The award-winning Imaginal Marketing Group in New Orleans is referred to as a niche agency because for 20 years, it has specialized in one thing: beauty industry businesses. Its motto: “We Speak Salon.”
Owner Kathleen Turpel says that though she’s a marketing veteran, “sometimes even I get overwhelmed by the overload of information in marketing,” she says.
“I’ll scroll on Instagram and come across at least 12 coaches, 10 new tools that I must have, and everyone’s an expert," she says. "I have a tech bent, and I still get overwhelmed.”
Turpel and the agency's General Manager, Nikki Brown, will be at the International Beauty Show in New York on March 23 to teach in the Beauty Business Seminar: An Interactive Growth Workshop for Salon & Spa Owners & Managers.
The focus: “cutting through all this noise and figuring out what tools are best for proven results for salons and spas,” Turpel says.
“We’ve evaluated them for cost and return on investment, and we want to stay on the cutting edge without putting business owners’ money at risk. We don’t like experimenting.”
After 20 years, Turpel and Brown say there are some tried-and-tested truths they have identified in marketing for salons and spas. Here are 10 of the big ones.
1. YOUR WEBSITE IS KEY AND MOBILE-FRIENDLY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE.
KT: I can remember when the Internet just started to become a thing, and I thought it was like an online brochure. I had no idea that a website would eventually become the central core of your marketing.
It’s where you lead all your digital marketing campaigns. It's where you convert your clients, your potential new guests who are thinking about you. But now it’s beyond digital and it’s now mobile.
Website is still key, but specifically so people can look at it on their phones. You’d better make sure you’re planning for mobile first, and not desktop. And not just your website but everything — digital referral programs, digital business cards, everything’s tailored to view on your phone.
NB: If someone can buy a gift card to your salon on their phone? Money machine. Seriously.
We've seen salon owners say for years that “my clients don't buy gift cards from us.” But when you create the right platform on your website and they can buy them online at 11pm when they're seeing ads on social media, and they're able to just click through to your site — they will buy them.
So salons who weren't selling gift cards before, suddenly they've got this new revenue stream.
2. AI IS A GREAT TOOL, BUT CAN’T REPLACE HUMANS.
KT: Although people are talking about AI being so cutting edge and new, AI has been sneaking up on us for the last 10 years.
I always disclaim AI is a great tool, but it's not the final tool. It doesn't run itself. You can be penalized, actually, if your site is all AI. You've got to put that human touch to it. It's not your leader.
Salons can best use AI to save money on things that would take hours manually, and that's everything from organic SEO optimization to blogging to social media posts to even data-mining your database.
In the past, we were not big fans of using AI for customer service.
All of us have had an experience like that with an airline and getting caught in that loop. It’s super frustrating. People who were early adopters of AI customer service have often found it's as much of a problem as a help.
But that tide is turning and there's a new generation of AI tools. Some of them are embedded into the software itself. They’re very natural and you would be shocked you're talking to AI if you didn't know.
3. SALON & SPA MARKETING IS POWERED BY GUEST CARE & TEAM CULTURE.
KT: I talk a lot about culture. Which you would think has nothing to do with marketing, but marketing doesn't work if that culture isn't in place. With marketing, the most important target market is always the team. And culture is the biggest marketing point.
I mean, if you don't have a great CX in your salon, it doesn't matter if you have it on your digital presence. Nothing works if your team isn't engaged and happy and motivated. Nothing.
You can be successful with just having a super great team. You can be totally successful. You don't even need a website if your team is super excited. But if you want to multiply that success, then you add all these other tools that are proven.
Team and guests are the two things every salon should always be marketing to. You’re always hiring and you’re always attracting new guests.
Even if you have a full team and you’re splitting shifts and there’s no room to grow, you still want a waiting list of people to hire. (And you really should be thinking about a second location.)
4. GATEKEEPING CLIENTS FROM THE TEAM ISN'T A THING ANYMORE.
NB: Among salon owners, the attitude of “oh my God, I can’t let my stylists and clients find each other outside the salon” should have completely gone away by now.
Today the stylist-to-client relationship is very transparent and it’s a two-way street. Instagram makes it very easy to find whoever you want to find.
And if you decide to embrace that, there's a whole a lot of tools available to you that can capitalize on that stylist-client relationship. Like a digital referral program that allows the guest to text a referral from their stylist’s chair.
KT: Before, salon leaders were feeling protective of their clients. But with the advent of social media and technology, there's no way to do that anymore.
