20 Best Salon Marketing Ideas: How to Market a Beauty Salon
Generally, not everyone is willing to give up their hair for just about any salon to mess with.
That is why they always lookout for the one that dishes out the best care. If you run a salon, you can get things right.
However, it’s not enough to have the best tools and place of business especially if you’re starting out.
What you want is more patronage. As such, it would help a lot to implement some marketing ideas to put your beauty salon on the map.
Here are surefire ideas to help you market your beauty salon:
1) Get the Colors out
Use up to three to five colors consistently in everything you do.
That applies to your website, emails you send out, loyalty cards, your working space, and much more.
A color palette is particularly useful for creating a strong and recognizable brand whether that’s online or offline.
Further, you’d want potential customers to associate certain colors with your salon when they see them.
Brand Awareness
Colors give out indicators. For example, one study showed that colors can increase brand awareness by 80%.
That’s not all. Another study found that about 90% of purchasing decisions are based on certain colors people come across.
As such, the colors you pick speaks to those you wish to attract.
Try to understand your salon personality, choose the right color palette, and use them consistently.
2) Simplify Your Pricing
Your pricing structure should be simple without being mediocre. If you have a menu, let your services speak for themselves.
To get things going, it’s probably wise not to offer too many options or at the same time.
That is because customers can feel overwhelmed with too much.
Simplify your menu with easy options that can lead to higher spending.
3) Offer a Family Package
Offering a family package will get you the kind of numbers you want. You’re essentially caring for a group of people so it makes sense to give them a discount.
That way, your salon is always the port of call when they need to give their hair a treat.
Families usually love using a spot for different reasons including for a uniform look and health reasons.
Build your Website to Reflect this need
A website with appointment booking capabilities should also reflect what you offer to families.
In line with that, parents can book an appointment for each of their children, then pay all at once.
Take it a step further by offering home appointments to families when you can.
4) Cultivate High-quality Relationships
Developing a long-term relationship with a client isn’t as easy as it seems. But with some work, you’ll get things right.
What you want is a situation where you build a connection that wins you a ‘lifetime’ guest who will also recommend your services.
Through such customers, you can also get reviews, and engagement on and offline.
5) Carry Business Cards
A beauty salon is a serious concern. As such, using a business card is a no-brainer. It’s very effective too.
You might be on a train or be walking on the street and have a stranger compliment your nails or looks.
A business card will suffice here right after you appreciate their kind gesture.
Chances are that they’ll love the same treatment and follow up on your invitation.
6) Offer Referral Discounts
You need all the help you can get to market your beauty salon. Referral discounts work a treat and usually leads to people trooping in.
What you can do is slash off some money when customers lead others to you.
Don’t forget to thank them for their efforts, and let them know exactly what they’d be getting for referring your salon.
7) Loyalty Programs or Punch Cards
Much like referral discounts, these are nice ways to recognize great clients.
You probably have customers who have stayed loyal to your salon for ages.
It’s time to flip the coin. Give them something to show you appreciate the time and money they spend at your place.
Here are some creative tips to help you:
- For every ten visits, you can give a discount on the eleventh.
- Consider letting them be the first to know about new products you bring in.
- Let the same rates apply to them even if prices go up a little.
8) Conduct Review Marketing on Yelp
Reviews are very helpful to a lot of businesses. Your salon doesn’t have to be left out.
They help your customers assess your service quality based on what people like them have to say.
The numbers indicate that you should pay attention to such reviews too.
That is because about 80% of consumers admit to trusting reviews as much as if they had received a review from a personal contact they trust.
Ask
If you want reviews about your beauty salon, ask for them. One way to do that is to enable the booking of appointments via your Yelp page.
This will also encourage regular Yelp users to try out your business.
Since they’re already familiar with Yelp, they are more likely to leave a review and possibly post pictures of their experiences.
Get things started with a business profile on Yelp, then go ahead to provide up-to-date information about your salon.
Include information like where your salon is located and photos of your work that people can share.
Keep up the Reminders
It’s possible to lose track of your Yelp page or expect people to simply do things on their own.
However, gentle reminders that they can “Find us on Yelp” sure helps.
Other than that, you can use flyers and stickers, or leave a Yelp link on your website.
Remember not to ask customers for reviews directly though. That’s against Yelp’s policy.
9) Partner With Other Businesses
Look around you. Chances are that there are other businesses you can partner with.
For example, you can ask hotels near your beauty salon to keep your marketing material on-hand in case a guest asks for a referral to a local stylist. Don’t stop there though.
Other businesses like restaurants and fitness centers might have bulletin boards with advertising from local businesses.
Try to work with them so that you can have a spot set aside for your advertisements.
10) Give Your Salon Interior a Makeover
Let your beauty salon ooze class all over with more concentration on the insides.
That will make it presentable and great to take photos in. It will stand out on social media and would easily attract clients.
What you want is a place that gives off the impression and reality of being pampered
A Worthy Investment
Getting some money into your business for a makeover is a worthy investment.
Firstly, you’d be pumping money into your concern.
Secondly, those changes will make an impact especially with colors that represent your brand.
Even if you don’t have enough money, you can do the little you can to liven up your place.
Apply good themes, adequate lighting, and decorations.
11) Get Your Beauty Salon Featured in the News
Press coverage is important. If you’re able to get it, wonderful!
That is because businesses who do often have to come up with something extraordinary or pay for it.
Either way, good press coverage will give you social proof to share on your website.
As such, you gain more trust and attract more clients to your salon.
