One of the most common challenges beauty salon owners have with marketing their businesses usually stem from the fact that they don’t have a marketing plan for a beauty salon in place. As a result, they is no methodical way to market their business that will provide them with a consistent supply of leads for their business.
They may have heard of a marketing plan before, but it’s often dismissed as being too hard and or time-consuming to go through and they understandably take the route of least resistance of doing what they already know or copying what they see their competitors doing.
They revert to using individual tactics such as posting on social media, in the hope that will suffice, but it’s not enough. If you want to dominate your market and have a strong brand that continues to grow and become the premier salon in your area then you need to develop a strategy that gives you a marketing road map for your salon.
In this article, we’ll do a deep dive into what you need to consider in your marketing plan and how to avoid two of the biggest mistakes most salon owners make which puts them at immediate risk of failure.
The Importance of A Marketing Plan.
As a business owner, you know the importance of marketing your business. But it can be tough to come up with fresh ideas, especially when you’re struggling to keep up with all of the other demands on your time.
Creating a marketing roadmap can help you focus your efforts and make the most of your time and resources and perhaps most importantly, monitor what is working and what is not.
A marketing plan spells out all of your marketing goals and objectives, as well as the strategies you’ll use to achieve them. It should also include a budget and timeline for each activity, as well as who will be responsible for carrying it out.
What is a Salon Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is a document that outlines your marketing goals and strategies for achieving them. It should include specifics about how you plan to reach your target audience, what tactics you’ll use, and how you’ll measure your success.
When creating a marketing plan for your beauty salon, it’s important to consider all of the different ways you can reach your marketing and achieve your business goals. There are a number of factors to take into account, including your target market, your budget, and your goals for the salon.
One of the most common mistakes is that salon owners simply don’t do this step and make it up on the fly, but this is a guaranteed way to fail as you’re not likely hitting all the potential areas that could bring success.
Plus you’ll end up doing the same thing as your competitors without actually thinking about whether it’s good, bad or even effective for your business.
A Guide to Marketing Your Salon
This guide is packed with information on how to create a winning marketing plan for your beauty salon. It covers everything from pricing and promotional offers to social media and email marketing.
Creating a Winning Marketing Plan
Before we get into the details of creating a marketing plan, let’s take a moment to discuss why marketing is so important for beauty salon owners. The fact is, if you don’t market your salon, you’ll quickly find yourself at a disadvantage compared to your competitors. And as we all know, in the beauty industry, it’s a dog-eat-dog world.
One of the biggest reasons why salons fail is that they cannot generate enough business to keep them going, and the route cause is their marketing plan is none existent and they mistake posting on social media as being the most effective way of marketing without the evidence to back that up.
The good news is that with a little planning and effort, you can create a marketing plan that will help your salon thrive and focus on tactics that fulfil your objectives. In this article, we’ll discuss the most important aspects of marketing your beauty salon, as well as some tips for putting together an effective marketing plan for your salon.
Why do you want to start your salon?
This is an important question that you should ask yourself before starting a beauty salon. Are you looking for a way to make a living? Are you looking to start your own business? Do you want to be your own boss?
Your answer to this question will help dictate the direction of your marketing plan and really nail your “WHY”.
Without this understanding of why you’re embarking on this journey, you will find it hard to get some purpose behind your business and the motivation you have for starting a salon business.
Picking the Right Location
Another important factor to consider when marketing your beauty salon is the location of your business. This is something that you may not be able to control, but it’s still important to think about. You want to choose a location that is accessible and that will attract the right type of customers.
You also need to make sure it is where potential customers would expect to see a beauty salon, think high streets and shopping malls. This not only helps with visibility but with perception too.
Obviously, the more prestigious the location, the higher the rent, but if you’re imaginative you can mitigate that by sharing premises with a similar business who are not in direct competition, renting a chair, or first floor premises on a high street which often commands lower rents.
Research Your Industry And The Local Economy.
This is an important exercise to do and will inform not only your marketing strategy but also your business plan. For example, you might want to consider targeting a specific area, like a shopping mall that is undergoing reconstruction, as this will bring in foot traffic. You should also think about the demographics of the area and what type of services they would be interested in.
One example is of a client who was located in a commuter town. The salon owner established that the core marketing were the same people who would catch a train to work in the morning and then return that same evening. She simply printed up some flyers including a QR code to a special offer on her website and attached a free sample to each flyer.
Then, she simply got up super early on the busiest commuter days of the week and handed out the flyer to her target audience: career females, approx 22-49.
Over the course of several weeks, she became fully booked with appointments and with a waiting list, she was oversubscribed with that one marketing tactic.
Research Your Competitors
It’s important to have a good understanding of the local market, as this will help you develop a marketing strategy that is tailored to the needs and wants of your target audience. You should also research your competitors and what they’re offering. This will give you an idea of the services that are in demand and how you can differentiate your business from theirs.
you might do similar treatments to them, but having a twist or an angle will help your differentiate your brand and stand you out from being vanilla.
Often, when new stores open up in a local area you can benefit from the initial FOMO. People will book just because they want to know what the new fangled thing is all about, sometimes just to tell others they have been there before anyone of their friends.
This is a golden opportunity to knock their socks off and to give them such a great experience they want to go nowhere else, and then to keep that up time and time again without becoming complacent.
The thing is, this is part of your marketing strategy too, you need to have all those scenarios included so you can plan marketing activity around that and to see what works best.
Who Is Your Target Customer?
This is an important question that you need to ask yourself before you start marketing your beauty salon. You want to make sure that your marketing efforts are directed at the right people, as this will help you achieve better results
Your target customer may vary depending on the services you offer, or the people you like to serve most. For example, if you offer hair services, your target customer might be females aged 18 to 45. If you offer skincare services, your target customer might be women aged 35 to 54.
One of my clients is based in a beach resort, a lot of her treatments cater for younger surfer types who spend their holidays there during the summer as a result she changes her marketing to a heavy social media presence during her busy time in the summer, but in the low season, she relies on email marketing and local community events to keep her name at the top of mind for local clients.
So as you can see, It’s important to tailor your marketing efforts to the specific needs and wants of your target customer.
Creating a Logo and Branding
Once you’ve figured out your target market, it’s time to start creating a logo and branding for your salon. This is an important step, as it will help customers remember who you are and what you offer. The key is to create a logo and branding that is unique and memorable.
There are many different ways to create your branding and to make it stand out from the competition. One approach is to create a logo that incorporates your salon’s name and tagline. You can also use bright colours and interesting fonts to create a look that is distinctively yours.
Another important aspect of branding is consistency. You want to make sure that all of your marketing materials – from your website to your social media is consistent across all platforms as otherwise, people won’t know what you’re all about as well as looking a little amateurish, which then plants doubt into the viewer’s mind about the quality of your work.
How to Attract New Customers
Now that you understand the importance of marketing your beauty salon, it’s time to start planning your strategy. The first step is to figure out who your target audience is and what you can do to reach them. Once you have a clear idea of your target market, you can start developing marketing campaigns that can precisely target your ideal audience and who are more likely to use your services.
This is one of the key areas most small business owners fail to include and significantly increases their chance of failure, but spending a little time to understand who you would like to work with or your ideal audience, increases your survival chances immeasurably.
one trap you should avoid at all costs is thinking that you want to sell to everyone. A lot of new salon owners think that if they limit their pool of prospective customers they will miss out, but this is a naive way to approach it.
Instead, you want to think about things like your location, the socio-economic groups who live in the area and what their problems might be.
An example of this would be if you’re located in a business district of a city, would your potential clients be the stay at home moms or the people who were more career-oriented for example?
Advertising and Promotion
Once you have your branding and marketing materials in place, it’s time to start advertising and promoting your salon. There are many different ways to do this, but some of the most effective methods include your website, social media, google ads, print ads, and local directories.
Having your website launched at this stage would be beneficial as it’s a good idea to have a central repository for all your information, as well as acting as a shop window for people to view before making the decision to visit your salon.
it’s also a place where you can have a page to book appointments also and if you want to become a little more sophisticated, capture contact details so you can develop your client base through email marketing, retargeting and reputation management.
Special Events and Promotions
Another way to promote your salon is by holding special events and promotions. This could be anything from a free haircut day to a discount on a new beauty treatment.
There are many different ways to do this, and it’s important to come up with creative ideas that will appeal to your target market. You also want to explore what options you have to do a joint promotion with another company that is not in direct competition but has a similar audience, a fashion show for example, where you would join forces with a local fashion retailer.
This way, you can get greater reach and you can share the burden and marketing costs between you and at the same time build rapport with other local businesses who may be able to refer customers to you.
Customer Retention
Attracting new customers to your business is expensive, so once you have attracted new customers to your salon, you need to retain them. This helps keep your business sustainable and profitable as it’s less expensive to get existing customers to spend more and more frequently.
The simplest way to do this is to provide the very best experience for your customer and impress them with your service, contact them regularly and keep them engaged with your brand.
Opening and running a beauty salon can be a daunting task, but by using the right marketing strategies, you can make your business successful. Tailor your marketing efforts to meet the specific needs of your target customer and create a logo and branding that is unique and memorable. Make sure all of your marketing materials are consistent across all platforms and hold special events and promotions to attract new customers. Most importantly, retain existing customers by providing them with an excellent experience they will love.
