A well-structured marketing plan is the key to an effective salon marketing. In the era of the digital, it is essential that your salon marketing plan implements a variety of components including social media marketing, content marketing and so on.
The tricky part for most salon businesses is finding the right balance between those components when writing their marketing plan structure. Not sure how to write a marketing plan? We are here to help!
What’s a marketing plan and why do you need one - Step 1
A marketing plan is a strategic plan to help your salon business define strategies to attract potential customers and engage with them in order to achieve your salon business objectives. A good salon marketing plan should define your salon’s potential target market, your business objectives and strategies to achieve them within the scope of a specific time frame and budget.
The reason why you need an effective marketing plan with an appropriate structure is because it can help you clearly see and evaluate your business situation, as well as assist you with achieving your salon objectives within a specific time frame and establish a sustainable competitive position within the field.
How to structure your salon marketing plan and what should you include
Before you begin to write your salon marketing plan remember that an effective marketing plan incorporates the following components:
- Realistic and clear objectives which you are sure to be able to accomplish
- An effective strategy to help you achieve these objectives and differentiate from your competitors
- Very detailed account of tactics and actions to assist you translating your marketing strategy to action points
- Analysis of the salon market competition – what are your main competitors and are they doing better? Why? How can your salon do better than the competition? What is your unique selling point?
- Situation Analysis- List your salons’ Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
- Your customers profile – Who are you targeting? What are their demographics? Who is your current customer audience and how can you expand it?
PDF Topic: "Salon Marketing Checklist"
When preparing your salon marketing plan structure, first you need to list your objectives. That way you can clearly see a mapping of your goals and this sets the stage for everything else to come.
Step 2
Then, your second step after outlining your salon objectives is to identify your salons current position on the market, your business priorities and the desired direction which you wish to follow. In this step you can include:
Step 3
Now that you know what your salon marketing goals are and what’s your current business situation, your third step is to lay out clear strategies to help you achieve these specific objectives.
Consider – if your objective is to attract a new target audience, refer back to your customer profile point in the marketing plan. What kind of people are you trying to attract – are they interested in an anti-aging therapy or do they care about their hair more?
Reflect back to the services which your salon offers and consider what new you could include. Alternatively, are there services on offer which could attract your new desired audience?
Step 4
Your fourth step is to find a way to track your objectives’ success – consider what strategy you could use to measure your customer conversion rate per month for example. Make sure you establish a specific time period for measuring your objectives and stick to it to ensure consistency.
Step 5
Number five in your list should be to identify relevant and timely actions and responsibilities by product, function, market segment and service.
Finally, outline the resources which your salon marketing plan requires as well as forecasted revenues. Prepare a strict and realistic budget. And… voilà, you are done! That’s how you write a good salon marketing plan.
PDF Topic: "Salon Marketing Checklist"
