8 fun ways to get your salon's marketing ready for the holiday season
I’m gonna go ahead and say what every single person has been saying at the end of November since the beginning of time:
Where did the year go? Am I right?
American Thanksgiving and Black Friday, then Christmas, then New Years eve and a completely new year… it always comes up so fast!
I’m personally so focussed on planning for 2022, some big changes in my business in January, and everything I need to do for that, that I’ve almost completely lost sight of the holiday season that’s coming up. Which is such a shame because the days leading up to Christmas and New Years are such an important time to focus on marketing!
Not only is everyone shopping around for gifts, there’s also this warm, familial, peaceful mood in the air. I think it’s a really important time to connect with clients and potential clients in a deeper way, as well.
Now is the perfect time to plan ahead for your December marketing, and get inspired with some fun ideas for promoting your beauty business around the holidays.
Here are 8 creative marketing ideas to keep your crazy holiday season organized, make more money in your business, and have a holly jolly Christmas (yep, I went there!)
Get holiday photos done
I hope you’ve got some fun promotions and marketing planned for the season - and if you don’t yet, you’re in exactly the right place, don’t worry! One of the best ways to make your social media, website, ads, and emails pop during the holidays is by having beautiful photography.
You still have time left before Christmas and New Years to set up a photoshoot, get your pictures edited, and find creative ways to use them in your marketing.
Branding photos are one of my favourite things ever that I’ve done for marketing. Plus, they’re a lot of fun, especially when they have a theme to them.
I recommend you schedule a local photographer to come in to your salon and do some holiday-related photos. I promise, they’re going to come in handy so much!
Here are some ideas for wintery photos that will be so useful in your Christmas promos:
You and your team in cozy sweaters, with mugs of hot chocolate and twinkle lights
Photos of your gift cards, you and your team holding your gift cards and them framed in a cute way for emails, ads, social media posts
Photos of your top selling retail products and gift packs - photos done on your own look so much more authentic and real than stock photos
Photos of your salon with Christmas decorations and details
If you already have a photographer in mind, get in touch with them now and schedule that photoshoot ASAP! Your photographer needs time to edit the photos.
If you don’t have a photographer of choice, there are so many great ones where you live, guaranteed. Hop onto Instagram and search the hashtag #torontophographer (replace Toronto with your city name) and I know you’ll stumble on some real talent.
Then book your photoshoot day as soon as you can and have fun! And don’t forget to bring some props like lights, bows, presents, Santa hats, champagne (for new years promos), etc.
Do a holiday gift certificate campaign
Do you sell gift cards around the holiday season? I highly recommend that you look at doing them, because they can be such a lucrative way to boost your sales while also welcoming in new clients who’ve received a gift from their friend or family (thank you for the referral!)
I absolutely fell in love with this gift card campaign idea from Daniela from AddoAesthetics:
“I call it the ‘Buy 100 Get 100 promo’. Clients can buy a $100 gift certificate and when they do they’ll also get five $20 gift certificates. They can either use them themselves or give them out as gifts.”
Daniela says that the spas in her Spa Retail Rockstar program are able to sell 50 or even 60 of these gift cards in one month, and it’s a huge way to increase sales while also reaching new clients. Just think of those five gift cards that your clients will give away to friends and family over the holidays!
And if you’re not sure how to make these gift certificates, Canva has a ton over beautiful templates for you if you just search “gift certificate”:
Promote your retail products as gifts on social
December is the perfect time to sell more retail products as well! You have so many clients coming in and out of your doors, why not let them do some Christmas shopping, too? And while they’re at it they might pick something up for themselves.
One fun popular thing to do is put together box sets or duos of products as a gift. People love gifting and receiving gift packs. Do you have some smaller sizes of your most popular products that you can bundle up together?
Once you’ve decided on your gift sets, start promoting them on Facebook and Instagram. Style your photos with small gifts, bows, or wrapping paper in the background to make the photos look festive, or even get your photographer to do that (if you’re bringing in a professional like I mentioned.)
Another way to promote your retail products over the holidays is by doing gift guides on social. Share some fun festive photos of your top products under $25, dress them up, and share about why this item is the perfect gift, like Lush Cosmetics does:
Don’t hide away your retail products in your salon, make them shine on social media so your clients are already excited to buy when they come in! And whether they buy for themselves or as gifts is up to them.
Put on auto-replies and quick replies on your Facebook and Instagram pages
With all of the holiday craziness going on, it’s very likely that your inbox and social media is going to be blown up with booking requests more than usual. That’s awesome!
Just make sure that you’re prepared for the increase in questions about your menu, pricing, location, and you’re responding back to inquiries quickly. This will help you give amazing customer service from the start, and help you book in more clients.
More and more clients want to get in touch with you through social media, so make sure you’re prepared with quick responses on both Facebook Messenger and your Instagram DMs, even if you can’t be available right in that moment.
How do you do that? On Facebook, you can set up auto-responses and quick questions in Messenger, so when someone messages your page, you can welcome them and anticipate their questions, while answering them and helping them to book:
Click here to learn how to set up auto replies in Messenger.
Instead, on Instagram you can set up saved quick replies to the questions you commonly get asked in your DMs. I love Piper De Young’s guide where she shows you how to save the answers to questions you get a lot, and quickly reply with them:
Click here to read Piper’s blog post to setting up Instagram quick replies.
This is such a simple but super-effective way to keep up with all of those inquiries you’re likely going to get in the next month. It’s the best way to keep yourself from getting overwhelmed with messages and provide stellar service to potential clients at the same time!
