7 Key Elements of Hair and Nail Salon Marketing

Marketing Techniques For Beauty Salons & Tanning Salons

If you own a hair and nail salon, you know the value of repeat business and word of mouth referrals. You also know that in order to retain that repeat, loyal business, you need to provide stellar customer service. But you can only go so far with exceptional service and skilled hair and nail technicians. You need to fuel your business with a strong, targeted marketing strategy.

From content marketing and local SEO to social media and reputation management, hair and nail salon marketing takes a dedicated approach. Marketing for your industry isn’t like it used to be. Your customers are on social media all the time, using their smart phones to conduct research on the products and services they want to buy. They need to find someone they can trust with their best assets: their hair and nails. If they love you, they’ll bring their moms, friends, and daughters. But you have to get them in the door first.

A great hair salon, nail and tanning salon marketing strategy should include these seven components:

• 1. SMS marketing
• 2. Loyalty programs
• 3. Content marketing, optimized website, local SEO
• 4. Landing pages
• 5. Citation & business listings including voice directories and GPS Maps
• 6. Social WiFi
• 7. Reviews

Local SEO is a big one because it it’s an umbrella that encompasses content marketing, landing pages, listings and citations, and a review strategy all working together for the best results.

Let’s go in-depth on each one.

1. SMS Marketing

You may have been relying on your email marketing campaigns very heavily up till now. While email does still have a purpose in digital marketing today, it’s not as robust a strategy as you would think. With emails only having about a 3 to 20 percent open rate and cold calls being ignored like the plague, you can’t rely on this method alone anymore. This is why you need SMS messaging for the best results. Did you know text messages have a 98 percent open rate, and 90 percent of those texts are viewed by the recipient within three minutes?

As a hair and nail salon owner, you can use SMS to your advantage. You can:

• • Text clients the day before an appointment to remind them of the day and time. This will reduce no-shows and forgotten appointments exponentially, saving you time and money.
• • Text clients your latest deals and offers.
• • Geofencing coupled with SMS brings clients back over and over.
• • Text Mobile Wallet Coupons and Deals.
• • Text customers refer-a-friend deals so you can expand your client base.
• • Thank new clients with a friendly message and discount on their next visit.

Not only can you use text to send booking confirmations and appointment reminders, you can send rescheduling notifications, new promotions, and give clients an opportunity to book last-minute appointments. This last one is especially handy because we all know how frequently you get cancellations. Rather than be stuck with an empty time slot where you’re not making any money, you can reach out to clients to offer them a coveted time slot.

2. Loyalty Programs

With nearly 80 percent of consumers hoping to be offered a loyalty program before committing to a business, this is your chance to add value to your customers and boost your bottom line. Give them something special in return for their loyal service. All hair and nail salons have a core customer base that comes in on time, tips well, and never strays.

Hold onto those loyal customers with a loyalty program that targets them personally so they know how much an important part of your business they are.

There are many different loyalty program types you could offer as a hair and nail salon, such as:

• • Touchless digital loyalty programs (Buy 9 colors, get a wash and blow dry free)
• • Text marketing with geofencing and electronic coupons delivered using automated marketing campaigns
• • Points-based spa loyalty program (Accrue points on services to gain perks)
• • Tiered points-based reward system (Reward different groups of customers differently, with each tier offering progressively more benefits)
• • Subscription membership program (Subscribe and save on your most popular packages)

Loyalty programs do more than just make your clients feel special. You can use them to collect customer data to better personalize your overall marketing campaign.

3. Content Marketing

It’s not cheap to look good. You want to pamper your clients well so they feel luxurious and special when they step into your salon. But you also want to empower them to take care of themselves when they can’t make it to you. Show off your industry expertise with tutorials, blogs, articles, videos and other resources that cement you as a local leader in the hair and nail space.

Videos and photos are the best way for your salon to engage with your audience. Hair and nail care is very visual, and you can use these platforms to show before-and-afters, hair braiding tutorials, and much more. This not only shows off your skills and teaches them something new, it earns their trust in your skills.

Of course, you will need a mobile optimized website to showcase all that content, as this forms the foundation of your entire digital marketing plan. Mobile optimization involves the adjustment of your website content to ensure users can access the site from their mobile devices, which will customize their experience to their specific device.

Once that has been established, you will need to apply on page SEO techniques to further enhance the experience. This is the process of optimizing the content of a website for achieving higher rankings in search engines.

Local SEO is a vital part of your overall SEO strategy because it targets customers in a specific region, city or neighborhood. This is how you can improve your rankings and visibility within local search results like Google Business Profile, Google’s Map Pack and Local Pack. Google says 76% of users who conduct a local search on their smartphone will visit a business within 24 hours -- 28% percent of those searches will result in the purchase of a good or service.

4. Landing Pages

Local landing pages capture qualified leads so visitors stay focused on one service or topic, such as haircuts, colors, blow dries, highlights, manicures and pedicures. Every page should feature its own specific call to action (CTA). These landing pages should be mobile-friendly, attention-grabbing, and quick-loading. Make sure you include lots of headlines that break up dense blocks of text, and pepper in some high-quality images and videos.

Using these pages to target specific keywords for the hair and nail care industry will improve your SEO and help you rank higher in the SERPS (search engine results pages).

5. Citation and Business Listings

You’re a locally-owned business, so you have to claim your business listings on relevant review sites. This will help you generate leads online more effectively, as you show people your business is legitimate and reputable. This can be done by verifying, completing and maintaining your listings with up to date, accurate information on every salon location you own.

Claim listings on review sites such as Google and Yelp, to be sure, but go deeper into industry review and match sites like FASH too. This will help you build consistent business pages and respond to customer reviews all on one platform.

Citation Management Company: Hire a listing and citation management company to create and manage your company profiles across the internet including GPS Maps, Voice search directoris and the major data aggregators

6. Social WiFi

Social WiFi utilizes a guest WiFi landing page so clients can log in using their social media credentials when in or near your salon. This allows you to collect customer data such as name, email, and demographics. Plus, you can ask your customers to like or follow your social media channels while connecting to your salon’s WiFi hotspot.

You’re essentially offering them an immediate and engaging way to connect with your hair nail and tanning salon using meaningful, relevant channels they understand. Not only can you gain a better understanding of who is supporting your business the most, you can visualize in-depth information about your customers in order to foster deeper connections.

Many of todays WiFi marketing platforms offer geofencing technology, digital coupons utilizing Mobile Wallet on iPhone and Adroide devices, and of course must have text marketing software

7. Reviews

Word of mouth reviews are good on a local level, but they only go so far. You need access to online review sites to see what people are saying about you, and to have the opportunity to respond back to them. Online review management will help you manage your brand, attract new leads, boost sales, look trustworthy, and expand the conversation about your salon. It’s no secret now that people trust online reviews as much if not more than reviews from friends and family.

Make sure reviewor reputation management is an integral part of your overall digital marketing campaign. The very nature of your business requires trust. After all, if you don’t have trust as a hair and nail tech, it will be difficult to attract and retain clients.

- Reviews are the 2nd most important ranking factor for local search rankings

In Conclusion

These marketing strategies aren’t just good advice for the hair and nail salon business. They can be applied to many different industries, from restaurants to coffee shops. Check back next month as we identify specific ways the restaurant industry can benefit from a targeted digital marketing approach.

Contact Tactical-Moves

If you own a hair salon, nail or tanning salon and want to fine tune your marketing strategy for optimal results, contact us today at 617-858-5802. We can customize a campaign that’s tailored to your unique business needs and customers.

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