The Best Strategies for 2020
Let’s face it: in today’s highly competitive market, there are too many beauty salons and an ever-narrowing window of opportunity to get clients’ attention.
Even when you manage to get the attention you need for your beauty salon to be noted, keeping it is a whole different challenge.
To compound an already challenging situation for any business, and especially in the beauty industry, COVID-19 has irrevocably altered daily life, daily routines, and daily needs, forcing businesses in a literal game of sink-or-swim: either they will adapt quickly and efficiently, and ride the wave of change and progress, or they will be struggling to remain on the map.
In the case of beauty salons though, the news is good if you know where to look! The pandemic has elevated the need for personal care to a higher, more symbolic level: People need to have personal luxuries and take special care to look beautiful not for vanity, but because it helps them emotionally to cope with the post-covid uncertainty.
Not only during quarantine, but also in the post-quarantine reality where the pandemic’s risks still loom over everyone, taking a break from the stress to pamper oneself and escape from a burdensome reality- and thus, the beauty salon becomes a raft of solace in the turbulence of uncertainty and the feeling of losing oneself as routine breaks down or reconstructs into a shell of what it was only a few months ago.
Considering that the coronavirus pandemic has also forced nearly everyone to move to the digital space for practically everything, including consumer products and booking services, the digital presence of your beauty salon has indivertibly become the most important element in your marketing approach for the foreseeable future.
How, then, can you make your beauty salon stand out in the vastness of the internet?
The general answer is by creating a community.
This might appear an impossible goal, but it actually is very attainable if you break it down in easy, paced, preplanned steps that you adhere to consistently and over a steady period of time: remember, in creating your brand and maintaining a top slot in the totem pole of businesses in your industry, you are running a marathon, not the 100-meter dash.
So, what you need to do is follow these tested and true steps, but consistently and continually, to boost your beauty salon to the top and, most importantly, keep it there.
1. Solidify your brand with proper storytelling
Storytelling is a trade secret in every marketing campaign: your target audience will remember your brand if you have a solid personal story to present in it. They’re even more likely to become your clients if you consistently create content that enhances this brand story more and more or expands it. Ask yourself what your beauty salon’s calling is and then tell everyone about it, using images, music, and words.
Make your storytelling data-driven: use what engages people, what interests people, and what moves people in order to create your unique story about your beauty salon via interactive ads and mini-ads full of evocative images.
2. Make your beauty salon’s website cutting edge
Just a bland page about your beauty salon is not going to cut it.
Your beauty salon’s website must be as awesome as your brick-and-mortar base- and very importantly, it has to maintain a consistent look and feel both digitally and at the storefront.
Nowadays, it’s important to make sure your website is responsive and able to work smoothly and efficiently in a vast array of devices, from smartphones and tablets to laptops and desktops.
It’s also very important to make your website an experience rather than just a reference: include interactive video, appropriate widgets, fun little activities and AI for extra features such as visual and voice searches and chatbots. The more user-friendly your website is, the higher the chances that users will become your clients and loyal followers, thus building a solid community and not simply a clientele.
3. Treat your beauty salon’s social media as your “mini-websites”
Social media is where it’s at. There’s no doubt about it! Social media are the internet era’s word of mouth- and it’s extremely powerful. You must harness it with a strong, consistent, and unique presence across several different platforms. And you must take care of them with the same attention to detail as you do your main website: they are the ones that will get the traffic going, and they can even get you sales before the user even hits your main site.
It’s within the social media platforms that your beauty salon’s storytelling is going to shine and push you to the top of notability, despite the rapid-fire stimulation that users are exposed to. Your aim is to go viral, of course, with fun videos and tiktoks, instagrammable photos of your work, fun with your clients and strategic blogging and reblogging.
Going viral does entail a good amount of luck and randomness, but despite that, there is also a good amount of strategy involved. If you maintain a consistently fun and visually pleasing presence in social media, you are bound to build customer loyalty and create leads. And sooner or later, you will be viral enough to boost your business to the top.
4. YouTube, e-mail, and SEO are your best friends and secret weapons
The beauty community is one of the most active, and most lucrative ones out of all of them at YouTube. Your beauty salon must create its own niche within it! Be strategic in your approach, and consistent in the type of content you will be posting at your channel. Remember that YouTube is where you can sell services and products as much as anywhere else.
E-mail marketing is also powerful because it will bring your beauty salon right at the inbox of your prospective clients. Inform them of news, offers, and opportunities for better service, and watch your mailing list grow as clients sign up spontaneously for perks!
Lastly, SEO optimization is key: learn to use search engine algorithms to propel your site to the first page and generally get your beauty salon found faster than your competition.
Sometimes, advice and steps to getting to marketing goals might look sensible and necessary, but also devourers of time you may not have or demanding skills you will need to build in order to become efficient. This is where trusty partners come in. A good few of the steps we described are part of the expertise of professionals in digital marketing and advertising.
Consider relying on the experience and enthusiasm of digital marketing professionals like R Digital to propel your brand to the top while you do what you love!
