How to Build a Successful Hair Salon Branding?

Hair salon branding can make or break your business. Creating a brand identity that is attention-grabbing, elegant, and unique is how you’ll convince new people to give your salon a try. And should be on top of you salon marketing strategy list.

People are very visual: they look at exciting and valuable things. While your salon is already valuable, you must make any advertising, products, and the salon itself visually attractive as well.

If you’re looking for some branding ideas, read on. With a bit of consideration, you’ll find just the right elements to show potential clients what your salon is all about.

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1. Why Having a Strong Salon Branding So Important?
2. Steps to Define Your Salon Brand
3. Salon Branding Design
4. Salon Brand Guidelines
5. Building Your Salon Brand - Top Tips
6. Things to Avoid When Creating Your Hair Salon Brand?
7. Conclusion

Why Having a Strong Salon Branding So Important?

Your salon’s brand is the representation of your business and the message that you use to attract attention. It’s how you present yourself to the world.

Here are some things that you have to consider for modern salon and spa branding:

• How are you communicating with your clients? What are your brand elements saying to them?

• What style of writing and speaking best shows off your desired personality?

• Does your name and logo design send a message about the essence of your salon?

• How do your colors and fonts help you stand out in the industry?

• Are the images you’re using showing both the style of your business and what it has to offer?

The first step in creating an excellent brand is to identify exactly who your ideal client is - this is the person you want to come and use your services. Next, you have to work on ways to appeal to them with both visual and linguistic elements.

The point is this: even if your wording is perfect, your ideal clients won’t be visiting your salon if they’re looking for a place with spa offerings and all your visuals are focused on styling.

Once you’ve figured out exactly who your tribe is, you must find ways to develop a perfect brand that appeals to them. Standing out to the right people will ensure that you attract clients who share your values and appreciate your business.

Steps to Define Your Salon Brand

• 1. Develop Customer Personas

  Start by creating personas for your ideal clients, and you should work from the ground up for this. Give them names like Brenda - who loves massages and wants ombre dye - or Paul - who wants a quiet place to get a quick trim on his lunch break for example.

  Once you’ve set up a persona/ template, get creative. Give each person you want to reach careers, a different lifestyle, and social activities. Decide what their family lives look like and what kind of technology they use. Ask yourself what their current beauty regime is.

  Doing this will help you develop your salon client’s profile and identify people that you want your brand to reach. For example, if you choose clients who are more familiar with technology, you might want to focus on a brand that plays well on sites like Instagram or TikTok.

• 2. Think About the Services You Wish to Provide

  Knowing what types of hair salon services you will provide is also a good starting point that can help you work toward defining exactly what you want your advertising to look like.

  A client looking for balayage might want something different than someone looking for a whole spa experience. Knowing your atmosphere and offerings ahead of time will help you figure out what resources you want to advertise.

• 3. Thinking About Your Pricing Strategy

  A significant part of your brand has to do with what kind of pricing strategy you’re going to pursue in your salon.

  Decide whether you want to offer an upscale, expensive environment or if you’d rather be a salon with a quicker turnaround that is trying to provide any person who walks in the best value for their money.

• 4. What Brands Will You be Stocking?

  Your stocked brands say a lot about your values and should be included in your marketing.

  Maybe you should consider brands like Wella, which are popular and well-known, or brands that offer cruelty-free products or custom-made products. These types of products are becoming more important to younger clients.

  Salon branding products are important from the beginning, especially if you want to sell your own salon brands one day. Make sure you’re only carrying things that make you proud.

• 5. Define Your salon’s Customer Experience

  Perhaps the most important thing to know when you’re asking yourself, “How do I brand my salon?” is what experience you want your customers to have.

  You must consider every step of each service you offer. What kind of experience should customers have if they contact you via your website? Should they be able to book online and should they receive an appointment reminder to remind them of their appointment?

  Ask yourself what it will be like for a client when they step in the door. Decide what kind of reading material, complimentary drinks, greetings, and seating will be available. Think about your atmosphere, which will differ depending on whether you’re offering a quick and convenient style salon or more of an exclusive salon experience.

  Write out a workflow of each service or treatment you offer. Decide how your stylists will interact with customers during the wash and condition, for example. Customer interaction is key to modern salon branding.

  Do you want your clients to shop your products before or after their visit? What is the perfect flow for a person to go through the checkout? Think about how you’ll follow up with them and get them back into the salon at a later date, too.

• 6. Research Your Local Competitors

  Check out what other local salons are doing with their marketing outreach. It’s essential to make sure that you stand out in the industry and are defining your own niche.

  Visit in person, check out their online presence, and see how they advertise on websites as well. It might help you figure out how to make your own company stand out from the local competition.

Salon Branding Design

 

• 1. Get Inspiration

  To start, get inspired! While you want to put your salon business’s personality into your logo, it’s a great idea to check out what others are already doing.

