Everyone is taking about the economical crisis that has shaken from the ground many businesses, and beauty salons, spa’s or hair salons were among the first to be affected. You may wonder why? In such times, people tend to focus on the main necessities, and some clients are ready to give up taking care of their skin or hair for paying their house mortgage. The true dilemma is: how do we gain them back, considering the fact that we as business owners are also going through tough financial times?

Advertising a hair salon, clinic or spa is essential, just as working with top professionals or having the best prices. Your allocated marketing budget should ideally be at least 10% from your total budget.  And it should on both maintaining loyal customers and attracting new ones on a regular basis. Now if you think you don’t need to spend money to advertise your salon, spa or clinic, you’re completely wrong. It doesn’t matter the fact that you have the best people working in the salon, or the products you use, it’s all about letting people know what you can offer.

Especially if you are new in the business, setting the budget for advertising your hair salon, health business or beauty clinic, can be quite difficult. It’s hard to decide how much money will be used for the equipment, rent, retail products, professional products and many business owners leave the marketing plan at last.

However, your marketing plan is one of the most decisive factor in your future business success, one that cannot be ignored. This is why I thought that a basic guide on how to spend wisely on marketing your salon, spa or clinic would be useful for many of you.

1.    Make a list with your marketing goals and the existing budget. For example, let’s say your first goals would be to introduce your new hair salon to the local community. For small budgets, the most convenient method to advertise the new hair salon could include a newspaper advertisement or flyers that you can make at home.

2.    Decide on a balanced approach to your marketing and remember to keep track of the return of investment (ROI). Small budgets don’t allow mistakes, so make sure you analyze everything before spending. Choose the best media to advertise your business, keeping the message fresh, attractive and on-target.

3.    Be creative! Even if you don’t have a allocate salon budget, this doesn’t mean you can’t be creative in order to obtain the same impact. Traditional, low-cost ads can always become hot stuff is you manage to keep them live and fresh, think about the features that make you salon unique on the market. Feature something NEW or FREE in the marketing material (whether we are talking about a newspaper ad, flyer or brochure) and you can get the attention of prospect clients.

4.    Free stuff - Established hair & beauty salons or clinics used to attract customers with gifts or services. However, when you have a low budget and you don’t want to make any compromises regarding the quality of the gifts, is there any solution? Of course, it is: free consultations won’t cost you a penny or free gifts with the purchase of in-house products or services just require a small investment. The gifts don’t have to be expensive; they just have to reflect the perceived value to the customer.

5.    Internet advertising is in the trends and costs ten times less than traditional advertising media! The Internet is still the best way to advertise a salon with a small marketing budget. While generally you get what you pay for, something is better than nothing - a budget website can be created for about $100, and you can write your own email newsletter. It is a great way to promote your products, services and special offers without spending a fortune.

For many business owners, setting a marketing budget can be a true challenge. However a good plan and wise choices can help you establish a solid position on the market and underline your unique vision without spending loads of money.

So what are your experiences with marketing budgets?  Post a comment below and share your top tips!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freebiebook.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2009

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1. Sending out newsletters is one of THE best ways of building relationships with clients.  Email is quickest and cheapest so it’s the one I personally prefer most of the time.  That said, email is a funny thing – you need to make sure your email newsletters aren’t too heavily sales based.  Make sure to include lots of free tips and tricks for clients (as well as your latest offers) so that they look forward to them arriving and open them with anticipation of picking up some new bit of info.
2. Your weekly newsletters are doing lots of your work for you.  They are relationship building between you and your clients.  If you’re sending them via email, try to make sure to send them each and every week.  Even if you’ve run out of time, and it’s just a short tip for the week and nothing else, never skip a week if at all possible.  Keep that relationship up and over time you’ll find more and more of them book in regularly.
3. Are you adding all your new clients to your email list?  Every single new client or enquiry should be added onto your list.  That way you’ll get the best coverage and the most responses.
4. Statistics show that most people only read about one in every 4 emails they receive properly.  So if you are sending them a weekly newsletter, they are probably only reading one of them fully once a month.  This doesn’t mean you should drop your frequency down to once a month though!  If you do this, that means they would only be reading one email from you once every 4 months… which really is not very often!  So keep it at once a week and know that you’re getting at least one quality bit of contact with your clients per month.
5. There’s been lots of research and most statistics show that it takes between 5 and 7 contacts with a new client before they want to book or buy.  So if you add a new client on your mailing list, it might be several weeks before they then book in to see you.  But remember if you don’t put them on your mailing list, you won’t have any contact with them and they may never book.  So add all new clients on asap.
6. Getting some clients unsubscribe from your newsletter?  Not a problem.  It’s very common with email marketing that clients will unsubscribe when they are too busy to read your emails.  HOWEVER, it’s also very common for clients to wish to re-subscribe later when they’ve got more time or energy to devote to whatever it is you are offering them.  So always be polite and never take an unsubscription personally.  If you’re highly professional and always welcoming they may well be back in the future.
7. If someone asks to unsubscribe from your newsletter but you can’t see their email address on your list, ask them if they have an alias or another email address.  Many people now days have 3 or 4 different email accounts and if they’ve subscribed to your newsletter under a different email address, you’ll need to know what that is to remove it.
8. Are your friends and family on your mailing list?  Do make sure to add them if they aren’t.  They’ll be your best promoters and your worst critics.  Which means if there’s ever anything wrong, they’ll be the ones to let you know asap so you can fix it.  And when its fantastic, they’ll forward it on to their friends straight away.
9. Do encourage your clients to forward your e-newsletters on to their friends.  The more people you have finding out about you and your services, the quicker and better your business will grow.
10. A great idea is to have a feature in your email newsletter about once every 4-6 weeks on referrals.  Offer clients a voucher or free gift for referring a friend.  If you don’t ask, you don’t get.  So ask for referrals and you may well be pleasantly surprised with the results.
11. Bonus tip - Competitions are another brilliant way to get referrals.  People love to tell their friends about great prizes they might win.  So once every 3-4 months have a big competition.  Give away a gift basket or package and feature it in all your newsletters and marketing materials.  Then actively encourage clients to forward on your newsletters to friends so they can enter too.  How?  Just ask.  EG “we are having an amazing competition this month.  See the details below.  Do make sure to forward this email onto all your friends, colleagues and loved ones so they can be in to win as well!”

So what are your tips?  Post a comment below and share with everyone else what your favourite strategies are for staying in touch with your clients…!