Guide to Salon Marketing

Discover new marketing ideas to help you promote your hair or beauty salon or to potential customers in your local area more cost effectively.

Running a beauty business can prove to be an attractive lifestyle choice, particularly for women who want to build a career or are returning to work. Recently, beauty salons and hairdressing businesses have become incredibly popular.

In fact beauty salons, hairdressers and beauty consultants are consistently some of the most popular types of new businesses to start up in the UK, according to monthly data from Startupsplus. However, to build a successful beauty business new skills are often required and there are many challenges that must be overcome.

One of the toughest challenges can be finding new, interesting ways to promote a small beauty business to potential local customers when you have a tight budget. But you needn’t worry - there already exists a wide variety of marketing tools available to beauty salons and hairdressers that can be easily afforded and managed! And which don’t require any specialist marketing or prior business knowledge.

Targeting your Market

Before you can start on your marketing campaign you’ll need to decide what kind of establishment you’re running and who it’s going to appeal to. For instance; will your local market be made up of trendy youngsters, busy mums, affluent middle aged people, or career women? Each of these groups will have vastly different requirements and needs, so be sure to find out who your local audience is and then you’ll be able tailor your prices and services accordingly.

Once you’ve identified your market, follow our guide of the promotional tools that are available, and the different ideas you might like to consider to help you attract more of the right kind of customer to your business.

Special Events

Hosting a special event is a great way to give potential customers an added incentive to come out and spend their money with you!

You could organise your own regular events, perhaps on a quieter day of the week to your improve overall sales. Look at ideas that will match the interests of your market. A good example would be inviting in other services which complement your own - such as aromatherapy, head massage or even pedicures.

You can also tie your events in with other seasonal events or larger social events which are taking place - festivals or celebrations for example.

Direct Mail

Direct mail is a particularly effective option for anyone looking to promote hair and beauty businesses.

It can be targeted closely to the potential consumers most likely to visit you, can be easily implemented without specialist skills, and at a relatively low cost. The results of this method can be measured far more easily than other promotional strategies.

Ideally, you should start by finding a quality mailing list from a reputable source. There’s an enormous range of lists available to you - for example one list company, Selectabase, has numerous lists which are well suited to the hair and beauty sector:

• The Birthday Mailings list will give you the details of any local consumers who are about to celebrate a birthday. You could target the women on the list with a special promotion for a birthday treat, such as a makeover or even full beauty treatment.

• The Recently Moved list identifies consumers who have recently moved into your local postcode area and sends you a list of them each month. Why not mail them a brief introductory letter to get their business and loyalty before they start looking elsewhere?

• The Silver Prospects list is a database of older people, so if they represent your market you can rent a list and mail it whenever you want to run an offer to get a great boost of new business.

• Likewise, the Mobile Phone Owners database is a fantastic tool for targeting younger consumers, and it gives you the option of targeting them based on their age and location.

You should mail your list with a high quality mailer and a letter that’s personalised to each potential customer. Be sure to clearly explain all the features your establishment has to offer them. You could also include a unique voucher for them to redeem, which will also help you measure the success of your mailing is having.

PR

If you build up good relationships with your local press you’ll be able to use these contacts to get your business regular coverage with them.

Be sure to let them know about any special events you’re running or news stories like new members of staff or additional services that are on offer, and always accompany your press release with high quality photographs - which will greatly improve the chance of it being published. If you find a particularly good publication, ask if you could supply them with free regular health and beauty tips in return for them promoting your establishment. The press are unlikely to turn down free, quality content from a trusted, popular company.

And don’t forget local radio – there are lots of local stations nowadays and most are keen to feature local businesses that have an interesting story to tell.

Website

Make sure that your business has a simple but effective website. It needs to be full of the information people want to know – your prices, how to book, parking information, location, directions, opening times and any other details you think are relevant.

Why not consider including a guestbook for customers to add their comments, and use the website to encourage visitors to sign up for news and exclusive special offers sent out by email.

Press Advertising

A lot of small businesses will rush to use press advertising in the local paper or in directories without considering their other options first, or whether advertising is even the best way to promote their business. This is an important point to consider, as advertising may be reaching a lot of people who simply are not your target audience.

Press advertising is a great method to raise awareness of your business, but only if it is used on an ongoing and consistent basis. One idea is to print a voucher or special offer each week in your local paper and you’ll eventually feel the benefit of this repetition. However, dabbling in very occasional advertising will rarely achieve any measurable results.

In summary – there’s a wide range of affordable and effective marketing tools available to promote a health, hair or beauty business at a local level. All it takes is good organisation, a little effort and some imagination to achieve great results from your marketing spend.

Steve Sellwood is from http://www.selectabase.co.uk/lists/consumer/salon-marketing.aspx, providers of a range of affordable direct marketing lists and services to small businesses in the health and beauty sector. Selectabase can be contacted on 01304 382211.