Selling yourself IS vital, especially if you plan on establishing your own business. However, in the mean time, you need to be realistic and ask yourself whether your current manager will let you offer customer discounts...
The first thing I would do would be to discuss with your employer about who the main target audience of the salon is, and effective ways in which the business can generate awareness amongst them.
For example, social media is increasingly popular within the younger generation, and is also a cheap and easy way of keeping information up-to-date! Making a Facebook page for the salon can be done in just a few minutes and will keep customers informed on new products, services or any offers that may be up for grabs, making the likelihood of customers visiting the salon a lot higher. It sounds like a relatively small sole trading business, so get your friends to share the page with their friends as a way of cheap word-of-mouth promotion which is always beneficial in smaller towns!
Alternatively, you could simply produce some posters and hand them out around surrounding areas to help further generate awareness and resultantly increase sales. But be careful as your county may have certain rules and regualtions regarding handing out flyers on the street.
These are just basic advertising ideas which is just a small aspect of marketing, however, if you are aiming to produce a whole new marketing strategy for the business, research the '4 p's' which will help get you started but would take too long for me to go into depth about, they are - price, product, place and promotion.
Hope this helps :)
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