Plan a 12-days of Christmas contest and promotions
This is probably my favourite idea out of all of them, because there’s so much room for creativity, it gets major engagement on social, and you get to promote your products and services, too!
On the 12 days leading up to Christmas, you can run a new special promotion each day, plus giveaways which get everyone excited. Trish from The Local Bombshell Salon told me how she does it:
"We use the 12 days of Christmas to drive engagement to our social media and also gain sales. We offer a deal each day plus a fun giveaway.”
On the first day she offers 20% off all tools plus a giveaway for a free round brush. "All they have to do to enter is answer a question about Christmas," she explains. "Anyone that answers will be entered, then we draw the winner the next day when we announce Day 2's deal and question."
Can you think of some of the awesome products and services you can promote during your Christmas countdown? Here’s an example of how Drybar did a mega giveaway each day during the holidays:
Pre-write some fun holiday emails to get more bookings
Emails are the perfect way to communicate with your clients over the holidays and get them excited about what you’re offering.
To make sure these email actually work, make sure that you’re consistent, that your emails are not overly salesy, and that they have a ton of value in them.
If you just pop into inboxes whenever you have something to sell, and your emails are not personal at all but stuffy and businessy, it’s very likely that they’ll get ignored.
But Christmas is the perfect time to be warm and welcoming in your emails! And trust me, when you’re intentional about what you put into them, your clients will love opening up your emails and hearing from you.
Try to send 1-4 emails over the holiday season - one per week is my personal recommend as that’s what I do!
Here are some ideas of what to include in your holiday emails:
Share some photos from your holiday photoshoot
In your first email, tell them something big is coming to get them excited about your upcoming promotions (think of this as an early December teaser!)
Get them excited about your 12 days of Christmas contest, with photos of the contest prizes and links your your Instagram feed
Share photos of your gift cards, even just a fun random photo of you holding the gift card is great
Tell them what your most popular services are over the holidays (Christmas style guides with photos)
Wish them Merry Christmas if they celebrate as well as Happy New Years
You can create graphics in Canva for your emails, but personal photos tend to get the best response
I recently interviewed beauty business coach Jessica Kidner about how she built up her salon to 6 plus figures (especially using the power of email) - click here to watch our interview and get inspired!
Have a plan to get reviews from all your new clients
With all of the holiday styles and makeovers, Christmas party pampering, etc, this can be a very busy time of year! Plus, you’ll have a bunch of new clients coming in end of December and beginning of January from gift cards.
How can you capitalize on all of these new clients coming in? First of all, it goes without saying that you need to provide them with a fabulous guest service from start to finish. I did an interview with Abby Warther a few months back about the perfect customer service experience, which you can watch here. If you follow Abby’s advice and focus on great service above all else, you’ll have more clients rebooking with you.
On top of that, don’t forget about taking your new clients and turning them into loyal fans and advocates. Make sure to get their email addresses and add them to your email list, and get them to follow you on Instagram when they come in.
Lastly, be sure to have new clients leave you a review! Follow up with them after their appointment through email or text message (your booking software should let you do this) telling them that you were so happy to meet them, and asking them for their feedback in the form of a review.
If you have 30 new clients come in over the holidays, and half of them leave you reviews on Google, think of how much your Google or Facebook review ranking will increase! Having a bunch of new 5-star reviews will help you get found online, and it will bring in even more clients in the future.
Run a holiday campaign Facebook ad
This one’s my personal favourite, and it might just be because I have a program about Facebook ads.
By the way, I’m not sure if you knew that Facebook owns Instagram, and when you set up Facebook ads, you can set up the same ads to show on Instagram, too! So if you feel like you want to promote more on Instagram than on Facebook, this is for you, too!
If you’re doing a special gift card campaign, if you’re running a Christmas event, or have a special winter promotion you’re doing in your salon, you should definitely get the word out! Beyond posting on Facebook and Instagram, beyond sending an email to your list… running ads on social media will help your holiday promotion reach thousands of targeted people in your city.
And the great part is, you don’t even need to spend a ton of money! If you start now, you can spend $5 a day for the next 2 weeks leading up to Christmas, and you’ll spend $70 total. But you can get sooo much more in return.
I’ve had students in my program that spend just $70 on ads, get 11 new clients book in, and make more than $1100 in revenue from a single Facebook ad!
All you have to do is put together an irresistible offer, package it up into a Facebook ad with friendly, welcoming text, and a video (yep, videos perform best in ads)… and choose who to promote it to.
Want to run Facebook ads to promote your salon’s holiday sales? Grab my brand new ebook below about growing your revenue and clientele with ads!
Bonus: Give yourself the gift of business and personal growth - investing in yourself is the best gift!
I’ve found that the more I invest in my mindset and personal growth, the happier I am and the more my business grows, too. If there’s one thing I can say about self-care and growth over Christmas and New Years, it’s this: take real, practical steps.
I personally have done a few things this year that have helped me grow personally and as a business owner:
I have invested several thousand dollars in online programs to help me upgrade my skills
I’ve been reading business books for the first time in my life
I’m now part of an accountability/mastermind group of female business owners
We’re only as good as what we feed ourselves, and I hope that you take some time this holiday season to think about the year you’ve had, what you want to achieve in 2022, and gift yourself some brain food.
Whether that means buying some books, investing in programs or training, or just taking some much-needed me-time, I think it will help you finish this year strong.
Happy holidays!
