The busyness of a salon offers a lot of consistency. No matter how busy the day is, you know your staff will be busy performing lob cuts, waxing eyebrows, and sweeping the floor at some point. Rinse and repeat.

While your routine may be predictable, can you say the same for your brand? We like to think that our brand is established. But without careful thought, planning, and strategy, your brand can slip away from customer’s minds.

In this busy digital landscape, potential customers are constantly inundated with advertisements and social media posts. Keep your salon at the top of their mind with these brand building strategies.

1. Create an Audience Persona

You know your customers best. So instead of guessing who to market to, create a marketing persona of a fictional customer. Personas allow you to cater directly to your customer’s ideas and preferences.

The persona should map out your typical customer’s demographics. Now consider their persona a step further with their behavior and preferences. Does your typical customer just get a haircut or a manicure as well? Narrow down specifics so you can customize your brand to your ideal customers.

2. Perform a SWOT Analysis

When’s the last time your checked up on your competitors? Before defining who you are, it’s worth looking into who you are not. Select a few competitors in your area that offer similar services to you. From there, perform the analysis.

A SWOT analysis allows you to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your closest competitors. Pay careful attention to how they brand themselves with their logo, tone, and value proposition. Figure out what you’re doing well as a business compared to them.

A SWOT Analysis looks at internal factors and determines if they are strengths or weaknesses of your business. It also looks at external factors and says if they are a threat to your business or an opportunity to grow it.

These are some commonly considered internal factors:

• Financial resources (funding, sources of income and investment opportunities)
• Physical resources (location, facilities and equipment)
• Human resources (employees, volunteers and target audiences)
• Current customer lists, trademarks
• Current processes (employee programs, methods for looking after clients needs and software systems – like CRM Software and Accounting Software)

External factors are typically things you or your company do not control, such as the following:

• Market trends (new products, technology advancements and shifts in audience needs)
• Economic trends (local, national and international financial trends)
• Funding (donations, legislature and other sources)
• Demographics
• Relationships with suppliers and partners
• Political, environmental and economic regulations

3. Define your brand image

Now that you’ve created an audience persona, it’s time to narrow down who you are as a company. If you haven’t already, establish a mission statement for your salon. Let your customers know what you’re all about.

Additionally, you’ll want a clear value proposition. Your value proposition should communicate to customers what makes your salon different. Maybe it’s exceptional attention to quality brow lamination or a luxurious salon experience with cocktails. Whatever your value proposition is, define it and make customers aware that they won’t find a competitor quite like your salon. These values will help inform your brand voice and keep it consistent.

4. Cultivate a Brand Voice

Your salon is coming to life already! It’s time to materialize some of these branding plans. You’ll want to cultivate your voice next. The voice of your salon needs to match the established value proposition. Are you professional and tech-savvy? Or is your salon a little zany and quirky? You may want to work with an agency or marketing professional to help narrow this voice down.

Decide what your personality will be to move on to next steps. Create a do and don’t list to create guidelines for your voice. Make sure the tone of your salon comes through with all of your marketing materials.

5. Visualize the Brand

As your personality is established, you’ll have to create some visuals to help bring it to life. Brainstorm an effective logo, color palette, and typography for your brand. All these visuals should help communicate your value proposition and tone. You may want to work with a freelance graphic designer to help create these materials.

We know how effective logos can be. Think of the most popular brands: McDonalds, Nike, or Disney. As soon as you see their logo, fonts, and color scheme, you instantly recognize their brand from their consistency. One day your salon can achieve the same status!

6. Upgrade Your Website

A professional website will not only improve your branding strategy, but it can also help get you more business! Curate a professional image and establish trust with clients with a professional website. You may want to use a hosting service such as WordPress. Or you may want to work directly with a freelance web developer. The choice is yours!

You’ll want a sleek, modern website that allows your customers to learn about your services and contact you. Write web copy that is engaging to your audience persona. You’ll also want to get your website indexed with Google Search Console so search engines can properly find you. Your freelance help should be able to assist you in doing this.

Consider easy form fills, phone call buttons, or chat bots to capture leads. If you use these lead generators, you’ll need a staff member to monitor them to ensure they get a timely response. Don’t forget to set up Google Analytics as well to help monitor your website’s metrics!

7. Establish Digital Strategy

Once you have an amazing website, you’ll want to make sure future customers can find it. Create a digital strategy with your consistent branding. Create a Google Business Listing if you haven’t already. Link your brand new website to it so searchers can access it right away.

You’ll want to refer to your audience persona from earlier. Consider what social media profiles they use. If it’s not clear, create a survey for current customers and ask how they found you online. Given their feedback, you may want to create new social media profiles or remove some inactive ones. You can also check referral traffic on Google Analytics to achieve this answer.

For example, if your clientele is Gen Z, you may want to create a presence on TikTok and focus less on Facebook given their social media habits. Set key performance indicators given the channels you choose and start creating content.

8. Create Content and Schedule It

Just having social media profiles isn’t enough. You’ll need an established content schedule to keep current and prospective clients engaged. Luckily, the sky’s the limit with what you can post on your profiles. You’ll just want to make sure all content is relevant to your ideal customers.

Try using a free tool like Canva to create beautiful posts with your color palette and typography. Before and after photos are great ways to showcase your salon’s work. Prospective clients on the fence can easily see what our staff is capable of!

But of course, you’ll want to vary your posts too. You can switch up with brand promotions, conversation starters, holiday posts and much more! Use a social media scheduling tool like Hootsuite to create a calendar of interesting posts.

9. Complement Digital Strategy with Events and Print Materials

A digital presence is essential in our increasingly online world. But don’t forget about ground signs, event materials, an print materials. There is still a place for these marketing materials in your branding strategy! Similar to online, you’ll want to ensure your new logo is prevalent on any print materials. Work with a local print shop to create beautiful, updated graphics.

You’ll want to update business cards for the salon and your employees. Ensure brand consistency across all business cards. You can even incorporate digital elements into your print materials by using QR codes. Link business cards to your gorgeous new website so clients can find additional information!

Lastly, if your salon sells private label products, you’ll need to update the products with a new label as well. For example, brow private label products should feature your new logo and your salon’s name. Eyebrowz Wholesale makes updating your artwork easy, just send over your new branding materials!

10. Keep Branding Consistent

So, there you have it, you’ve created an exciting new brand image for your salon! You’ve worked hard to get this plan in place, so it’s important to keep it consistent. Make sure all employees are aware of the rebrand. Your tone should not falter on social media or the website by allowing multiple users to post at the same time. Appoint a social media manager to keep the tone consistent.

It may take some practice, but a consistent brand image is sure to promote trust with your customers. Keep your clients coming back for more with your awesome new brand.

How Private Label Supports Your Brand Image

Having high quality products in your brand helps enhance your brands image in the eyes of your consumer. You can pick a range of products and packaging that best matched your image and brand voice.