Are you looking for salon marketing and advertising ideas to grow your salon business?

Then you’ve landed in the right place.

This is where I share the most effective salon marketing strategies right now.

Today, you’ll get an overview of these activities so that you can start attracting more new clients and grow.

This is important.

I’ve met many talented hairdressers, nail techs, and barbers who are amazing at what they do. They may be among the best in their field. However, they are still struggling to build the right clientele and make their salon profitable.

It shouldn’t be this way. A salon business can (and should) be profitable.

But we need to go beyond delivering a good service. People also need to know that your salon exists. And they need to understand that what you offer isn’t a cheap commodity but a benefit worth paying extra for.

Salon Marketing Strategies

Let’s start with some of the bigger salon marketing strategies before we dive into the quick tips and marketing ideas. It all starts with the right foundations.

1. Get Your Salon Visible on the Search Result Page 

What do you get when you type “salon near me” on Google?

This is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself today.

But getting registered with Google Business Profile is just the start.

There are several quick tricks and strategies you can use to make sure your salon shows up at the top when people in your area are looking for what you offer.

You can read my detailed guide on optimizing your salon for Google here.

This doesn’t take a lot of time to do. But when you’ve gone through the process, you’ll have new clients discovering your salon without you even thinking about it.

The most beautiful form of marketing if you ask me.

2. Create or Refresh Your Salon Website

Your salon website is often the first impression you have with new clients.

And as you’re in the beauty industry, I’m sure you know how important a first impression is.

People simply don’t trust salons whose website looks unprofessional or dated.

As a salon owner, you must ensure your website looks up to date.

But a good website is so much more than just a first impression.

3. Level up Your Online Booking Experience

I’m not going to tell you that you need to have online booking enabled.

You know that.

Over 76% of people say they prefer booking appointments online.

And I’m sure you’re already accepting online bookings (if not, we’ll fix that now).

I want you to think about how your online booking app helps drive your business. Does your current software allow you to customize your scheduling experience?

• Can you embed online booking on your website and match the experience to your salon’s brand?
• Can you charge deposits, sell gift cards, and offer recurring appointments or memberships with recurring payments?
• Can you automate a waitlist matching clients to your calendar openings when they become available?
• Can you send appointment reminders and follow-ups and allow your clients to reply to your business in the same message where any staff member can reply live?
• Can clients book without making an account?
• Can you have clients complete a form as part of their booking?

If not, you should probably consider upgrading your salon software.

I love Mangomint because it can do all of the above, plus a ton of other intelligent features. Also, as shown in the example below, it just slots in on top of your website, and you can customize colors, etc., to make the experience seamless with your brand.

You can access a complete list of my recommended salon scheduling software alternatives here.

4. Run a Salon Newsletter

If you run a salon, you run a relationship business.

But how can you effectively maintain good relationships with all your clients?

The answer is a salon email newsletter. 

You might think that email is an old marketing method that has become irrelevant, given the development of social media.

But that’s not true. 

Far from.

Email is the most effective way to build trust, relationships, and sales at scale.

But you need to do it right, or it’s just a waste of time.

There are two ways to approach salon email marketing: using your software’s built-in email marketing platform or a 3rd-party system (like Mailchimp).

Some salon software systems offer built-in email marketing. These systems, when built properly, offer a seamless integration with your client list. It also cuts down on the number of tools and subscriptions you need to maintain.

However, if your built-in marketing tool does not have everything you need, a dedicated email marketing system should work just fine.

Naturally, this requires that you use a salon software platform that supports your preferred email marketing integration (like Mailchimp) so that your client email list is up-to-date.

For more tips on email marketing, check out my article, where I walk you through email marketing for salons.

5. Define Your Salon’s Email Marketing Strategy

In addition to your salon newsletter, you can use the power of email marketing to promote deals, boost sales, and get more clients in your chair(s).

There is one straightforward strategy you should prioritize in your campaigns: personalization.

Start every salon email marketing campaign by filtering your client list.

