Marketing is really important if you want to run a successful salon or spa. Some salons sell themselves with the help of famous clients, however, even they need an ongoing beauty salon marketing plan for steady growth. There are a lot of online salon marketing techniques and traditional approaches that you can follow to market your salon business.

Selling a service is difficult because the customers can not really test them physically like a product before they choose to buy it. But to make your task easy we have compiled a list of techniques and tactics that will help you sell more.

1. Look the part
2. Keep a detailed menu explaining your service
3. Offer free consultations
4. Stay on top of your online listings
5. Make bookings easy
6. Position your salon as an experts hub
7. Take your services to the customer
8. Visual merchandising 
9. Practice upselling
10. Co-branding and affiliate marketing

1. Look the Part

If you or your employees do not have good hair or skin then the customers probably won’t be interested in your salon’s offerings. You need to make sure that everyone in your team looks the part. Also, you should recruit individuals who can maintain their appearance or just get a dress code for your salon. You can provide discounts on your products and services for your employees along with monthly allowances. It will help them maintain clean and salon-worthy appearances. 

2. Keep a Detailed Menu

When customers order food from a restaurant, they are more inclined to order food that is descriptive with prep info and ingredients rather than just the name of the dish. The same goes for Salon services. If you have different hair spa treatments then make sure to explain what the process and products will be. These vivid descriptions will give customers a better idea of what they’re getting when they choose a particular service. Thus, implementing salon promotions that work. In addition to describing your services, also share the benefits and results. Do not forget to add these on your website as most customers will make sure that they check it before availing your services. 

3. Offer Free Consultations

Free consultations are a great way to get the footfall of your salon. A complimentary session or free consultation will bring in the first-timers who are apprehensive of your services. It will help them figure out the best services that your salon can provide. Make sure you give the best treatments as these will be your potential clients. You can get their numbers and email-IDs too and get in touch with them in the future once they avail of your services. During free consultations, you can help customers get a closer look at their skin, recommend services according to that, and offer discounts for subscriptions, etc. You can give special app discounts to customers who download your salon app.  Make sure this process is personalized, you have one chance to convert them from a potential client to a loyal customer. 

4. Stay on Top of Online Listings

Online marketing for Salons and spas is quite popular on Google and yelp. Make sure you have claimed your listing and provide as much detail as you can. Make sure you have pictures of your work and your workspace.  After your listings are all set up, request your clients to leave reviews or give positive ratings to help customers deciding on which salon or spa to visit. Judging by the ratings, feedback, and ambiance of your salon, customers will pick or drop your services. The more attractive your listings are, the more customers you will get.

5. Make Bookings Easy

Booking appointments should be easy for your customers with multiple portals to select from. E.g. websites, Facebook, Salon app, etc. Make sure you invest in a salon booking app via which you can send automated SMS and reminder notifications for better results. It’ll help reduce no-shows and save a ton of time by reducing the effort to manually touch base with customers about their appointments. 

6.Position your Salon as An Experts Hub

For new customer acquisition and customer retention, you need to position yourself as the go-to service provider. You need to invest in a complete marketing suite for your salon like My Digi Salon App. With this app, you need not get professionals to work on your PR, online advertisements and features in news outlets will help you attract an audience. These beauty salon advertising ideas will help in building your credibility and will help you show off your expertise on a much larger scale.  

7. Take your Services to the Customers

There’s a huge demand for event-based and on-demand services. If you can afford to then work on marketing strategy for your salon that allows your hair and makeup artists to provide on venue services for weddings, photoshoots and other events. This is will give customers one more reason to choose your services over your competitors. Make sure you market these onsite services well by mentioning it on your social media pages, websites and other platforms. You can even talk them up while interacting with them in-store. 

8. Visual Merchandising 

Visual merchandising is not just a physical retail window, online visual merchandising is also taking over the market. You might have all your retail items positioned in key locations in your salon, e.g. near the reception or check out counter. Just like that the strategic display and arrangement of products in your eCommerce store or app is online visual merchandising that can help in marketing your salon online. People linger around these areas and the +1s are usually sitting there, placing your products here will give them an opportunity to look around and buy things they like. 

9. Practice Upselling

One of the unique salon service ideas is you need to upsell your services in order to shoot up your sales. While making it a part of the conversation is one thing, you need to make sure that you know the customer and build a rapport before initiating upselling. It is much easier online, you can get customers to fill out surveys online then target them according to their needs. Informational brochures/emails with information to educate them or the services that would benefit them the most.

For e.g. hair care products for a client who mentioned hair fall issues or eye creams and facial services for clients that complain about their eye-bags. You even give-add on services like sulfate-free shampoos for a client that got keratin treatment done. Make sure that you are not outright selling, explain the service/ product benefits before doing that. 

10. Co-branding and Affiliate Marketing 

This is a great brand-building marketing strategy for your salon where you can work on affiliate marketing by giving product-specific deals to your clients. Partner with a local brand and run a promotion in which after the retail purchase the client can get a discount for a service done in your salon.  

Summary

The right salon promotion idea can make the tricky process of selling both services and products completely doable. Hope you will test and try the different tips mentioned above. We are sure you will see results instantly.