In the competitive field of beauty, marketing your salon can be quite the challenge, not to mention cripplingly expensive for the smaller company. So how can you expand your clientele without breaking the bank? Traditional advertising such as the local Yellow Pages, or radio and television, however small the station, are just too far out of the advertising budget that many salons have to work with. In addition, how well this kind of investment works is almost impossible to track. You may indeed be gaining a new client as a result of a commercial they have seen or heard, but the chances are they will be to interested in your services and how much nicer they are going to look to mention how they found about your salon, and you will be too busy attending to their needs to ask. There is another, very effective and economical method of marketing your salon that you may have never considered, or even heard much about. In today’s economic climate, the savvy salon owner should consider the great power of online advertising. Thanks to the great spread of everyday Internet use by exactly the people you need to target and the power of major search engines like Google, you can target specific geographical areas for people searching basic keywords, in this case things like “beauty salon” “hair salon” and “makeover”. Even better, online advertising lets you target the specific demographic you are seeking. By entering such specific keywords into a search, the user is already demonstrating a keen interest in the services you have to offer. Half the battle is won right there. But how does this kind of marketing really convert into great salon advertising? To be most effective you need to direct the person who clicked on your brief little online ad to a more expansive “landing page”. On this page you need to create a great and compelling reason for this potential customer, or visitor (they are “visiting” your page now) to share their basic contact information with you. This is a great showcase for any salon. You are able to showcase images of your glamorous work, further piquing the interest of the visitor in your salon. Combine this with a printable coupon for a free or discounted service of some kind that a visitor can download after entering their contact information into a short online form and you should be onto a winner. This contact data is emailed to you right away, so you can follow up with this hot lead right away, while they still have beauty on the brain! This is the true beauty of using the Internet and this kind of salon advertising is how little it costs. You will only be charged for potential customers who take the time to “click” on your ad specifically, those people who are demonstrating a real interest in your services. Online advertising like this really is the best and economically sensible way to make the best of your salon marketing dollar.