If you send out your deals in a bulk email “blast” to every client you have ever had, your emails will quickly get picked up by spam filters.

This wastes your time, your client’s time, and your email marketing money. Plus, it could spell trouble for your future campaigns.

Even without a spam filter, generalized email promos will likely get lost in the void and depersonalize your customer relationships.

For example, let’s say you have a client who gets your scalp treatments to help with alopecia. You know this individual and their struggles and develop a close client relationship.

Later, you send that same client a haircut and color treatment promo in an email blast. This could disrupt their feelings that your business understands their struggles and cares for their needs.

Instead, for this example, you should filter your client list for individuals who had a color treatment more than six weeks ago and may be due for a touch-up.

With this approach, you will find your campaigns more successful while potentially minimizing your email marketing costs.

The free Mangomint webinar recording here offers tips and insights on building personalized email marketing campaigns.

6. Get Your Salon Setup for Success on Social Media

I guess you’re not surprised to see social media as one of the salon marketing strategies in this list. 

However, you can easily spend a lot of time on social media without generating new clients. To be successful with social media, you need a strategy, and you need to execute that strategy consistently.

This would be too much to cover here, so I have put together an article that walks you through how to run social media for your salon effectively.

7. Communicate. And do it via SMS!

Do you want your messages to clients to get seen?

Then, you should leverage SMS.

SMS messages have crazy high open rates – 98%, according to Gartner. This is incredibly impressive compared to email at 20%, and social media is even lower. 

But it’s also more intrusive.

So you need to be careful with how you run campaigns over SMS, or you run the risk that people will block you and they will not get your important notifications like appointment reminders.

This is why I prefer to use SMS only for personalized messages that are highly relevant to the person.

This could be automated messages tied to a specific appointment – like a certain amount of time after their visit in case they haven’t re-booked. But even better is to use it for real personal interaction. Where you and your team send specific messages to clients and allow them to reply to your reminders and messages.

Real conversations.

Yes, it’s 2024, and people are dying for real after an era of blast send-outs. Save that for email and social media.

But you need a tool to help you with this, or it will be a mess for you to handle.

Below is an example of what this would look like if you’re using Mangomint. Mangomint gives you one business SMS number where all the people you give access to can reply to conversations, and you’ll see the full overview of all messages, automated and real, in the chat flow.

This is super powerful and, in my opinion, the right way to leverage the SMS channel.

8. Ensure Consistent Salon Branding

Everything communicates.

Like it or not.

Branding is not just about the decor of your salon or your salon logo…

Everything communicates who you are.

Your brand.

This is why you need to figure out your salon’s unique story.

Your voice.

This changes everything.

Your brand allows you to charge higher prices. When you get it, people understand how you are different and the value you provide.

Your brand boosts your word-of-mouth marketing. It gives people stories and a reason to talk about you.

Executed consistently, this can be one of the most important marketing strategies for your business.

To get you started, I recommend you watch the video below, where I share my best tips to refresh your brand.

Salon Advertising Ideas

This next section will zoom in on how you can leverage advertising to attract new clients to your salon business.

9. Run Facebook and Instagram Ads

Does your salon have a Facebook page? 

If you do, you probably have already tried some type of advertising on Facebook. What I hear many salon owners do is that they boost their Facebook posts to get more visibility. But this is really not the same as doing Facebook Advertising.

10. Run Google Ads to Catch People Looking for Salons in Your Area

We learned in the first salon marketing idea in this list that you must ensure your salon shows up when someone is searching for salons in your area.

This is how people look for new salons.

But if many other salons surround your salon, it’s likely that your salon still doesn’t show up at the top. In fact, the first rows in the Google search result are dedicated to showing paid ads.

So, even if you have a good salon website that is optimized for search engines, it’s quite likely you’ll not show at the top. This is why you should run paid search campaigns.

When you set up your search campaign, you should be as specific as you can. As you only pay when people click on the link, you should try to show the ad only to people who are likely to book with you. 

