Excellent marketing is fundamental to the success of any barbershop business, often making the difference between growth and failure. A strong and modern advertising plan can raise awareness and bring first-time clients to your shop, while great haircuts, excellent customer service and a welcoming atmosphere will keep them returning.
These barbershop marketing ideas are simple and affordable ways to grow your business, build your clientele and boost your brand’s visibility while increasing revenue. Whether you’re a new barber or an experienced professional starting a shop, implementing these effective advertising strategies will get more customers in your chair and strengthen your business.
The Most Effective Barbershop Marketing Ideas To Grow Your Business
1. Create A Brand
Creating a brand involves more than choosing a catchy name for your barbershop and adding a logo to your door. When building a brand, you define your business’s identity to influence your potential audience’s purchasing decisions. The brand should stand out from your competitors and earn rightful space in the minds of your audience.
Your brand consists of your business name, logo, color scheme, typography, core values, content topics, operating procedures, customer service and more. Think about your mission and approach to business, incorporating these ideas into every aspect of your barbershop – from how it looks to how people feel when they visit.
2. Build Your Barbershop’s Website
The website for your barbershop business should be a branded representation informing potential customers and loyal clients about what they can expect when they sit in your chair. As technology has evolved, building an excellent user-centric website is easy and affordable. Many companies allow you to choose a template, register your domain name, and purchase a hosting plan for one reasonable monthly or annual fee.
Your website’s homepage should explain why people in your community should choose your services and provide helpful information about your brand and its vision. To be comprehensive, publish other business pages such as a gallery showcasing your services, a blog with educational content and contact information, including your address, telephone number, and hours of operation.
3. Set Up Social Media Pages For Your Business
Setting up accounts for your business across popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is a proven way to raise awareness and get customers. Social media gives you a unique opportunity to network with people in the community, flex your skills and knowledge, and make your presence known.
If you enjoy making content, create YouTube and TikTok accounts that provide tutorials and before-and-after showcases. These drive incredible engagement, driving traffic to your website and your barber’s chair.
4. Create A Yelp and Google Business Profile
A Yelp Listing and Google Business Profile are beneficial for any local business looking to enhance its online presence. Here are some potential ways these platforms can support your barbershop marketing plan and connect with potential customers:
- These business listing and marketing platforms improve your barbershop’s visibility in search results.
- These profiles provide essential information about your business hours, location, and contact information.
- These sites allow the community to provide their opinions of your barbershop in reviews that you can use to your advantage in your marketing campaigns.
These profiles are free and relatively easy to set up, but keep them updated as your business information changes.
5. Get Reviews From Happy, Loyal Customers
Getting those first few good reviews on your Yelp and Google Business profiles can be tricky, but you can use a few helpful tips to get the ball rolling.
- Provide exceptional service to every client with every visit.
- Make sure your satisfied customers know that their opinions matter to you.
- Ask for reviews when the satisfactory experience remains fresh in your customers’ minds.
- Utilize multiple channels for reviews, such as email, SMS text messaging, or social media prompts. Your website should also include a link to leave a review.
- Make it easy to leave a review by incorporating QR codes on paper receipts, business cards, or flyers in your barbershop and offer support if customers have issues with the review process.
- If your first request for a review goes unnoticed, send a gentle second reminder about a week later.
- Offer incentives for first-time reviews, such as a small discount on the customer’s next service or a free shave with a full-service haircut.
6. Use An Online Booking Platform
Online booking is essential in the fast-paced modern world. People want to achieve results as quickly as possible, and dialing a phone number is no longer the best option. Online booking is relatively easy to implement into your website, and many platforms offer it as an integrated service when you purchase a monthly or annual subscription.
Online booking is efficient and convenient, and because it allows potential customers to take immediate action, it can increase the number of bookings you see each month. Incorporate helpful ideas like social media integration, point-of-sale and marketing tools, and payment processing.
7. Share Great Haircuts on Instagram
Instagram is the go-to social platform for photography-based marketing, so when your customers love their cuts, share them with your clients’ permission. Some barbers use the opportunity to tell the community about the clients, such as their names and the length of time they’ve been clients. Regular posts attract new clients and allow you to engage with your community, and they can even keep your followers updated with the latest hair and grooming trends.
