I own a specialty hair salon and we provide unique services. I have some new stylists that need help filling in their books and I’m hoping to invest in some marketing for the first time. Can anyone help advise me on the best way to invest in my business to get more foot traffic?
I work behind the chair full time and provide lots of training to my staff so I don’t have a ton of free time to invest, but have been working hard on social media and pushing for yelp and google reviews. I’ve been teaching myself a bit about SEO, but am not a pro. We also do a lot of community events that thankfully have kept us afloat in our 2 years of being in business.
I have worked somewhere in the past that paid for yelp advertising and when they cancelled the premium account yelp started removing all of our good reviews and harassing us. I was going to pay for google advertising but was afraid after that last experience and would love feedback on how to invest.
Here’s my site if you’d like to know more about what we do: www.blacksheepsalonLBC.com
Thank you!
Hey! I’m a social media manager - feel free to DM me and we can discuss the best way to use that money to bring in new clients. Cheers!
Join the best local Chamber of Commerce.
Focus on google my business. Get reviews there. Make booking easy and pay for ads in your area for that on maps.
Depending on your niche, you might want to create a YouTube channel. I found my current hair specialist that way, but it is also very niche, and he charges a premium. Do some tutorials or other content related to that and see if it works.
Why not pay someone to do the marketing instead of wasting time and money to trial and error on the ads? I wasted alot of money and time figuring out the best way to do my ads.
End up, my friend introduced me and I hired this company out of Singapore to market my education business and I now have too many students than I or my teachers know what to do with. Happy problems.
Anyway, I’ve already prepaid and I have one more month of service left. I can give you that 1 month to try out if you like. =)
Happy to help out a fellow female entrepreneur who is also clueless in marketing. 🤣
Can you share the singaporean marketing company?
You haven’t mentioned anything about your physical location.
For example, there are no directions of how to get to your store on your company’s website or pictures of store front.
Are you located in shopping mall, strip center, or free standing building?
Do you have street sign and attractive store front? Are there adequate numbers of vehicle parking spaces to accommodate more customers?
You mention a lot about spending on social media. However, you are first and foremost a location-based business (destination).
Part of generating door swings is having a convenient location and attractive store front.
Another aspect is repeat business such as having a customer loyalty program to reward frequent visitors.
Another way to generate more business is mobile operation. Provide salon services to folks that are home-bound such as the elderly, disabled, etc.
I ran a salon for over a decade. Here’s my advice that worked for me for years when I had newer girls. Run an inactive client report. Find every single client who has dropped off and send them a personalized text- you can type one into a note and copy it and personalize it. Let them know you have a new stylist who is x% off through Dec (must have a deadline) and she has just a few openings left if you would like to get in and get your hair freshened up for the holidays. Let them know your stylist is trained by your personally, or has their color formula you did for them, etc. Since you are busy, you can have your stylists go down the list and each do 5-10 texts per day. To me, this is better than paying for marketing because these are clients who have already known and liked your salon and maybe just got off track and have been thinking to get back in but just haven’t made the appointment. My other option is a referral contest. Now through Dec only- current clients get $x off their next service when they refer a friend. Each referral puts them into a drawing for a really beautiful, huge gift basket of retail products valued at $X. Way cheaper than $500, and referrals are always the best. And finally, ask every single client to leave a google review. Ask them personally and then text the link.