For example, you can limit your ad to only being visible to people based on walking distance of your salon. You can also define specific words that they need to use when searching.

This could include specific services that you offer in your salon. By being more specific, you’ll increase the chances that when people click (and you pay), the visitor will decide to book with you. 

Google offers a great advertising program for this purpose.

To learn more about how to advertise with Google, you can read their Google Ads guide to getting started with ads for your salon.

11. Hire a Salon Influencer

Influencer marketing is everywhere today. Big brands and small businesses are increasingly turning to influencers to help them generate awareness of their offering.

In fact, it’s increasingly replacing traditional methods of advertising. 

Because it works.

It’s one of the most effective marketing ideas for hairstylists and beauticians who deliver noticeable results through their service. It’s enough that the right influencer posts a picture of a transformational hair color result from your salon to have your phone ringing for days. 

But the thing is.

Beauty influencers know their worth. And it can be expensive to get a big name to your salon. This is why the best influencer marketing strategy for salons is to work with local micro-influencers. These are people who live in the area and have 3,000-30,000 engaged followers.

I’m sure that if you review your salon client list, you’ll notice that you already know some of them.

Try to work with them and incentivize them to promote your salon. As they are already your client, they’ll be authentic, and their followers are most likely highly relevant to your salon. Ideally, they would @mention your salon in their post.

If you’re doing this on Instagram, make sure you have your salon’s Instagram bio set up with a link to your salon’s website or salon appointment software where people can book.

Salon Promotional Ideas

Attract new clients and get existing ones to spend more via effective salon promotions, specials, and deals.

12. Drive Sales by Leveraging Seasonal Events

Seasonal events are effective in increasing the relevance of salon promotions. They are also easy to plan for and help you highlight your different service offers in a relevant context throughout the year.

For example, you may promote your styling or make-up services for the Christmas festivities or your product line for men in time for Father’s Day.

To make your offer even more relevant, you can also tap into local events, festivals, or other happenings taking place in the town or city where your salon is based. An example could be a spa salon offering feet massage to marathon runners over the local marathon weekend.

As you run your salon promotions, I would always be careful with giving discounts on your core services. There are other, smarter ways to promote your products and services.

In the video below, I walk you through how you can structure your promotions in a much smarter way.

13. Always Offer Gift Cards

Gift cards are an effective way to generate additional income. During the Covid lockdown, many salons I worked with leveraged gift card promotions to drive sales even when the business was closed. Keeping them afloat during the most difficult times.

So you shouldn’t view gift cards only as a way for your clients to buy a gift for their friends. They can be powerful cash drivers as you can promote and sell them online.

Your salon software should be able to do this for you. Below is what it looks like when I set up a simple cash discount gift card in Mangomint.

I can then just link out the offer from an email campaign or social media to generate some additional promotional sales.

14. Increase Sales by Offering Add-On “Express” Services

So your salon is fully booked, but you’re still not making enough profit?

When you’ve built a good salon clientele, you need to focus on increasing the amount each client spends during their salon visit. Offering add-on services on your menu is a great way to do this.

These add-on services require little or no additional time from you to perform. You may even be able to add the services during an already-booked appointment.

The best is, of course, if you can introduce them to clients as they book. In the example below, I’m using Mangomint online booking.

Ideally, the cost of the products you need to use is low, so by simply adding the service to the appointment, you immediately increase your profit.

For example, let’s say you run a hair salon. An add-on service could then be a scalp care treatment that you can add while you have your client in the backwash anyway.

Below are some ideas to get you started, but I’m sure you can think of many more.

The McDonald’s example may be far from a beauty salon, but the idea is the same. If you consistently manage to cross-sell and provide additional express service with each appointment, you can drastically increase your salon profit.

Think about it.

If you add $15 on average to each appointment, you can add $100/day to your business, which is $20,000/ year – in pure profit!

15. Always Tell Your Clients What You’re Using on Them to Increase Salon Retail Sales

Would you say you and your staff members are good at selling salon retail products?

