There may just be one too many ways to do digital marketing for hair salons and spa's. What digital advertising platforms should salon's focus on? What's the best way to grow your Salon business online? There may not be hard and fast answer to the salon internet marketing question, but these strategies will show you how to do salon marketing online.
Catch The TL:DR Version in the Video Below.
Top Organic and Paid Media Strategies For Hair Salon Marketing
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Run monthly time-limited promotions
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Do at least viral style giveaway every month
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Run Facebook Messenger bots
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WhatsApp Business Account
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Email list growth
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Instagram Business Account.
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Post content to TikTok
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Do tutorials on YouTube
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Set Up Google My Business Profile and ask customers to review and post consistently
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Post how to’s and advice on Pinterest
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LinkedIn- Use LinkedIn to showcase events and customers of a corporate nature or even matric balls etc. Remember many of the professionals are parents
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Get active on meetup.com Host free or paid(small fee) workshop where you show attendees very valuable techniques they can do at home. Cross post with Facebook events as it will show up on Facebook local and expand the organic reach.
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Tag Major product brands you use to create amazing results.
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Do viral style quizzes about different hair types and the products or care that it needs
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Reddit: The internet of how-tos. Find geographically local subreddits and contribute meaningfully
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Quora: Answer Questions related to your industry to establish your expert authority.
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Find relevant directories to list on- this goes hand in hand with GMB listing
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Make your content go viral on ViralContentBuzz.com
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Get free Press Releases with HARO
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Blog – Gather a compilation of the most common questions customers ask. Especially while their hair is being done. Write blog posts of 500 or more words based on real user feedback.
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Find local influencers- do their hair at no charge in exchange for promotion on Instagram and TikTok
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Issue online coupons to collect free samples in store.
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Use calendar content heavily. Nearly every month of the year has a specific event or ‘day’. Christmas, Mandela Day, Women’s Day, Youth Day. Make sure to always make a big deal of these days and try to run your promotions around this.
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SMS Marketing
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Facebook Groups
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Medium.com
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SEO
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FaceBook Ads
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Google Search Ads
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YouTube Ads
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Tinder Ads
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MeetUp.com Subscription
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TikTok Ads
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Paid Classifieds
Organic Tactics for Free Traffic for your Salon
1. Run Monthly, Time-Limited Promotions
As a business owner, it's important to understand that your customers, as consumers, have been conditioned to responding to events. A monthly event, communicated efficiently in a time-limited fashion can bring in a constant flow of new customers through your doors. Think about the promotions that caught your attention. Then, days later, when the promotion ended, the item just remained at the same price point. I'm not encouraging you to do this. The point is that promotions blind consumers to value and puts them in buy mode. FOMO is real, and if your promotion is time-limited, you're sure to get a few extra heads through the door and bound to book a few more seats in your hair salon.2. Viral Style Giveaways.
This is somewhat different from a promotion, but includes elements of a promotion. This however has the sole purpose of creating exposure and collecting email addresses. This is one of the ways you can run a viral giveaway:– Choose a mid to high-value product or service with high-profit margins or lowest cost to the business. This could be a service or a hair product hamper.
– Create a post using free software like Canva with hundreds of free templates. This will make the task of creating a beautiful eye-catching promotion much easier.
– Use referral software like Vyper or Viral-Loops . This software is super-easy to use and is perfect to make your content go viral, very quickly. It tracks Facebook Page likes, post shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and even YouTube subscribers. But most importantly, it helps you grow your email list, fast.