To that end, the online press provides an excellent source for backlinks to your website.
Normally, news sites are considered as ‘authorities’ so having them carry a newsworthy item from your salon is a jackpot as far as marketing is concerned.
Information is Important
News sites are always on the prowl for information, and they’ll value input from experts on beauty, products, celeb hairstyles, and routines.
Respond to their calls for help or comments on such topics seeing that you have a beauty salon and know more than a few things about the industry.
12) Post Coupons Locally
There’s no better way to get your salon growing than being involved with your local community.
That is where you should post coupons locally. You can do that when you’re sure about planned local events.
Look up the schedule and place your coupons accordingly. Such coupons will drive up traffic to your beauty salon especially with events like prom nights coming up.
This way, you’d be effectively marketing to your local community.
13) Run Holiday Promotions
This marketing strategy cuts across almost all types of businesses.
During holidays, everyone wants to look their best because of the number of events coming up.
There are usually family get-togethers, special times with friends, and community events.
As such, the beauty salon is usually a very busy place. It’s best not to take anything for granted though.
If you want to be the first spot people visit for their routines, consider sending a holiday promotional email.
Do that days or weeks before the state or national holidays.
Get it Spot on
You can use an email automation tool to help you make the most of your holiday promotions.
That way, you can use key information like demographics so that your offer gets to the right people.
For example, November is a good month to send a promotional offer or coupon for a free hairdo or hair cut to individuals between the ages of 17 and 60.
People will have that in mind and prepare their families accordingly.
14) Allow Online Reservations
Online reservations are an important aspect of booming businesses.
You can have that too especially if it takes time to get to your location.
That way, customers don’t feel disappointed when they feel they should go ahead of someone else.
Further, it might be too much trouble speaking on the phone or going all the way in-person to some customers.
What an online reservation system helps you do is manage your time and that of your customers.
If you can’t set up one, you can add an email address to your contact info people could use to set up appointments.
15) Use Hashtags to Pitch Your Salons for Events
Hashtags are great even though many people would prefer alternatives. However, they’re very useful in digital marketing instances.
Since you hope to get customers online, it only makes sense to also use hashtags.
For example, you can get proactive with the photos you have of recent customer hairdo and your location.
A couple could be getting married and opt to use your salon for business. Once that’s done, you can showcase their photos (with permission of course!).
You could also search for engagements online and send direct messages to potential clients.
Research has shown that hashtags help facilitate filtering and discovery of related content.
To that extent, users searching a hashtag you’ve used can come across your account and engage thereby becoming new followers and potential customers.
16) Run a Contest in Your Beauty Salon
Running a contest in your salon and on social media sites is a great way to get clients.
You can give the individual who gets the most referrals an all-out spa day that pampers them a bit, especially if they net you more than a handful of new clients.
Of course, you don’t have to make the prize a spa day; it can be something smaller like a gift certificate that they can use during their next visit.
17) Produce Video Content
Content is king anyway you look at it. Whether that’s in the form of a video, image, or writing, it does help you get the word out.
You can use a video to market your beauty salon.
For example, you or your team could put up a video on “How to Properly Set up Mermaid Hairdo.”
It could be other things like maintaining your curls or even keeping your nails done. Whatever the case, a video will go a long way.
Make it Engaging
Recent statistics show that people will spend 100 minutes a day watching online videos in 2021.
That is why more brands are looking to utilize videos since consumers are now watching more than before.
Further, an estimated 48% of customers want videos to reflect what they are interested in.
The fact is videos are entertaining whether it’s for the right or the wrong reasons.
As such, they can form an important part of a consumer’s decision-making process.
Tips to create the best marketing video content for your beauty salon:
- It’s nice to have a posting schedule. You don’t want a gung-ho approach especially when your potential customers are offline.
- Use tutorials and demonstrations
- Tell stories
- Let your personality shine through
- Enable user-generated content
- Optimize your content for SEO
- Include a great call to action
- Evaluate your success
18) Use Facebook & Google Ads
Facebook and Google ads are two of the most popular ways to advertise your business.
Strange then, that many people try to choose only one when you can use both.
They both target specific interests who live locally thereby locating people easily.
Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users which makes it a hotbed or user’s activity.
Also, through Google Ads, billions of people are reached each day via search, email, etc.
19) Capitalize on Instagram
Instagram is loaded with a lot of content including videos. Well, after you’ve made one, you can use this platform to let the world about your salon.
Apart from looking at what celebrities do with their hair, users or Instagram want to know those near them that can attempt such audacious hairstyles.
Besides, with permission from your customers, you can share all those fabulous stuff you can do with nails, hair, and much more!
20) Hire a Salon Influencer
Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to get people to recognize and use your salon.
That’s why you should get one. Use a well-known figure to generate awareness about your services and offers.
Usually, it does a world of good when the right influencer posts a picture of transformational hair color or hairdo from your beauty salon.
Working with Influencers
With salon influencers, you often have to pay because they know their worth.
However, if you don’t have much, you can agree with them.
Also, you needn’t go too high. You can use micro-influencers that live in the area your business is located in.
Make sure you give them enough details to help you get the relevant traffic and conversion.
It sure helps if you run your blog so that they can add your links to relevant posts.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that all these marketing efforts lead clients to your business.
Other than that, you should do your best to ensure they’re satisfied with quality treatment and services.
Let your customers have a super special feeling anytime they waltz through the doors of your beauty salon.
What’s more, you can use what you feel is the most potent or a combination of several marketing steps here.
