Easy Ways to Market a Salon Online with DIY, Before and After and Bullet List Stories
This morning I read an article about merchandising and marketing for furniture stores which talked about a very simple approach to before and afters that you’ve probably never considered using, and it’s a good one. The article talked about using your blog to market products visually, by documenting before, during and after photos as you change your merchandising displays.
One key to effective merchandising in the salon and spa is – of course – changing window, shelf and floor displays fairly frequently. It’s necessary to do this if you want your customers to “see” your products, because the mind tends to block out what it perceives that it’s already seen. Make sense? As human beings, when we see something over and over again, we stop seeing it’s details because our mind tells us we’ve already internalized the visual information.
So since you must change your window, shelf, counter and other in-salon displays often enough that it registers in your clients minds as “new” information, why not get more marketing mileage out of the task and even find ways to use it as you market a salon online with web, email and social media marketing?
Here’s how:
- Take before, during and after pictures during even small remodeling, renovation or redecoration projects. Are you replacing a floor display? Sink? Station? Front desk or another single item? Rearranging your waiting area? Setting up a new window display? Take pictures of the old, of the construction ‘process’ and the new and tell clients how it makes your salon or spa better for them or better enables you to serve them.
- Take a photo of a family of products, such as all the products one might want to use if they have dry hair, scalp and skin and write a bullet list of why the products are great, such as, “8 great ways to beat winter dry” and list what the product does or a specific moisturizing benefit that it provides.
- Take a series of pictures photo-documenting a DIY (do it yourself) or how-to showing how you set up a display to merchandise a set of products or a seasonal product display.
- Use the photos as the basis of a post on your salon or spa blog as a way to organically talk about products without overtly selling. Cross post links to your blog on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks (these could make awesome Pinterest board pins!)
In addition to providing you with a way to talk about products and your salon or spa without coming off like a salesman, you also have the opportunity to create interest in visiting your salon and spa by prospects and clients, beyond the times they would normally come to see you. You will be creating expectations in their minds of what they will find at your salon and they will look to see if they can spot your projects when they are in your salon.
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Elizabeth Kraus is the author of Client Rules: 2016 Marketing Calendar for Salon and Spa with 12 months of marketing ideas for growing a salon business including the salon marketing strategies you need to attract new clients in today’s digital salon marketing landscape.
Perfect for salon owners but also easy to implement for any beauty industry professional – from booth renters and hair dressers to estheticians, nail techs, salon suite franchisees and anyone who wants to know how to grow salon clientele and keep clients engaged for the long haul.