A Beauty Community: How to Grow Your Salon Client List

One of the hardest things to do is attracting new clients into your salon and turn them into loyal and regular clients forevermore. With beauty being back after a year in lockdown, now is the opportunity to reach new open minded clients.

So how is it best to reach your clients?

The beauty industry relies overwhelmingly on word-of-mouth influencing; research from Harvard Business School has revealed that 67% of people buying beauty products count on the recommendations from social media, in comparison with 44% responding to brand ads. Word-of-mouth influencing holds greater value to the regular consumer thanks to seeming more honest. A lot of the time, real life before and afters or effects of a service are also visible to allow the consumer to determine more easily if they choose to invest. So here are some methods you can implement in your salon to reach new clients.

Referral Scheme

Harness this powerful word of mouth marketing and get your clients finding new salon customers for you through a salon referral scheme. It may sound obvious but many hair or beauty salons overlook this. Even in this online age I like a simple card referral system so your client has something to pass on to their friends. It’s important to be generous. 10% off is hardly going to tempt someone to spread the word. When you calculate how much a new client is worth to you over the period of a year it doesn’t make sense to be tight-fisted with your marketing incentives. Promote the system on your salon website, social media, email marketing and even in advertise it in your washroom. Get the word out there. And finally, don’t forget to measure the number of new salon clients who come via recommendation. If they’re not being referred then you know you’ve got a big problem with your service, pricing or technical know-how. It’s as simple as that.

Influencer Marketing

Micro influencers are local Instagrammers or bloggers who promote your beauty business services to their followers in an authentic and engaging way, in exchange for a small payment or free services. There’s no set-in-stone payment amounts for influencers, so you can get incredibly creative with what you offer. You might, for example, offer a full salon treatment for an influencer as payment. That works beautifully because the influencer can simply post or blog about their time at your salon, complete with before and after pictures, hashtags, the works! Alternatively, you can offer an influencer a discount to share on their social media at a cost or even arrange an Instagram takeover.

Traditional Press Media

Being featured in the press is an exclusive form of advertisement for most beauty salons and it can lead to a large array of clients. Offering a free treatment suite to an editor can result in them giving their recommendation which can hold a lot of value and be respected in the wider industry. This can be then used in your own marketing and the feature itself should bring in a lot of leads and potential long term clients. Working with a magazine can result in both a personal recommendation from the editor on social media and a mention in the publication.