Most salon owners I meet answer no to this question. Even if they know how good business it can be. 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.

By just doing this, you’ll significantly increase the chances that your client will purchase the product to take home at the end of their appointment.

I’ll cover this in more depth in my article about the salon consultation here.

16. Retain Salon Clients and Accelerate Revenue with Packages

Getting new clients is important.

But most of your salon’s profit should always come from your existing, loyal clients.

It always costs more to attract new clients than to retain existing ones.

But what are you doing today to reward those loyal to you?

A simple way to do this is to offer packages. Basically, rather than just selling a one-off service, you sell a package with multiple services that clients can redeem over time.

Not only is this an incentive for them to stay loyal – they’ve already paid for their upcoming services – it’s also a way for you to generate some upfront cash for your business.

Most modern salon software platforms should be able to support this.

17. Get New Salon Clients with Out-of-the-Box Activities

The best type of new client you can get is someone who has been recommended your salon by their friend.

They are more likely to become loyal clients after their first visit. 

Word-of-mouth marketing is the most common way that salons build their clientele. But what if you were to get intentional with your strategy to get your clients talking about you with their friends?

I’m not a big believer in referral cards and incentive programs. There are just too many deals flying around there for you to get heard. And although it can work, it’s just really difficult to execute.

What I’ve seen be much more effective is to do something completely random. Even crazy.

A good friend of mine runs an annual chili plant competition. Basically, all his clients get a chili seed when they leave the salon, and whoever manages to grow the best plant and shares a picture of it on social media wins the competition.

Super random, right?

But this has become a massive thing for him. People rally behind this competition and keep asking every year when the next round will take place. Because this is so random, people can’t help but tell their friends about it and share their progress on social media, which is creating a major buzz around his salon.

You would need to come up with your own thing. But I’m just sharing this one example of how you can get people talking about your salon by doing something that is outside the norm.

In my experience, this is much more effective than incentivizing people with discounts and money.

18. Give Product Samples to Your Clients

Next time you meet your sales contact at your product supplier, ask for product samples.

These can be sachets or mini-size products.

These are great to give to your clients so they can try the product, which makes it more likely they will buy the product from you during the next visit.

One word of caution here.

Ensure you only give out product samples after your client has checked out. For example, let’s say your client is planning to buy a product from you, but they haven’t mentioned this yet. If you offer up free samples first, your client might decide they are satisfied with the samples and choose to save their money instead.

Additional Salon Marketing Ideas

Armed with the right salon marketing strategies, advertising, and promotional ideas, we’ll now cover additional salon marketing ideas to take your salon to the next level.

These are all easy-to-implement ideas that you can put into action today.

19. Always Re-Book Salon Clients During the Visit

“When is a good time for your next appointment?”

This is a simple question to ask that has an immediate impact on your salon business. But we often forget about it.

This is probably the most simple marketing tactic on this list, but it’s so important.

Inform your staff and receptionist that they should always re-book clients after their appointment. Remember to follow up and regularly remind about this so it’s never forgotten again.

If you’re using a good salon software, you should be able to set it up so that it automatically sends out a reminder to book after the appointment or a few weeks later when it’s about time they book again. 

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

I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that good client relationships are crucial for the success of your business. 

Your clients know you. They trust you. And hopefully, they also like you 🙂

This trust relationship is extremely important for a salon to be successful. 

But what about all the potential new clients who see you on social media or land on your website? How can they trust you if they’ve never met you?

To move people from just a website visitor into a salon client, you need to establish that trust and relationship with them.

And the most effective way of doing it is via a video.

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. It should tell your salon’s story and show the people behind it. Just as when you meet with a new client in your salon.

You can, of course, 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 with the help of a colleague or friend using a later-model smartphone. 

Upload it to YouTube and embed it on your salon’s website.

This can do wonders for your conversion rates of website visitors to new clients.

21. Use Instagram Stories to Promote Salon Specials

Are you using Instagram stories as part of your salon’s social media strategy?

