I think you’ll agree with me when I say: it’s not necessarily hard to find good barbershop marketing ideas and tips, but it can be quite hard to understand how to act on those ideas.
Everyone knows they should get their business in front of as many people as possible, but how does one actually do that?
This article is going to show you not just what you could be doing, but how you could do it. By the end of this article, you’ll know how you can turn barbershop marketing ideas into successful marketing strategies that work.
You’ll find out how to promote your barbershop business online, but we’ll also go over the best offline marketing ideas for your barbershop that you could start using today.
1. Get Your Barbershop On Google Maps
“76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a physical place within 24 hours and 28% of those searches result in a purchase.” says ThinkWithGoogle.com
Where do people first search for local services? In Google Maps. Advertising your barbershop on Google Maps is the most powerful way to attract nearby customers online.
There’s no doubt that this is the most popular barbershop marketing idea, and yet very few barbers realize its true potential.
Here’s how Google search results are displayed for someone who’s searching for a barbershop on Steinway Street:
You might think it’s complicated or challenging to get your barber shop on Google Maps, but it’s actually extremely easy. Plus, listing your barbershop business on Google Maps is free of charge.
First, you’ll have to go to Google My Business website and create an account. Google My Business is simply the place where people add their business to appear on Google Maps.
To add your barbershop on Google Map after you’ve created an account, you’ll just have to fill in your business details and ask to be verified. In a few days, you’ll receive a postcard with a verification code.
Check out this video to see the entire process and find some extra information:
After your barbershop appears on Google Maps, kindly remind your customers to leave a review for your barbershop listing on Google Maps. Reviews make your listing stand out, but they also help people decide whether to visit your business or not.
Good barbershop marketing means building trust and lasting relationships with your customers, so always reply to the reviews they post. This will show them that you value their opinion, even if it’s not always a positive one. Do not write fake reviews or offer incentives to customers in exchange for reviews, as it could get your listing removed from Google Maps.
Google Maps will list businesses based on proximity, review score, and some other factors. To promote your barbershop at the top of the local results you can invest in Google Ads for Google Maps.
2. Have an Online Booking System
Another great barbershop marketing idea is to give your clients the possibility to book your barber services online. Offering online booking & advance booking to clients is in high demand.
You’ll make your customers happy because they’ll be able to book a seat for themselves. You’ll also get more appointments as they can see your available time slots in real-time.
It just makes it easier for them to find and book a time slot that works for them, without having to call or message you. That’s why this is the best barbershop marketing idea! Because it helps your barber business grow while getting rid of the stress that comes with managing appointments and clients.
This is how your Online Booking page could look like. It took me less than 30 minutes to set it up in Appointfix. Appointfix is the best booking app for barbers, it’s free and easy to use. You can add your barbershop’s name, logo, services and prices, opening times, and a picture of your choice.
You can create an Appointfix account by installing the app on your mobile device. To install it, you can find it in the App Store if you are using an Apple device, or in Google Play, if you are using an Android device.
After your Online Booking page has been set up, go ahead and add a “Book Now” button on your social media profiles such as Facebook or Instagram, add it to your website, and share it with your clients. You can even use Appointfix to send mass messages to your clients and let them know they can now book your barber services online.
To add the “Book button” on your Facebook page you’ll just have to log in, go to your business page and click on “Add a Button”, as presented in the following image:
Here are all the steps to create your “Book Now” button on Facebook and to connect it with your Appointfix online booking page. The “Book Now” button will be available as soon as you save your changes on Facebook and it will be displayed to anyone visiting your Facebook business page. This is how it looks:
3. Create a Logo For Your Barbershop
There’s no barbershop marketing without a logo. Logos are essential for building trust and recognition. Good logos have a powerful symbolic association connected to people’s memory.
Just think about your favorite brands and try to visualize their logos. It works, right?
If you don’t already have a logo, you’re probably wondering how you can get one. The easiest way would be to get one professionally designed, but that can be quite expensive, and logos don’t have to be expensive.
Nike’s swoosh logo cost just $35, Twitter’s first logo cost $15 and Coca Cola’s first logo was created without spending a cent!
A cheaper way to get a logo for your barbershop is Fiverr, a platform where freelancers offer their services. The downside is that you have no guarantee that the freelancer you are hiring for the job is actually a professional designer.
You can actually make a barbershop logo yourself, completely free. It’s super easy and it takes less than 5 minutes. There are plenty of tools out there, but not all of them allow you to download your logo in high resolution for free. You’ll need the high-resolution files for print.
I really wanted to give you the best barbershop marketing tips in this article, so I really dug around for free tools. That’s how I found Hatchful by Shopify, a completely free logo maker, that’s easy to use and actually has modern logo designs.
To make your own barber shop logo, get started and select your business category. For barbers, that’s the “Health and Beauty” category.
Next, choose a visual style for your logo. For a barbershop logo, the Bold, Strong, or Vintage styles are a perfect fit.
To finalize, select where you’ll use the logo, such as Social Media and large surfaces for print. Your logo sizes are based on the options you select, so make sure to select all those that apply.
Now you can choose a logo and personalize it to match your barbershop’s style.
You can change the font, icon, colors, and layout. Keep in mind that a good logo is easy to recognize in small and large print.
Once finished, you’ll receive all the logo files in your email, available for download at any time. The files have great resolution and you’ll be able to use them consistently in print, website, and social media channels.
4. Showcase Your Barber Portfolio
Social Media is great for showcasing your barber work on a daily basis. But some of your favorite old work might get lost after a while and new potential customers won’t get to see it.
