Juggling clients, setting up appointments, managing your salon, employees, and other business tasks – it’s part of your daily routine as a salon owner. But when does marketing come into play?
Technology becomes a greater part of our lives day by day. From tools like Canva that let you create stunning graphics to AI solutions – those who don’t take advantage of technology will stay behind. The same is true for salon marketing tools.
You don’t have hours every day to edit videos, create cute graphics for Instagram, engage with followers in comments, and do your job on top of that. But marketing is vital for the success of your business because it attracts new clientele and transforms customers into repeat business.
You have to do marketing, the question is how? With these salon marketing tools, promoting your salon will become a breeze and you’ll have time to serve existing customers while attracting new ones and growing your business.
Which Are the Best Salon Marketing Tools?
If you want to take your marketing game to the next level, these salon marketing tools are going to help you immensely. From the blog, email newsletter, and salon management tools to content creation, design, and website tools, you’ll find something that will improve your efficiency and make you stay on top of your audience’s mind.
Let’s take a look at the list of the best 23 paid & free salon marketing tools:
- SendFox
- MailChimp
- Vidyo.ai
- ChatGPT
- Grammarly
- PicMonkey
- Pixabay
- Canva
- Trafft
- Buffer
- Google Drive
- Website Blog
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar
- Unbounce
- StoryPrompt
- Keywords Everywhere
- Facebook Events
- Google Business Profile
- Google Keyword Planner
- Craigslist
Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing tools can help your salon stay on top of mind by creating thoughtful campaigns and showing up consistently in your potential clients’ inboxes. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll spam them and write a newsletter every day. The whole point is consistency and delivering value, whether it’s weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly – it’s completely up to you!
SendFox
Simple but powerful email marketing tool that will allow you to stay in touch with your customers and nurture relationships with them. You probably don’t have days to learn how to use new email marketing software, and that’s where SendFox comes into play. The user interface is completely intuitive so you don’t need any knowledge to start a newsletter and send the first email marketing campaign for your salon.
Price: Free plan and $49 for a lifetime deal!
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools and your salon can get the most out of its advanced features such as automation, AI, analytics, and powerful segmentation options.
Price: Mailchimp offers a free trial, but it’s a great marketing tool for your salon if you’re just starting out. Why? If you have 500 contacts or less, you don’t pay anything! The paid plan starts from $13 per month.
Salon Marketing Tools for Content Creation and Design
Content creation and design are a must if you want to stay ahead of competitors and reach your audience on channels where they spend most of their time. Every successful salon business plan needs to have marketing strategies you’ll utilize to attract new clientele.
However, if you’re not a professional content creator or designer, even one Instagram post can eat up your time. And you have other things on your plate, such as managing the salon, employees, and serving customers. Luckily, there are salon marketing tools specially designed to make content creation simple and easy.
Vidyo.ai
If you have long-form content such as Instagram live or podcast episodes, you can easily transform it into short videos and distribute it on TikTok, Instagram reels, Youtube shorts, and Facebook. Vidyo.ai is a great salon marketing tool that helps you get the most out of every piece of content and saves you time, making the content creation process more efficient than ever.
Price: You can explore this amazing tool for free and you get 75 minutes of video upload monthly. If you need more, pricing starts from $29 per month.
ChatGPT
If you haven’t heard the whole Internet talking about Chat-GPT, where have you been? When you don’t have the inspiration after a long day at work to write a caption or blog post, Chat-GPT comes in to save the day. It’s great for basic research, helps with writer’s block and you can train Chat-GPT to suit your brand better.
Price: Free.
Grammarly
Grammarly is the writing assistant that helps you every step of the way – from correcting typos, adding correct articles, and helping with the structure and flow of your content. The great news is that Grammarly introduced AI that can also help you brainstorm ideas, write content and overcome writer’s block. Grammarly is a great tool if you want to streamline your writing process and spend less time editing, while everything you write is professional, on point, and error-free.
