After months in lockdown with no clear end in sight, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel for hair salons. Whilst there may still be a bit of time to go until you can reopen your doors again, the coming weeks can be used to ensure you return with a bang.
As you plan for your reopening, you may be thinking of your hair salon marketing strategy and how you can ensure those bookings come flooding in post lockdown.
Creating a marketing plan is a great way to ensure you have the right plan in place to achieve your goals. Although, it can be a daunting task and hard to even know where to begin!
It’s likely that you will have created a marketing plan at some point, but it may well be in need of a refresh. So, to help get you started, we have listed our top tips to create a salon marketing plan that ACTUALLY works.
Evaluate your business performance
Firstly, it’s important to analyse your existing business and identify what has worked well, where the gaps are and which areas you can improve on.
It may not be the most exciting part of your marketing plan, but it’s essential to look at your finances from when you were open.
Identify how many appointments you had per month, the total number of new clients and the overall revenue by month and year. These figures can then be used as a benchmark to create your marketing goals.
You should then look at your previous marketing efforts, how much you spent and how successful they were. This could involve looking at metrics such as website visitors, social followers and contacts in your client database.
Conduct a SWOT analysis
If you’ve never heard of a SWOT analysis, not a problem! It’s super simple and another tried and tested way of evaluating your business. Here are some examples which could apply to your salon:
Strengths – Excellent customer service, large range of services, extended opening hours
Weaknesses – Lack of marketing activity, no online booking system, lack of organisation
Opportunities – Website improvements, automated marketing, increased product offering
Threats – New competitors, promotional offers, new government safety measures
Identify your target audience and competitors
While it may be clear to you who your target audience is, it’s beneficial to clearly outline this in your plan. Ask yourself who exactly you want to target in terms of demographics and needs and identify the marketing channels they use.
In such a competitive market, you also need to consider who your competitors are and look at what they are doing. Our Business Benchmarking feature is a handy analytics tool that measures how well you’re performing compared to similar businesses.
So, you can be nosey and see how well you stack up against the competition!
Choose your marketing channels
When putting your salon marketing plan together, you should really have in mind what channels you want to focus your efforts on.
It might be that you only focus on a few marketing channels such as Facebook and SMS. While this may work well, there are so many other ways to engage with your audience that you may be missing out on.
With Shortcuts salon software, our Marketing feature enables you to easily set up SMS and email marketing campaigns that can be personalised throughout the year. As a busy salon owner, this makes it easy to keep in touch with your clients without lifting a finger!
Decide on a marketing budget
Marketing your salon will cost money, but how do you decide on a budget? It’s worth considering the areas you want to focus on and how you can use your resources effectively.
The budget you allocate will also depend on how quickly you want to grow your business. As a general rule, you should aim to use at least 5% of your sales revenue on your marketing budget.
Outline your goals
No progress can be made without setting clear goals. They can also be a great motivator to put your marketing plan into action and get your team excited.
These could be goals to increase monthly appointments, new customers or even your website visitors. Don’t get too carried away though and be realistic with what can be achieved with your timeframe and budget.
Monitor your performance
Reporting on your progress is just as important as getting started in the first place. So, once your marketing plan is in action you must remember to monitor its performance.
Why not use some of the various Reports in Shortcuts to keep track of your cash flow? It will also help you identify whether you are on track to achieve your financial goals. The ideal tool for a busy salon owner like you!
Using Shortcuts Salon Software to attract new customers
Shortcuts Software has all the features you need to help you get found online, stay in touch with your existing clients and achieve your business goals.
Our salon software will also help to cut your admin workload in half by simplifying your daily tasks, so you have more time to do the things you love.
If you’re keen to learn more, you can get in touch with us or book a demo.
