Simple steps to market your hair salon
Marketing is something all businesses do, but it isn't always formally structured.
You might view marketing as the occasional handwritten flyer, but the best way to give your business a boost is with a structured marketing plan.
Adam Bernstein looks at some of the best ways to market your hair salon business.
Create an Image for Your Hair Salon
First, you need a company image. This is one of the most important exercises in building awareness of your business. Decide the image you want by asking yourself these questions:
- What image should my business project?
- Who are my target customers?
- Who is my competition?
From this you can start to build an identity. All of the ways in which you communicate with your customers must have a consistent and considered look and feel - and that begins with a good logo.
For this reason, designing a logo is not for the unqualified. Get professional help from a graphic designer. Don't skimp on your logo - in the long run, poor communication of your image will cost you more than a designer ever will.
Have a Great Salon Logo
Before you meet the designer, think about the basics - it will save your designer time and money:
Taglines: This is a one-line slogan that accompanies a logo. Reds, yellows, oranges and other bright colours tend to suggest pioneering, trendsetting, and fun, while colours such as blue, grey and darker greens tend to suggest a quieter, more mature and conservative image.
Typefaces: The image conveyed by the more formal typeface used in newspapers is vastly different to that projected by simple handwriting typefaces, which is in turn different to the image portrayed by heavily stylised modern alphabets.
Graphics: Use graphics to enhance a logo that uses words to convey your image, but don't let the graphics dominate.
Once you have a logo, use it everywhere including all letterheads, invoices, business cards, envelopes, signage, vehicles and packaging.
Get to Know Your Clients
But before you can get your message out, you need to find out who your customers are.
Unless you can answer this, you're not going to be any different to other salons in your area - and you may even be selling the wrong kind of product or service to the wrong sort of client.
So that you can match your products and services to your customers, you need to know who your competitors are. What makes you different? Monitor your rivals - never take your eye off them.
Know Your Salon's Strengths... and Weaknesses
It's a good idea to do a SWOT analysis on your business - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? That should give you an idea of how to market your business.
Equally, you will be able to look your weaknesses squarely in the face and decide whether you can live with them - or whether you had better do something about them.
Establish your unique selling point (USP). You can have a business without a USP, but it won't grow very fast. Looking like everyone else is a recipe for failure.
Make Your Salon Stand out from the Crowd.
What is unique about your product or service? If you know this, then promoting your business will be easy - you simply tell people.
Marketing is not just about the statements you make in your advertising and sales - it is about everything you do. It is about the way you welcome your customers, your prices, the way your staff look.
Also ask yourself why customers keep coming back. Marketing is about selling the customer something that will benefit them.
Sit down with a piece of paper and work out what value your customer places on your service. Every feature of the service should have a benefit attached to it.
Treat complaints as an opportunity. When else are your customers going to tell you exactly what they want? When else are they going to be so ruthlessly honest? A complaint handled well makes you a friend for life.
Use questionnaires to find out what your customers think. Use them all the time - not just in short bursts of enthusiasm.
More HJi Advice For Marketing Your Hair Salon
