This is us, Head Punk Alan Forrest Smith and myself in Paris With another Starbucks coffee
As I walk up the Northern Quarter on my way to a yoga class, yet again I find myself with a cup of Starbucks soya cappuccino in my hand.
In reality, I don’t always want to buy another Starbucks coffee, but by the time I reach Northern Quarter I have to pass at least 5 Starbucks shops, regardless of which route I take (there are at least 3 backstreet ways to get to my yoga class).
Is this a co-incidence, Starbucks management popping up shops every corner? or carefully planned brand strategies? and how can you use Starbucks brand ideas even with a tiny salon marketing budget?
Let’s think about it.
What is the point of opening one more Starbucks shop around the corner? Well, that’s where the brand awareness comes in. You see, when you see something once, in this case, say Starbucks shop you tend to ignore, you see it the second, third, fourth time and you start to notice and by the time you see the same shop 10th time, even though you are mildly annoyed you give in and stop to shop.
And that is a valuable piece of information to have when you are planning your salon brand advertising whether through offline or online channels.
Here’s why…
How many times have you seen hair advertising on a FaceBook, and then you’ve Googled something and you saw the same advertising message you saw on FaceBook a day before, and then you visited some websites, and there again the same advertising message popped up, and then you checked your Gmail and you saw the same ad again on the right-hand side… and so on and so forth until you finally gave in and clicked on the ad to see what it is all about?
Do you think that’s another coincidence? or have you been a “victim” of another brand awareness campaign?
Or are you thinking you need to pour a lot of money you don’t really have in hair salon advertising budget to achieve the same level of brand awareness online?
Or perhaps you are thinking all above is not applicable for your small salon business? or maybe you found one or two ways of bringing new clients in and settled for now?
Whilst it is advisable to keep using proven one or two marketing strategies that work for your salon business, you can easily raise your brand awareness and reach a wider audience using a mixture of different marketing strategies, all of which designed to ultimately bring your customers to your salon, just like Starbucks does … luckily you don’t have to have a big budget, as long as you have a tiny budget and a big imagination you can achieve same if not bigger success than your “big” salon competitors.
So, here’s what you have to consider for your salon brand awareness…
The principle of brand awareness and the very reason of investing time and money into it…
Raising brand awareness is more than selling more of your hair appointments. The whole point of the exercise is that next time your customer thinks of a hair salon, they think of YOUR BRAND, not neighbors. So the goal is to play your message on your clients’ minds all the time, just like I think of Starbucks on my way to a yoga class.
Why? because what happens if suddenly you drop your one way of marketing for whatever reason? Or perhaps your competitor comes along with bigger budget and swallows your beauty advertising message? You want to raise enough brand awareness in your city or local community to maintain a competitive edge over competitors.
And don’t assume the competition will quit, or your customers will remain loyal forever. Salon is a highly competitive, ever growing market…
No budget is a small budget, we deal with customer accounts that have 50 million in advertising budget and we deal customers who have only a thousand dollars to spend, and it makes no difference… Whatever your budget and aspirations are there is always a way to do more from everything you’ve got.
For more information about Salon Extreme MENTOR, contact us today EMAIL info@salonpunk.com or CLICK HERE
Yours in Hair
Tamara Machavariani
Salon Punk