Stop Relying on Social Media: Where Salons Will Really Find New Clients in 2026

Sometimes we just need to accept that we need to change the way that we're doing business. And that's going to be my advice as we head into 2026. For so long, we've been focused on increasing the client experience for our current customers. Guess what? It's time to get out there. It's time to hunt down some newbies. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. And how's life? How's business? How's December treating you? A little bit quieter than perhaps we're used to in December? Or maybe we can remember how things were last year. If you remember last year, it was about two and a half weeks into December before we all started to collectively breathe again. It felt like the Christmas rush was never going to come. And I think this may be the pattern going forward. I think the days of us being absolutely booked up all day, every day, all the way through December may be behind us. I hope it's not the case. I hope that you are enjoying yourself this December. What I did say, though, last Christmas was we've got to make it fun. And I think there's an awful lot to be said for the older way of doing things as far as Christmas was concerned in terms of you used to go into a salon and certainly in my salon. Lots of the team members were dressed as an idiot, to be honest with you. We had elves and reindeers and Father Christmas running around the salon. There was definitely a smell of mince pies going on. There was mulled wine occasionally. There were lots of tipsy clients coming in after work. And it had a bit of a Christmas vibe to it. There was a bit of fun to be had. And people used to look forward to their Christmas visit. If you've stripped out a lot of those things, if it's not a fun experience anymore, well, guess what else is not a fun experience? It's dragging my ass out when it's freezing cold to try and find a parking space in the middle of December. I'd just rather put it off, to be honest with you. So if you're not giving me a fun reason to be in the salon, I'm probably not going to come in. So it's going to take a while. It's going to build up over a number of years. But let's start getting the fun back in there. I think Covid meant that we lost a lot of our spark. That being said, I do hope that you're having a nice busy December. I want you to start looking forward now to 2026, though. And I want to redefine how our marketing and our customer engagement is going to change a little bit over the next 12 months. Because for an awful lot of years, we've been really focused on loyalty, maintaining loyalty, keeping repeat business and increasing the quality of the customer experience.

And yes, of course, all of that is desperately, desperately important. It is much cheaper to keep an existing customer happy than it is to go out there and find a new one in terms of either financial spend for marketing or in terms of effort and energy. Getting new customers through the door is bloody hard work. But unfortunately, the message from your Uncle Phil is that 2026, I'm afraid, is going to be the year of bloody hard work. We're not doing enough to get new customers through the door now. We've got to the stage where those extended gaps in between people's appointments are pretty much here to stay. We've done everything we can to try and get people in more frequently, to try and get them spending more frequently, to try and make sure that we're maximising their visits when they do come in. I think the problem is we're getting so good at upselling, so good at increasing the average bill. People don't feel the need to increase their frequency of spend. So what do we do? Well, if people have kept bigger gaps in between their appointments, that means our utilisation, the amount of our week that's booked up, is a bit lower than it should be. The only other way that we can fill that is either re-engaging lost customers or bringing new customers through the door. And today I want to focus on new client marketing. I want you to get much more savvy about bringing new customers in. And unfortunately, bringing new customers into the salon is a bit of a cutthroat business because unless you are targeting newborn children, those customers are already spending somewhere else. Which means that you've not only got to position your salon as the best version of a particular service, you've also got to persuade people that it might be time to look around and start thinking about some of the reasons that people would prefer your salon experience over somebody else's. Start thinking about the stuff that's important to your customer. It's all about knowing your customer and what drives them in a really intimate way. And we need to target the needs that aren't being met by their existing salon. And that can feel a little bit icky and a little bit uncomfortable. The other thing that's going to be uncomfortable is you're probably going to have to start looking at different marketing channels. Because I've been saying for a very long time now that unfortunately, social media is not a great place to find new customers.

Paid social media, absolutely. If you want to run yourself a laser hair removal ad like everybody else does, then it will get you some new customers at a price. But in terms of you just expecting people to go from looking at videos of dogs doing ridiculous things, looking at videos of people shampooing carpets, and then your video of a facial service pops up and I'm expected to make that purchase decision. I'm sorry, it just doesn't happen that way. By all means, use social media to deepen the connections that you have with your existing customers. But if you are looking to social media as a free source of new customers, I'm afraid you are barking up the wrong tree. I think for a certain part of your clientele, absolutely. But I think it tends to be the people that are looking for the bargains, tends to be the ones that are shopping on price, tends to be the ones that are looking for the deals to come in when you're doing a training day as a model. I don't think they're the customers that we want to be targeting in our marketing. So what are we going to do instead? Well, the first thing I want you to really lean into is looking at some kind of recommend a friend. Don't do it all day, every day, all year round, because you can't keep your enthusiasm that high for that long. So target certain times of the year when you want an influx of new customers to come in and hit your existing customers hard with a reason to recommend you right now. Whether that be some kind of reward for them, but a lot of them would do it just because you're asking very nicely. If I'm really honest, don't give discounts away unless you absolutely have to. And let's get some new bums on seats. Now, you can afford to be generous with a recommend a friend because there's very little wasted effort. If you get 20 new customers from social media adverts, a number of those will not be a good fit for your salon. If you get 20 customers who have been recommended by existing customers, your hit rate is going to be a lot higher because your existing customers will be doing the short listing for you. They're only going to recommend people to the salon that they think are going to enjoy the experience. There's a lot less wasted marketing effort. So you can afford to be generous with your deals. Do be careful that we're not anchoring your services at a lower price point, though. That's going to make it hard to charge people properly later on. What else could you be doing?

Well, I think we need to be looking at where else people are consuming marketing messages. And I think it's time for us to look a little bit old school. I think we need some PR. I think we need to start getting on the radio. I think we need to start getting in local magazines, local newspapers, if people still read them. And most of all, and most importantly, we've got to make sure we're appearing in search results. Now, a lot of you are getting a little bit confused and a bit obsessed by people getting search engine results through AI. So basically, instead of people going to Google asking what they can do about a particular, I don't know, problem with their hair or a particular skin condition, they're jumping onto ChatGPT and asking the same question. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't panic. All of the stuff that we learned around SEO, around making sure that Google finds decent quality content on our websites is exactly the same for AI as well. The only thing I would say is we could probably do with a short summary of each page on each page of your website too. But apart from that, keep doing the same things you've been doing with excellent content that positions you as the expert and educates our customers about the questions that they have. None of that changes just because AI is in the loop. So think about dusting off your blog, creating some excellent content. Apart from anything, it gives you something to talk about on social media too, now, doesn't it? So what have I missed? What are you doing to get new customers through the door in your salon? I'd love to be sharing some of your hints and tips with my gorgeous Build Your Salon audience. Also reach out if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Phil at buildyoursalon.com is my email address. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. And until then, take care.