Business tips

Create a Marketing Plan for your hair or beauty salon

  • Business Tips
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Many beauty salon owners don’t bother creating a marketing plan, as they think it’s not worth the hassle. They’re too busy with their daily duties, challenges and struggles – spending a few hours writing down things that seem so obvious, that it sounds like a bad joke. Let’s be honest: creating a beauty salon marketing plan shouldn’t be done just for the sake of it, only because Internet marketing gurus told you to do so. It should be a document that actually helps you to keep track of your marketing activities.

Tip: To make sure you have everything you need to keep the business prospering, we have prepared a step-by-step checklist, which you can download and print so that no important points go unnoticed. Download your free checklist!

A well-prepared beauty salon advertising plan can significantly boost your salon’s profitability, so it is really important to at least write down the core concept of your hair and beauty salon marketing strategy. To help you get started, we prepared a simplified guide, tailored to the actual needs of beauty salon owners. How can you create a marketing plan that will genuinely help your beauty business thrive? You just need to accomplish five steps – to identify, to set, to prepare, to deliver and to measure your plan.

Identify

You have to analyse three areas that influence your business – the state of your salon, your audience and your competition.

When it comes to your salon, think about:

  • What are your products or services? What does your brand represent?
  • What are your mission and vision? What is your core statement?
  • What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your opportunities and threats?
  • What are your most profitable services?
  • Did you meet your financial goals last year?

 

Your audience:

  • What is your target market?
  • Who are your clients? What are their needs and fears?
  • What percentage of them returns for another service?
  • Did most of your profit come from returning salon clients or from new ones?
  • What do they seem to like the most about your salon? What they are not fond of?
  • What catches their attention? What makes them never want to return to your salon?

 

Your competition:

  • Who are they? What is their branding?
  • Which of their branding ideas do you like and dislike?
  • How do they present themselves on social media?
  • What are their prices and sales policy?

 

Set

You have to set your goals for the upcoming year – which may seem easy, but can turn out to be a hard nut to crack. You have to think about what matters to you the most – brand awareness, raw financial profit, a rising number of new clients, an increasing number of returning clients, or maybe something else? Remember – setting a specified goal does not mean that you will ignore other aims completely, but for the time being, you will focus on this one the most.

Think about:

  • Do you have a problem with getting new clients?
  • Are you facing a decline in returning clients?
  • Are your clients leaving reviews?
  • Are you satisfied with the effectiveness of your website and social media fan pages? Do they reflect your values?
  • Have you considered rebranding? Are you satisfied with the content you provide?

 

Prepare

Most beauty and hair salon marketing strategies are in fact just a thought-out description of the way you promote your business. Your aim here is to achieve a consistent marketing message in your chosen platforms, such as local advertising, mass media and various channels of social media. Salon owners are often encouraged to prepare a whole salon marketing calendar. For example, if your goal is to get more new clients, you can plan the First Day of Spring event with a free skin-type consultation. In your marketing plan, you set the date and draft details, such as where are you going to announce and promote the event. You do not even have to be extremely precise, just briefly describe your idea. This way you will be able to prepare yourself in a few weeks prior and avoid doing everything last minute. If any of the sales, events or campaigns will require special preparations, you will be ready on time. You will be also able to plan the special days evenly during the whole year, without them concentrating in one period and lacking in another. After each of these promotions, you can track what they brought you and update your strategy according to which techniques worked well, and which turned out to be a flop.

Think about:

  • Where do your potential clients hang out? How can you encourage them to check out your business?
  • Which channel will you focus on?
  • Which one of your employees will take care of your social media accounts?
  • What types of events would you like to host?
  • What is your budget?

 

Accounts on various social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) are great when it comes to reaching new potential clients, but are not the best for communicating with loyal ones. For customers who require a more personalised approach, it would be best to contact them via email or SMS. Consider getting yourself a hair & beauty salon software that eases the process.

Deliver & Measure

Stay realistic and do not rush to accomplish your plans. You will not get results immediately – even the best beauty or hair salon marketing plan will not bring you profit right away. Also, be flexible – as the year goes by, you will probably notice that some elements of your strategy work better than others. You will have to adjust your plans accordingly. Moreover, you may encounter some obstacles or even not be able to accomplish some of your tasks at all. Do not worry about it – your marketing plan should be your helper and a guideline, not a book of rigid commandments. Measure the effects of every campaign, draw conclusions and implement them as soon as you can – do not wait for the next year and next marketing plan! Keeping numbers under control can be very difficult, so it is best to have reliable tracking tools at your disposal – and Booksy software allows you to get a full picture of the salon’s financial situation or customer satisfaction levels, so you should definitely give it a try. When creating your hair or beauty salon marketing plan, ask your beauty salon manager and trusted employees to brainstorm with you. They may notice things about your salon that go over your head and have great, fresh ideas on how to improve your marketing techniques. Do not forget to engage your most hardworking staff member as well – Booksy will help you to implement every marketing plan you prepare!