A Salon and Spa Guide to Recognizing (and Adapting) to Your Market

Regardless of what kind of business you run, if you don’t cater to your market, you’ll have a hard time finding the type of success you’re looking for.

This is no less true for spas, salons, and tanning salons.

In order to get people in the door and keep them coming back, you have to make a real connection.  Strive to meet your market where it is and then track engagement with your brand over time.

The first step is to make sure you understand who your potential clients are.

Identifying Your Target Market

This may seem easy.  But don’t take this step lightly.

Whether your company is new or established should play a role in your decisions here.  The thing is, your branding and marketing efforts need to match the people you want to bring into your business.

So if you’re the new kids on the block, you might want to base your initial branding on nearby untapped markets.  If you’ve been in business for years, you need to take care not to alienate your current patrons when trying to unearth untapped veins of new customers.

Don’t hesitate to use local demographic data available through both private and government entities to better inform your decisions.

​You can also look into who your competition is targeting (through social media, search, or elsewhere).  You can be certain they are scoping you out anyway.

Once you’ve found a group to target with your outreach campaigns, it’s time to tailor fit your message to them.

---

Communicating on Their Terms

Modern marketers know that they need to meet potential customers where they already are.

This goes a bit deeper than simple online/offline customer acquisition.  This is about strategic exposures that can both build faith in your brand quickly and establish you as a local industry leader.

First, make sure you place your messages where your potential clients spend their time—both digitally and physically. Otherwise, your marketing has little to no chance of even reaching them.

To put things simply:

If your market doesn’t use Twitter, your Tweets do no good.  If your radio ads are on stations your potential aren’t listening to, you’re throwing money away.  Focus on the channels your target audience selects, not the ones you prefer.

Second, tailor fit your communication to the market.  This doesn’t necessarily mean you must act how your market expects, but at least try to craft a message that resonates with them and uses the same language they use.

Just be careful not to fumble a potential connection by sounding like an “outsider”.  Mold your message to your audience, but keep it genuine to your brand.

If your audience doubts you, you’ll find out right away.

---

Measuring Responsiveness

It is absolutely vital modern businesses track the progress of their marketing campaigns.

With ever-thinner margins, maximizing ROI is crucial.  And understanding the true value of your dollars is the only way to guarantee that they aren’t being wasted.

We like to recommend that salons and spas take a somewhat scientific approach to promoting their brand.  If you don’t accurately measure results in the context of specific goals, it is extremely hard to fine tune your campaigns.

In this case, information is certainly power.  Still, there are different qualities of information and therefore levels of power.

In our opinion, marketing data that disregards time is fundamentally lacking.  In this industry, season is huge.  The weekly timeline is also a big deal.  And believe it or not, time of day has a lot to do with how your marketing is received.

You might measure how any given campaign affects brand mentions online month-after-month or calls directly resulting from an email sent.  

Whatever marketing strategies you employ, make sure the metrics you use are applicable.  And if you’ve properly identified your market and fashioned messages specifically for them, it shouldn't be hard to figure out what you need to measure.

If you need help implementing some of the items discuss SalonTouch Studio can assist you.

Make sure if you enjoyed this post to share it with your connections, followers, or friends on social media.

---