9 Best Nail Salon Marketing Ideas to Get More Customers (With Examples)

Here’s a question you’ve probably pondered over: How do I promote my nail salon business? 

What if I told you there was a way to reach the level of success you’ve always dreamed about? What if I told you that it was something simple and easily doable?

The answer to all of that is simple:

Marketing!

Growing means getting more money which happens when you get more clients. Getting more clients requires more people to know about your business which only happens when you are willing to put yourself out there. The best way to put yourself out there is by marketing.

We understand that marketing might sound like something tricky and complex at first. That’s why we’re here to help you come up with a plan to land the best strategy by giving you nail salon marketing ideas. For that we need to do a few things first:

Identify your USP (Universal Selling Point)

Your nail salon is your vision of what you think is special as a technician and tells your story to the world. It’s important to identify that vision as it is what dictates how you want to present your nail business to the world thus creating your brand. This brand is what acts as a skeleton for your nail salon promotion ideas.

Here are a few ways to help you identify your unique selling point (USP):

• Compare yourself with your competitors and see what they offer.
• Identify your nail salon’s strengths and weaknesses as compared to your competitors. One way to do this is by putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and thinking about what it is that you think makes people choose your business over theirs? 
• Introspect what was your vision when you opened the nail salon and chose its aesthetic and services.

You don’t have to go on this journey alone. Your customers can play a huge role in your nail salon marketing. Use them to your advantage to expand. You need to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is and what they like/dislike.

Here are some key starting points to help you out:

• What are the kinds of posts that have larger interactions?
• Which social media platform works best for me?
• What kind of people come to my salon?
• What are my most selling services? 
• Specifically search for patterns based on age groups, gender, and economic status.

Ready to travel the journey of elevating your business? Here’s a teaser of what’s to come:

1. Go Google! How to be visible on Google
2. W W Why? Websites and why they are important
3. How to put the PRO in PROmotions
4. 160 Characters and how they can change lives- A guide on SMS
5. Around the world in 80 seconds – A guide on social media
6. Emails are your new best friend – How and why on email marketing
7. How to go a step further with advertisements
8. Your customers are your best friends! A guide to referrals
9. Tap into that customer love! How to use loyalty programs

1.  Go Google! How to be visible on Google

In today’s world whenever we face a problem and want to get access to the information we all turn to our savior: Google! From flight bookings to the latest trends in nail tech, it’s all on Google. Since everyone uses it for finding answers, what better way to stand out and be found than Google.  

That’s where Google My Business comes in!

GMB is a free tool that manages how the business appears on Google Search and Maps. It includes adding your business name, location, and hours; monitoring and replying to customer reviews; adding photos; learning where and how people are searching for the business.

Now that you know the ‘why’ here’s the ‘how’ to do it well:

• Have a clear cover photo so that people can see your business clearly.
• Since a picture is worth more than a thousand words, add more photos of your business to tell your story.
• Upload a brief video of your nail salon. You can even use 360 view videos as virtual tours of your salon to show off your aesthetic and gain more trust!
• Get clients to review and give feedback on your nail salon. The more reviews the better your chances of getting listed higher.
• Leverage Reserve with Google: RwG is a new search and book platform by Google that lets customers book appointments with your salon, directly from Google Search, Google Maps, or the Reserve with Google website. To ensure that you can have your bookings from Reserve with Google you need to ensure you use a nail salon scheduling software that is partnered with Google.

This is an example of what the Book Online button looks like on a GMB profile. The Book Online button stands out and grabs attention, prompting users to book an appointment right away!

To know more about how to leverage Reserve with Google click here.

2. W W Why Websites and why they are important

As you could see in the previous section Google listings also link to your site which begs the question why have a good site?

Having a company website adds to the overall legitimacy of your business and helps build your brand long-term. Furthermore, good sites help your business rank higher on Google.

Here are some tips on how to make your website stand out:

• Take inspiration from pre-existing sites if you are unable to come up with a creative website idea. Look at what your competition is doing and what works to get a better understanding of what is trending in the industry.