This is a very good place to run short-term promotions. The same goes for Snapchat.

As they are “live” and only live for a short period, it drives a sense of urgency with the viewer to take action on your offer. This can help you sell your salon specials fast.

Even better is if you run a gift card promotion on your website.

22. Add Service Pages and Keywords to Your Salon’s Website

In the first salon marketing strategy, you learned how to register for Google Business to get your salon to show in the search results.

I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Many clients find your salon online, and search traffic from Google is free. In fact, it’s quite likely you landed on this article because of a search you did on Google, right? 🙂

But to get your salon’s website to show at the top, you need to put in a little bit more work.

23. Make Your Salon’s Instagram Locally Relevant Using the Right Hashtags

The Internet is a big place. Really.

Competing with the millions of salons in this world is tough. And, unless you have an Instagram account like @guy_tang, your voice will just disappear in the noise of all hairstylists and nail technicians posting every day.

But the good news is, you don’t need to communicate with the whole world. As your potential new clients most likely live in your city, it’s enough that you focus on reaching people there.

Sounds obvious, right?

Still, I see many salons missing out on this. So, I wanted to share a quick tip that you can start with this week that will help get your posts visible to people living in the same city as you.

Are you using hashtags when you post today?

If you’re not using hashtags consistently, you’re missing out on a big opportunity. Your potential new clients look at local hashtags when searching for salons in your area. So you want to make sure you are visible when they do.

24. Always Link Back From Your Social Media to Your Salon’s Website

Do you remember why your salon is on Instagram?

If used strategically, Instagram is one of the best places to promote your salon. But it’s also easy to end up spending a lot of time on Instagram without actually getting much new business out of it.

And, in the end, that’s why your salon should use social media. 

Learn more about how to create a salon Instagram bio that converts your followers to clients here. 

25. Use Active Language when You Post on Social Media

To grow your engagement and following on your salon’s social media, you need people to take action.

Nice pictures and quotes are good, but you also want people to take action. Explore some awesome hair quotes, nail quotes, hairstylist quotes, and relaxing spa quotes for Instagram.

Ask people to do something.

Tag a friend, answer a question, or visit your website for that matter. 

26. Setup an “Insta-Friendly” Space in Your Salon

You can achieve a lot with the right salon Instagram hashtags and captions, but what’s most important is, of course, the quality of the images you post.

By making sure you have a good space to take quality images, you’ll not only improve the quality of your images, but this can also work as a fun selfie station for your clients to take their pictures at — which is great marketing for your salon.

Find a clean area in your salon where you and your clients can take good before & after pictures. 

Make sure you have good light to show the result in the best way possible. If you don’t already have one, I recommend you get a ring light to support this. You can check the ones I recommend in my recommended salon equipment list. 

Remember also to promote your salon’s Instagram handle when clients post pictures from your salon.

27. Ask Your Salon Clients to Leave Reviews

In the Internet age we live in, people research salons before they book.

So, you want to ensure you have a good amount of reviews for your salon on Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Not only do client reviews give confidence to new clients that your salon is good, but it also helps your salon rank better on Google.

This is why you should always ask your clients to leave a review after their service. 

And be transparent. If you have a good client relationship, tell her that if she leaves a review, this would be a big help to your business. In most cases, she’ll want to help you and write a good review.

You can also automate this with your salon software so that an email or SMS is sent directly after the appointment.

28. Get New Salon Clients by Collecting Email Addresses

Email marketing is, hands down, the best way to stay in touch with your clients in an automated way in between appointments.

But you shouldn’t only use email marketing with your existing clients. 

In fact, it’s even more valuable to capture the email addresses of people who are not yet your customers. You can then use your salon’s newsletter to build trust with them and later turn them into new clients.

I explain how you can do this in my email marketing guide for salons.

29. Maximize Your Salon’s Street Visibility

This is one of the most obvious salon promotion ideas on this list.

But, while we’re getting all excited about promoting our salon online, we should not forget this more traditional promotional tactic. 

