Christmas marketing: a guide for nail salons to boost business

By Marie-Louise Coster | 05 October 2025 | Business, Expert Advice, Feature

Session nail stylist, salon owner & educator, Marie-Louise Coster, offers up top tips for the festive season…

Now is the time to look ahead to Christmas and consider how you will maximise your marketing to make profit. The first thing you need to do is review last Christmas: what worked and what didn’t? What were your most and least popular retail products? What earned you the most money? When you’ve determined the most successful things, repeat them with a twist, to create difference and excitement.

Once you have done this, your focus needs to be on retail. This is the easiest way to make extra money without working extra hours. For those who get paid monthly, there are very few pay packets left before Christmas, and people start shopping earlier each year. It doesn’t hurt to start putting out a few gift sets and emailing clients about must-have festive sets.

Perhaps even take pre-orders, so you know you have sold products. Make a real urgency and exclusivity of it – like trying to get your hands on Coldplay or Oasis tickets! If clients don’t pre-order, they run the risk of being disappointed.

You could hold a Christmas gift event to showcase your retail offerings. If you are worried about what to order, this event could help you decide. Ask a sales rep from the brand you use to bring their retail offerings and showcase to attendees, and take pre-orders.

You could also make your own gift sets, with a bespoke service available for clients to choose what items they want inside. A wish list can be effective, too: either printed, electronic or on social media. This can list all your retail products, for clients’ family and friends to tick the ones they would like to give to them.

With retail sorted, you need to look at you diary. We know that there will be the usual Christmas parties and social occasions and that will require more pampering, so start pushing appointments for November and December and consider offering extended hours. But don’t offer everything to everyone, because you may end up with half-full days, and that is not cost-effective.

Just like with retail, create a real urgency about appointments. Emphasise that they are scarce and people need to book in advance. Do an email campaign urging clients to book appointments, then back this up with a social media campaign. Always wait about a week between the email and social media campaigns to give your loyal clients chance to book, before you open up to the masses.

At this time of year, I encourage my clients to book their appointments for the rest of the year, and I suggest a couple of treatments that they don’t normally have, which might nice for them over the festive period. For example, a massage after the stress of Christmas shopping or a a spray tan for a Christmas party.

With marketing, always exhaust the cheapest and most interactive sources first. Because of social media, it is so easy these days to take an instant, cost-effective and interactive approach to marketing that provides immediate results. It is also easy to reach your client base with a simple email newsletter, or a text/WhatsApp message – assuming you have been given permission to do so.

The important thing is to keep communicating, keep reminding and keep showcasing. Maximise upon the excitement and selling power of the festive season.

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