5 Successful Salon Marketing Ideas for Organic Salons
One of the many great things about owning an Organic Salon is that building a loyal and highly profitable clientele is just so darn easy. While all the chemical-based salons around town try to promote themselves with dangerous Group-On campaigns, expensive billboards, and useless direct mailing campaigns; an Organic Salon has a niche, boutique, and unique product line that any health conscious person concerned about their wellbeing gravitates towards. I have written this article to share the strategies that have proven to be successful for me in generating new organic salon clients.
I Love That I Have Exclusive Products to Recommend
What’s worse is that I have seen dozens of salons in my area spend valuable advertising dollars primarily promoting the brand of their product lines never realizing that those manufacturers are rushing those same products to the shelves of Target and Walmart just as soon as the salons have built up a nice following for them from recommending these brands to all of their clients and advertising them all around town. I honestly don’t even think these salon owners ever realize what these manufacturers have done to them because these products are quickly replaced with some new “revolutionary” professional product that is also being fast-tracked to retail shelves as soon as these unwitting salon professionals have paid a premium for the products for the honor of helping the product manufacturer build its brand. It’s despicable!
Luckily, if you’re using Organic Color Systems you know that in the 20+ years of their history, they have never sold any product in their line through any other outlet than professional and licensed salons.
5 Salon Marketing Strategies That Have Been Proven To Work
Since I have realized so much success, and have been simply amazed at how easy it has been, with marketing an organic salon for little to no money, I thought I would share some of my successful tactics in an article to share.
1. Cooperative Fundraising: There are thousands of groups in your local community that would like additional ways to do fundraising. Well, you can be their source of funds while they help you grow your business. Here’s how.
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- Step 1: Raise your service prices by $5.
- Step 2: Go to your selected organization (hospital, church, park district sports team, cancer treatment center, your child’s classroom, local high school band, etc.) and ask them if you can donate $5 to them for each new client they send you.
- Step 3: Get 50 pieces of card stock paper and print a coupon that says “Bring this card in and I will donate $5 to….”
- Step 4: Provide the organization with these cards and ask them to distribute them however they see fit.
- Step 5: By doing this, with one or more organizations, you have potentially created hundreds if not thousands of sales representatives for your salon at now cost.
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2. Invite a Friend Night: Want to put your referral network on steroids? Host an “Invite a Friend” every other month. Get some light drinks and some food (teaming up with a local caterer looking for additional exposure has been successful for me) and let all your clients know that if they bring a friend that evening, both of them will get their beauty services (restricted to a reasonable limit) for half price. Make sure you pre-book everyone’s next appointment, and you will be shocked at how many of these clients become loyal clients that return frequently.
3. Targeting the Organic Niche: I still purchase ads in my local organic periodicals, which have given me a very good return. But, I have found a few tricks that have seemed to work even better. I printed bookmarks for my salon and added a $5 for new client coupon on it. Every other month, I go to my local library with my nine-year old daughter and we insert one of them into every book relating to organic food, the environment, global warming, alternative health, and any other related topic. Each month we insert about 75 bookmarks and within two months almost all of them are gone. More importantly, my salon sees about 7 new clients a month with these coupons in hand and it’s absolutely free!
4. I like to actively contribute to my community. One thing that I have done that has been outrageously successful is to sponsor programs for community events. My salon now sponsors the programs for all of my towns high school plays, choir and band recitals, dance performances, and even charity and church events. Each program includes a full-page ad for my salon, including, you guessed it, a $5 coupon so I can track the results of how many coupons come back to me. All I do is pay for the paper and copying and I get my ads and coupons in front of hundreds of local people and support worthwhile events.
5. Make Your Online Presence Known: Many salons have websites, but in today’s online world, that is simply not enough. To actually get lots of business from the Internet, you need to make sure your list your business in the local listings for the major sites. Here is a list of the links to do this for free and it is fast, simple, and will bring you amazing responses.
Google Places: http://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/
Yahoo Local: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings/?forceAB=LL1 (basic listings are free)
Bing: http://www.bing.com/businessportal
When entering your businesses information, it’s helpful to have some photos to upload or videos on YouTube to add in.
These are just five simple ideas that will bring you enormous success. I have several more and will share them in a future article for Organic Color Systems. This line has been amazing for me and has changed my life in so many profound ways. Anything I can do to help other salon owners be realize the same success with this line will make me feel like I am really making a difference in the world. It’s so peculiar that I feel this kind of passion for line of products, but I have a feeling I am not alone!
I would love to see anyone with additional salon promotion and marketing ideas to share their experiences in the comment areas below. I promise to leave my feedback as well.
