We hear a lot about marketing tactics like email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, etc., but there are other small little tactics that make a huge difference in rejuvenating your marketing efforts! From selling gift cards to offering spa swag bags at group outings. The options ultimately seem endless! Today we want to go over 18 of them that can get you started on taking your marketing tactics to the next level and make you stand out from the competition:

1. Client Appreciation Gifts

Who doesn’t love a gift occasionally, right? I know I sure do! If you have a client who spends a good amount of money at your salon and is a loyal customer consider getting them a client appreciation gift, these are especially common around the holidays like Christmas.

Get creative with your gift! It doesn’t have to be a gift card, make it something memorable that doesn’t have to be terribly expensive for you. For example, if you are close with a client and know a cause that is close to their heart you can donate to it or offer them a gift basket of products, they have mentioned they loved when they were in the salon. Customers feeling recognized for their loyalty can go a long way.

2. Partner with Non-Competitive Local Businesses and Local Charities

You can generate a lot of business by partnering with companies that can refer to your salon or spa service in return. For salons, the options are endless. Think outside of the box! You can partner with makeup artists, wedding vendors, photographers, and hotels or resorts nearby.

Reach out to local charities and this can be other than programs like locks of love. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with hair just because you’re a salon. You could simply run a fundraiser for a charity of your choice, or one that speaks to you. For example, you could hold a fundraiser where customers can drop off toys and animal supplies for a local animal shelter.

This creates a mutually beneficial program and more clientele for your business as the word spreads about your partnerships or charity work. You can also partner with these businesses to offer exclusive promotions.

3. Start Video Marketing – Engage Your Followers

Videos are becoming increasingly popular on social media, especially on mobile. Over the past year, the time people spent watching Facebook Live every day has increased by four times and Instagram videos by 80 percent! Imagine all the followers and potential followers your videos could be engaging!

Videos are also the perfect way to create a personality for your company and your brand, enabling you to connect with your viewer and earn their trust. The more videos you have to help educate and inform your customers, the more you will build on that foundation of trust which will later turn into sales.

Overall, becoming active with video marketing has endless benefits including follower engagement, boosting conversion rate and SEO ranking and builds trust between you and your followers.

4. Try a New Social Platform

We often shift most of our energy towards one or two social platforms. We get it, keeping up with all of them can seem like a lot. However, once you get the hang of social media it isn’t too bad, and you could be missing out on a group of customers by neglecting a new platform.

Let’s say your salon has social media profiles on Twitter and Instagram. You could be missing out on all those possible clients that could stumble upon your Facebook page if you had one. Keep your brand consistent across all your platforms and do some research to determine which platforms are more targeted towards your target audience. If you need help in setting up a new social platform for your salon or spa or even determining your target audience, give us a call at Blue Atlas we would love to lend a hand!

5. Glam Up Your Existing Social Profiles

Facebook and Instagram are social platforms that are nothing new, but with so many new features being added to them all the time, it’s important to freshen up your social media pages when you notice a new update or feature, to establish yourself as a trendy salon.

If you aren’t using Instagram stories already for example, you need to be! Stories are a great way to interact with your followers and show behind the scenes look at your salon and spa. It’s also a great way to build a trusting and personable relationship with potential clients. Stay on top of trending hashtags and use them in your posts. Hair tutorials, styling advice, hair transformations, inspirational quotes, and pictures of your spa or salon are all trendy posts that refresh and keep your Instagram in the know.

6. Advertise Locally

Localized Ads allow you to specifically target certain demographics within local areas. This means that if you don’t have a huge online reputation, you can start getting the word out about your products and services to people who are nearby. Advertising locally is a great way to initiate a relationship with the customers that live close to your business, and are more likely to support your growth.

Local online advertising is also a fantastic way to build your reputation online. If you begin by establishing excellent customer service and fantastic products or solutions for the people in your local area that are talked about online through reviews, then you’ll have a great foundation to continue to build on.

7. Create a Salon Tour Video for Your Salon’s Social and Website

To move people from just a website visitor into a salon client, you need to establish that trust and relationship with them. How is that possible with potential clients that don’t really know you yet? A video that shows you, your salon, and your staff is a powerful salon marketing tool. It doesn’t need to be an expensive production, but it needs to be authentic and show the meaning behind your salon. It should tell your salon’s story and show the people behind it. That is what is going to build trust between you and your potential clients.

You can hire a salon marketing agency to produce and edit the video for you. But if you don’t have the budget, just record a video on your smart phone and upload to YouTube and your social channels!

8. Run Facebook Ads to Get New Customers Through the Door

Many salon owners mistakenly confuse boosting their Facebook posts with running Facebook ads. Boosting your posts will get you more visibility but it’s not really the same as doing Facebook Advertising. Boosting Facebook posts will only give you likes, comments, and if you’re lucky a new client booking.

Facebook ads are all about getting your message in front of exactly the right segment of those people. The people who are most likely to want your products or services. If you want to get the best results, it’s important to understand the different Facebook ad types and targeting options before you dive in. Hootsuite has an amazing, detailed guide to help! If you still need some help, Blue Atlas is here!

9. Remarketing Ads

When it comes to digital spa and salon advertising, there are a lot of options out there, from Google AdWords to Facebook Ads. What you may be less familiar with is remarketing advertisements.

