I've been self employed for 4 years, and the real turning point for me was doing the nails of a lady who owned a very successful restaurant in Fareham. Every time someone commented on her nails she gave them my card, I think at one point 50% of my clients were down to her recommendations (and she wouldn't take anything in return as she too was a business woman), so that was my big lucky break. She had to stop in the end as she was a workaholic and didn't have time to get them done!
Getting new clients is very easy, bet if you put a sign up saying Free full sets you'd be inundated, but would they stay faithful to you? Maybe, maybe not? Like Cec says it's all about pitching your place in the market. If you sell yourself cheap then you will get clients that only want cheap. You need to decide what type of client you want to attract. The loyal ones are those that are prepared to pay more but like the added extras - drinks, nice atmosphere, first class service, first class nails, etc.
If you have this month's Scratch there is a fab article about marketing on page 66 which I urge every Geek to read if they haven't already.
You should do a SWOT analysis, that is decide what are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunitues, Threats. If you don't know what your opposition is up to then how do you know if you are better or worse than them, too cheap or too expensive, too upmarket or too downmarket etc etc etc. From here you can decide what type of client you want - loyal ones, salon hopping ones etc and pitch your pricing, marketing and style of advertising accordingly. If you want classy clients then you need to portray a classy image in your ads - if you want young clients then you need to aim it at a funkier angle.
Sorry not sure where all that suddenly came from lol, but it's not just about where you advertise as much as how you advertise to get those loyal clients.