Cost-effective marketing for your hair salon business

Ego Hair Design is an award-winning salon in Inverness, Scotland. Located away from the central shopping area with its naturally high footfall, the salon has the ongoing challenge of encouraging clients to come to them.

Salon owner Caroline Sanderson shares her thoughts on how she attracted clients without spending a fortune.

Know your market

Don't try to be all things to all people. Find your niche and use it to attract the people who want your specific offering.

Nearly all salons claim to specialise in cut and colour so why not stand out from the crowd and find a niche within that - wedding hair specialist, for example? Make sure that you focus on this specialist area in any promotional material or advertising you

carry out.

Factor in Facebook

You need to find your Facebook voice as a salon. People on Facebook are there to socialise with friends, so when you are communicating use a friendly approach - people socialise with people not brands.

You have just a few seconds to attract their attention in their 'live feed' so start all your posts with a powerful headline in capitals - this isn't always advised but it worked for us - and the rest must be in lowercase for easy reading. For example, you can use the headline FREE HAIRDRESSING if you were running a buy-one-get-one-free deal for a new stylist.

Work that website

If you don't have a salon website you could be missing out. Although a well-maintained Facebook page can be as effective - and free!

Almost everyone uses Google searches

now to find local services, including hairdressers. If you opt for a website, one element you must get right is the home page. This is your shop window.

Again, you have a short time to attract attention so rather than make the

ultimate salon marketing blunder of only putting your logo as your headline, use your niche marketing headline again.

Find a friend

Refer-a-friend programmes can be extremely effective at building new business and client loyalty.

You must make this desirable for both the friend and your client. I offer a cash value of £15 for every client referred, plus a free condition and shine treatment.

I give clients up to nine referral cards so if they refer nine friends they receive a value of £189 in savings.

So when I say to a client: "Would you like me to give you £189 worth of free services to use at the salon?" I mean it.

Loss leaders

If your average client stays with you for a year and spends £300-£400 during that time, how much are you are willing to pay for that customer?

You should be more than happy to give them their first cut for free if you are confident in your services. I use this for building business for new stylists.

But do screen who you're giving free hairdressing to and don't forget to give them refer-a-friend cards.