8. Publish Blog Content To Build Credibility
Blogs are an excellent source of dynamic content for marketing your barbershop business. Uploading just two search engine-optimized blogs per month helps your blog appear more frequently in search results, improves your credibility, and helps you become an authority in your field.
The best blog topics include pieces on current trends, hair-cutting techniques, and reviews or demonstrations of new tools and products. Some barbers write monthly pieces on community happenings as a nod to other local businesses.
9. Personalize Your Services
Successfully marketing a barbershop is all about standing out from your competitors through value and experiences that are unique to the area. Personalized services are one of the best ways to bring people through the door and keep them coming back.
Furthermore, they may even reach potential clients who would have overlooked your barbershop. Consider services such as old-fashioned hot towel shaves, face masks, eyebrow waxing, nose/ear hair trimming, and others that can expand your demographic and ticket value.
10. Grow Your Online Presence
Aside from creating and maintaining your website and social media accounts, several other ways to grow your online presence can help you stand out. Interviews with local radio or news personalities can undoubtedly bolster your reputation, but these opportunities may be few and far between initially. Instead, consider participating in interviews with YouTube and TikTok personalities in the same industry or niche.
11. Run Paid Advertising Campaigns
While organic website traffic can be a worthy investment, paid advertising through platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads should also be in your marketing plan. Paid ads are perfect for small brick-and-mortar businesses like barbershops that are just opening up.
They are exceptional tools for targeting specific demographics in well-defined locations, allowing you to avoid focusing your efforts on places or people outside your target audience. Second, these ads are incredible for promoting special events or new products and services.
12. Network In Your Community
With careful networking, you can build relationships that allow your barbershop to become a community landmark viewed as a social hub and cultural cornerstone. Networking involves fostering new connections while preserving old traditions and can be essential for supporting your community’s local economy.
In many cases, networking in your community may look like volunteerism. Showing up for your neighborhood’s block parties, clean-up initiatives, or town halls can have a powerful impact on your business and demonstrate your commitment to others. You might even sponsor a local softball or little league team to provide community children with healthy activities and put your barbershop’s name in front of more people.
13. Partner with Other Successful Local Businesses
Partnering with other successful businesses in the community expands your networking opportunities and supports your local economy. For example, you might work exclusively with a coffee shop down the block for snacks and beverages or with a boutique that sells clothing and grooming products you and your customers love.
14. Sell Gift Cards and Offer Promotions To New Customers
Providing quality services in an incredible atmosphere is essential for building and maintaining a customer base, but if you want to grow your barbershop, consider offering gift cards and promotions. Options might include the following:
- Gift Card Discounts: Discounts on gift cards are compelling and encourage repeat business. Offering $5 off a $25 gift card purchase allows your customers to invest in a necessary service, but they’ll need to return to your barbershop to enjoy the discount.
- Referral Programs: Referral programs are relatively easy to implement and track, mainly if you use an online booking system. As an example, you might offer $10 off your customers’ next service for every new customer they refer.
- “Punch” Cards: Like a “Buy X, Get Y Free” promotion, digital punch cards allow your customers to earn a free service. For example, you might offer your customers a complimentary hot towel shave after five paid haircuts. The feeling of working toward a goal is a powerful incentive to keep people coming back.
Regardless of your chosen gift card or promotional option, carefully consider the terms and include them on your website and in your shop – anywhere you mention the promotion.
15. Use Email Marketing To Increase Customer Retention
Email marketing can be a powerful and effective way for barbershops to boost customer retention and create long-term relationships with clients, from sending appointment reminders to exclusive deals on services and discounts on hair products.
If you have a website, using email to send useful hair care tips, styling advice and product reviews can strengthen your status as an expert and grow your barber business.
16. Host Community Events
Hosting community events is a powerful way to market your business in person rather than online. Hosting events can showcase your dedication to your community, endear people to your brand and help you form personal and professional connections. In many neighborhoods, barbershops host back-to-school events, providing free haircuts to children in need and partnering with other businesses for school supplies, activities, food, and beverages.
Also, consider hosting an educational workshop focusing on hygiene and grooming, donating a part of your weekend earnings to a charitable cause, or putting together a fundraiser for a local family impacted by a fire, severe weather, or illness. The possibilities are endless, and each gives your brand exposure while highlighting your dedication to goodwill.
