How to Host an Open House at Your Salon

Whether you’re a seasoned salon owner or you just recently ventured into salon ownership, growing your client list is always one of your top priorities. In most scenarios, your salon business can grow steadily through implementing the marketing tools provided by your salon software, from referrals, and word-of-mouth. 

However, if you’re really looking to ramp up your salon business, hosting an open house is a fun and effective way. This means it’s time to get into both party-mode and business-mode in order to create a soiree experience that not only coaxes clients into your space but makes them want to return again. 

There are many ways to host an open house event at your salon, and we’re here to reveal our favorite tips to ensure your event leaves a lasting impression on new and existing clients alike.

Let people know about your salon’s open house

You’ll want to make sure you get the word out about your open house to both new and existing clients. However, reaching these two different lists of people requires a well-planned strategy. 

For existing clients:

• Include information about your salon’s open house in your newsletter. You can even create a one-off campaign to send out an invitation to the event through email. 

• Distribute postcards at your salon whenever a customer stops in for an appointment. You can even leave a stack of them at your front desk for people to take as they please. Maybe even encourage these customers to take a bunch of them and distribute to their friends.

• Create a Facebook event and invite all your existing customers—make it an open event so they can invite their friends too! 

• Consider a referral-based offer—something like, “Bring a friend to the open house, and you’ll both receive a free treatment/discounted service!”

For attracting new clients:

• Feature the event prominently on your website. You can even create a fly-in or pop-up ad to automatically appear whenever someone visits your site with all the details about your open house. If you happen to have a blog on your website, make sure you create an entire post highlighting the event.  

• Use Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads, and any other platforms you’ve seen success with in the past, to target your ideal demographic,.

• Partner up with local businesses likely to have significant crossover with your ideal clientele and ask them to hang a flyer for your event in their window or pinned to their events board. These could include spas, coffee shops, nail salons, makeup studios, clothing boutiques, etc. 

The day of the event

Even though it sounds like a lot, planning your event to take place over the course of a whole working day will give you the best chances of your ideal customers walking through your door. Instead of just doing an open house happy hour which would typically last around two hours, try to create an event that spans six to eight hours to increase foot traffic. 

If you want all your efforts to come full-circle for a successful event, you need to make sure you have plenty of incentives to convince people they should check out your open house. These could include fun activities, raffles for discounted services, drinks, food, a styling education station, entertainment, and goodie bags. 

And speaking of goodie bags—they are the perfect take-home gift that you can use as your “come again” offer. Along with some samples of your favorite hair care products and branded merch, sneak in an intro offer that your new clients can’t resist. These offers could include discounted services, a free hair consultation, a free deep conditioning treatment with the purchase of any service, or a discount on any products you sell at your salon.