grow your business, grow your salon, Halloween, Marketing Tip, salon tips, small business, Social Marketing, Social Promotion

4 Notable Business Goals Salons & Beauty Businesses Can Achieve This Halloween

A woman getting ready for Halloween at a beauty salon

Good news for salons and beauty businesses across the United States!

Halloween is just around the corner, and the news is that Americans are expected to spend a record high of $10.14 billion collectively on the day.

Some big numbers, right?

But not surprising, given the fact that this spooky festival is the second highest-grossing commercial holiday in the US, just after Christmas.


Taking a closer look

Let’s try to understand the scope of business for the salon and beauty industry during Halloween.

It’s important to acknowledge here that a major contribution to all Halloween sales is from the retail sector (think costumes, candies, and decorations).

But, if we were to take a closer look, we would realize that salons and beauty businesses contribute a significant chunk to it too.

Primarily because Halloween parties are all the rage among adults. In fact, this year 56% of adults said they are planning to celebrate Halloween – which if you put into comparison – is almost similar to pre-pandemic (2019) numbers, and a 14% rise from 2020.

This makes it a busy time for beauty & nail salons across the country especially due to the growing prevalence of vaccines.

Stylists and makeup artists work round the clock prepping up excited customers for these Halloween parties and adding some spooky glam to their looks.

From vampy makeup to spooky nail art, face painting, and dark eye shadows, Halloween is big business for the salon and beauty industry!


Why is Halloween a good great business opportunity?

Here are 3 reasons that make Halloween a great time to market your salon or beauty business:

1. Halloween is primarily a Christian festival, but almost everyone joins in the festivities. Hence, your target market becomes much larger than in other common festivals.

You have a relatively larger audience to target, as compared to other religion-centric festivals.

2. Not all salon and beauty businesses target this festival. For example, bridal salons, salon suites, etc., are unlikely to capitalize on this opportunity.

You’re likely to have lesser competition from your contemporaries.

3. Halloween sits right at the beginning of the much-hyped holiday season of the year. For most businesses, sales spike during this season. Some business owners even claim that they make about 30% of their annual profits from this season (October-December).

Any new customers that you attract during Halloween are likely to come back during Thanksgiving and Christmas. You won’t have to compete with other businesses and their extensive holiday marketing campaigns to attract customers.

Kickstarting promotions to attract customers during Halloween can be a great way to lead up to Thanksgiving and Christmas sales and avoid competition during rush seasons.


For all these reasons, from a business perspective, Halloween is a great time to catch up on all your pending business goals, or outline new ones and achieve them quickly.

It is perfectly timed for you to turn around the year for your business.

Look past the trick-and-treaters, and you might be surprised at the sweet business opportunities this festival provides! 😉


Now that we have covered the ‘why’ aspect of Halloween being a solid demand-generating opportunity, let’s move on to our next important segment. 

We have curated the top 4 business goals that Halloween can help you achieve, coupled with an exhaustive list of ideas that you can include in your planning, and implement to see exciting results!


🎃 Goal 1 – Increasing Revenue

Increasing revenues for any business follows a simple mechanism. Learn it the easiest way here in this blog, and in this one.

In order to increase it this Halloween season, here are a few ideas you can try:

 

A. Add some Halloween-inspired services to your menu

These services can range from a full-blown Halloween hair-and-makeup package to simple face-painting items on your menu.

You can try different price points that work with these services. For example, start a spooky nail art pattern at $50, 7 days before Halloween, and increase it up to $80-100, leading up to the day. (This is just an example. The price and the service vary with your location, services, and customer base).

Properly set the stage with a solid hair and makeup team, you might even consider bringing on freelance makeup artists for the season. The end of October is filled with Halloween-themed parties, giving salons multiple opportunities to book appointments reserved for theatrical makeup, face painting, special effects, and creative hair. Halloween falls on a weekday this year, so you can expect the weekend-before rush of hair and makeup appointments.

– Experts at the BeautyMarkMarketing blog

In order to promote these services,

  • Get the word out by putting up beautiful window displays and storefronts. The idea is to give a visual treat to your customers as they pass by and entice them to come to try the service. It’s a great way to make sure everyone in the neighbourhood knows that you’ve launched a new service.

