How to Write Your Hair Salon Marketing Plan

Opening a hair salon is an exciting business venture for anyone who is undertaking it! Part of doing so, however, does include writing a marketing plan for your future hair salon, which can be quite challenging. Luckily enough for you, however, we’re going to spend some time taking a look at the steps to write a marketing plan for a hair salon. 

Steps to writing a successful marketing plan for a hair salon:

1. 1. Understand your current business situation 
   2. Define your customer pool 
   3. List your marketing goals 
   4. Create your budget
   5. Establish a marketing strategy 

Understand your current business situation

The first step to creating a successful marketing plan for your hair salon is going to be to sit down and understand the current situation of your business. 

This step may differ depending on whether or not your business is already established. 

As such, we’re going to take a look at both of these situations separately. 

• • Understanding your current business situation as a new business: 

If you are just beginning to open up your business, or in the process of doing so, understanding your current business situation is going to be crucial.

Important information to include when understanding your business situation as a new business: 

1. 1. 1. 1. How close you are to opening up your business 
         2. What kind of financing you have established 
         3. The number of employees you have ready 
         4. Essentially any other important information to your business 

Establishing all of this information will give you a great understanding of the situation of your future business. 

• • Understanding your current situation as an established business: 

This understanding of your business situation will be the first step you will need to accomplish to begin the process of writing your marketing plan. 

When you are trying to understand your current situation as an established business, you want to look at a few different things.

1. 1. 1. Monthly revenue 
      2. Current costs 
      3. Revenue trends over the past few months 
      4. Employee numbers 
      5. Any other important information 

• • Understanding your current business situation; example:

This is to serve as an example of a summary of your current business situation as an already established business: 

As of 6/12/2020, Scissor’s Hair Salon is bringing in average monthly revenue of about $40,000. Our monthly costs, including employee salary, rent, equipment operation, and all other expenses, are about $15,000. Over the past few months, we have seen an average revenue increase of about $850 per month and we do expect that to continue for the months to come.

Define your customer pool 

Defining your customer pool is going to be crucial to nailing down your advertising plan. 

Having a defined customer pool is going to show you who you should be advertising too, and then allow you to fit your marketing plan around that. 

What does a customer pool look like? 

A customer pool is going to be a set of characteristics that you decide will match the kind of people who will visit your business. 

For example, when you are creating a marketing plan for a hair salon, you will likely nail down your customer pool to be women between the ages of 16 and 60. 

Although this may not be exactly what your customer base will look like, it is a good place to start when you are deciding who your customer pool is going to be. 

Most patrons who visit hair salons are women, and nailing your pool to women as young as 16, as that is the youngest teenagers in the US can drive by themselves, and women younger than 60, as generally when people age they tend to care less about their appearance, can give you a good idea as to who is going to be visiting your salon. 

Why is establishing a customer pool important?

Establishing a customer pool is going to allow you to know who you are going to attempt marketing to. 

Having a smaller group that you are targeting is going to allow you to specialize your ads much more than if you are simply trying to advertise to anyone and everyone because not everyone is going to be visiting a salon in the first place. 

Example customer pool: 

At Scissors hair salon, we have noticed that our average customer pool consists of a female majority, most of which are between the ages of 16 and 55. We expect this pool to be fairly standard as time goes on, and will focus our efforts on this group. 

List your marketing goals

This step is going to be the next one you take before you can officially establish your marketing strategy. 

Creating a list of your marketing goals is going to make establishing your marketing strategy that much easier. 

But if you have never completed this process before, you may not be entirely sure what this step consists of. 

Thankfully enough, we have the information you are going to need to complete this step. 

Information to include in your list of marketing goals: 

1. 1. 1. How many advertisements you are planning to run
      2. Places/sites you plan to advertise 
      3. The number of new customers you plan to drive in
      4. The increase in profits you are expecting to see 

Creating a list of this information is going to serve as a guide for the next step, where you establish a marketing strategy. 

Having this list will help you decide where to focus your marketing, how much to spend on it, and ideally how many new customers and how much profit you are going to bring in as a result. 

Marketing goals example: 

The owners of Scissors hair salon are hoping to see the following goals from our future marketing campaign: 

1. 1. 1. 1. 10 social media advertisements per month 
         2. Marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and a company run blog 
         3. 20 new customers per month
         4. A 5% increase in profit 

To learn how to write a marketing plan for your business HERE.

