How to advertise a beauty salon - effective ways to attract customers

Launching a beauty salon from scratch and attracting clients is no easy feat, especially in the rapidly growing and competitive beauty industry. To ensure effective promotion, both newcomers to the niche and established companies with years of experience and a vast customer base need to employ various strategies.

In the face of ever-changing consumer preferences, even well-known brands risk becoming irrelevant if they ignore the need for continuous development.

Effective Methods to Attract Clients to a Beauty Salon

Word of mouth plays a pivotal role in attracting clients to a beauty salon, as nothing advertises better than the high quality of services provided. For new beauty salons, it is crucial to set high standards and maintain them to make acquiring new visitors less challenging, regardless of the amount invested in advertising and promotion. However, in the competitive landscape, efforts are required to grab the attention of the initial clients. Simply stating "We are open" on the signage may not be sufficient.

Attracting and retaining a new audience is a meticulous and not always straightforward process, but with the right approach, the first results can materialize in a short time.

The work of attracting clients for a beauty salon can be categorized into the following areas:

• Offline advertising: Facade and salon signage, features in thematic magazines, outdoor advertising, and collaboration with media.
• Online promotion: Managing social media pages and groups, creating and promoting a website, running contextual advertisements, and placing information on online maps.
• Building and managing a customer base.

One example of successful promotion of a beauty salon Derma Glow by Beata in NYC, website is https://faciallaserhairbybeata.com/

Next, let's explore all available and effective methods for attracting clients to a beauty salon, adapting them based on location, company goals, and other relevant factors.

Offline Advertising

The process of attracting new visitors offline begins long before the opening of your business. This requires careful preparation aimed at generating preliminary interest in your new beauty salon, where high-quality services are provided at affordable prices. It is essential to pay attention to the opening, offering attractive discounts and bonuses to the first visitors to create a positive impression and lay the foundation for recommendations. Although offline advertising often has limited local coverage, a well-executed strategy can make it an effective tool.

Signage, Facade, and Salon Design

The first impression is often determined by the appearance, so signage, facade, and display play a crucial role in attracting potential clients. It is important that the salon's external appearance corresponds to its concept: if the business focuses on affordable prices, the facade can be beautiful but not overly expensive. Exclusive salons should adhere to the highest standards. A well-visible and attractive sign, especially in the dark, as well as well-designed displays, can significantly enhance the salon's appeal. Interior design also plays a role in creating a comfortable atmosphere for visitors.

Thematic Publications

An effective method of promoting a beauty salon can be placing advertisements in print publications such as newspapers or specialized magazines. However, the choice of publications should be oriented to the territory where your target audience is located. Advertising in popular magazines may not be beneficial if your salon is located in a province.

Outdoor Advertising

Outdoor advertising, usually with a local reach, can be an effective means of attracting clients in small towns or residential areas. Various outdoor advertising tools, such as billboards, banners, stands, advertising in elevators and public transport, lightboxes, and signs, can be used wisely. It is important to choose the most suitable options and place them close to the salon for maximum impact. Creative slogans and original images will help stand out among ordinary outdoor advertisements.

Print Advertising

Leaflets, business cards, and brochures are effective tools for attracting and retaining clients. Distribute leaflets before the salon opening, containing information about upcoming discounts and promotions. Business cards can be handed to clients for direct contact with the masters. Brochures with essential information about the services provided can be placed in the salon for general awareness.

Online Advertising

Offline advertising is gradually becoming a thing of the past: many no longer respond to attractive signs, newspapers or printed magazines are primarily read by the elderly, and flyers and brochures are immediately discarded.

For more effective promotion and attracting customers from any part of the city, it is recommended to use online advertising: social media, a website, beauty aggregators, and online maps. Young people and middle-aged individuals actively use the internet, read news, search for products and services on search engines, and also check reviews on dedicated websites.

Online advertising has a global reach, meaning that customers are willing to travel to a beauty salon even from the other end of the city for high-quality service. Costs for online promotion can be minimal, but results may not be immediate.

For faster customer attraction, professionals can be hired, and specialized services can be utilized, albeit at an additional cost.

