5 Musts for Marketing to Multi-Cultural Clients

Making the Case for Adding Multi-Cultural Salon Services

Adding multi-cultural salon services could be the key to growing your business in place or help you raise the revenue needed to add new locations. Here are five marketing musts for salons who want to successfully promote the multi-cultural services they offer.

The USA is already a diverse country; the Census Bureau’s latest QuickFacts estimate the U.S. population at more than 318 million people, of whom 62 percent are white, 17 percent Hispanic or Latino, 13 percent Black or African American and 5 percent identify as Asian. The multi-cultural mosaic is increasing at such a rate that most experts predict whites will no longer make up more than half of the U.S. population by the year 2050.

The U.S. beauty industry must prepare to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse client base. As a salon owner, this mean equipping your staff to serve multi-cultural target markets already present in your community now, as well as those that will emerge in the ensuing decades.

5 Musts for Marketing to Multi-Cultural Clients

1. Know Your Stuff

There are some questions you need to answer before adding multi-cultural services to your salon’s menu and others that can help you successfully promote them. For instance:

Are there adequate numbers of a given market segment in your area?

If there are not enough people likely to need a specific service, it might not make sense to invest in the training, products and salon resources you would need to dedicate to them. Sites like city-data.com allow you to look up demographic information that pertains the cities that feed your salon’s client base that can help you determine whether a basic demand for services is likely to exist.

What techniques will you master and which products will you need to stock?

Depending on which types of multi-cultural markets you want to serve, there may be a few or many different techniques your staff will need to master. Likewise, you will need to consider which products will be needed both for use in-salon and for client care at home.

2. Speak the Language

While “speaking the language” may refer to providing digital and print marketing collateral to help promote your services among clients whose first language is not English, it’s also about understanding how “real people” refer to services when they search for them online.

Avoid industry-specific or technical jargon and use keywords and phrases that people are likely to use when searching for a business like yours online or searching for specific multi-cultural services like the ones your salon provides.

If you are marketing services to segments where language could be a barrier, consider having some of your salon’s digital and print marketing materials translated into other languages or adding individuals to your staff who (literally) can speak the primary language of your target audiences. This not only demonstrates your commitment to serving the market segment, it can also ensure better consultations and communication within the salon, resulting in better outcomes for clients and increased likelihood of success in promoting retail products, add-on services and personal referrals.

3. Get Out of the Salon and Into the Right Channels

Adding multi-cultural services to your salon’s menu – both print and digital – is not enough. From social networks to local schools, organizations and publications, to reach the market segments that are looking for services like yours, you will need to research different off and online channels that can help you reach them.

4. Send Clients Home with a Plan for Success

Successful client outcomes don’t usually come from salon services alone and many multi-cultural services require both repeated services and the right products for at-home client care. Giving multi-cultural services clients a written, personalized plan for success not only provides you – as the stylist – with an organic opportunity to pre-book their next appointment, it also makes recommending products for at-home care a seamless part of the client experience.

5. Take a Long-Term View

Building demand for your salon’s multi-cultural services will take time and repeated effort. Make promoting these services part of your on-going marketing activities in social media, advertising, emails to clients and prospects, asking for referrals, and as part of the education and events you host in the salon.

Marketing multi-cultural services isn’t just a plus, it’s a necessity. Be sure that your salon is prepared to grow along with your community by educating yourself and your staff on the market segments most likely to dominate your region’s growth in the future.

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