  Go online and look at some of the websites for salons and spas that inspired you to start. It’s best to look at those offering the same kind of customer experience that you want to provide. There is a ton of inspiration on Pinterest and other sites.

  Once you’ve seen a few cool things and have saved some salon and spa branding ideas, fonts, or examples, it’s time to dream up your perfect brand - with help from a few different resources.

• 2. Choose Your Designer

  Choose a graphic designer who can help you with your salon font, logo, and other aspects of visual marketing. They can help you translate your style into something that will appeal to your market.

  You can find artists locally. Also, sites like behance.com, upwork.com, 99designs.com, or fiverr.com are all fantastic places to find designers. Read through a review or two of the person’s past work before you reach out to them.

  If you’re looking for a free option, you can also develop your salon logo with various online software, from logo builders to Photoshop. Anything you have should work if you’re comfortable with graphic design.

• 3. Think Longer Term

  Don’t dive in and go with something super popular - trends change very quickly. You want something that will showcase the personality of your salon for years to come.

  Think: classic, clean, stylish, and simple. Your salon brand should convey a sense of class and cool.

• 4. Remember Your Customer Personas

  Don’t forget Brenda and Paul. It’s easy to get lost in market research and neglect to consider the actual people who are going to be looking at your website, ads, business cards, and other promotional materials.

  You need to define precisely who these people are so that you can maybe have a little more insight into them. Make sure each has a distinct personality for your salon or spa to appeal to.

  Read over your profiles again and ask whether they would like this brand. Would it appeal to them? Is it fun? Is it unique enough to stand out against many other advertisements?

• 5. Test on Friends, Family, And In the Street

  Don’t just assume that your first brand for your salon works. You have to be your own salon branding agency and do some A/B testing with family, friends, and potential clients. Get out there with personalized salon branding examples.

  When you show the materials to people, they should give you an opinion about what it means to them. You don’t want to guide their thoughts on this because the goal is to figure out whether their ideas match your own.

  Don’t be shy when it comes to creating a brand for your salon. You want your personality and the identity of your salon to shine through your marketing materials, and a little testing can make sure that it does.

Salon Brand Guidelines

The best guidelines are ones you create for yourself - and it’s just a bonus that they’re free. Defining your guidelines means deciding how you want to share your brand.

Think about a website, business cards, different media sites, communication apps. You might have a different approach and personality on TikTok versus Facebook, but the overall message still needs to remain consistent.

As you think about your own preferences, remember to make notes on everything from the font you use to the colors in the images you’re going to incorporate.

Building Your Salon Brand - Top Tips

• Improve your Google positions. It’s crucial that people find your business when they search for local salons providing what you offer. Make sure your website’s search engine optimization is excellent.

• Create social media profiles on each primary social media (& relevant) site and follow relevant local businesses. Consider working with another nearby business to develop and advertise a discount for new followers - you might be able to help each other reach new local people.

• Upgrade your website. It should look professional, add value to the life of a person looking at it, and be easy to find online.

• Create some great buzz by offering a unique and friendly experience. You could offer free bottles of water, or sample products, for example.

Things to Avoid When Creating Your Hair Salon Brand?

Ignoring client reviews

Customer referrals are free, and they’re also the easiest and best way to get new clients. Don’t ignore what people have to say about your place.

Even if a review isn’t good, follow up with the person. Find out what else you might have done to improve their salon customer experience. A quick note in their inbox might make all the difference between good word-of-mouth and negative reviews.

Inconsistent Social Media Presence

You need to create a unique salon social media strategy for every site, from Instagram to Twitter. Make sure that you have many posts planned in advance, taking special events into account.

Consistency is critical with an online presence. Create an outline for social media marketing and take a few hours at the beginning of every month to put it into play.

No Staff Training

Creating a brand isn’t just about knowing what is the best color for a salon. It’s about delivering a unique and exceptional experience that’s different from any other local business.

Train your staff to be the best of the local salon brand and represent the personality of your business. Give your customers a reason to recommend your salon or spa and to return to it.

Think carefully about whether you want to offer discounts on sites like Groupon. You might see a quick uptick in business, but those links will always be online - if you aren’t looking to offer a value for money experience, they might not be worth it.

This is especially true if your business ideas focus on a classy shop or spa-like atmosphere that draw people in with luxury.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is neglecting to create a salon marketing calendar. You need to have a plan that keeps you on people’s timelines and feeds.

Conclusion

Maybe you’ve never created a brand before - and that’s okay! Now your salon’s brand rests in your hands. Stay true to your business, and remember that your style is the core of what will entice customers into your business.

But a classy logo and a savvy online presence might also do more to drive business than you'd expect. So grab a notebook and get started on your hair salon branding ideas.

Citations

How brands become icons: The principles of cultural branding
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PqfSW3zpvFoC&oi

Corporate identity, corporate branding and corporate reputations: Reconciliation and integration
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/03090561211230197

Successful brand management in SMEs: a new theory and practical hints
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108