Expert Advice: Think outside the box to keep ahead of the crowd
Katie Godfrey shares her marketing hacks to promote your beauty or hair business.
One of the subjects I love talking about and teaching beauty businesses about is marketing, and I thought I'd share a few pointers to help you and your beauty and hair business.
Marketing is something we need to do every day within our businesses to help it grow and to keep us in front of the crowd when competition is always growing.
Here are some suggestions that I have found useful in marketing my own business.
Use emails to build a personal relationship
Never underestimate the power of email marketing. Most of you reading this will agree you don't send emails to your database, but this is a huge part of my marketing strategy for growing my salon and brand.
Most salon software nowadays will have the option to send emails from there. If you're not using this already, I highly suggest you do.
You need to build a personal relationship with your clients to build up rapport. Sending an email doesn't mean being Sales-y or sending out offers. Just connect with your clients, update them with what's going on in your salon or business. Give them tips and after-care advice, share any wins and just chat to them on email like you would a friend.
Make the most of social media tools
Many small businesses now put all their energy into social media, which needs to be a huge part of your marketing; just don't forget all the other ways that you can market your business also.
Knowing your audience through your social platforms is key to how you are going to market on there and what content you will produce. If your existing clientele are the people that are following you, you then need to do more than promoting your treatments as your clients already come to you for these services.
If your followers are potential new clients, then you need to promote what you do within the salon on your social media accounts.
For example, my salon's Facebook group is full of regular clients. On there I promote new services but also share lots of hints and tips and updates on the salon. On our Instagram page, it's newer clientele. So, on there we will focus a lot more on interaction and showcasing our work to convert these followers into clients.
Poll: Using polls on your stories will help interaction on your page. You can make this fun with different games, for example “This and that” or “Yes or No”.
Question Box: Using the question box is a good way for you to get to know your followers and your followers to know you. Make sure when a question comes through you always reply either privately or through the story.
Quizzes: Quizzes are also fun to do with your following. Let them guess how much they think they know you.
As you can see, we basically want people to be able to interact as much as possible. We need to add anything on our stories which will entice your follower to click on something.
When you are posting on Facebook or Instagram, you always want to make sure you have a call to action. People like knowing what to do, what action are you asking them to take from your story or post?
Connecting with other businesses
People like to buy local and support local, even more so since Covid. What businesses are there around you that have a similar target audience that you could connect with and promote each other to be able to get new clients through your door? There are so many ways of doing this that can work very effectively, you just need to think outside the box.
For example, if you're a make-up artist you could connect with a local beauty therapist that doesn't offer make-up services. If you are a beauty salon, can you connect with a local florist. You can then share leaflets, share posts for each other on social media, do a competition together, or even raise money for a charity together.
There are many ideas and businesses you can connect with to help grow you both. We go through this in a lot more depth in my salon owner's club.
Remember, a client needs to see you at least 7 to 14 times before they trust to come to your business or buy a product. The above are ways to be able to get in front of potential clients more to speed up this process.
Katie Godfrey is a Business Mentor, beauty salon owner, CEO of KG Professional, offering ABT-Accredited courses across the UK, and hosts the podcast channel The Life Of KG.
Katie Godfrey Business Mentor
