7 Bad Marketing Ideas for Salons: Make Sure Your Marketing Doesn’t Work

7 Bad Marketing Ideas for Salons and Spas: Seven Ways to Make Sure Your Salon Marketing Won’t Work

Salon and spa marketing ideas that actually work?  There are plenty of them out there.  Easy to execute marketing ideas for salon or spa?  They’re out there too.  Salon marketing ideas you can execute quickly and inexpensively that produce pretty much immediate marketing returns?  Trust me, they exist.

So if there are spa and salon marketing ideas that are easy to execute, cost little to nothing to do, and produce immediate marketing results – then why aren’t more salon and spa owners taking advantage of them? 

The answers lie within the choices we make – choices that ensure our marketing will work, or won’t.  Things that we do to make sure our marketing works, or, in this case, the things we do to make sure our marketing doesn’t work.

And the first of these 7 bad marketing ideas  – seven sure-fire ways to make sure your marketing doesn’t work (a.k.a. my top 7 bad marketing ideas for salon and spa) is this:

1.  Be inconsistent.

Launch programs and fail to follow through.  Practice “one and done” marketing.  Don’t be systematic or consistent.  Don’t communicate on a regular basis with clients and prospects.

I mean, who wants to be predictable? 

2. Don’t worry about your brand identity or business reputation.

Your brand identity exists as the sum total of perceptions – things that people believe to be true about you and your business based on their interactions with you, your company and all of its representatives. And you can’t control perceptions, right?  So don’t do anything strategic to build a strong brand or worry about your business reputation.

3.  Believe that word of mouth is the best way to market your salon or spa.

After all, word of mouth marketing occurs spontaneously as a result of your clients being enamored with you, your staff, the ambiance of your salon or spa and the results your clients receive as a result of your services.  Clearly, that being the case, you should have no shortage of referrals, pre-booked appointments and undying client loyalty.

That being the case, word of mouth is the best way to market your salon or spa.

If that is not the case, then word of mouth is not the best way to market your salon or spa, and continuing to claim that “word of mouth is our best marketing” and worse – believing it yourself – is a bad marketing idea for salon and spa.

Word of mouth marketing occurs as a result of marketing work, strategy, ease of sharing for clients and – ultimately – whether you give your clients something compelling to talk about that sets your business apart from competitors.

4.  Ignore the numbers.

Why should you care about things like how many new clients you get each month, how many you lose, which of your staff are selling retail and upselling new services, the amount of your average ticket or any of the other types of statistics which could point out where you might have issues which you would then be forced to address, such as:

• lack of employee engagement and buy in
• poor customer service
• failure to educate clients about home care
• inability – or unwillingness – of staff to provide prescriptive, consultative services

Why should you care that most US consumers start searching for what they want to buy – and that includes salon and spa services – online?  If you believed this, you’d have to put content on your website that works to get local search traffic on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

If you believed this, you’d have to start sending regular email newsletters to your clients and prospects – you’d have to actually use those email addresses you’ve collected at the front desk. You’d have to be on social networks and use them strategically. You’d have to invest resources and hire strategically to build a content marketing strategy.  That’s not the way we’ve done business up until now, and it goes against the belief that word of mouth is the best way to market your salon or spa.

But maybe it’s just a new way to define word of mouth marketing!

5.  Don’t track results.

There’s surely no merit in knowing which aspects of your business and your marketing are actually working to help you attract clients, what’s working to engage members of your target audience, which programs drive client loyalty and which of your clients are talking about your salon or spa, and the means they’re using to do so.

Knowing those types of numbers might force you to stop spending time and money on marketing and programs that don’t work, in order to focus your energy and resources on those things which actually bring you the results that you want.

Plus, you might have to admit that you were wrong about “word of mouth marketing” being the best way to market your salon or spa.   

6.  Don’t hold staff accountable. 

Holding people accountable simply isn’t reasonable.  If you want something to get done, and done right, in the salon and spa, you have to do it yourself.

There is no point in holding staff accountable; you already know that they’re not going to do what you want them to do. They’re not going to buy in to your programs. They’re not going to sell retail. They’re not going to provide stellar customer experiences. They’re not going to improve their technical skills and abilities or be open to learning new techniques. They’re not going to exceed expectations or go beyond the call of duty.

7.  Don’t try anything new.

Perhaps this should be at the very top of the list of bad marketing ideas for salons and spas.  Continuing to do things that aren’t working, and failing to try things that are new in order to attract new clients to your salon or spa, engage clients and prospects, motivate people to take the actions you want them to take and turn clients into long term, loyal customers – even though it’s so ineffective – sometimes just feels more comfortable.

It’s time for a new definition for word of mouth marketing. It’s time to do something new, hold people accountable and develop consistency in our marketing. 

If it’s time for this for you, contact me to set up a consultation to analyze your salon’s marketing program and make changes that will turn bad marketing ideas for salon and spa into good marketing ideas and a marketing plan that will actually produce the results you want.
If you’re not ready for a full-blown consultation, check out my latest salon marketing calendar!  This calendar can help get you into the content marketing game – the real salon word of mouth marketing strategy you need and a system to help you establish new habits of consistent, effective marketing.