You have to come from a transparent place, knowing there's a balance of power with your team and with the business owners.
And the best-case scenario — which has always been the best-case scenario — is the owner and stylist working together in a culture where you care about each other and you want the best for each other.
Owning a business is not for the faint of heart. So you have to really put yourself out and lean into it and be fearless. We suggest that salon owners put their stylists’ social media handles on their bio page or on their business cards. Help them build their clout. That's working together.
It always comes back to your team and culture. In the beauty industry, there is a place for everyone. Renting a suite works for some people, for stylists who are natural entrepreneurs. And then others want to work as part of a team.
We saw the clearest example of that during COVID — a whole shift of people leaving team-based salons and going to work in a suite. Then within three years there was a huge backlash of people returning to team-based salons because they were not cut out to work as an independent.
So the key is really hiring the people that want the environment that you're offering, whether it's a booth rental, whether it's a team environment, whether it's a suite.
5. SALONS SHOULD HAVE *THIS* MARKETING BUDGET AND *THESE* MARKETING PRIORITIES:
KT: A best-practice marketing budget for salons should be 3% of gross sales.
If we're talking about how to spend that budget, we have to break it down into four priorities: a website presence, a search presence, a social media presence, and digitizing.
A website that is findable on local search SEO is really important. When I say findable, I mean you appear in the Google map section and you have a lot of great reviews. Because if they can't find you, they can't consider you when they're looking for a new salon.
You have to have a social media presence, thought I will say I’m not recommending being an early adopter. Small businesses don’t usually have room in their budgets to experiment with new tools. That costs money.
I don't recommend TikTok as an investment for salons. TikTok is usually better for a national audience than a local audience. Whereas Instagram and Meta are great for local audiences.
One of the things we’ll be teaching in our upcoming class in New York is how to optimize your social media for businesses. Because that’s completely different than how to optimize it if you are a stylist.
Business strategy is a lot different than influencer strategy, and we see a lot of salons implementing an influencer strategy to their business. It doesn't work, though they've put tons of hours and passion into that. They're getting very little engagement and results.
And digitizing what they formerly had on paper is a priority for me. Because it's a cost savings and there's a wow factor involved. That's one of the things we really advocate.
6. MOBILE I.D. ADVERTISING IS WHERE IT’S AT.
KT: Our agency has always been a pioneer on social media advertising in the industry. And we've never found Google Adwords to be a great return on investment, unless you’re a cosmetology school. It has a very high cost per conversion.
But there's a new form of digital advertising called Mobile I.D. Ads, which pinpoint the places where your potential best guests are frequenting. We can send an ad directly to their phones and it will track them. So we can tell how many of those people come into your salon.
NB: People who have never been there before. That's the kicker. They were at these locations you targeted, they saw your ad, and then they came into your location. That's the coolest part.
KT: Imagine putting Life 360 on all the people who seen your ad. It’s next level, to be honest. We’ve had some huge successes with this.
For example, a salon who is a competitor of yours closes down. So you can target that salon and get their clients interested in coming over to your salon.
Or let’s say your salon is near office buildings or a university, and you want to get those people to come in. This is a way to micro-target beyond what social media can do. And there's proof of performance in those tracking devices. So it's pretty amazing.
7. MEASURING RESULTS IS A KEY STEP TOO MANY SALON OWNERS SKIP.
KT: I have continually seen lightbulb moments when we talk to clients about measuring results of campaigns.
Because they tend to put a lot of energy into rolling it out and making sure everybody is aware of it, and then when it’s over, they’ll move on without going back to break down why it worked or didn’t work.
Campaigns are not a set it-and-forget it type of thing. Lightbulb moments come when salon owners see a marketing campaign breakdown after the fact. They can see what happened and how people responded, or why they did or didn’t respond.
For instance. When we know we have proven programs that aren’t working for some reason at a particular salon, we will talk to the owner or sometimes secret-shop there to figure out what is happening.
Then we find out there’s coaching for the team that needed to happen but didn’t, or there’s some human error involved. And this is news to the salon owner — “oh I thought we were doing that!”
Measuring results and really seeing your return on investment so that you're sure that your marketing is effective, is something that should be a part of every single campaign.
8. YOUR WEBSITE NEEDS AUDITING EVERY COUPLE YEARS.
KT: When somebody has an old site built maybe 10 years ago, and they update it and they instantly see an influx of new client inquiries or new clients walking into the salon, it blows their mind and they always say “I wish I’d done this a long time ago.”
