The most rewarding marketing you can do for your salon

Email marketing is known to drive more sales and bookings than any other marketing activity you undertake. Targeting your clients, both potential and existing, right from their pockets, their handheld devices is not only easy for the client to see and click onto, but it is a sure fire way to consistently double, even triple, your sales.

Your social media, combined with your consistent email marketing should be working hand in hand. Creating a great digital strategy that suits your needs and wants, as well as the clients’, then your salon will be reaping the rewards!

Simply put, if you are looking to increase bookings and sales, having an appealing and visually stunning email newsletter is by far one of the most lucrative activities you can undertake.

First things first, how often do you currently send out email newsletters to your mailing list of clients? If the answer is anywhere between never and rarely, it’s time to change tactics. Commit to sending out an enticing email at least monthly, preferably 2-3 times per month, depending on how many brands, services and treatments you want to market.

But, it’s not just about sending the email, or getting your emails opened. It is about selling your clients on why you are a good idea, encouraging them to click, call and book.

If your clients aren’t clicking ‘book now’, or even opening your emails, this could be a case of lack of an attention grabbing subject line, which compel your customers to open your email. This needs to be stunning from the moment they glance at the email notification, making them interested in knowing more about what you want to say.

We have 4 simple ways to immediately grab your client’s attention, compel them to learn more, and ultimately turn that interest into a sale:

1. Peer pressure.
   Customers don’t like to miss out on current trends or popular treatments, and social proof is a HUGE way to entice them to book on a whim. Social proof provides credibility and drives your customers to want something even more because everyone else is doing it or getting it.
   

2. What’s inside.
   Get your customers guessing so they simply MUST open your email to know what’s going on. For example: “have you heard the latest trend in facials?”. Every salon customer will want to know what’s new in your salon, and their interest will likely turn into a read email and subsequent service booking.
   

3. Hot spot specials and money saving deals.
   No client can resist an incredible deal, like a free gift with a treatment, or even an incentive to book. For example, “call to book today and receive a free serum upon arrival at your appointment”. It’s simple and it’s effective.
   

4. Do it now.
   Limited offers, only 7 appointments left, and bonus deals are all a great way to compel your customers to take action, and take it now. If you create scarcity in your services, it not only makes you seem highly in demand, but your customers will also have the urgency to book or buy

8 Salon Tanning Marketing Ideas

@th_makeup_artistry client wearing Sunescape Month in Maui spray tan

With summer in full swing, and the upcoming heatwave weekend in Sydney tomorrow, your tanning business is likely pumping out some bronzed and beautiful ladies. But that doesn’t mean you can stop marketing the service!

Many tanning salons have established a good base of customers, but these marketing ideas can help your tanning business grow and reach new potential customers all the way into the colder months.

1. Set up monthly tanning plans.
   Offering people value in return for them signing up to a monthly tanning plan. You can provide free tanning sessions a month when they sign up with a makeshift ‘contract’ allowing them to find the value in returning to your business, and you to get the customer on your database to further digitally market to them through emails and SMS bursts. Even though your investment might be small, the outcome for gaining a customer might be huge.
   

2. Provide new customers with enticing gifts.
   Giving a first time or relatively new customer a customised gift bag with samples of retail products you have in store, like Sunescape’s retail range, will make them return to your salon, guaranteed. Sampling is a small expense and the gift bag shows the client’s that you care about them and your business. When they run out of their sample, they’ll come back to you…
   

3. Offer incentives to repeat customers.
   Providing regular tanning customers with incentives that will keep them coming back and giving more value to their tan could drive new memberships to your salon. Using a referral program with your existing customer base, and rewarding them with a free month of tanning or a free gift of tanning mousse, will give them something they really want (value) and something you really want (more customers)!
   

4. Loyalty Programmes.
   Like above, customers respond to enticing incentives. Start a loyalty program that provides free products or services once a customer reaches a certain number of spray tans or purchases over a certain predetermined amount in store. It could be 5 tanning sessions until you receive a free spray tan, or committing to a few months on spray tans to receive retail products for free (or discounted).
   

5. Take advantage of social media to create offers and value deals.
   Put all your highly valued offers for spray tans onto your social media pages to people that do not follow you or aren’t current customers might be tempted to participate in your services. Social media is a gold mine for customer reaching out to businesses and asking questions about their services. Post specials and availability bookings on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and even utilise other sites like Pinterest to reach even more people with your value offer.
   

