5 ways to turn bridal clients into nail & beauty regulars
By Guest Writer | 17 March 2022 | Business, Expert Advice, Feature
Beauty business expert and founder of Beauty Boss HQ, Layla Tourh, serves up advice for how you can turn bridal clients into regular clients…
Layla Tourh
If there’s one industry we can count on to be very busy this year, it would be the wedding industry! Many brides have been waiting a long time for their ‘big day’, but due to the pandemic and the various lockdowns, countless of weddings have been postponed, cancelled, and rescheduled.
Now with things getting back to normality, we can expect to see brides looking to get booked in with their nearest beauty salon – but how can we keep them as regular clients after their wedding day has been and gone?
1. Be Seen Online
Social media is so important. The first thing you must always have is a strategy and a plan of action. Once you have established what your strategy is, think about the keywords and hashtags that will help you be seen on social media. 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 search terms like ‘bridal make-up’ or ‘bridal nails’ so you could use hashtags like #bridalnailservices #bridalnails(location) #luxurybridalnails.
Social media is the fastest way to get new customers looking at your business. Brides will likely be looking at Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest for inspiration, but don’t under-estimate Google for local salon searches that offer specially-tailored bridal beauty services.
2. Become The ‘Go To Expert’
People love finding things that feel tailored to them. In this case, it’s brides looking to find the right beauty 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 will be open to a conversation about a tailored bridal ‘package’ created just for her needs. By adding a bridal package to your website, bio, and treatment menu, it will certainly position you as a bridal specialist in the beauty space.
But what if you don’t have a variety of services to offer like hair, nails, and make-up?
You can add on treatments to a package. For example, if you’re a nail tech, look at services like paraffin wax manicures, or include nail art using Swarovski crystals.
3. Contracts & Agreements
Just like when a bride secures her wedding venue, chooses the cake, or orders her dress, an agreement and contract between the two parties is exchanged, 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 for your bride. Protect your business and your valuable time, and make sure to draw up an agreement between the bride and your beauty business.
4. Collaborate With Other Bridal Specialists
Do you have a great local hair salon close by? Do you know of a highly regarded make-up artist in your area? Is there a fabulous wedding dress shop in your vicinity? Collaboration in business is very powerful if done with a strategy in place!
Think about the experience you give to your clients upon their arrival. When offering them coffee, have some small tasters 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 you can massively increase your visibility to your ideal clients when you take your collaborations to Instagram! The new collaboration tool on Instagram 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 other’s audience.
5. Offer Them A Post-Wedding Appointment
When a bride walks through the door 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 is to offer them a ‘post-wedding day’ appointment, which you could include in your bridal package, as some services will require a safe, professional removal, such as nail extensions and gel polish. They could be undecided about keeping on services like lash extensions and hair extensions, but they will have time to think it over if you still include an extra appointment in their package for after the wedding day.
One last thing…
Due to the re-scheduling of thousands of weddings since 2020, be sure to leverage from the increase of bridal services this year.