Creating Instagram and Pinterest Pages

Having an Instagram page is a must-have for any beauty industry-related business. Nowadays, every woman has an account on this social network. In Instagram, one can buy clothes and cosmetics, purchase gifts, schedule dental appointments, and order food delivery. A proper Instagram development strategy will attract more customers, eventually transforming an inconspicuous establishment into a trendy beauty salon.

To promote an Instagram page, it is sufficient to post high-quality photos of procedures, results, interiors, and skincare products. Posts should be timed when the majority of followers are online to achieve the maximum reach and gradually increase the number of followers.

For faster results in the initial stages, targeted advertising can be set up, or an SMM specialist can be hired. It is worth emphasizing that for such a business, this is the most effective way to attract customers: with a large number of followers, there may not even be a need for a website.

Advantages of promoting a beauty salon through Instagram include direct communication with interested individuals, attracting customers from different city areas, free showcasing of master's works, posting photos before and after procedures, and a quicker start to word-of-mouth marketing.

The social network Pinterest should not be overlooked either. To promote a beauty salon through it, one needs to create posts that people will want to share.

The social network's principle is similar to Instagram: it is recommended to upload high-quality photos at the right time, accompanied by a brief but interesting text.

Managing a Facebook Group

Creating a Facebook group is the second most effective way to promote a beauty salon online. Young women may not spend as much time on this social network, where the emphasis is more on textual content rather than photos. However, Facebook can be a quite effective means of attracting customers, especially when using targeted advertising.

Promoting a beauty salon on Facebook consists of the following steps: creating a content plan in the "problem-solution" format, informing about provided services, mentioning novelties, special offers, and promotions, conducting customer surveys to gather opinions on services and the salon as a whole, publishing useful content on the topic, and regularly boosting the best posts to increase reach and the number of subscribers.

With the right promotion strategy on Facebook, one can almost forget about creating their own website. For greater effect, it is advisable to simultaneously promote pages on both Facebook and Instagram.

Beauty Salon Website

Having a website for your beauty salon allows you to attract new clients from search engines and, at the very least, gather your brand traffic. Without a website, aggregators and directories will capture your brand traffic. When creating and promoting it, it's essential to follow the principle of "penny-wise, pound-foolish."

In this regard, it is recommended to hire a team of professionals who will think through every detail: develop an original and user-friendly design, optimize it for all devices, bring it to the top of search engine results, and provide the option for online booking, and more.

On the website, you can showcase photos of completed works, maintain a blog with useful life hacks, publish information about special offers and discounts. It is crucial to include up-to-date contact information so that new visitors can reach out and ask any questions. Instances where a beauty salon does not need a website include when it is located in a residential area of a large city catering to a local audience, offline advertising is effective, or there is a significant return from social media.

Additionally, if there is a lack of knowledge to develop a website or funds to pay for a programmer, SEO specialist, content manager, or copywriter.

Advertising on Beauty Aggregators

Recently, beauty aggregators have gained popularity - platforms where clients can find the nearest beauty salon offering specific services. The advantages of registering on such platforms are that it is absolutely free, and there is no need to spend time attracting customers - just fill out the profile with current data, a list of provided services, and then await calls from interested individuals.

Placement on Google Maps, 2Gis

Today, almost every business can be found on Google and Yandex maps, so it is essential not to neglect this method of attracting new clients. Also, the 2Gis service - detailed online maps of cities - should not be overlooked.

Presence on all these platforms will help the beauty salon website receive additional organic traffic in the local area from already interested individuals who just need to be converted into clients.

To publish your business on Google, Yandex, 2Gis maps, it is enough to create profiles and fill in basic information: address, area, phone number, working hours, and the like. It is necessary to regularly monitor this data and update it when necessary.

Contextual Advertising in Google AdWords

Setting up contextual advertising in Google AdWords is a paid but highly effective method of attracting an audience to the beauty salon website. According to statistics, there is 1 inquiry for every 25-30 visitors to a service-related website. To acquire 1 customer, two to three inquiries are sufficient.

The budget for contextual advertising is determined based on the desired number of new visitors to the beauty salon. A downside is the relatively high cost, but the expenses will pay off if the new customer becomes a regular one.

Experts also recommend implementing remarketing - banner advertising that is regularly shown to everyone who has visited the website.

It is advisable to launch contextual advertising for a period of at least 10 days, after which optimization is carried out to improve performance.