• Have all your information clearly listed on the website as your information is what most people will be looking for on the site. This includes your brand, your locations, services offered, prices and timings.

• Utilize images to tell your story: Within the nail salon industry websites that are more visual focused have been observed to perform better than more text-heavy sites. Use the space to show off your best works and make the website more interactive by using your nail salon’s images to tell your story.

• Integrate and have online booking solutions on your website: At the end of the day, giving convenience outweighs everything else. Having a book now button on your site makes it easier for people to book. Besides, people are more likely to book right after they see your skills in action on your site! 

• Hire a professional to make your website better. However, if you are unable to do this due to budget constraints there are various sites with beautiful templates and tools to let you build your own dream site like Wix.

• Test your salon’s website on mobile: Most of us use phones to check out everything we want to find on the internet. At that point it is very important you make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. 

• Focus more on functionality as opposed to flashy effects: When people come to your site, they don’t want to see flashy glamorous effects. They instead want to have clear access to information that is relevant to your business. Further, focussing more on navigation also increases your website ranking on Google.

• Add testimonials:  Trust with customers is the grassroots of any good business. What better way to build trust than having good testimonials. This adds more legitimacy to your nail business and convinces people to book.

• Make it fast: If your website loads too slow, your visitors will leave without waiting. So, you need to be careful with adding too many large images to your website.

Source: Naildega

A good example of everything we have discussed so far is the website of Naildega (Pic above). Notice how there are clear salon appointment booking buttons that are strategically placed to allow people to directly book easily.

P.S. If you don’t have a website, Appointy could give you a mini website domain along with the booking/scheduling features and help you with your promotional strategies too.

Book a demo now to see it in action.

3. Put the PRO in PROmotions

The easiest way to grab customers’ attention is by running special offers and promotions.

A promotion is a discount that you offer to anyone that is willing to come in for your services at a particular time. 

Promotions are a great tool for nail salon advertising.

Here are a few hacks to not only get more customers but also make more profits from discounts:

• Ensure that you plan out your budget and how much discount you can afford to give in advance to make a profit.
• Track the time and dates when your business runs slow. Offer sales during these times for hitting two birds with one stone.
• Pamper first-time customers with free extra services to start building loyalty.
• Club two or more services and offer combo packs. This makes people spend more in your nail salon than they initially would have because they feel they are getting a better deal.
• Offer special festive event discounts as these are the times when there is a larger influx of clients. Black Friday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day are a few occasions that brim with activity and you can leverage this by advertising your salon the right way.

Running these nail promotions can also increase your social media visibility which in turn brings in more customers. It also pairs with other nail salon marketing strategies to bring more attention to your product.

4. 160 Characters of SMSs and how they can change your life

We saw what promotion is but what about how to let people know about your nail promotion? 

The answer is simple: Use SMS.

It is a personal channel where you directly reach people’s phones and can directly interact with them. 

Did you know that 90% of texts are opened and read. What makes it even better is that 45% of them convert into appointments and reviews!.

Some great nail salon marketing ideas using SMS include:

• Discount texts: SMS can be used to attract customers via running promotions like sales and discounts and making consumers aware of them. This is enhanced by sending these texts at strategic times when people are freer and are likely to see the message as well as react to it.

• Promotion: Don’t hesitate to show off your work to the world. Sending nail promotions that highlight your work is more likely to attract and bring in more customers.

• Feedback: It is important for you to get reviews on social platforms like Facebook and Google for more visibility. Furthermore, feedback helps you improve your services as well as know what is going right and wrong. SMS is a very powerful tool for getting feedback!

• Reminders: You don’t want your customers to forget about their appointments. The most effective way to do this is to remind people in advance that they have a booking with you. The best way to communicate the same with them thus becomes SMS.

For more ways to prevent no-shows check out this blog.

Now that you know why SMS are important you might be wondering how to craft the perfect one. Here are some secret tips to get you started:

• Keep a conversational tone: Since SMS are personal, keeping a conversational tone helps with feedback and increases chances of engagement as it gives a personal touch.