Price: Free and Grammarly premium is $144 annually. However, you often get a 40%-60% discount for an annual subscription, usually through email.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is your best friend if you want to make your photos shine on every platform. You’ll find stunning templates for logos, banners, thumbnails, social media posts, and much more. Using PicMonkey will streamline your content creation process and wow your audience with every new post they see from you. You know how much customers love those before-and-after images – and this salon marketing tool will make creating them fast and simple.
Price: You can try PicMonkey for free and choose the plan that suits your needs. Pricing starts from €10.99 per month.
Pixabay
From sound effects, videos, and royalty-free images to vectors and illustrations – you’ll always have content that’s professional and inspiring to share with your audience. Pixabay has a library of more than 4 million images, graphics, and videos you can incorporate into your content creation process.
Price: Free
Canva
One of the best salon marketing tools – Canva is a gift from heaven for owners who don’t have enough time to create and design content from scratch. With hundreds of templates and thousands of elements, you’ll create fantastic content for every platform.
Price: Free, but if you want more elements and templates, Canva Pro is just $12.99 per month.
The Best Salon Management Software
Did you know that most of the repetitive tasks you dread so much can all be automated? And all you need is salon management software that will take care of customer appointments, reminders, employee management, days off and even automatically send coupons to your most loyal customers.
Trafft
Trafft is not just another appointment scheduler – its salon management software takes care of every important aspect of your business such as managing employees, customers, schedules, tracking important KPIs, and transforming one-off customers into repeat ones with loyalty rewarding systems such as coupons. With its analytics dashboard, you can easily see which services are most popular, and also which employee customers prefer.
You can drastically reduce no-show rates at your salon with automated SMS and Email appointment reminders and also avoid double booking by syncing Google and Outlook calendars with Trafft.
The best thing about Trafft? It integrates with other salon marketing tools such as SendFox, Google Analytics, and MailChimp and you can connect it with other apps you use through Zapier and Webhooks. You’ll have everything you need at your fingertips to manage, promote and grow your salon, making Trafft’s salon management software a partner to your growth.
Price: Great news is – you can sign up for Trafft’s forever-free plan so you can check it out and see how well it works with no risk. The basic plan starts at $9.08 per month.
Social Media Marketing Tools for Salon Owners
Do you have a love-hate relationship with social media? You get a lot of clients through social media platforms, but managing, strategizing, creating, brainstorming salon hashtags and publishing content is not something you enjoy.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media management platform that takes care of scheduling, collaboration and analytics while it also allows you to manage multiple channels such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more!
Price: If you’re just starting out, Buffer has a free plan, especially for you! When you get up to speed, you can choose different plants starting from $6 per month.
Apart from promoting your salon on Pinterest, you can use it to find fantastic ideas that you can implement right away in your salon. From hairstyle to salon design ideas you’ll feel the inspiration flowing whenever you visit Pinterest.
Price: Free
Google Drive
Maybe not the first tool that comes to your mind when talking about salon marketing tools, but Google Drive is essential. When you start marketing your salon, you’ll need a safe place to store all materials – from graphics to videos. Google Drive is the perfect solution because you can store, share, and collaborate on files with ease.
Price: Free for up to 15GB and only $12 per month for 2TB of space.
Salon Marketing Tools for Website
If you want to maximize your online presence and attract new customers directly from your website, we’ve prepared salon marketing tools that will provide you with valuable insights, and optimize your performance to drive more conversions.
Website Blog
If you have a website, posting valuable, high-quality, and relevant content on your blog will attract visitors, but also build trust and convert them into customers. Your blog is always going to be yours and you’ll consistently get traffic and customers. A little investment of time and effort will get you a long way.
Price: Free
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool you should definitely connect with your website to gain valuable insights about how visitors find it. You can see average positions on Google, click-through-rate, and how many clicks you get. Once you have that data, you can tailor the experience on your website to how people search and improve your traffic.
Price: Free
Google Analytics
Google Analytics measures everything – from organic traffic to how many visitors returned, conversion rate, and where the traffic comes from. If you want to see how visitors interact with your website, connect the website to Google Analytics and make your next website improvement based on data.