Remarketing or retargeting ads are those ads that pop up on other areas of the web after you visited a website. For example, you visit an online boutique and as you’re browsing the web later that day, an ad for that store pops up! In fact, 3 out of 5 people notice retargeting ads. The reason why retargeting ads are such a smart strategy is because only 2 percent of people who visit a website end up converting on the first visit. Retargeting ads bring the 98 percent back to your website by reminding potential clients about your business.

10. Sell Gift Cards

Selling gift cards or having them available for sale may seem common for most people; however, a lot of salons and spas still don’t offer them. If that’s you, you should consider offering them to your clients and prospects.

Gift cards are similar to referrals for your business. Did you know referred customers are 4.5 cents more profitable on a daily basis than customers who weren’t referred? Either the gift card goes unused, or the customer is likely to spend more than the actual gift card amount. Either way, that’s a win-win for your salon or spa!

11. Incentivize Your Salon Staff with Salon Competitions

We talk and hear a lot about providing incentives and competitions for clients but healthy competition with your salon staff is effective, as well!

Your salon software can help you set up commissions on specific products that you want to be part of the competition, which incentivizes individual performance. However, consider peer motivation and being publicly recognized as an even stronger motivation, as they are quite popular among employees.

In your team competitions, you can reward both individual achievements as well as the overall team result. This is a fun and engaging way to get the full salon team to become engaged and perform well.

12. Give Product Samples to Your Clients

Next time your product supplier stops by, ask for some samples of your most popular products to give to your clients. These are great incentives to give to your client so he/she can try out the product and will be more likely to buy the product at their next appointment. However, you should discuss what the client is looking for in a product before giving them one. Why? If you give the samples first, they might decide not to buy the product from you as they now feel like they can keep trying different samples first instead of buying the full bottle.

13. Salon Swag Bags

There is an entire psychology around the idea of delighting or surprising clients. Offering complimentary treatments, like a salon swag bag is a great way to gain customer loyalty, especially with new clients. Let’s say you provide a new customer a swag bag filled with branded little goodies. You are providing them with something to rave about and show off to their friends! You are making your business stand out from the crowd.

Salon swag bags are also a great way to get free advertising. Let’s say you have a baseball cap in your swag bag, branded with your logo. That client wears the baseball cap around town and others notice the name and look up your spa or salon. Boom, free advertising! A little bit of money invested into a swag bag can go a long way in the long run!

14. Service Addons

Add-ons are a great way to boost your revenue and is something that you can advertise with a main service. If it’s not something you are already offering with a haircut, you should start! It’s only beneficial to you and your salon.

There are two ways you can go about service addons. One is suggesting an upgrade at each appointment, such as a deep oil treatment or conditioner. Another way is suggesting additional services, like a manicure at a discounted rate on their current or next visit.

15. Explain the Products Used in The Service

Salon retail products often have a 50% profit margin or more and it doesn’t take up much additional time from your staff to sell. So, selling retail is an important activity for any salon.

A good number of stylists or spa employees state that if they aren’t “selling” it’s because they aren’t comfortable with it. Which is why it’s time to invest in some simple training to make them comfortable at selling their products because who do clients trust most when buying a product at their salon? Their stylists, of course! They see what you did with a certain product and they will want to recreate that themselves.

How do you get your stylists comfortable selling? There are simple training programs available that can be done in a day. If you have confidence in your employees, they’ll have the confidence themselves.

16. Text Message Reminders

Text message marketing for spas is a gold mine because it hasn’t been used as much as email marketing. Sadly, not everyone opens their emails, but everyone, at some point, reads their text messages.

You can send text messages about anything really, but as a salon you should focus on sending messages about special promotions, reminders for appointments, and feedback after appointments. SMS reminders for appointments specifically have shown a decrease in no show rates, which in return saves your salon some money. Even better you can schedule these texts automatically, similar to automatic emails! Talk about a time saver!

17. Enable Online Booking

First and foremost, online appointment scheduling software gives your clients the ability to make appointments online, which most clients prefer in today’s world. For example, 75% of people want options for self-service. The same software can also significantly reduce no shows and can send out reminders for upcoming appointments.

There are many options available to you when it comes to picking and online booking software. Keep in mind when you’re picking a program that it offers other marketing features like birthday emails, an online marketplace, and other features. If you need help picking an online booking software or would like to build your own, give us a call we’d be glad to help!

18. Host a Giveaway or Contest on Your Social Media

While you can host a giveaway in your salon or on your website, fewer people will find out about it than if you were to announce and promote it on your social media. The whole purpose of giveaways and contests is to get your salon in front of as many people as possible and social media is definitely the best channel for that.

Plus, it’s fairly easy and not awfully expensive. This spa promotion idea will only cost you your time invested in producing and managing the contest and the prizes that you’ll be offering. These prizes can range from beauty products, like hair products, or even services like a manicure or hair cut!

Final Thoughts

As you can see the support behind rejuvenating marketing tactics for your salon are out there, you just have to look for them! From video marketing to local advertising to creating new social profiles, there is so much for you to dive into! If you need help or have any questions about any of these marketing tactics, please reach out to us at Blue Atlas! Find out more about our digital marketing services!

18 Rejuvenating Spa Marketing Tactics for Your Salon in 2021