6. Create monthly campaigns.
   With Sunescape, your marketing campaigns and ideas are done for you, with social media graphics and email newsletters created for you to push out to your audience. Publishing a monthly campaign theme on social media or your website so they can enter a contest or go into the draw to win a small prize in return for handing over some personal information (obtaining email addresses to go into your database). People will like your Facebook page for the chance to gain a small reward.
   

7. Involve yourself with the customer and community.
   Get involved with your community and target market to that people know who you are and what you offer. Community involvement will get you new exposure, while creating something a potential prospect will consider invaluable will allow you to become a go-to tanning source in your community, and they’ll come to you to get their tanning needs met every time.
   

8. Keep your contact means up to date.
   One of the most important things in the beauty industry is being easily contactable by various methods of communication. This means you need to have an always answerable phone, current email address and even an online chat or online forum that potential customers can ask questions and book themselves in for a spray tan. And always add new content to your marketing approach every day, whether it be a blog post, website update or social media exposure. An outdated site immediately puts off customers from continuing their research into your salon, and they may go elsewhere. Being contactable means being visible, and you will even get higher rankings on search engines with your fresh content.

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Sunescape Tan is formulated to give you a natural looking and feeling tan. They provide salons and consumers with a safe, ultra-moisturising bronzed glow; one that smells amazing, fades evenly, and is long-lasting. he proprietary formula is certified approved natural DHA, not tested on animals, and free from alcohol, parabens and petrochemicals.

To enquire about becoming a Sunescape salon or for more information, call 1800 625 387  or visit www.sunescape.com.au. 

Social Media Marketing Tips For your Salon

If you have been an avid viewer of our Profit Advantage exclusive MOAP Monday live sessions, you know that social media is KEY to the success of your salon. From communication with loyal clients to engagement of new people, it is guaranteed that social media (and the dozens of platforms available today) will be integral to the continuation of your thriving business.

Social media is an incredible way to engage with potential clients, spread more awareness about your services, and garner more brand loyalty among customers by backing up what makes you and your salon unique and interesting. It is crucial that businesses know how to connect with customers that they will enjoy, and that will eventually benefit your business.

We’ve listed 3 huge tips to help you transform your salon’s social media strategy:

1. Post exciting, yet professional content – What you post should entice your customers to need more interaction. Make it engaging and interesting, by providing them with a new source of information (perhaps even exclusive information to your followers). Remember to stick to your brand image by posting photos and information that aligns with what you wish to communicate, such as a fresh modern appeal or classic images.
   Tip: Create your own clean graphics with beauty tips or hot salon deals using sites like Canva, Photoshop (for those tech-savvy ladies), or even 6 second videos presenting some exciting news. This creates content that is interactive and appealing to your target audience
   

2. Use Facebook as a key communication channel – Facebook gives you the perfect way to share services, exclusive offers, sell your products, host contests and giveaways, as well as communicate with your target audience. It is rare that you find a customer without a Facebook profile these days, so take advantage of your new found world stage. Post plenty of pictures of your services and before and after shots to present exactly what you offer clients (pictures are 120% more likely to engage users than simple text posts).
   Tip: Treat your page as a miniature website, customers should be able to find all of the information they are looking for within the first few minutes of landing on your page. Make use of the various page tabs to show your products, location, services and reviews. And boost this information with targeted Facebook ads, looking at those located near your salon, or those who like similar pages on Facebook
   

3. Showcase your work on Instagram – With more than 200 million users in 4 years, Instagram is quickly becoming one of the biggest social platforms out there. Treat the highly visual Instagram as a showcase of your work with pictures showing a variety of your work, results, services, as well as fun creative photos that rake in the likes. Newly added Instagram stories are an awesome way for you to really take your clients behind the scenes of what you do and why you love it, bringing in added personality that other social medias do not have.
   Tip: Stay on trend using trending hashtags and feel good posts like quotes and appropriate memes to draw more users onto your profile and find out more about your salon. And don’t forget to link your Instagram to your Facebook as a ‘business’ profile for more contact options for customers.

These tips and strategies will push your salon to gain new customers, and retain those customers through brand loyalty. The importance of an interactive relationship with your followers has never been so profound, so hopefully it is your time to jump on board.