Most people walking past your salon either live or work near your salon – making them a perfect client prospect of yours. Your salon window is an advertising space you’re already paying for, so you better make the most out of it. 

You should make it your mission to ensure that everyone living or working in your area knows that your salon exists. There are a lot of tactics you can use here: Play music outside your salon, make sure you have good lights in your window and street sign, and make use of the sidewalk if you have one outside. 

Anything you can do that is disruptive (while still in line with your salon’s image) is good. People are busy and have other things on their minds when they walk past you, so you should take the opportunity to stand out. 

30. Make Your Salon Staff the Best Promotors of Your Salon

Just like your salon window is an advertising space you’re already paying for, so are your salon employees.

In fact, employees are generally the biggest cost that a salon has. So you better maximize this investment.

Your employees should be your best ambassadors. Everything from what they wear to how they act communicates your salon’s brand.

If you haven’t done so yet, take the time to define how you want them to promote your salon. Write it down. And train them.

Make sure to also include the biography of each hairstylist on your salon’s website. You can learn how to craft a good salon and stylist bio in this article. 

You cannot expect that they’ll understand this by themselves. A motivated team that knows what you expect of them can make a massive difference in how your salon is perceived.

For more ideas on how you can motivate your staff, you can read my article on the most effective ways to motivate salon employees.

31. Invite the Local Paper to Your Salon

What’s unique about your salon?

I’m sure you have a story as to why your salon exists or why you’re offering a particular type of service that no one else does. Or maybe you’re particularly knowledgeable about a specific beauty topic? 

Whatever your story is, you are sitting on a good PR opportunity for your salon. Write down what your unique story is and reach out to local papers and magazines to get them to write about you.

Local papers love local stories. And if you have one that is relevant in your community, you have a good chance they will feature you and your salon.

If successful, this can have a big impact on your salon. 

32. Incentivize Your Salon Staff with Salon Competitions and Commission

There are many ways you can motivate salon staff.

In general, you should prioritize intrinsic motivation first. However, monetary rewards certainly have their place as well.

Your salon software can help you set up commissions on specific products and services to incentivize individual performance. However, peer motivation and being publicly recognized is typically an even stronger motivational driver for employees. 

33. Leverage the Power of Music in your Salon

Research shows that music influences the experience of your salon — and how much your clients will spend with you.

Take advantage of this and build an uplifting playlist for your salon. 

34. Enter Local Win-Win Partnerships

You’re not the only entrepreneur in your area.

There are more people, just like you, who are looking to grow their business. Take a walk around the area of your salon and look at what other businesses are there.

Talk to them.

I’m sure you’ll find some other local, noncompeting businesses that are interested in partnerships with you to benefit both parties. In fact, when picking your salon location, an important consideration should be opportunities for local partnerships.

You can run co-promotions (e.g., you offer a free coffee at the café next door with your service). In return, they offer their visitors a discount on your services. 

The partnership needs to be beneficial for both parties, or it will inevitably fail.

This is a great, free salon marketing idea with endless possibilities.

35. Always Carry Salon Business Cards

Who is the best ambassador for your salon?

You are. 

And, without thinking about it, you’re probably out promoting it daily. 

As a salon owner, you should always have your business cards with you so that you can easily hand them over to interested people. 

To get ideas for salon business card designs, I recommend you check out my list of hairstylist business card design ideas.

It can also be a good idea to add a nice quote to your business card that somehow represents you. You can find quotes to use here:

• Spa quotes for business cards
• Hairstylist quotes for business cards
• Hairstyle and hair color quotes
• Nail quotes 

36. Host an Event in the Salon

A good way to get publicity for your salon is to host an event.

This can be a bring-your-friend event, a bachelorette party, or an opening event where you invite people in your area.

Another good option is to allow another local business to borrow your salon for their event. This helps introduce new people to your salon.

There are many digital marketing strategies for salons to build relationships (which I frequently talk about), but I must admit. 

