Without marketing, your potential clients won’t know about your salon or why they should book an appointment at your salon. Needless to say, it’s crucial for every business. Although crucial, marketing can be a daunting prospect to put into action.
With a variety of salon marketing choices out there, it can be difficult to know what actions will bring in positive ROI. Before planning your first or next marketing campaign, you need to assess the broad approach you want to take – Are you more of a do-it-yourself (DIY) person or prefer the done-for-you (DFY) approach? You can better plan the marketing journey for your salon when you weigh the pros and cons of both the approaches. Let’s dive in
What is DIY Salon Marketing/The Hands-On Approach?
Do-it-yourself (DIY) salon marketing entails doing all of the marketing efforts to grow your salon, inhouse. Every aspect of your marketing strategy is done by you or someone from your team, from social media management to ad campaigns to website management to search engine optimization.
Advantages of DIY Salon Marketing
- Control: Your marketing approach is completely in your control. From coming up with marketing ideas to grow your presence online and implementing the marketing campaign, it is all on you.
- Cost-Effective: As you’re not hiring a marketing person or an agency, you straight-up save on the service fee you would pay them. This means that you can save on costs which can be used in the other areas of your salon business.
- Personal Touch: The salon owner is in the best position to understand his/her brand. Your marketing can be as unique as you or your vision, which will make your brand more authentic.
Disadvantages of DIY Salon Marketing
- Time-Consuming: Running a salon is a full time job and a half! Hiring & training staff, salon maintenance, inventory management, client satisfaction & retention are a few major things that keep your plate full. And marketing requires time. When you do it yourself, you add another stuff on the list. It becomes tiring when day-to-day salon operations and marketing your salon require to be taken care of at the same time.
- Learning Curve: Before you do marketing hands-on, there’s a pretty good learning curve you need to go through to understand the gist and platform specific nuances. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, change their algorithms abruptly several times a year. In 2022, google changed its algorithm 4,725 times. That’s about 13 changes a day. A day!
It then becomes a full-time job to keep up with those changes and pivot accordingly. - Limited Expertise: Salon owners are beauty and hair experts. There’s no debate on that front. But when it comes to marketing, most barely understand it. They would go on the internet, read an article or watch a few videos, apply those tactics (not strategies), lose a bunch of money and throw the towel in. Placing a website visitor or a social media follower into your salon chair is a science that needs to be mastered. With time, money and patience.
What is DFY Salon Marketing / The Hands-Off Approach?
Done-for-you marketing entails partnering up with a reputed salon marketing agency to attend to your marketing requirements. By outsourcing to experts, you can stop worrying about search engine optimization, email marketing and social media management. You concentrate on running your salon.
Pros of DFY Salon Marketing
- Expertise: A salon marketing agency comes with expertise in the field and gives you better chances of marketing success. They constantly update themselves with the trends of the industry and can develop strategies that are effective for your business.
- Time-Saving: When you hire professionals to manage your marketing, you can be on the other side, doing what you do best, managing your salon and offering the best services to your clients. All this while they bring in new clients in the chair.
- Scalable Solution: Salon marketing agencies provide services that are flexible to accommodate the needs of your business. When you grow your salon, they can then change the marketing strategy to fit the new goals you want to achieve.
Cons of DFY Salon Marketing
- Needs investment: The services of a professional agency would require an additional budget. A good marketing agency makes sure that they are an investment rather than an expense.
- Less Control: With the help of experts, you may find yourself giving up some control over what you want to do in terms of marketing on a daily basis. There is nothing wrong with seeking the services of an agency, but they should keep you in loop every once in a while.
- Dependency: When one relies mostly on an agency, he or she becomes dependent on it. In case of termination of the agency relationship, you may end up with no marketing plan or even the knowledge on how to go about it on your own. That being said, reputable marketing agencies would give you enough notice period to delegate the assets and strategy to another agency or to your team.
Salon SEO: A Crucial Component in Both Strategies
The importance of salon SEO (search engine optimization) cannot be overstated, regardless of whether you opt for do-it-yourself or done-for-you marketing. SEO makes it possible for your salon to be seen in the results of search engines when prospective customers are looking for the hair and beauty services in your area.
- DIY SEO: You may optimize your website by utilizing relevant keywords, adding website content that is interesting, and making sure that your website is mobile-friendly. This is what is known as do-it-yourself SEO. You are able to monitor your progress with the assistance of tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- DFY SEO: A salon marketing agency will implement a thorough strategy for search engine optimization (SEO), which includes keyword research, on-page and off-page optimization, and local SEO strategies, in order to guarantee that your salon occupies a prominent position in local search results.
Which Strategy is Right for You?
Based on what we’ve discussed in this blog article, it is important to assess your goals, budget, and schedule. A strategy to engage the target audience on your own can be a great fit if you are technology-savvy, willing to learn, and have flexible work hours.
However, a DFY strategy with respectable salon marketing agencies may be the best option if you would rather concentrate on operating your salon while still growing your salon.
Conclusion
Whether you take the DIY route or hand over the whole thing to a DFY marketing agency, what is most important is that your salon is constantly attracting potential clients. Every strategy offers its own set of benefits.
If you are thinking about getting a DFY solution and would like to be sure that your salon regularly attracts new clients and keeps the old ones coming, consider teaming up with us – The Salon Marketing Agency. Focus on what you do best—helping customers look and feel their best—and let us handle the knowledge and assistance necessary to grow your business.
To find out how we can make your salon stand out, contact us today!
Hey, I'm Anshul and I'm a 2-comma club award winner with over a decade of experience in the digital marketing industry. I specialize in helping salon and spa businesses scale their business using proven digital marketing strategies.
Throughout my career, I've had the privilege of working with a diverse range of clients, from world-renowned motivational speaker Tony Robbins to marketing guru Russell Brunson, as well as internet sensations like Julius Dein and Dan Henry.