Think about it. What phone were you using 10 years ago? It probably doesn't even function today. It’s the same with websites. You have to constantly have a modern website that's compatible with current algorithms and current methods for search. That's super important.
This doesn't mean you need a new website every year. But we usually recommend at least auditing your website every 2-3 years and gauging: do we need a refresh? Do we need a new site? What's going on?
We know that development costs have come down in the last 10 years too, so often times a new website can be less expensive than it used to be.
But in lots of cases, all that’s required is a refresh so the site looks great, looks modern, and it just needed a tune-up in the code and optimization.
9. THERE ARE WAYS TO SURVIVE A BAD ECONOMY.
KT: We've been through a lot of recessions or downturns in the economy and when that happens, salon owners have to go lean and mean with their budget.
So they’ve got to cut out all the nice-to-haves and focus on the have-to-haves, which means keep what's working. Do less experimenting. Tried and true is what you lean into. And that’s where measurement comes back to being necessary to make decisions like this.
You know, it's been said that the salon industry is recession-proof. Because even when times are bad, people still want to feel good. They want to look good. I don't know if that's really a true statement because people definitely do spend less and stretch out their appointments — but I do think salon visits are never fully cut out.
So customer experience is really important. Consultation is the key factor there. And people are looking for value for their money.
NB: Visibility is more important than ever in the type of situation when every dollar counts extra, and not only do you want the best experience for your money, but you want consumer-friendly information ahead of time so you can make the most educated decision.
People spend hours on Booking.com and Airbnb and they're cross-referencing everything to make a decision, right? All the information you want is there.
So now you’re trying to find a new salon and you go to their menu and you see a bunch of services and the entire description is “$30+” and that’s it. Nothing else. That’s really frustrating.
You’re not going to go there. You’ll go to the salon where you get the more detailed description of the service, where you feel like you have the power as a consumer to make a more educated choice.
People want all the information online. They don’t want to call up and talk to someone. So the more information you can give them — on your website, on your Google business profile, on Instagram — is super important.
KT: With that said, lots of salon owners are still not understanding that online booking is not a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a must-have.
It seems every week I talk to a salon owner who's still afraid of that. I tell them they just have to get over those fears because the truth is, you’re losing money if you don’t have online booking on your website.
10. CONVENTIONAL MARKETING WISDOM OFTEN DOESN'T WORK WITH SALONS.
KT: Many salon owners have had bad experiences with hiring professional marketers who didn't fully understand the beauty industry or how salons, spas, barbershops function.
And they spent a lot of money there without getting enough return on their investment.
It took me at least two full years to get accustomed to working in the beauty industry. One, there is a totally different language than other businesses use. Two, this is not a browsing business or an impulse business. There is a relationship you don’t have in other industries. This is about choosing something long-term.
While other industries have some parallels to it, I feel like that we, the beauty culture, are so different than every other business. It's team-based. It's nurturing — and that goes with your team and with your guests. Success is based on repeat purchases on a regular basis.
If you're talking about a restaurant business — people try multiple restaurants all the time. But with salons, there's a loyalty there. So how do you cement in that relationship, to keep people coming back over and over?
Even people who are brilliant at marketing, but don't work in beauty, still don’t quite don't get it. This is not selling a restaurant. This is not selling a product. This is selling a relationship.
NB: I think the second thing here is the level of customization. Like, even if you're going to the dermatologist for Botox and fillers, you know what you're going to get and you're kind of ordering ahead.
But when someone comes and sits in a salon chair, you’re dealing with a unique person in that moment. What do they want? What is their vision like? How can I help them achieve that?
So it's got a built-in creativity and a dream element to it and I can't think of any other industry that has that same component.
KT: I've talked to owners who had nightmare experiences because they've worked with somebody who just didn't understand what it takes to bring a guest back in, over and over. How they're dependent on the consultation every time.
You're in the business of changing the way someone feels. And business people and marketers are not used to talking about feelings.
I remember one of my first shocking moments when I came into the beauty industry in 2001. I came from publishing, from magazines and newspapers. And I went to ISPA (the International Spa Association conference).
I was in this room full of about 10,000 people. And the speakers on the stage were talking about love — and I felt very uncomfortable (laughs).
I mean, I came from the Fortune 500 world and I just … I had to get over that. I have gotten over that really well by now, but it took me a while to break down all those walls.
Nikki Brown of Imaginal Marketing Group will be one of the featured speakers at the 2025 Beauty Business Seminar: An Interactive Growth Workshop for Salon & Spa Owners and Managers at the International Beauty Show in New York on March 23. Register here.