Nothing beats the experience of a traditional, face-to-face event. 

37. Capture Salon Client Feedback

I’ve covered a lot of marketing ideas today. There’s more to come, and I hope you’re finding it helpful.

But how do you pick the next thing you should do that will help you get new salon clients and grow your salon business?

Ask your clients.

Feedback is gold.

You need to be collecting it regularly. And, more importantly, act on the feedback you get. 

The problem with feedback is that it’s subjective to the person giving it. So it’s probably not a good idea to act on everything you hear. Instead, try to spot themes of common feedback to act on.

The best way to do this is by putting your salon software to use. By setting up automatic feedback forms that go out right after a client’s appointment, you can collect valuable feedback in a structured way.

Marketing Ideas for Hairstylists and Hair Salons

All salon marketing ideas and strategies in this list so far are applicable to all types of salons. In this section, we’ll cover hair salon promo ideas, hair salon advertising, and marketing ideas for hairstylists specifically.

38. Hair Salon Promotional Ideas

We’ve already covered some general promotional strategies for salons.

But what are good hair salon promo ideas?

Here are some hair salon specials that grow salon sales:

• Get a free care product with hair color service: By giving away retail, you can avoid discounting your services to avoid diluting your pricing. 
• Hair makeover gift cards: This is the perfect Mother’s Day gift. Always offer gift cards.
• Free children’s haircuts with your service: This is another good way to add value to your offer without diluting your core service pricing. 

For more ideas, I recommend you go through my list of salon promotions that work.

39. Hair Salon Advertising Ideas

There are several ways that you can advertise your hair salon. The ones I’ve been successful with are Facebook ads and Google Ads, but there are also platforms like Pinterest where people are actively looking for hair inspiration that I’ve yet to test. 

I’m including some hair salon advertising examples from Facebook below. Even if they were designed for Facebook, there are some important learnings here to consider as you’re creating your hairstylist ad.

1. Use benefits vs. features. People aren’t as interested in the cutting technique you’ll use on them as they are in the emotional benefit you deliver (e.g., a clean feeling in the example below). 

2. Include all details: Make sure you communicate the exact offer, where your salon is located, etc. You don’t want people to not take the offer because they were missing information.

3. Use descriptive images: Show hair or someone cutting hair. You only have a split second to convey what your ad is about, and images offer the best way of doing this. 

4. Have a clear call to action: Don’t leave people who get interested in your offer uncertain about what to do next. Clearly tell them what action you want them to take next.

40. Marketing Ideas for Hairstylists 

Here are some unique hairstylist marketing ideas:

1. Influencer hair makeover: Hair services are typically the most visually transformational services. This is why working with influencers who post their before and after pictures are so effective.
2. Work on shows and events: Find some time to go outside the hair salon and participate in shows, events, and festivals where you provide hair styling services. This is a good way to build your hair salon’s name in the community.
3. Donate hair: Having a salon CSR (corporate social responsibility) strategy is becoming increasingly important. There are many ways a hair salon can engage in such activities. For example, there are people who, due to treatments, are in need of wigs with real hair. So why not donate instead of throwing it away?

41. Run a Hairdresser Competition

Hairstylist competitions are a great way to motivate your salon team and reward the behaviors you want in your salon.

Only you know what the goals are and what you should reward. It can be directly sales-related (e.g., earn points for every retail product sold) or qualitatively (like the best hair color service done).

It can also be based on activities that help lead your salon to the desired results — such as the number of hair consultations or attended stylist education, for example.

42. Time to Move to Action: Build Your Salon Business Plan

This list of salon marketing ideas ended up quite long!

I hope you’ve found some salon ideas today that would be right for your salon. 

But it doesn’t end here. 

It starts now.

You’ve invested a lot of time today to go through this list. If you do not take action now, this was just a waste of time.

So, pick at least one of the salon marketing ideas I shared today, and go do it!

Remember to check back on this article – maybe even bookmark it – as I will continue to update and add more ideas.

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