One of these campaigns every month will keep your social media presence as well as your email list constantly growing and help you identify a large number of prospects that are interested in the product or service that your salon offers.3. Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger has an estimated 1.3 Billion active users(statista.com). The Messenger platform has become very dynamic and can host videos, run competitions, run automated messages and even book appointments. This counts for Instagram as well but we’ll get into that a little bit later. Messenger has an unbelievably high open rate and can be as high as 97% with averages of around 78%. Use Messenger subscription services to stay top of mind and make them aware of any promotions you have running. To run basic to advanced Messenger campaigns use a service like ManyChat or ChatFuel and watch customers book themselves into your salon with automated payment set up and booking system and diverse integration capabilities.4. WhatsApp Business Account
WhatsApp for business is somewhat different from the everyday WhatsApp we all know and love. It allows for more than 256 members in a group and gives a bit more control in specific channels and joining your business WhatsApp group becomes alot more intentional. You can run promotions and have an even higher open rate than Messenger and even connect your FaceBook ads directly to your WhatsApp Business account so when they click your FaceBook or Instagram ad, they get taken directly to your WhatsApp Business Profile where either you, or a WhatsApp bot can greet them and close the sale and hopefully welcome your newest customer. Download the WhatsApp business app here: https://www.whatsapp.com/business/5. Email List
If you never do anything else online. Do This. Always, always always collect email addresses. Everything else has proven to be seasonal. We’ve gone from Google Talk, MySpace, MSN Messenger, AOL Messenger to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to whatever else is out there. Most of these platforms are really good and run through seasons of providing amazing customer reach and then dying down with dwindling organic reach. It would be prudent to note, that when you are not active on these platforms, even they send you email reminders to come back to visit their platform. So when all else fails, even the biggest and best of the bunch still depend on email to keep their wheels turning. Without complicating things, a simple excel sheet is enough to collect First and Last Name and of course, email address. MailChimp and MailerLite are free to use for the first 1000 subscribers and can provide everything you need to build your list with opt-in forms and segmented lists as well as keeping an accurate record of options.6. Instagram Business Account.
Salons and spa’s alike offer niche health and beauty services. This makes the requirement for good marketing to always be very visually stimulating. Enter the filter. Posting consistently has so many benefits. With Instagrams reach beginning to decline, it will probably be on par with Facebooks’ poor organic reach as well. This leaves us to gather data like posting often and evaluating when the best time to post actually is. There are many reports and studies to give you an idea of what a good time to post is, but you are the expert in your geographic area and will need to experiment what the best times are as the broader results are just that, broad. They, unfortunately, don’t take into account the outliers and minor geographic regions a salon might service. Amplify organic reach by cross-posting with peripheral businesses like yoga instructors, acupuncturists, boutique gyms and even personal trainers. This kind of alliance on a micro-influencer scale can provide reach you would otherwise need to pay Facebook for.7. TikTok… The new kid on the block
TikTok is a video sharing app that has had phenomenal growth in recent times. Having in excess of 500 million active users, massively high entertainment value and extremely high watch hours per viewer, this app is giving other competing apps a run for their money. Nearly all content is viral and becoming TikTok famous is relatively easy at this stage. It’s a really good time to find some influencers on TikTok and watch 1000’s to 10’s of thousands of fresh, organic viewers see your brand.. More on TikTok in the paid section.8. YouTube
YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Boasting more than a billion viewers a month People go to YouTube to learn and to be entertained. With make-up and hair stylist YouTube channels earning 6 to 7 figures from monetized YouTube channels, it’s safe to assume that YouTube is going anywhere soon. For most, it is tutorial driven with instructional infovids at its core. Your customers are likely watching these very YouTubers whereas they should be watching you, the local expert tell them how to do the very same things these YouTubers are doing. YouTube’s algo is not as advanced as Googles yet and provides much more organic views with recommended videos, suggested videos and autoplay features, you can rank highly fairly quick in your local region with a little help in dropping in the correct tags and video structure. YouTube tutorials will be consumed by your viewers and this WILL lead to website visits. And, if optimized correctly, these website visits can lead to bookings.9. Google My Business
It still surprises me that many businesses have not even claimed their very own listing. This is literally the definition of throwing away money. Imagine this situation. Prospect needs to get their hair done. What do they do? Go to Google and type hair keyword with area. BOOM! There your results are. They call or visit the site and make a booking. It’s alot easier to show up higher in Googles Local SEO rankings than it is for organic rankings.10. Post how-to's, unique, visually appealing content, infographics and advice on Pinterest
Pinterest provides an amazing opportunity to go viral with almost every post. If your graphics are easy to understand, highly shareable and high-value content. Pinterest could serve you for years to come as content gets shared over and over.11. LinkedIn
I know you’re probably thinking that a salon shouldn’t post on LinkedIn because it’s primarily a Business to Business platform. But the truth is, business people need to look their best and most of the professionals on LinkedIn are parents as well. Parents who have daughters matriculating or getting married or going to prom. As you showcase high-quality work and show your personality through your content, expect to see a rise in engagement. At the time of writing, LinkedIn is at its peak in terms of organic reach. (Q4 2019)12. Meetup.com
Get active on meetup.com Host free or paid(small fee) workshop where you show attendees very valuable techniques they can do at home. Cross post with Facebook events as it will show up on facebook local and have expanded reach.13. Twitter
Another somewhat matured algorithm. Here it’s important to leverage trending hashtags to maximise exposure. Tag products you use to achieve amazing results, if the asset is worthy, they’ll respond and retweet. These accounts usually have a substantial amount of followers and could drive your Twitter growth.14. Quizzes. Do Viral-Style Quizzes about different hair types and the products or type of care it requires.
