How to promote a beauty salon and a tanning salon?
Six ideas of marketing activities.

    In this article you will learn:
  • How you can increase the number of customers in your salon and the number of services on offer
  • What marketing activities will be most effective
  • Whether implementation will be difficult
  • How long it will take you
  • What the approximate cost will be

Let’s go straight to the point.

There are many ways to effectively promote beauty and tanning salons. It’s best to choose those which will bring us the first benefits as soon as possible, after which you can focus on those which will pay off in the longer perspective (due to greater involvement). All tips are thoroughly explained in the table below.

1. Micromoments

“The most important thing is here and now.”
Micro-moments are a trend that will undoubtedly sooner or later have to be followed by every company. What’s going on? It's easy. The modern customer is demanding, and we must meet these requirements. Their online presence can be summarised briefly:

  • I want to find out NOW? (e.g. does the salon provide the service, how much does it cost?)
  • I want to do something NOW? (e.g. book an appointment)
  • I want to buy something NOW? (e.g. buy a gift card for a treatment or a tanning session)

If we make every effort to respond to customer expectations at a given moment, there is a high probability that they will use our services.

How to do it?

Even the smallest improvement in the way of communication can determine whether we will keep the client or whether they will continue to look for what they need from the competition.

Imagine two websites of two different beauty salons. The first of them gives information about tanning prices in a legible form on the subpage with the price list. The other company also has a subpage of the price list but it does not appear there immediately. You must click on one of the links again to get access to the PDF file where you can find prices.

In the first case, the customer will receive a response to the price information after 1 click, in the second one after 3rd and downloading a file that is difficult to view on a smartphone. Which salon will encourage more to use its services? It's not hard to guess.

Another example is the process of reserving a service. Formerly popular contact forms are becoming a thing of the past. Hardly anyone will want to wait a few hours for a response confirming (or not) the date of the visit. Information - "Thank you for sending the form, we will contact you as soon as possible" - caused discouragement and postponed settling the case to an unspecified "sometime".

A customer who is determined to buy something is in a specific mental state. They are focused on meeting the need at this very moment - not in an hour, not in two, but now.

If they decided that their hair needs to be shortened and they booked the fastest visit in a week’s time, they feel that the "Hairdresser Project" has moved forward. They managed to book a date.

That is why on websites and social media it is necessary to make it easier for clients to book or access the price list. Give them the feeling that the matter has been settled and they can calmly return to other activities. There are many ways to do this:

  • Provide a schedule on the website along with the option of booking a visit for a given time.

    If you do not want to commission the programmer to create a reservation system, because it is too expensive, time-consuming, or our site is built based on old technology, we can use external tools and place a pre-made widget. An example of such a service can be Booksy (https://booksy.com/en-gb/).

  • Allow booking of visits in various forms: by phone, visit schedule, Messenger and WhatsApp messages etc.

    Many tools have the option of programming an automatic response. If you do not have a system that will allow you to book a visit after business hours, let the customer feel served, e.g. by sending them a message saying "Thank you for choosing us. The first thing we will do tomorrow morning after opening the salon is to take care of your reservation, and in addition we will prepare a small surprise for you.

    You can also use CallPage systems that allow you to make a phone call on a date selected by the customer. The tool automatically dials the number left by the customer and connects it to the salon service at the selected time. It's worth trying them out for free during the test period (callpage.io).

  • Simplify access to information as much as possible.

    Customers usually look for: price list, contact details, opening hours and a catalogue of treatments. Access to this information should be simple and intuitive. What we should distinguish is the main goal we care about - that is booking a visit. If we require the customer to leave a phone number, explain why this number will be needed. However, we cannot demand too much. The golden rule is that the less we demand, the less it discourages the customer. It is better to ask about additional data when they visit the salon.

