Marketing is a salon’s way of telling its story in order to attract new clients and encourage existing ones to try different services from the menu. The ways salons leverage marketing to tell those stories is expanding every year, as owners sample newer vehicles like community videos, influencer programs and social media, along with more traditional methods.

Here is the winner of the best Guerilla Marketing campaign in SALON TODAY's STAMP competition.

RedBloom Salon
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Owners: Troy Winget and Jodi Ohama

Two of the salon’s master stylists took the lead on a marketing project that had some legs. Without telling the team why, they asked each member why they love what they do and collected the responses through an online form. On a Monday, when the salon was closed, the team leaders used window markers to write the responses on the salon’s windows to surprise both the guests and the team members.

“We did this campaign because we wanted to share the passion of our team with our guests and the community. We left it up for a week, shared pictures of it on the salon’s social pages and printed out all the responses and had those floating around the salon,” Winget says. “In total, we spent $30 on window markers and $10 promoting the posts.”

The windows excited the team, guests and passersby, and the posts reached 13,286 people. To continue to leverage the team’s responses, the salon launched a series of Instagram posts featuring the portraits of individual stylists with their #RedBloomPhilosophy quotes every Sunday. “We are still reaping the benefits of this campaign,” says Winget. “And we heard of a handful of other salons who used the same idea.”

This is one of only one of 31 marketing ideas featured in Salon Today's September/October S.T.A.M.P. issue. See the others here. (Coming Soon!)

More about STAMP:

SALON TODAY’s Annual Marketing Program, (STAMP), puts the spotlight on fabulous marketing—ideas that have been tried in the salon environment and proven successful. By entering this competition, these winning marketing teams are willing to share those entrepreneurial ideas with you, to encourage your team to put your own STAMP on it.