Use posters like these to attract customers to your business.

Examples of Halloween posters for your salon

Source: Pinterest
  • Moreover, for better results, you can pair new services with some existing ones, or give them out for free to select customers. You can even put them up on discounts.

..which brings us to our second point,

 

B. Give them an offer they can’t refuse!

According to Deloitte’s holiday shopping stats, during the holiday season, 58% of buyers are actively looking for goods that are on sale and 56% searching online for the best deal.

Given below are four ways (with examples) on how you can attract customers during Halloween by giving out deals and discounts. This is also a good opportunity to make use of all your customer’s emails that are lying around!

  • Getting new customers to try your services

“Hey Charlie, try face painting at this new salon in your neighbourhood. Everything’s at flat 25% off”

  • Getting existing customers to try a new service

“Hey Jenny, good to have you back. Would you like 15% off on our new pumpkin nail art?”

  • Getting your inactive customers to visit your salon

“Hi Rose, we haven’t seen you in a while. Here’s your 25% coupon for Halloween makeup and hair. Come visit us before your party?”

  • Getting your regular customers to visit more often

“Carrie, how did you like your haircut yesterday? We’re painting temporary tattoos this Saturday with 50% for our regulars. Interested?”

 

C. Do retail in (Halloween) style

Salon owners across the country agree that retail products and add-ons form a significant chunk of their monthly cash flow (almost 20%).

In order to make some extra cash, you can try stocking some Halloween-themed beauty add-ons for sale.

Some examples of this stuff are devil-horned headbands, monstrous piercings, colored eyelashes, etc. Just keep it simple and think of the props that might go well with common costumes.


🎃 Goal 2 – Team Building

Festivals and special events are a great way in general, to boost your team’s morale and encourage bonding among its members.

And Halloween is no different. In fact, it’s only better.

 

A. You are with your team in spite of the holiday season

People don’t travel across cities to be with their families on the day (like on Thanksgiving), and hence you don’t need to give out a week-long holiday to staff.

You can work right till the day leading up to Halloween, and then celebrate the day with your team.

This way, you can encourage team building without any loss in the staff’s productivity.

Bonus: Just in case you wanted to know, we’ve put together a few resources from over the Internet to help you throw a great Halloween party. Whether you want to organise a quick party or something on a budget, there are tips for everyone in these:

Halloween Party

 

B. It’s you and your team in this – together!

Decorating your salon gets the festive vibe and energy going. Almost every blog on Halloween marketing for salons would agree (well, not literally. But most!).

But that doesn’t mean you need to set aside a separate budget for decorations this month. You can simply use DIY pumpkins, owls, and skeletons, and create quirky decor items with your team.

You can even ask your staff to bring in one DIY decor item each and use them to adorn your salon.

Take a couple of hours out on a Saturday, and kick off the decorations with food, drinks, and excitement.

I bet you’ll have fun!

Halloween Party stuff

Source: Pinterest

🎃 Goal 3 – Building better relationships with customers

In the beauty business, it is not uncommon for customers to form a natural bonding with their stylist, or makeup artist.

And don’t get me wrong, it needs to stay this way. Because at the end of the day, these are the people your customers turn to in order to make them look good.

But thinking about it from a business perspective, you need to surpass this customer-stylist bond by establishing a better (or at least equally good) customer-business relationship.

The reason is simple. If your customers are coming to you just because of that one stylist they like, it’d be hard to retain such customers if that particular stylist leaves.

Building a great relationship with your customers is one way to solve this problem.

Since Halloween sits right at the beginning of the holiday season, you’re in luck. You’ll get numerous opportunities to start fresh or nurture your customer relationships over the next couple of months. 

You can try the following tactics this Halloween to bond with your customers at a business level:

  • Show a little love to your regulars by giving out free, or discounted trials of any additional services that you’re offering, such as face painting, or temporary tattoos. This can extend into a full-fledged loyalty program that you can launch for the rest of the holiday season.
  • Involve customers in festivities. Enhance their entire salon experience. Get a little bit of trick-and-treat-ing going. Put some statement quirky decorations, and Halloween-inspired photo stations, and encourage customers to click a picture with it. (You can further leverage this, as explained in the next section). Or simply have a conversation about their day and wish them Happy Halloween. Smiles and kind words go a long way with customers. 
  • Reach out to them. Send your inactive customers a notification wishing them Happy Halloween, and invite them over for a service, possibly at discounted prices.