• Make it crisp: SMSes have a word limit. You want to be able to deliver as much information with as few words as possible.

• Don’t spam: While it is important to run advertisements it is important to not run them too often as that can annoy clients and result in them unsubscribing and ignoring your messages. Try changing the frequency of when you send messages to find the optimum frequency that suits your needs.

5. Around the world in 80 seconds- A guide on social media

At the end of the day, the nail salon industry is very visual-based. What better place to flex your skills and show your work than social media! 

Social media is the easiest place to start nail marketing as it is very affordable and accessible, but more importantly, there are millions of potential customers scrolling every day. 

Here are some evergreen social media tips to get you started: 

• Use hashtags right: Hashtags are a way of labeling your content letting people know which tag it belongs to. You will be able to use 30 hashtags so it’s important to make each one count! 
  
  This is the best way to get people to see your posts as you’re expanding the reach of your posts because people outside your own followers will see your stuff. They’ll discover you because they see your post on the page for the hashtags they follow and on the discovery page under posts they might be interested in. 
  
  The right way to use hashtags is to avoid using generic popular hashtags and instead research by looking into which hashtag gives you the most reach and interaction. Find out which ones work for you and then mix and match them to get the maximum reach possible.

• Tag your clients: Tagging your clients and sharing good customer reviews of your work is a great way to build trust and increase authentic reach.

• Create videos: Depending on which type of demographic you are targeting (TikTok Instagram for young people Facebook for older people) make videos that suit the platform and curate content that garners more interaction. 
  Some nail technician advertising ideas include having a before and after video, showing off salon tours, capitalizing on ongoing social trends and generating content on it, having a question-answer session educating viewers about your work, and so on.

• Use giveaways and contests to encourage reach: Have giveaways that look like discounts for your services.
  Organize contests that are based around your services to generate more engagement which increases your followers and gives you more organic reach.

• Use Instagram Stories: Instagram featured stories act as a way for you to show off your nail business vision as well as aesthetic. 
  Some common ways it has been used include posting stories of day-to-day work, salon tours, having a story explaining the journey of each employee as well as their favorite products, having product reviews, and so on.

• Add booking option directly from social media: You can use scheduling software and pair them with social media so that your clients can directly book from social media. 

To learn more about how to do this on Facebook click here.

A good example of how this button looks on your profile is given below.  The Facebook appointment button appears right below your profile cover image as shown below. Its strategic position ensures that it is visible to profile visitors right when they visit your profile, and they are prompted to book an appointment with you! 

6. Emails are your new best friend- How and why on email marketing:

We’ve seen SMS marketing but what if we want to take it a step further and make the process cheaper? Wondering how to ensure your content reaches your target audience? 

That’s where email marketing comes in as it offers you an advantage like none other. A free canvas where you can design and send whatever content you want to your subscribers in your own way. You can get creative with links, images, and various calls to action on your own terms making it a great fit for nail advertising. 

More importantly with emails, you aren’t dependent on an algorithm for what your target audience will see and will not see as in this mode anything you send is guaranteed to be received by the people on your mailing list. 

Typically, 22% of your email list will open up your email, whereas on social media your reach is usually only 10% of your followers. Even better, you can send emails free of cost! The Return on Investment for emails is $44 for every $1 spent. 

That being said, you need to first establish a good mailing list. A mailing list is the collection of people who get your mail. It is important to have a larger audience who interact with your emails. 

Some key ways to collect Email lists include collecting emails with each appointment at your nail salon and having an option to subscribe to your mailing list on your website as well as your social media handles.

Some key tips on how to make your email better include:

• Have subject lines that grab people’s attention: Your subject line is the most important part of your email as it determines if someone is going to open your email or not. You want to keep your email subject line short and not give away everything that’s coming in the email. It is thus important to make it as catchy and eye-grabbing as possible. For example, you can put a name in the title.

• Deliver Value in Every Email: It is important to ensure that you clearly communicate what you want to achieve and do it well in the mail or else people will think it is spam and unsubscribe.