Price: Free
Hotjar
Hotjar is an amazing salon marketing tool that provides you with heatmaps and analyzes how visitors behave on your website. It’s great to find areas for improvement and opportunities to convert more visitors into customers.
Price: Free for 35 daily sessions and pricing starts from $39 per month if you want features such as Events API and data segmentation.
Unbounce
Unbounce is a landing page builder and conversion optimization tool that will help you take your marketing game to the next level. You can create customized landing pages, do A/B testing and it also integrates with other marketing tools.
Price: Unbounce is on the higher end when it comes to pricing for salon marketing tools we’ve included. Their “Launch” plan starts at $99 per month and you get unlimited landing pages, AI copywriting, and popups.
Salon Marketing Tools for Promoting Your Business
Promoting your business plays a crucial role in the success of your salon. If you want to reach a wider audience and engage with potential customers on a deeper level, we’ve prepared some awesome salon marketing tools to help you with that.
StoryPrompt
In today’s age testimonials are considered word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. And everyone tells you how important customer testimonials are. But nobody tells you how to create awesome testimonials that really build trust with potential customers. StoryPrompt is a salon marketing tool that will help you and your customers create testimonials that convert. You can create text and video testimonials and embed them into your website or simply share the link.
Price: Basic plan is completely free, while other plans start at $39 per month. However, you get a lot for free, including 25 video testimonials, the wall of love, and unlimited prompts.
Keywords Everywhere
If you want to see important keyword metrics directly in your web browser, Keywords Everywhere is here to help. What’s the catch? When you Google anything you’ll see what people also ask, keyword search volume, trend data, and how tough the competition is.
Price: Keywords Everywhere Extension is free, but if you want more data you’ll have to buy credits. 100 000 credits cost $10 and you spend one credit for each keyword.
Facebook Events
If you want to increase the visibility of your salon, you can create Facebook events either in-person or online. Creating an event will build trust with potential customers and they’ll want to check out your salon to see what you’re all about.
Price: Free
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a must if you want to get more local customers who will eagerly come back to your salon – always. It’s great to increase the discoverability and authority of your salon to local customers who maybe didn’t hear about you. Many salon owners find Google business profile a cost-effective way to get new leads. It puts your business on the map (both literally and figuratively) and it’s great for attracting new customers. Customers can also leave reviews that directly influence the visibility of your Google business profile.
Price: Free
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is one of the most valuable salon marketing tools you’ll find. It provides insights into the search volume, popularity, cost-per-click (CPC) and difficulty of specific keywords. You’ll be able to do in-depth keyword research, identify trends, optimize your ad campaigns, and plan content based on data.
Price: Free
Craigslist
Craigslist is a great, free tool to promote your salon and grow your customer base locally. You can post ads to gain more visibility and even take it a step further and create special promotions for Craigslist. It would be great if you included custom graphics and made the offer on the website exclusive.
Price: Free
How to Choose Salon Marketing Tools for Your Business
Obviously, you probably don’t need every tool we’ve included on the list. But how can you choose the right salon marketing tools that will actually make a difference in your business?
Define Priorities
What do you dread the most? Is it back-and-forth DMs on Instagram with clients who want to schedule appointments? Or is it designing the perfect Instagram carousel? Measure what takes most of your time and energy, and invest in salon marketing tools that will help you claim it back.
Choose Channels
Maybe you don’t need to be on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, and send email newsletters on top of that. See where your audience spends most of their time and invest in channels (and tools) that will help you meet your audience where they are. After you’ve tried these salon marketing tools, you’ll spend more time doing the work you love and also get more clients in a salon.
Talk with Clients
You already have clients, right? The best marketing approach is to make it a habit to ask clients how they heard about your salon and what made them decide to book an appointment. You’ll get valuable insights and feedback so you can make informed decisions. No matter which salon marketing tools you use, it’s vital to make decisions based on data.