Salon Marketing for the Jan-Feb Slump

January and February are often the most difficult months for beauty salons, with clients going back into savings hibernation (we call it light wallet syndrome), after spending probably too much over the Christmas period. Bringing clients back into salon after they have had all their Christmas and New Years treatments, as well as retail spend done and dusted can be near impossible.

While pre-Christmas spending continues to rise, January and February are notoriously quiet months for beauty, hair and aesthetic salons

Time to crank out those awe-inspiring marketing ideas to reel new and old clients back into your doors. Here’s what we found works:

1. Play on the ‘New Years resolution’ mania
   We have all done it, but the obsession with resolutions each year continues to grow with UK gym memberships increasing 44% in 2015 (source: Guardian). From gym memberships to loving yourself more, health clubs and organic food stores captialise on this demand, and so should salons. Treatments in your salon can satisfy the desire to look younger, feel better and take care of yourself. Talk about finding the “new you”, and a “fresh start” on social media, in emails and on your website when marketing to clients to see a better return in the New Year.
   Example: Add healthy smoothies, or internal supplements to your treatments. Bestow Beauty is the perfect way to encourage your clients that they will feel healthier and slimmer from the inside out, from their skin to their well-being
   

2. Implement clearance sales – Need to get rid of those last remaining gift packs, or retail stock? Entice clients back in with can’t-stay-away discounts and deals, or even make your treatment packages more attractive by adding value such as a complimentary follow-up treatment rather than straight discounting. January sales can clear your stock ready for the New Year, keeps the team motivated to sell and keeps cash flow going.
   Example: Offer great discounts and sales on the days that are slow, like Mondays and Tuesdays, and start marketing these sales NOW. Pre-Christmas the hustle and bustle is there, waiting for an opportunity for you to mention your New Year sale. Take advantage of your audience looking for cheap answers post-Christmas, with a Christmas card saying thank you, and promoting your offers
   

3. Run a salon event – It doesn’t have to cost much at all, a fantastic idea to encourage clients coming back is to run a salon open day with small goodie bags, demonstrations and mini-treatments as a thank you for their loyalty. This will ensure some of your retail stock and samples will move as your best clients will be in attendance.
   Example: Utilise gift packs to introduce higher spending clients to new products and services you offer. They may even buy there on the spot, but don’t expect this, they are all watching their wallets
   

4. Gift cards – This is a major one! Gift cards are often undervalued in marketing, but ask yourself how many people receive gift cards for Christmas, and how many people you gave gift cards for Christmas this year. It comes to a lot overall, so this is definitely something to push in order to get people coming to your store in January and February. Studies have shown that 61% of gift cards holders spend more than the total value of the gift card.
   Example: As a one day only promotion, run a ‘buy two, get one free’ on your salon gift cards, pushing it hard on Facebook and e-newsletters to create interest and in-store volume. We recommend making them valid from 1st January to 28th February to ensure more clients within this time period.

Promote a salon open day through e-newsletters and social media posts leading up to, and following, Christmas.

Start thinking NOW about your Jan-Feb promotions. While it might seem a bit too far away to be thinking about now, especially during the Christmas frenzy, it is ideal to be ready and prepared when your profits start to slow down. Boost your offers now while people are still in that ‘buyer’ mindset, and this will stick with them into the New Year.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year… For Selling Retail in Salon

As much as you are excited for the holiday season, and might feel like winding down as the year comes to an end, the Christmas period is often the busiest time for salon’s retail sales, whether you usually sell loads or not.

Clients you may not have seen in month suddenly reappear to buy those products that they love for someone else, or are keen to snatch up an easy but beautifully packaged Christmas pack gift set. And here is where you come in… successful retail sales in this period start with great visual merchandising (and of course products your clients will love)!

We’ve got the packs sorted for you (remember to get in quick, there are VERY limited quantities), now it’s your turn to sell more and more retail products in the busy coming weeks. Here are our tips and tricks to guarantee to drive your Christmas retail sales through the roof:

1. Eye-catching retail displays, window displays
   Make it easy for your clients to shop in your store, and they will soon turn from browsers into buyers. Be bold with your displays, and arouse their interest by pointing out new stands and display sections in your store, motivating their need to buy there and then.
   

2. Avoid confusion by communicating mixed messages
   Don’t put one item exclusively on display without explaining why this product is so valuable. This is the same for multiple items on stand. Something like focusing on ‘Stocking Fillers’ for those smaller retail items will catch the eye of clients looking for easy on the wallet presents, sending the message of easy buying.
   