A web programmer will help us to properly prepare the website. It would be perfect if he were to be accompanied by a specialist in "user experience" (UX) who will advise on how to properly arrange the information. The cost of such services is usually determined in man-hours. Each valuation is individual. It all depends on the website and the complexity of the changes. It can be estimated that it will be 5 to 15 man-hours, at a rate of £32 - 40 per hour.

A tool to study user traffic on our website may also be helpful. Thanks to the backlights you will see where they click e.g. HotJar ( https://www.hotjar.com/).

2. Knowledge base

“The internet is a place where we look for answers.”

This seemingly trivial statement is very important from the perspective of the service provider. Users search for information on the internet, which means that to provide it you need to think about it from their perspective.

How many times have we found the engaging description of a company in the "About us" tab? Business owners are so focused on their business that they forget about the most important thing - the attention of the customer. The example of one of the solar salons illustrates this very well:

Who will be interested in information about the date of establishing the company? What does it mean that the salon is the best, that the service is the best and it has the most modern tanning systems?

The site should, above all, satisfy the hunger for knowledge of customers. On the page "About us" we can talk about the benefits of using our offer. Instead of just slogans it is important to show and tell specifics, which where possible could be referring to said slogans. Here is a sample of a description for a solarium:

We also need to skillfully talk about the services offered. The information should be reliable, practical, unique and preferably our own.

It is worth spending several days to prepare a list of issues and studies. Under no circumstances should you copy texts from other sites, because in this way we will violate copyrights and expose your site to a decline in search engine position (so-called cannibalism).

When it comes to the beauty salon, it is worth preparing short descriptions about:

  • The procedure step by step
  • Duration, soreness, recovery period
  • Recommendations after treatment
  • Photos of before and after the treatment, with commentary

When we give the answer titles in the form of questions, we'll eventually get higher positions in the search results. The knowledge base may also be a good idea for a blog that will lead those interested in the article further - towards the offer and then to booking the service.

3. One-time promotions

"How does one imagine 10%?"

Promotions help to increase the traffic and direct the customers' attention to the service. Each such action costs, therefore it requires good planning.

10% discount is a lot or a little? For the salon owner, this may be obvious, not necessarily for the client. When considering a promotion, it is better to offer something measurable, something that is easy to imagine as an attractive opportunity, e.g. replacing the percentage with the amount of the discount in the currency.

There is no perfect promotion, but there are several guidelines that should increase its effectiveness.

A good promotion is one that is:

  • Easy to visualise

    Therefore, instead of "10% less" it is better to say "£ 2 cheaper" or "you save £ 2" or "£ 2 as a gift".

  • On a simple basis.

    One short sentence must be enough to focus customer attention. It can also be a promotion slogan, e.g. "£ 50: Two treatments for the price of one", "Tuesdays cheaper by £5," In the series of treatments you receive two free. ", Etc.

  • Time-matched

    If the promotion is too short, the customers may be dissatisfied if it turns out that they did not manage to find out that "yesterday was cheaper". If the promotion lasts too long, we risk that the promotional price will be perceived as regular. A suitable solution may be to give it an understandable timeframe, e.g. summer promotion (everyone knows when it is summer), a limited period, so that the customer wants to make a decision faster (e.g. 15-30 days).

  • Attractive

    However, if we decide on a percentage discount, let’s make it count. It is generally accepted that the minimum that will encourage customers is a 20% discount.

    When preparing a one-time promotion, you should also think about reaching a wide audience with it. If we have a large community in social media and many people regularly visit our site, free traffic is enough. Otherwise, you have to think about paid channels.

4. Paid campaigns

"How much will I pay for a visit to my site?"

Sponsored posts, advertising in Google Ads, stories on Instagram encouraging our services - a lot has already been written about how to do it, that's why only the most important information on how to effectively promote a beauty or tanning salon on the web is presented here.

Even when we publish often on Facebook and Instagram, we will never reach even half of our fans. Algorithms (e.g. Facebook edge rank) are responsible for the rules of displaying our posts on fans’ Facebook walls. There are many ways to improve ranges, but the fastest will be simply to buy them.

