Salons by JC hired IDealogic to create a brand strategy that would allow the rapidly growing franchise to move forward with clear direction and a strategic marketing plan, as well as to help define and capitalize upon opportunities to position the brand as a national leader. The salon suite business model presents somewhat of a unique challenge, in that the brand must communicate with and convert multiple B2B and B2C segment targets, i.e. Franchisor to Franchisee / Franchisee to Tenant / Tenant to Client. These segments need to be guided through a systematic sales process that is tailored to speak to each specific audience. Rapid growth had left the franchise little time for the development and implementation of such differing strategies and engagement touch points.

Our first step in addressing these challenges was to perform an in-depth assessment, discovery, and evaluation of the brand, including a local and national competitor analysis. Along with this information, we compiled independent research, industry overviews, and reports from our market databases into our comprehensive Brand Analysis book.

We applied these findings to develop a customized guide of best practices featuring our recommended branding and marketing strategies designed to position Salons by JC as the industry leader, elevate the brand’s identity, improve its visual communications, create high quality and consistent brand messaging, improve lead generation for franchisees, and educate prospective tenants on the brand’s salon suite concept/business model.

As franchises are primarily B2B companies, all of our brand strategies for franchisors revolve around a simple truth: the brand’s most important role is to provide a foundation for a successful business model through a proven system; and that system generates the possibilities for thriving livelihoods for corporate staff, franchisees, and their employees. With this in mind, we developed three brand model strategies—the business strategy, marketing strategy, and brand strategy—that each play a unique role in meeting the brand’s objectives and are designed to guide each audience’s experience.

To empower the franchisees and tenants through their unique customer journeys, we engineered and mapped a complete brand experience designed to navigate each target segment though their own nurturing lifecycle experience. All marketing channels utilize custom touch points to attract and engage each segment group—from unknown to known prospect, to known prospect conversion, to customer retention—by way of the psychographic and demographic profiles we created to represent each.

We created Franchisee and Tenant Empowerment Programs. These programs include annual conferences, quarterly classes and seminars, and monthly workshops and webinars. Annual conferences held in desirable locations concentrate on large-scale culture building. The various quarterly and monthly sessions give franchisees and tenants the opportunity to form strong community bonds within a shared company culture as together they focus on small business development, local opportunities, continuing education, industry trends, and more. These allow participants the ability to connect in an inclusive environment of learning, acceptance, and camaraderie—and be part of something bigger than themselves.

Next, we developed a multi-tiered membership program to better connect Salons by JC to its tenants, and tenants to their end-consumers, with focus on customer frequency and retention. The brand’s exclusive concierge service is truly an innovative idea within the industry, providing tenants and their customers an elevated level of customer service that competitors simply don’t offer. The membership program is similar to a loyalty program but takes it a step further, as it is specifically designed to enhance the brand’s Concierge experience in ways that appeal directly to human nature using the fourth tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: self-esteem.

As the beauty industry is represented by a significant number of role models, one of our tactics for brand development is to capitalize on a brand ambassador and influencer strategy. This ensures that these types of role models will serve to promote and advocate for the brand through community engagement, customer-facing, live events, and more.

Aiming to elevate the brand’s identity, our visual communications and messaging strategy include emotional triggers designed for consistency across all platforms and are devised to appeal to the thriving livelihood of tenants and franchisees alike. This allows Salons by JC to build a community with a sense of unity, direction and purpose that has been engineered to revolve around culture.

• Beauty salons account for about 95% of U.S. hair care services industry revenue• The U.S. industry has a combined annual revenue of about $20 billion.

• The number of available positions is expected to grow by 16% by 2020, according to the Professional Beauty Association.

• The number of franchise establishments in the U.S. is expected to increase 1.9% in 2018 to 759 thousand (IHS Markit Economics).

• 151 million Americans had a haircut in 2016.