So, now that you are all set and ready to start your nail salon business, the next important task is to focus on how to market your salon, and your services. How would you make yourself stand out in the highly competitive industry, and ensure that you have a steady stream of clients? Here are some of the tried and tested marketing strategies, which are known to deliver results.
• Leverage Technology
Technology is your best buddy to increase your sales, and must be utilized. Host a website, enroll customers, accept online bookings, send upcoming appoint reminders, process payments, and take feedback. You can do almost all administrative work by deploying a salon management software. Based on the customer feedback and preferences a salon management software, such as the one from Zenoti, will give data driven marketing ideas. Such software will also allow you to analyze the results of each and every campaign to see the improvement in the performance metrics of the nail salon.
• Send Automated (non-sales) News Letters
Automated newsletters, which keep your customers informed can help in creating your brand and have a high potential to increase sales. However, such letters have to be like the slight nudge, and should not appear as a sales pitch. When implemented correctly, it can work wonders and help your clients stay updated with the latest trends and styles in the season. The more you personalize the newsletter by sharing your ideas, and thoughts the better will the reader be able to relate to it. It should seem like an informal chat, interspersed with humor. Some content ideas for such newsletters are
A. Write about three great products, and why you prefer using them
B. Write about how you can take care of nails, and let your nail artwork last longer
C. Speak about your achievements, including new services that the nail salon is providing.
Such newsletters can be sent once a month, and slowly but surely you’ll have a bunch of fans and followers. Since, people will read what your nail salon can offer they’re likely to not only try the services but also recommend it to people over a casual chat.
• Deploy a ChatBot
Often underestimated ChatBot is a great tool to engage with potential clients. Integrated with your website, social media pages and Google or Facebook advertisements, it allows immense possibility to engage in a friendly conversation with potential clients. Some salon management software already have the ChatBot feature incorporated and selecting one such software will help you up your game. From responding to commonly asked questions to accepting bookings, ChatBotcan accomplish all of these tasks to provide a seamless interface to potential customers. ChatBot can be further customized to collect potential customer contact information for the database. As soon as there is a website, or social media page visit, a ChatBot can seek name, contact and email and save the records for customer database and increase the readership of your newsletter.
• Seek Active Feedback
Getting customer feedback is a tricky slope. Invariably there would be some customers, who will never show up after one visit and some who will promise to give a review and forget about it. This is where engaging your clients helps them feel valued. For every appointment, actively seek a feedback. Request for feedback or review can be sent over push notifications on the app, or personalized emails. Reviews and testimonials are research material for new potential clients. Thus, sending an email, or a text to seek feedback and assuring them of best services will prompt the customers to give feedback on various platforms such as Facebook, Google etc. Both Facebook & Google often suggest your business based on the reviews and ratings by people. Higher the number of positive reviews, more the chances of your being listed as high quality local business.
• Use Social Media
People love social media. Whether Facebook, or Instagram people are constantly scrolling feeds. Create your social media page and post relevant content. You can share links to your blog posts, and pictures of your work. Small reels of customer testimonials, you or your employee talking about nail care tips. Show them that you and your employees while working on making the client look pretty, are also having fun. Posting small videos of how you’ve created a particular nail art or highlighting part of the technique used will enable your client to see your talent and better appreciate it.
Marketing is a constant game, and no single method works. This is where data analytics and software can help. By deploying data analytics, a salon management software can greatly improve your marketing game and help in increasing sales.
