Here Comes The Bride!

If there’s one industry we can count on to become very busy this year, it would be the WEDDING industry! Many brides have been waiting a long time for their ‘’Big day’’. Due to the pandemic and the various lockdowns, over the last 18 months, countless of weddings have been pushed back, cancelled, and rescheduled.

Now with things beginning to go back to normal, we can expect to see an overload of brides looking to get booked in with their nearest beauty salon.

So, we are already expecting an increase of enquiries from potential brides this year! But the question is, how can we bring these brides in to our beauty salons and keep them as regular clients?

👰🏻 Get Seen Online

It’s important now more than ever to get ahead of social media. The first thing you must always do, is have a strategy, a plan of action. Once you have established what your strategy is, think about the keywords and hashtags that will help you ‘’show up’’ on socials. Using keywords and hashtags can help get your beauty business seen and your content put in front of your ideal client (in this instance, ideal bride!). Brides will be using words in the search bar, like  “bridal make-up” or “bridal nails” etc.

Lets talk HashtagsI Yep! They are still relevant despite what some may think!

If you’re a nail salon you can use #bridalnailservices #bridalnails(location) #luxurybridalnails. 

Social media is a fastest way to get new customers looking at your business. Brides will likely take to sites like Instagram, Tiktok, and Pinterest for inspiration, but don’t under-estimate Google for local salons searches that offer specially-tailored bridal beauty services.

👰🏻 Become The ‘’Go To Expert’’

People love finding things that feel tailored to them that specifically solves a problem. In this case, it’s brides looking to find the right professional that can make them look (and feel) amazing on their big day.

It’s no secret that brides want to feel like a bride and look like a bride, therefore they’ll be open to a conversation about a tailored bridal ‘package’ created just for HER needs. By adding a bridal package to your website, bio, treatment menu will certainly position you as a bridal specialist, in the beauty space.

What if you don’t have a variety of services to offer like hair, nails, and makeup? 

If you are a niche salon, you can add on treatments to a package. For example, if you’re a nail salon, look at services like paraffin wax manicures, or include nail art using Swarovski crystals.

👰🏻 Contracts & Agreements

Just like when a bride secures her wedding venue, finally chooses the cake, or orders the dress, an agreement and contract between the two parties exchange, along with some sort of financial transaction. Your beauty business is no different. In this case, you are not simply booking in a bride for a set of nails, or a one-off facial, you’re booking in a whole range of beauty services leading up to her big day, which can often include having to order in specific products specifically for your bride. Protect your business and your valuable time. Be sure to draw up an agreement between the bride and your beauty business.

👰🏻 Collaborate With Other Bridal Specialists

Are you a beauty salon and down the road from you is a great hair salon?, do you know of a highly regarded make-up artist in your area? Do you have a wedding dress shop nearby?, a cake shop that specialises in wedding cakes? You see where I’m going with this!

Collaboration in business is very powerful if done… you guessed it, with a strategy in place!

Think about the experience you give to your clients upon their arrival, when offering them coffee, have some small taster bites delivered from the local wedding cake store, and equally think how can they introduce your business to their customers. 

There are many ways you can collaborate and support local businesses, and with new online collaboration tools, you can massively increase your visibility, and be put in front of your ideal clients/brides when you take your collaborations to the Instagram platform! The new collaboration tool on IG, allows you to have two authors to one piece of content - which means if you were to do this strategically with a fellow wedding specialist, both accounts will get brides looking at the content and you will benefit from getting new followers from each others audience. Like I said, powerful!

👰🏻 Offer Them A Post-Wedding Appointment

When a bride walks through the doors of your salon for the first time, we all hope they will return to our business as a regular client. One way to encourage them to visit you after the wedding/honeymoon, is to offer them an ’After the big day’’ appointment, even better, include this in your bridal package.

Some of the services they have booked in with you will require a safe, professional removal, such as nail extensions, gel polish. Lash extensions, hair extensions, or maybe they are un-decisive as to wether they want to continue having them, so why not include an extra appointment in their package, by then they will not be able to live without their lashes!

👰🏻 Sidenote:

Due to the re-scheduling of thousands of weddings since 2020, be sure to leverage from the increase of bridal services this year.