Creating your budget

If you would like to end up making money with an effective marketing strategy, you first have to spend money. 

As such, it’s important that you first create an all-inclusive budget that will let you know exactly how much you are going to be able to spend on marketing. 

• • Why is the budget important when creating a marketing strategy? 

Marketing can cost your business a significant amount of money if you are running a very intensive campaign. 

So it’s important that before you do run a campaign like this, you understand exactly how much money you can devote to this campaign. 

Doing so will ensure that you don’t at any point spend too much and put your business in jeopardy as a result. 

• • What should you include in a budget for a hair salon? 

When creating a budget for a hair salon, you should include the following information to ensure that your business has its funds organized. 

1. 1. 1. Employee costs 
      2. Cost for equipment 
      3. Cost for space 
      4. Expected monthly intake 
      5. Anticipated monthly profit 

Hair salon budget example

Scizzors Hair Salon budget: 

We currently spend $4,500 dollars a month on employee salaries and there will be no expected change in this number over the next month. Although we do not need any new equipment, our current cost of equipment operation is about $300 monthly. We are expecting to see a 5% cut in our rent cost, dropping us down to $840 per month. In the next couple of months, we are expecting to intake $40,000, with an expected cost monthly profit of $18,000.

Establishing a marketing strategy 

This step is going to build heavily on the last two where you established your customer pool as well as your marketing goals. 

Now that you have decided on who your customer pool is going to consist of, you can build a marketing strategy around that particular group, while working to meet your goals.

This step is going to be where you begin to create your advertisements and work to meet your marketing strategy goals. 

If your marketing strategy plays out well, then you could see a significant increase in the number of customers you see visit your salon every month. 

Thus, you must nail this aspect, as if you don’t, you may end up wasting a lot of time and money in the process that doesn’t pay off. 

Example of a marketing strategy:

At Scissors Hair Salon, we plan to run marketing campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, a company blog, as well as local radio stations. We plan to aim all of our marketing on a group of women between the ages of 16 and 55 years of age. 

We plan to run 4 separate campaigns, all aimed at different age groups, including those 16 – 21, 22 –  30, 30 – 45, 45 – 55. By aiming separate campaigns at each group individually, we can effectively target ads that will work to convince each group to visit our salon. 

Related Questions

What are the best ways to advertise your hair salon? 

Advertising is a crucial aspect of any business’s success, and if it’s done effectively, it can greatly boost your profits. 

With the new age of the internet, advertising has changed drastically. 

This is leaving many salon owners wondering, what is the best way to advertise for a hair salon in the technological world we now find ourselves in? 

Three of the best ways to advertise your hair salon using technology: 

Social media 

Social media has become ingrained in our daily lives, allowing us to keep up with friends, family, and random people we met over the internet. 

It can also be used to effectively advertise your salon. 

Not only is social media free, but operating a page for your business is a great way to reach several people with little to no work. 

Start an email campaign

Operating an email campaign is another fantastic way to utilize technology to your advantage. 

Simply having potential customers sign up to a list with their email addresses and then sending them weekly emails with promotions you are running is a great way to keep them reminded of your business while also giving them a potential reason to visit. 

Start a blog 

Starting a blog for your business is a fantastic way to help increase the traffic that your business sees.

Operating a blog allows you to provide a special perspective of your business on any particular subject you deem important. 

Starting a blog is also free and you can even produce extra revenue by adding advertisements to your blog! 

How much does it cost to start a hair salon? 

On average, it’s going to cost you about $90,000 to cover all of the necessary costs that come with opening a nail salon. 

This includes the cost of: 

1. 1. 1. Equipment costs 
      2. Supply costs 
      3. Start-up costs 
      4. The beginning waves of marketing costs 
      5. Hiring costs for employees 
      6. Insurance costs 
      7. The costs for licenses and permits 
      8. The cost for the physical space

All of these costs are going to add up to the total of your start up costs. 

This will vary, however, from hair salon to hair salon, so you must do your research as well as your calculations. 

The best way to do so is to make a list of everything you are going to need and everything you are going to be spending money on, and getting a rough estimate in terms of a price check. 

You can then add all of these costs together and will have a rough estimate of how much your start-up costs are going to be.

 

Looking to start your own Salon? Get the documents you need to get organized and funded here.

Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a legal expert to address your specific needs.