3. “Eye level is buy level” – This is a rule that supermarkets take to the next level, and can work just as effectively for salons. Place your most expensive and appealing items at eye-level, along with specific retail marketing signs. This works!
   

4. Colour can affect what sells – Think about the product’s packaging and how appealing it looks to your clients potentially looking for an impulse buy. Red is dynamic and evokes festive feelings around Christmas, while soft pink and lavender shades become more attractive to women salon clients.
   

5. Target your clients at the checkout – Last minute buying behaviour is dangerous (guilty as charged…), but something that is worth remembering when visually merchandising your retail products. Supermarkets put those small, but tempting items like chocolate bars and gum by the checkout to entice further spending. Pop ‘last minute Christmas gifts’ on the desk, and see them get snapped up in no time.
   

6. Slap signs on everything – Display signs are beneficial when showing the price, and especially the savings. Customers love to know how much they’re saving when they buy a gift pack, prompting them to make additional purchases.
   

7. Create a comfortable atmosphere – Introducing a comfortable, homely atmosphere to your store will create the perfect purchasing environment for Christmas shoppers. Target their senses with candles, a creative festive playlist, a tidy store (and NOT dusty products), and strung up lights to really add that extra oomph to your store, encouraging clients to stay longer and browse what you have on offer. This almost always inevitably ends in a purchase.

Remember that most people are visual learners; you can achieve so much with your retailing when focusing on what appeals to clients and you, as a salon owner. The easier it is to shop at your salon, the more they are likely to spend…

And, our Image Skincare, Youngblood, Pure Fiji, and Sunescape Christmas gift packs are extremely limited, so get in now before they are all gone!!

CALL US TO ORDER: 1800 625 367

How to Take your Instagram Feed to the Next Level in 5 Steps

Instagram currently has 1.59 billion monthly active users. Yep, you read right. That’s a lot of people that may stumble across your salon’s feed! With the popularity of Instagram as a source of contact for business and salons alike, it’s time to make your Instagram account the best it’s ever been.

You don’t need to be a professional photographer or have an expensive photo room to create beautiful imagery to use on your salon’s social media. With the right light, a smartphone, and a bit of creativity you are good to go! Professional Beauty Solutions will give you five key tools on how to create beautiful Instagram photos so pretty even the biggest magazines will envy it.

Do...

Use a clean background.

It’s important that your picture is not too ‘loud’. Take out excess items and keep the background as clean as possible. A simple white backing works well. Or how about taking on the marble trend that’s going nuts everywhere at the moment. We found this cheap option selling at Kmart for $29. The marble tones gives off a luxurious feel, perfect to showcase your makeup and skincare products. Another perk; it’s small enough to be stored away when you don’t want to use it.

Shoot in natural light.

The beauty of natural light (besides being free!) is that it brings out the best in your photo. Colours and details will pop and enhance the contrast in the picture. Long story short: daylight is best. The best time to take a snap is either in the morning or afternoon as the midday light can be too harsh. Try taking a photo close to a window or go outside on an overcast day to take advantage of the best natural light.

Here's another example on how light can make a HUGE difference by The Frow...

Have a theme.

Whether is a specific colour or a specific filter, having a consistent theme makes your Instagram feed look very professional and appealing. Making your Instagram feed harmonious will only benefit you, and people looking at your feed might just hit that follow button. Here are our examples:

Photo credit: Nuts and Blueberries

Photo credit: Mikutas

Don’t...

Worry about the amount of likes.

Creating a fantastic Instagram is what you have set out to do, and that’s great! But so many businesses and Instagram users become too concerned about the amount of likes their awesome flatlay gets. Post photos that are good and say something about your salon, not what you think will garner the greatest amount of attention. Yes, you want to gain new interest and maybe new customers, but don’t sacrifice the loyalty of your existing clients to become ‘insta-famous’.

Post for the sake of posting.

Creating content for the sake of posting something is not a good way to start your Instagram success. Work to make quality images for your loyal clients, understanding what they would want to see, and what you want to post. Take the time to edit your images in their best light, and engage with your clients, to make your feed a reflection of your salon image.

If you would like to learn more about how to use Instagram and other social media platforms to increase engagement and drive traffic to your beauty salon you can attend our social media session at Passion to Profits 2.0 this Saturday.

And remember that we are doing Facebook LIVE every Monday to give you the hottest trends and best marketing tips to take your business to the next level. Exclusive to PBS members only.