Quizzes have become and remained extremely popular. This is a really great way to refine and segment your audience. It provides a really good platform to grow your email list and to really understand which paid ads you should run to your prospects. Some good examples are Tryinteract and Thrive Quiz Builder.15. Quora and Reddit
Though not an immensely popular platform, compared to Instagram and Facebook. This is a great way to find out what questions people are asking and what type of content you should be posting. Answering common or popular questions and value-driven participation in subreddits can drive the right traffic to your site.16. Directory Listings
There are thousands of directories to list your business on. It’s important to find the correct and relevant directories to list on. This can and will have a dramatic effect on your Google My Business profile and where it appears in the local SEO, Google Search results. Go to brightlocal.com or whitespark.ca to find out which listings are the most relevant and geographically significant and watch you GMB listing improve its ranking.17. Make your content viral for free with viralcontentbuzz.com
Viral content is often shared here and can result in content reaching customers far and wide. Leverage this opportunity to go viral for free.18. Press Releases
Contrary to popular opinion. Press releases are actually easier to do than one might think. Help-A-Reporter-Out is a platform to connect with industry-related or geographically relevant reporters who will produce articles about you or your business to drive yours and their exposure.19. Blogging
You don’t have to be a genius writer to get this done. Everyone has a unique voice and you should attempt to write in a conversational manner. Gather a compilation of the most common questions customers ask. Especially before and while their hair is being done. Write blog posts of 500 or more words based on real user feedback as if you’re answering their questions. Your readers will appreciate the authenticity of your writing style and value your content as it is after all, based on the opinions of real customers. Another really hot tip when it comes to blogging is to guest post on other related sites or local business websites. These don’t have to be about tips and how-to’s and can refer to your journey as an entrepreneur. As long you link to your website correctly and early in the article, this will improve your Google search rankings as well. This is Search Engine Optimization technique known as back-linking.20. Identify Local Influencers
Identify local influencers with growing social media followings and do their hair at no charge in exchange for promotion on Instagram and TikTok. This can and most times will drive massive social media engagement if you find the right influencer for your niche.21. Issue Coupons
Coupons are totally free to create online. All it takes is a Google Search. Speak to your supplier about mini-samples you can provide to your prospective customers as a marketing tactic you can use to bring them into your store. Link the redemption process with a coupon code or phrase. This doesn’t have to be overly complicated. You could make up a random word for them to use when they come in-store to redeem.22. Use calendar content heavily
Nearly every month of the year has a specific event or ‘day’. Christmas, Mandela Day, Womens Day, Youth Day. Make sure to always make a big deal of these days and try to run your promotions around this. Refer to tip #1 for this.23. SMS Marketing
Technically not free, as you pay per SMS. SMS campaigns to current customer base can be very effective for communicating your promotion, providing reminders of bookings and especially sending birthday messages or special national event messages like Christmas wishes, New Years wishes etc. The idea is to use the most effective platforms to sustain being top of mind and remain the first choice to your customers when they require your services24. Facebook Groups
Facebook hates people leaving their platform. So much so, that they charge advertisers to show their ads or posts to more people and then charge them for every click that takes them away from the site. Facebook must consider that the user will not return and cannot be monetized anymore. Ok, that long-winded story actually had a point…what was it again?….Hmmmm. Oh yeah, Facebook Groups. Facebook groups is a way for Facebook to further hone in on buyer persona’s as groups of people with very specific interests congregate within a niche community for the purposes of having a likeminded community and receiving value. Think about how many times you joined a Facebook Group for reasons that didn’t benefit you. Probably around the ZERO mark, right? Starting a Facebook Group, preferably with a name not related to your business, solely for the purposes of providing value. This does a few things:-
- Establishes you or your company as experts and trusted advisors without seeming ‘salesy’. And the truth is, you’re not selling anything. You’re just providing value, sowing seeds that will reap a harvest in time.
- Depending on how you structure your group admission questions, this could be a very powerful tool to grow your email list as one of your admission questions could be “Would you like to receive free samples or tips?” or whatever people couldn’t possibly say no to and then tell them you’ll send it by email? Add this to your email list and send a welcome email with a voucher/coupon or whatever adds massive value and grows that database.