full-fledged marketing module to help your business grow. We particularly love Zenoti as it mixes advanced data analytics to help you improve your marketing.