5 ways to stop following the crowd and enjoy your unique salon business

You're a part of one of the most creative, exhilarating industries in the world, and yet, most of the time, you would never know it. If I look at your marketing, if I look at the way that your business is run, so often it's the same as everybody else. Today, here are my five ways that you can stand out and enjoy your amazing, unique salon business. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here from Build Your Salon here, coming in your eyes and ears again with a bit of wise old owl wisdom. And if you're listening to this on the day it's released, happy Halloween as well. How has October been for you? I've had some really good business results with some of my customers this month, and we're set for an absolutely corking quarter. So reach out, let me know, phil at buildyoursalon.com. I love hearing about how well you're all doing. So what are we talking about today? Well, I've been moaning a lot for quite a few months now. I've been having a little whinge and a bit of a dig at you salon owners, because I've said that if you delete your logo and your name from your price card or your website, I could put someone else's logo and name in there. And nine times out of 10, you wouldn't know the difference. There'd be nothing in it that says that there's anything unique about your business. And that's what today's all about, because we're part of an amazing, vibrant, creative industry, largely because there's an awful lot of young people in our industry, and it brings that youth energy that I'd love to be a vampire and suck out of people. But I think that that creativity gets lost, and I don't really understand why. We're creative in the services that we carry out. We're creative a lot of the time in our consultations too. And then when we look at our marketing and the way that we run our businesses, it's just cookie cutter. We're just copying everybody else. So here today are my five ways that you can stand out and set yourself apart from the competition and embrace the uniqueness in your business. And the first one is the bit that faces the customer, or the bit that faces the marketplace. We need to learn how to stand out in our branding and our marketing. Now, there's a bit of a double-edged sword here, and I blame Canva, because on the one hand, Canva has made really quite high-quality design services available to everybody. And we can put those design services in place, even on very small promotions and little bits of marketing that we want to do here and there, rather than the stuff that needed the big budget in the old days. So we would spend out on printed materials, design and print materials. If we had a big promotion coming up, now we can do it for everything.

But it also means that there's lots of us putting marketing out there that does look very similar to everybody else. So I would spend a bit of time. I don't even think you need to spend much money, but I would certainly get some textbooks on branding, not necessarily marketing, but branding and putting your own personal brand together. Make sure that you stand out a little bit. And I'm not just talking about stopping the scroll, but putting the values that you have. And in fact, standing out in your values is point number two. But put that behind your branding as well. So, for example, if you have a very traditional story and a traditional brand, that's going to be projected in one way. If your raison d'etre and the way you run your business is lighter and more youthful or funny even, that's going to be reflected in your branding too. Because what we're trying to do with branding and marketing is either switch people on or switch people off. Switch the right people on. Stand out against your competitors with your target niche. And everyone else can go by the wayside. So let's start getting a bit more creative with our branding. I want you to get more creative with your marketing as well, though, because loads of salons now are just relying on social media marketing to the exclusion of almost everything else. And I think that's a massive mistake. Firstly, more and more stories of people's accounts getting frozen or deleted from Facebook, Instagram, other social platforms. Secondly, I think it's also a really noisy space to try and stand out in. It's very hard to stand out on social media because there's so much more going on, particularly because people aren't on social media looking for stuff around salons. They want to watch people scraping snow off roofs and how to clean a rug. What do they do with those rugs to get them so dirty? But it's not the space that people are looking for salon information. So it's very hard to stand out. Let's get creative. Let's start standing out with our marketing, start looking at some offline marketing, shock horror. How about actually doing some of the stuff that we used to do in the olden days? Because, for example, the letterbox now is a very uncluttered space, a handwritten card, a handwritten envelope. When was the last time you got one of those and it wasn't your birthday? That will stand out on someone's doormat. So let's get a bit more lateral. Let's start getting a bit more creative in our branding and marketing. Then I want you to stand out and get really clear on your values and what your business is all about. And some people have built an entire business just off the back of their values. So, yes, they offer all the standard salon services.

