How The Great Clips Digital Marketing Team Supports Franchisees

Great Clips, the No.1 hair care franchise on the Franchise 500 for five consecutive years, is a clear leader in the $39 billion hair salon industry. To maintain its status at the top, the brand leverages data and marketing technology to target its audience at the right time to bring in new customers and drive repeat business.

“The digital marketing team is focused on helping drive incremental visits to the salons,” said Lisa Kummer, director of digital marketing for Great Clips, Inc. “We want customers to find us easily and more often than our competitors, and we want repeat customers to be reminded of our brand when they need a haircut.”

The brand has developed various marketing strategies, including supporting franchisees at an individual salon level. With system-wide and local tactics, the digital marketing team provides franchise owners with all the tools they need to streamline their marketing campaigns.

“We aim to automate as much as we can and take that responsibility off the plate of the franchisees,” said Kummer. “They need to worry about running their business. Our job is to optimize our digital channels to drive customers to salons.”

The team consistently optimizes the brand's exposure on search engines and adapts to changes in Google’s algorithms. This is especially critical as search engines often serve as a front door to the brand, triggering engagement.

“Google’s rules change quite often, so the digital marketing team structures its content to succeed based on our understanding of those rules,” said Kummer. “Great Clips leverages the expertise it has to perform really well in these searches.”

This year, the digital marketing team launched a franchisee-facing social ad platform, which allows franchisees the ability to customize and launch paid social ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram in minutes, leveraging branded ad templates. These campaigns can include digital coupons that help drive traffic with results that franchisees can see quickly. And franchisees are thrilled with the intuitive and accessible nature of the platform.

“It’s like having an in-house marketing agency where we have all the tools right at our fingertips,” said Ty Bushart, a franchisee with Great Clips, shared regarding the collective marketing support provided to franchisees. “It allows us to do things we couldn’t do on our own.”

In addition to this high level of digital marketing support, Great Clips offers a range of other benefits that make it one of the more robust franchise investments for 2022. While the consumer landscape may be unpredictable, there will always be a demand for quality haircuts at the right price.

The total investment to open a Great Clips salon ranges from $178,400–$376,900. For more information, visit https://www.greatclipsfranchise.com/.