Not every post is worth promoting. If we have devoted a lot of time to creating a great movie, it is better to invest in the movie than information about the opening hours of the salon during the holiday season.

As a rule, promotional budgets for small and medium-sized companies are limited, so you need to manage them wisely. One of the ideas for implementing a cheaper but effective campaign can be a promotion directed only at fans and friends of fans (so-called lookalike):

  • We publish a post that will give us a large reach (free of charge), encouraging our fan page to be liked (make the recipient think - "this is a good post, there’s probably more to come, so I will click that like button")
  • We publish another attractive post, encouraging people to like it (paid this time)
  • We publish a post with a promotion or other form of encouragement to use our services (for a fee), but addressing it only to fans and friends of fans of our fanpage (thanks to which the audience is narrow and we will reach most people at a low cost).

You should also consider paid campaigns in Google Ads. Those are just sponsored links in the search results that will appear at the very top of the page. Thanks to a small investment in promoting phrases that closely match our business, we can outdo the competition, which is very likely not doing it at all.

In practice, both investment in social media and advertising on Google is a small expense that is worth it, at least as a test. The cost of one visit to our site can be different, for social media it can be £0.30 - £0.50, per click, for Google Ads £ 1.00 - £1.20.

5. The human side

"Features that customers associate with people will automatically be transferred to the services they offer."

The company is made of people. Let's show clients our best side to get them to like us, gain authenticity and build a substitute for relationships, even if it is only virtual contact.

Small changes in the way of presentation can affect the assessment of our company. Instead of just writing that our product is good, let's show how we test it on ourselves. When we want to show that we approach each client individually, we show a photo in which we give them a small gift with cosmetics after the procedure, etc.

Social media publications from behind the scenes are also well received. This shows our ability to laugh at ourselves, even if something goes wrong, e.g. a tube of cream exploded; unusual events: a cat laid in the sun in front of the salon, or a new tanning bed arrived and we are wondering how to fit such a large and comfortable machine.

6. Positioning

"Why doesn't my site appear high on Google?"

Who doesn’t dream of being on the first page of search results? Unfortunately, the road to this goal is long and winding. It requires regularity and dedication of time, which we often don’t even have enough of to handle current affairs.

The fight for good results on Google is not made easier by the fact that we will probably see the first results of our work after a minimum of 3 months. So what do we do?

There are two strategies. The first involves independent work on texts and posts for our website, the second involves outsourcing this to a company that provides SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. What solution should you decide on?

Independent SEO activities

  • Take a lot of time
  • Are free
  • Require basic knowledge of web and SEO
  • Require specialised knowledge of the services we provide
  • Require at least half decent writing skills

SEO external agency

  • Are expensive
  • Require support from our side (mainly substantive)

If we want to do SEO ourselves, we should do it in the following order:

  • Perform a site audit that will show us what we should improve; there are free tools for that, e.g. https://www.seoptimer.com/
  • Make changes to the site as per the audit recommendations
  • Prepare a list of phrases after which potential customers should find us; best if we imagine what we would write ourselves, e.g. the best tanning salon in [name of the town], beauty salon in [name of the town], laser hair removal in [name of the town], how much does laser hair removal cost, etc.

The Google Keyword Planner (https://ads.google.com/intl/en_en/home/tools/keyword-planner/) will be useful for preparing your keyword list.

  • Based on the list of phrases, prepare a series of texts, e.g. blog, to be added on the website; we can also add them to the descriptions of our services.

Summary

There is no golden mean and there is no perfect way of promotion that would be suitable for any business. However, it is worth being aware of the possible activities, their required time investment and financial costs to choose one or several of them.

The more effort we put into any given action, the greater the chance that our competitors will not decide to copy it. This way you can easily overtake your rivals in the race for bigger profits.

A list of useful tools: