I was talking to a salon owner recently and she asked me, “how do I improve my salon business?”
As a Salon Marketer, I found this a big question to answer but when I thought about it, I was able to boil it down to three simple things.
This particular salon owner was starting her business again after some time out for health reasons.
For you, it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out in business or if you’ve been in business for a while and doing well. The same strategies will help you improve your salon business.
So let’s dive in.
Salon owners have told me over the years that they are apprehensive about being known as a ‘specialist’ in something. They fear they will miss out on potential clients if they don’t advertise all their services.
The reverse is quite true, however.
Being known for a particular service, whether its brows, nails, waxing, spray tanning or facial treatments is a good strategy.
Why?
You can more easily grow a business around a specialty treatment because doing so positions you as an authority. You become the ‘go to person or salon’ for that service in your area.
Word of mouth is a powerful thing and once you have clients coming to you for that service, you can then introduce them to your other products and services and grow their spend with you. It won’t be long before they are loyal clients and start referring their friends, family and work colleagues.
So how do you choose what to specialize in? The answer here lies in three things:
The intersection of these three things is the ‘sweet spot’ to help you figure out what you can specialise in.
A common strategy I have found with salon owners, when seeking to grow their salon business, is to offer discounts.
There is a place for discounting in any business strategy, but the danger here is that if you overdo it (or do nothing else but offer discounts) then that’s what your salon becomes known for. Discounting!
Instead, consider offering value – packaging up a promotion or several treatments into one offering and putting a price on that. This is a far more effective strategy than discounting as it gives the perception of ‘worth’ to your clients and potential clients and you still make money – if you’ve done your math right!
Another ‘value strategy’ is to offer a loyalty program and/or a referral program. These programs are great strategies for offering value and clients love to be rewarded for helping their favourite salon do better in business. It’s a win win.
When you’re starting or growing your business, or even if you’re established and looking to gather a few more, being easy to find is imperative.
I spend most of my time with salon owners helping them to be ‘discoverable’ to women (and men too if they’re in your target market).
By discoverable, I mean adopting marketing strategies that will help potential clients find you.
Many salon owners have told me that this part of running their salon is the most challenging – daunting even and sometimes confusing about what works and what doesn’t.
What I have come to understand with salon marketing is a few guiding principles and strategies that if you nail these, will stand you in good stead to move onto more advanced strategies – and maybe even work with a Salon Marketing Coach such as me. 😊
Here are some simple, yet effective marketing strategies that will help you grow your salon business.
Social Media
This in itself can be a daunting task for some salon owners, but my advice is to choose one platform only (e.g. Facebook) and get really good at it. Be consistent and patient with the social media platform you choose and it will pay off for you. Clients will come.
Use your social media platform to have conversations with clients, inspire enquiries by potential clients, take bookings, chat through messenger, like and share your posts, and if you don’t have a website, use your social media platform to do the heavy lifting for you.
Decide how many posts you will do each week. Do them on the same day and time each week. Use images and/or videos. Be sure to engage with those people who are engaging with you. And most of all, be patient.
Google My Business
If you’ve not set yourself up on Google My Business, then do so immediately. This is a very effective marketing strategy through which you can post information (the same as you put onto Facebook), receive enquiries, bookings and reviews.
And if you don’t yet have a website, it offers you a free website too.
Google My Business is where people will find you when they go searching for a hair or beauty salon in their area. You will show up on Google Maps and you will also show up in the search results on mobile or desktop.
Its important to stay active with posting and seeking reviews to get the most out of Google My Business.
Salon Website and SEO
If you have a website for your salon, then you may have heard that ‘content is king.’ If not, all this means is that the information you have on your website needs to be the information your clients and potential clients are looking for.
You don’t need to have volumes of content – just enough to inspire an enquiry or booking and then the rest is up to you to turn that person into a client and then a repeat client.
Another very important part to your website is to give it the best chance possible to be found online when potential clients go searching. This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) becomes your friend.
SEO is a big topic but any Google search on the subject will help you to learn more. Ask your web developer for some advice or better yet, find an SEO Specialist to help you. Naturally you can ask me for advice OR allow me to carry out your SEO for you. 😊
Adwords
This next strategy works in tandem with your website and SEO above. The three go hand in hand but you don’t immediately need AdWords for the other two to be effective.
AdWords is a paid marketing strategy to help your website appear at the top of the Google search rankings (page one) when a person searches for a salon (like yours) in the area.
Again, this is a big topic and not impossible for you to do yourself, although my recommendation is to find an AdWords specialist OR you can ask me to work with you on getting your AdWords up and running and working for you.
Some Final Ideas
There are many other ways to become discoverable to potential clients in your area. Here are just a few:
Have questions, comments, thoughts or
ideas that you’d like us to blog about?