5 tips for building a magnificent salon marketing plan for 2024

Did you think success was going to happen by accident in 2024? Stay tuned for my five tips on putting together a sensational marketing plan. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, with another dose of wise old owl wisdom. How is December treating you? A bit of a mixed picture coming through to me. Some people are getting the busy bit of the year that they've been waiting so long for. A couple of people saying that actually December is a bit disappointing and perhaps they are going to have to work that little bit harder as we get into January, February, March. I hope it's treating you well. Why not reach out, let me know, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends. So what are we talking about today? Well, I want to talk to you about how we put a marketing plan together for 2024. And the reason is, I think that there are too many salons putting last minute promotions together. They're waiting until they're three quarters of the way through the month, realising that there's not enough money coming in to hit all of those direct debits and standing orders that are coming out on the first of the next month. And they're panic marketing. They're putting something last minute together. It looks rushed. It feels rushed. It's normally got some kind of discount attached to it. And it leads to a very frantic way of running your business. So I want you to start looking a lot further forward. And also there's some economies of scale. It means that we can be ordering marketing materials in bulk rather than one marketing promotion at a time. It means that we can sit down and maybe spend a half a day when we're in the mood for email marketing, putting our emails together for two, maybe three promotions at a time. So we can cluster tasks, saves you time overall in the year. And apart from anything, just brings a sense of calm as we head into 2024. But there is one prior bit of work before you jump into a marketing plan. You need to have an idea, a financial idea of what you want next year to deliver for you, because we can't really start a marketing plan until we know what we want the marketing plan to deliver. Because marketing is all about bridging gaps. It's about us facing a month saying we expect this month to turn over 10,000 if we do nothing special. We have a target of 15,000. The only way we can bridge that gap is with our marketing. So we need to know what we need our marketing to deliver. If it were me and tip number one to get that broader view of 2024 is firstly sketch out what 2023 delivered for you. Identify the months where you're going to need to lean into the marketing, the busy months, the quieter months.

There will be a rhythm, a pace, a season to your business that we can tap into. So we know when we've got the bigger gaps, when we need to do more marketing, or maybe we just go with the flow a little bit. If, for example, like in my salon, August was always a tricky month. August was always quiet because my customer avatar is a mum. So as soon as the schools break up, she struggles with childcare. We struggle to get her through the salon door. Now, I can fight against that. I can push against that, rage against it with my marketing. And it's going to take a lot of marketing effort to change my fortunes in August. Or I can just go with it and say, OK, August is going to be a quiet month. That means maybe June and July. We really need to lean into the marketing to make hay while the sun shines. So have that broader view of how the year is going to look. Know the months that are going to be busy and those that are quieter. Then we can layer our promotions over the top. Tip number two, everybody thinks you need to come up with so many marketing campaigns. And it's all about being innovative and edgy and coming up with something brand new. That is simply not the case. Marketing over time is, in fact, more of a polishing and refining process. So have a look at the marketing that's worked for you before. There is nothing wrong with refreshing a campaign that's delivered results for you in the past. For example, my recommend a friend campaign I run over a month actually during August when I could do with those new clients through the door. And I haven't changed anything in that campaign for nine years now. They still get the same emails that say exactly the same. Yes, I've freshened up the way that things look a little bit as our logos changed and the fonts that we choose have changed. And I've got better at visual marketing. But the essence of the promotion is exactly the same because it still delivers results. And what you find is that my customers start to look forward to our recommend a friend campaign now. They know it's coming. So they don't tend to send people our way during June and July because they know in August they can get a tasty discount or a voucher for recommending their friend instead. There will come a time, though, when that promotion starts to not deliver those results. And if it continues to decline, then we'll swap it out for something else. So you should be facing 2024 with three or four promotions that have already delivered results for you in the past.

It's a lot less work than coming up with a whole year of innovation year after year after year. Once you've decided what promotions you're going to be running, I want you to bear in mind the customer's conversation that's going on in their head. So tip number three is to enter that conversation. Don't rage against it. It will be really hard. You know, this episode is coming out the week before Christmas. It will be really hard to promote anything in most markets that don't have a Christmas flavor because that's the conversation that's raging in the customer's head. And you can either enter that conversation or you can try and rage against it. If you try and rage against it, you're going to have to shout really, really loud. And yes, I know it can feel a bit cliched to come up with a Christmas promotion and a Valentine's promotion and a Mother's Day promotion. But it doesn't mean that you can't put your innovative, entrepreneurial, dynamic, creative twist on things. You can come up with your own flavor of Valentine's promotion. You can even do an anti-Valentine's promotion, but it's part of that same conversation. It's a lot less work. So use some of those big events during the year to give yourself a hook to hang marketing on. Once you've decided what those promotions are going to be, I want you to stop looking at the content of the promotion until you've decided who it's for. Tip number four is to identify the market before you identify the product. So basically, once you've identified the bridge in February, you've decided to hang it on Valentine's Day. Then we look at who is best placed to help you bridge that gap. If it's a big gap, it might be that we need to look at new clients and existing clients. If it's a slightly smaller gap, perhaps it's an existing client or a new client promotion. If it's a tiny gap, perhaps it's a lost client promotion with a heavy discount attached to it as well. Then we can decide what's going to be a no brainer for that customer. So let's say we've got a big gap in February. We're going to put a promotion together for new and existing clients and it's going to be a big ticket item. Now we know how much marketing effort has to go in there. We need to figure out which services are going to be able to tick that big ticket box for us. Number five is to stop building marketing campaigns on one pillar. In my mind, there are three broad areas where we can get a promotional message out there.

Firstly, there's online and this is where most salons are almost exclusively promoting on social media and wondering why your marketing isn't landing. You're neglecting so much marketing capital. Firstly, online marketing also includes banners put on your website, SEO work, email marketing. There's a lot more to online than just Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. But secondly, we need to move away from that space and the second pillar is offline. When was the last time you put a flyer through somebody's door? When was the last time you sponsored a local sports team or put a poster up in your town or village or city? Maybe it's time that we looked at some of the marketing we used to do when we were a brand new salon and started capitalizing on some of those offline opportunities. So many salons are neglecting this. It's actually really easy to stand out compared to standing out in a very noisy social media marketplace. And of course, the third space is in salon. What's your window display going to look like? Are we going to put badges on our team members? Are we going to put point of sale materials on our retail shelves next to our tills on our reception desks and so on? And some campaigns will lend themselves to some spaces more than others. So, for example, a new client promotion isn't going to make an awful lot of sense in salon because by the time they're in salon, they're not a new client anymore. And similarly, a lost client promotion doesn't lend itself particularly to in salon promotion either. So not everything is going to appear in all three spaces. But I want you to think about how you could make those spaces work as part of each promotion. You're going to get much more of a consistent marketing message out there and I think you'll improve the results that you're getting too. So I hope that's helped you. My five tips on putting a brilliant marketing plan together for 2024. What are your plans? Are you going to use any of the stuff that I've talked about or have you got something else? What have I missed? Reach out. Let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. And also, don't forget to reach out with your questions for my January Q&A. I'm taking submissions now for our January question and answer session. Also, all the previous episodes of the Build Your Salon podcast on buildyoursalonpodcast.com along with the show notes. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. If it's your vibe, I wish you a very merry Christmas. If not, enjoy a peaceful and prosperous festive season. And I will speak to you on the 26th of December with my final broadcast of the year.

Until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty and more successful tips for business owners. All on Build Your Salon.