The solution is to create a website for your barbershop. Save yourself a fair amount of money by creating it yourself instead of reaching out to a web design agency. There’s plenty of site-building tools out there that are inexpensive and easy to use, created for non-technical users.
And because this barbershop marketing idea is all about making an impression, Wix is the perfect site builder for this job. They have modern website templates for barbers that are easy to edit and customize.
You can add your barber shop logo, address, write some information about you and your business, and create amazing galleries that will make your work stand out.
You could also add special elements such as Google Maps or even your Online Booking page from Appointfix, with just a few clicks.
You can choose the free plan from Wix to set up your website, but it only costs 5 dollars to use a domain of your own for your website or 10 dollars to buy one from them. Having a personalized domain name is really worth the money, as you can choose one that your customers will remember easily.
5. Offer Free Barber Services For Magazines & Photographs
If you’re not already one of the most popular barbers in town, you’ll need to take a proactive approach to get your name out there. If you can’t afford to spend money on promoting yourself as a barber, you’ll love including this idea in your barbershop marketing strategy.
Offering your services for free to magazines and photographs is a great way to get noticed. Always ask the photographer to give you credit for the photographs and tag your barbershop once they are published.
6. Text Message Marketing for Barbershops
Sending the occasional text message to your clients can have a big boost in bookings. But there are other ways to use text message marketing for your barbershop, and with a greater impact on your earnings. These ideas will take your barbershop marketing to a whole new level.
While there are many ways to promote your barbershop with text messages, these are my favorites:
- Top 6 Text Message Marketing Ideas for Barbershops
- Use automated appointment reminders to reduce no-shows.
- Send clients special instructions before or after an appointment.
- Offer mobile coupons and discounts for a segment of your customers.
- Let clients know about new products availability.
- Send clients grooming tips from time to time.
- Send autoresponder text messages when you are on holiday
One of the best barbershop marketing ideas from this list is the one regarding appointment reminders. A no-show rate of around 20% is not uncommon for barbershops. Sending appointment reminders can reduce that to almost 0%.
Just by looking at revenue lost due to no-shows, you can estimate how much money you lost by not reminding people of their appointments. So if a barber earns an average of $2000 per month and has a no-show rate of 20%, he’s losing around $400 per month on those no-shows!
The good news is that you can start reducing no-shows today. You can either send appointment reminders by typing them manually from your phone or automatically with the Appointfix auto-messages option, the mobile app that I’ve talked about earlier in the article.
Looking at the Capterra reviews for the Appointfix app, users claim that the appointment reminder option really improved their no-show rate.
“Appointfix has cut my no shows to less than 1% – from around 15% – from the very first use.”
I strongly recommend including text messages in your barbershop marketing plan, especially the automated ones, as they’ll save you a lot of time and money. Here’s an example that will help you paint a picture of how automated text messages look and work:
7. Use word of mouth to market your barbershop
“Word of mouth can spread from one excited customer to 40,370 people in only a year’s time.” – Ted Wright, CEO of Fizz
Word of mouth is probably the most effective barbershop marketing idea because your clients can be your marketers for free. Kindly ask your regular customers to recommend your services to their friends. Don’t be afraid to promote your barbershop by actually asking people to talk about you. If they’re happy customers, they’ll gladly do it.
You can even offer them a discount on your next service for every new person they bring to your barbershop. Or you can create a “Bring a friend” service pack, so if a customer brings a friend who’s never been to your barbershop, they both get a discount.
8. Create a loyalty program for your barbershop
“It is six to seven times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing one” says business2community.com
While a loyalty program is a different barbershop marketing idea than word of mouth, it’s still going to make people talk about you. People can’t help themselves not to share a good money-saving tip with their friends.
The most important outcome of loyalty programs is that they are extremely helpful in retaining repeat customers. A loyalty program at your barbershop can keep your customers happy & make them feel valued.
Your customers want to feel appreciated for repeatedly buying your services. After all, they could have chosen someone else.
Most loyalty program guides recommend that you differentiate yourself from your competitors by making your program unique. However, I believe that loyalty programs can easily get confusing both for you and for your customers.
The best barbershop marketing tip: Keep things simple!
Start with a very simple loyalty plan, such as one that offers a free barbershop appointment after a certain number of appointments. You can even find customizable loyalty cards for barbershops that you can print and hand out to your customers.
9. Social Media Marketing for Barbers
Social media is a whole different beast on its own. While probably one of the most valuable and inexpensive ways to market a barbershop, it’s also extremely vast and you’ll have to put in quite a bit of time to form a following. But I promise you, it’s time well spent.
Because it is such an important and vast topic, I suggest checking out The Barber’s Guide to Social Media created by the National Association of Barbers.
10. Provide The Ultimate Barber Experience
While we can’t say that customer experience is exactly a barbershop marketing idea, all the efforts you’ve made to promote your barbershop will be in vain if your new customers don’t return for a second appointment. It’s extremely important that you create a pleasant experience for your customers that keeps them coming back.
There are no shortcuts to growing your business.
I really hope you’ve found new ways to promote your barbershop while reading this article. While some of these barbershop marketing ideas might be a bit out of your comfort zone, I promise you they are worth it.
Ultimately, marketing for barbershops requires perseverance to achieve results. Many barbers give up too early because the marketing results are not obtained immediately. Have patience and stick to your barbershop marketing plan.
Barbers also love to read:
- Beginner Barber Kit: Essential Barber Tools
- Best Beard Styles in 2020
- What are the real costs of running a salon business or a barber shop?
Iris Grossman
Marketing Specialist at Appointfix