• Keep it Simple: Typically emails that are simple and look like they were just sent from a friend to another friend get better engagement. People are used to spammy promotional emails today which typically are heavily branded with images. So, if you use a lot of images in your emails, your subscribers may think it’s an advertisement and disengage. It is better instead to have emails that sound personal for better engagement.

Here’s a good nail salon advertising example from JINsoon. The images are strategically placed to grab attention and the tone is personal. 
 

Source: JINsoon

7. How to go a step further with nail advertisements

As discussed above, social media is a great step to build your brand and expand. The question then arises about how to go further than that?

Here are a few nail salon advertising ideas to get you started:

The fastest way to grow and increase reach is by using Google, Facebook, Instagram ads that can generate new clicks to the website as well as to your social media. While this can be costly if done well it can significantly increase your reach.

These ads work better as they factor in location, interest, and likelihood of conversion preventing uninterested clicks or people on your site thus only bringing in interested people to your nail business.

However, if that is out of your budget you can also utilize local influencers to market your nail salon. Content creators have a wider reach on social media and thus can spread your message to more people. Furthermore, people have a certain level of trust with these already established influencers and you can capitalize on this to take your brand higher.

You can also do this locally by using visually appealing flyers. You can then hand them out in popular streets in your locality. A smarter way to do this is by collaborating with local popular businesses and paying and putting up your small flyers in their stores.

You can also partner with retail companies to advertise and use their products. This increases the reach of both your company and brand as well as theirs and gives you exposure to a larger audience. Often you can also get a commission by using and selling their products in your store increasing the money you make.

8. Your customers are your best friends! Referrals and how to run them

Remember we promised we would tell you a method to convert loyal customers into marketing tools. A simple and easy way to do this is through referrals.

It is the process by which you nudge loyal happy customers into getting you more customers by word of mouth. 

This is very effective as 83% of the people trust the recommendations of their friends and family and are more likely to at least try the service once. 

So, referral programs can help boost your revenue by significantly reducing expenditure on bringing in new customers.

A few ways you can do this include:

• Offline referrals: Offer incentives for loyal customers who are willing to introduce your services to their friends and family. These incentives can range from discounts and cashback on getting a certain number of referrals to having a points-based program where you can redeem points to get services.

• Online referrals can play a pivotal role in a referral program, because nowadays, being seen as a trusted business requires quality reviews. Online reviews are read by nearly everyone who uses the internet. So, you can nudge people to review your nail salon if they like your services.

9. Tap into that customer love! How to use loyalty programs

Want to get more out of your customers while keeping them happy?

Loyalty programs are the way to go! 

Loyalty Cards:

• Loyalty cards are a dedicated points system where people gain points when they use your services and these points can be used to claim goods or services from your salon helps. 
• You thus tap into the psychology of getting more for less and keep them on the hook for wanting to come back for more. Speaking of keeping people on the hook we have…

Memberships: Memberships are a way of getting people to subscribe to using your services long-term by paying in advance.

• One way of doing it includes running packages like allowing people to use a certain service monthly n number of times for which they pay in advance where they get a certain discount. You can also offer premium exclusive services. 
• This is better than it looks on paper as it even gives you a guaranteed source of income.

Gift Cards:

• Gift Cards are vouchers that can be redeemed for a particular service. Let clients gift your services to their loved ones on special occasions and festivals by selling gift vouchers at your salon. 
• This will help you get new customers with help from your existing ones. Gift cards like referrals are great because they offer guaranteed upfront revenue.
• Gift cards allow for better sales pitches also as people are more willing to spend more when they come to redeem their gift card. Gift cards can be strategically run during festivals and seasonal events in order to maximize usage,

Along with nail salon booking software, Appointy helps you create gift cards/certificates. 

Conclusion

Getting new clients for your nail business may seem challenging at first, but at the end of the day, all it takes is patience and some work to implement these ideas. 

If you have trouble implementing these suggestions or want to do them better try Appointy, the online nail salon software, that comes with Reserve with Google and has options to help implement your marketing ideas.

We hope that these nail salon marketing ideas help you grow your business. Let us know if you have any more ideas or how your implementation went in the comments.

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!