🎃 Goal 4 – Boost your social media marketing 

Whether you’re looking to start social media marketing for your salon, or if you just need a boost, Halloween is the perfect opportunity.

There are an overflowing number of ideas out on the Internet from where you can take inspiration and implement them for your own salons.

Moreover, social media usage increases anyway during the holiday seasons, hence it’s likely that your post won’t go unnoticed.

Some ideas you can try during Halloween are:

  • Encourage staff to try different looks and post them on your Facebook page. You can also compare looks from multiple staff, and take a poll from your followers on which look they like more. This will not only help you get traffic to your page but also give you an insight into your customers’ likes and dislikes.

A woman with long, white sleeved gown applying scary makeup on her face and getting ready for Halloween

  • You can do the same with random Halloween looks from celebrity salons or popular stylists. Ask your customers which look they like the best, and invite them to try that look at your salon. Putting a booking option right there is likely to increase your sales. But make sure to tag the page/ artist you’re referring to and give due credit.
  • All the selfie booths that we talked about earlier in the blog can also be leveraged for your benefit. You can run a Facebook or Instagram selfie competition of the pictures people click there, and reward those who get the maximum likes in a day.
  • Post customers’ looks and encourage them to do it from their own social media handles. Request them to tag your business when they post it. While once the Halloween season has passed, it won’t get you any more sales, but it’ll help people remember the great work you do and that you’re a creatively versatile business.
  • Share all deals, discounts, and packages that you’re offering via social media. It’ll get the word out and attract people to your business.

🎃 Time for a pro tip! 

A proper social media strategy at the proper time can give you huge traffic on your website. But don’t stop at that.

Convert your website/ webpage traffic into direct sales using this simple trick:

Think about all the steps that stand between a trending social media post/ blog and your customers booking appointments with you. And eliminate all these steps. 

These steps may include,

  • going to your business website
  • finding contact information
  • physically making a phone call
  • talking to the receptionist
  • actually remembering to show up for the appointment

The list of steps looks tiring, doesn’t it?

With each step, a certain percentage of your initial viewers/ readers fall apart from your sales funnel. Hence, the more steps you eliminate, the more chances you have of customers walking through your door.

 

What’s the solution?

There’s a simple solution.

Start converting your social media/ website traffic into direct sales by providing an option for customers to book an appointment directly through your Facebook and Instagram pages/ blog/ website.

Facebook profile of a business with a Book Now button

 

How to do it? 

In order to enable bookings directly from social platforms, you’ll need to enable online bookings for your business first. 

You can do that by investing in a good online scheduling software for your business.

A few of these scheduling software like Appointy provide a feature to add a Book Now call-to-action on all major social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Google MyBusiness), your website, and your WordPress blogs.

Using a scheduling software like this, you can complete your customer’s entire purchase journey within just a few clicks.

Our salon scheduling software takes care of all these steps and even more. This is how it simplifies the customer’s journey from your social media page to finally booking an appointment with you:

  • Going to your business website/ social media page: Direct Book Now button on the website or social media handles
  • Finding contact information: No contact information required to book an appointment with you
  • Physically making a phone call: Selecting a slot of their own choice from available slots
  • Talking to the receptionist: No conversation required. As easy as – Click. Click. Book.
  • Actually showing up for the appointment: Automatic reminders before appointments to reduce no-shows

Right from booking an appointment for the service, to paying for it, Appointy can take care of all your needs.

Don’t take my word for it. Believe the 16000+ salon professionals around the world that trust Appointy! 

Oh! And I almost forgot. Have a spooky Halloween! 👻


About Appointy

We at Appointy, help business owners grow and run their businesses with our online scheduling software. This blog was a part of our ‘Manage your Business’ category, where we provide expert tips, and resources, or simply talk about the challenges that small and medium businesses face every day. 

If you have any thoughts on this blog or would like to chat about your business struggles and achievements, let us know in the comments below. 

We love a good talk!