You get the standard salon results. But we're all about the ethical or we're all about the environment or something else. What else is it that you're out there flying the flag for that's so important to you that you can use to stand out in a really positive and very impactful way? Very down with the kids as well, by the way. Your employees and your customers, if they're on the younger side, they want something they can buy into. They want to feel that what they're doing is making a difference to society and the world at large. So your values and your story are hugely important. And, of course, when it comes to your story, completely unique to you as well. Then I've already alluded to it, but we need to stand out in our positioning and our niche. Stand out with the people that you're identifying as your ideal customer. It doesn't need to be the same as everybody else. It doesn't need to be everybody else's ideal customer. It's what's actually going to switch your business on and get you closer to your business goals. And then that translates into your story, your values, and even your marketing. So, for example, my monthly group coaching program is called Salon Spark. Nothing particularly offensive or even particularly unique about that, you could argue. But the tagline for it is Salon Spark. Get shit done. Make more money. Now, there are some people who would find that offensive. There are some people that would switch off immediately. And they're counting themselves out of my marketing, which is just as powerful as counting people in. Because the people that get it, the people that are going to enjoy the experience of my group coaching, the people who are going to be okay with the odd little bit of cursing that goes on in my group calls or sometimes even on our WhatsApp group, the people that are okay with that aren't going to be offended by that at all. I'm actually going to be talking their language. This is probably the kind of language that they're using as well. So, that positioning and niche is coming all the way through into the way that I run the business and the way that I market my products to. The other thing you could do is try and stand out physically. So, how do we make our environments just a bit different? And I think in the hair side, we've got much better at this now. There was, I call them the dark ages of hairdressing. And it was actually when the franchises were running the whole show, when things got very, very corporate. And we were inundated with what I call cream and chrome salons. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. Basically, you could have deleted the words Tony and Guy from above the door and put a different salon there. And it would have been the same and the same and the same. And everyone was striving for that very sleek, very cream and chrome kind of environment.

And in hair, I think we've moved away from that now. In fact, I think it actually came up through the barbershops first. There was a lot more quirkiness going on. And some of the vintage stuff was making an impact. And now you can get a salon in any which flavor that you would possibly desire. There's something out there for everybody. In beauty, I think we're still struggling a little bit, to be honest with you, to create something that's truly unique. And I get that behind closed doors in your beauty rooms, things need to be very sleek and very clinical. And that's absolutely fine. It doesn't mean your waiting area needs to look like that, though, does it? It doesn't mean your windows need to look like that. It doesn't mean your signage needs to look like that. And then we've also got some very creative people who are completely altering the physical space entirely. So instead of having a physical salon, I've seen converted horse boxes being used as salons, old VW camper vans, all sorts of wonderful things we can do physically to stand out in a way that appeals and stand out as something just a little bit different. And then finally, we can stand out in the way that we offer our services. Now, there's two elements to this. The first is the way that we describe stuff. And I think we really need to get to grips with being much more creative in our service descriptions. Because if you're describing things the same as everybody else, as a new customer, if I'm not being counted in or out by your positioning and your values, I've only really got price to compare on. So if I've got three salons that all offer a luxury facial and I don't see anything particularly different about any of them, I'm going to choose the middle one price wise because I'm unlikely to make a mistake, to be honest with you. So let's get a bit more creative. Let's start spicing up our prices with service descriptions that mean it's not easy to compare. It means that what you're offering is something completely unique and not the same as the salon down the road. And then you can't compare on price because I'm not offering the same services. So the way that we describe our services needs to stand out. And the way that we offer our services, the way that we actually carry out our services needs to be examined too. Now, I understand there are certain ways that things have to be done. There are certain protocols, but nothing in your business is sacred. There is nothing in your business that shouldn't be open to examination and improvement and innovation. Listen to me ranting. I do get very passionate about innovation though. It's actually what got me into coaching in the first place. But I think that innovation is something that we should be embracing at every available opportunity.

We should be continually polishing, refining and not be afraid to tear something down and build it from the ground up again in a better way. And I think innovation is something that we neglect. We almost delegate it to our manufacturers. And I think that's a huge mistake. So the way that you offer your services, they have to be consistent. Don't get me wrong. But our ability to innovate is the one advantage we have as a small business. The one advantage that keeps us on an edge against the big guys. Because the big guys, I've worked as a consultant with bigger companies, with manufacturers, with software companies. And to get a decision out of a big company takes weeks, if not months. You feel like you're just at the stage where you're getting to a decision and then it has to be elevated to another layer of management. And then someone needs to sign off on the spend. And it's a slow, boring process. But as a small business, you can change like that. And then if you don't like the way things are running again, you get to change like that again and again and again. And big business envies us our ability to adapt quickly. But there's no point in having that advantage in the marketplace. There's no point in having that advantage in your salon business if you're not going to utilise it. And I want you to be much less rigid in your thinking as far as your business is concerned. Much more able to embrace change and adapt quickly. And I know it can be scary. But once you've changed things a few times, once you've started to get into the flow and the rhythm, once your customers have got used to you changing things, they start coming in and asking, what's next? What's new? What are you working on this time? They're interested in your business. And that, my dear, is gold card status. So I hope that's been helpful to you. I hope it's inspired you a little bit and given you and empowered you, actually, to stand out in the marketplace a little bit more as something just a bit different. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. If you can't wait till then, head over to buildyoursalonpodcast.com. Any questions for my Q&A session every month, please fill at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends. Until we speak again, 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.