1 Aug 2017

How to use the UK’s Summer Festivals to up your Salon Sales!

August! The month of some of the UK’s biggest and best-loved festivals. Spread all up and down the UK you’ve got Creamfields, V, and Leeds & Reading – festivals that are a whole mix of music genres from house to pop to indie/rock! So, a perfect time to attract clients of all different interests and to run some festival-themed campaigns to attract each of these target audiences.

So, dependent on where your salon is based, you’re going to want to research the genre of the festival that is close to you in order to market to the appropriate audience. For example, look at the average age of the visitors, what their common interests are, and so on. This way you can create a strategic campaign that is well suited to attract that particular clientele.

So, ideas for a festival campaign to increase your footfall and get those clients spending! Your biggest one is media influence and celebs. Look at the big festivals, like the likes of Coachella and Glastonbury, see what the celebs wore and how they styled their hair & makeup for those. As, especially with the younger market, it’s the icons in the media that inspire their choice of style.

Next, work out if you can offer those styles and how you can make the price attractive to your clients. We’re not saying discount everything down, as you don’t want to do that either and be renowned for being the cheaper salon. Instead, create value to their salon experience, so for example include some little add-on extra’s like ‘free festival fizz’ or complimentary snacks? Or, you may want to put offers on your associated retail products, so for example if a client is getting their manicure or gel nails fresh for the fest, you might want to offer 10% off a nail product when purchased with the treatment? Or if it’s new bangs, how about putting offers on your hairsprays to keep the style in-tact for all weathers? That way, you’re still gaining the revenue from the appointment and hopefully still breaking even on your retail sales.

Another idea, if you have a company Spotify account, is to create playlists based on the genre of your closest festival! Do some research in to similar playlists and the songs that are included within those lists on Spotify already and then create your own. Name it after your salon and in reference to the festival, and then see how many followers you get! Not only does this help to aid your festival campaign, it’s also a new idea to get people talking about your salon.

Once you’ve got your ideas together, create a launch strategy! How can you push your ideas to clients? The main, and probably obvious one by now – get on social media. Social networks are the prime area to promote services that are linked to popular events, as so many people are already on there talking about it and sharing ideas. Although, traditional marketing is also useful here, for example a promotional SMS message to let clients know about your new services (or new playlist!) is a good one. Recent studies from a report by Dynmark suggests that "98% of all SMS messages are opened", so it is still proven to be a fast and effective way to market to clients. As a salon software company, we also see very positive results from when our clients use SMS to push marketing messages & campaigns to their customers – so any help you may need on that, we are your port of call!

A great way to then get your campaign noticed is to include the official and popular hashtags that are commonly used for that festival. So we know for 2017, V fest official hashtags are #VFestival and #V2017. So for example an idea might be:

‘Going to #VFestival this year? Head to <salonname> for all the best-fest beauty treatments!

Or 


‘It’s nearly time for #V2017, so we’ve created the perfect Spotify playlist to get you festival-ready! Follow it at <playlistname>’

The official social media pages for each festival usually have these hashtags in their bio, so just look out for the blue-tick next to their account name and then you know for sure that these were created by the company itself.

And then, just a little extra, are there any local festivals situated near to your salon location? Have you ever thought about maybe doing a pop-up salon? If there is a local music event near you, still implement all of the tips we have given above, but then why not go that step further and take your services to the site itself! Obviously, we understand there are a few more costs involved with doing this! You would need to be granted permission from the event organiser, carry out health and safety checks and do a risk assessment. However, if the event attracts a high volume of visitors, this could potentially be a whole range of new clients for you and a fantastic opportunity to increase brand awareness! And if you’re finding the idea a bit daunting, just think once you have done one event, you’re then prepped for if any of these opportunities are to arise in the future. Just a little something to think about if you fancy going that extra mile!

But as always, if you want any extra sales tips, or marketing tactics to help you to advertise to your clients, our sales and marketing team are always at the other end of the phone to help! Reach us on 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker x

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