Marketing 101 for salons: Visibility and discoverability. For any of your marketing strategies to work, your salon has to be visible in Google search results. When potential clients search for salons, cosmetologists, nail technicians, hair stylists, or any other beauty service providers on Google, 97% of these people won’t go past the first results page. If your web content appears on the second or third page, to be brutally sincere, your salon just doesn’t exist online. This is the same case with other search engines, e.g. Bing.
Besides Google, there is another marketplace that has a huge impact on your salon’s visibility and discoverability: Social media. This marketplace continues to grow in significance, all thanks to the ongoing rapid digitalization. And because almost everyone is on social media searching for the best hairstyles, beauty tips, and best nearby salons, etc., it is safe to believe that social media is a search engine in its own right. You cannot successfully publicize your salon business online without first optimizing your social media content. It is also worth noting that social media optimization goes beyond posting quality content on Instagram and Facebook. Good content isn’t necessarily discoverable. We will tell you how to make your social media content discoverable by your target audience.
And then there is the role of offline marketing in making local businesses such as your salon discoverable. As much as you need to invest most of your marketing budget in online marketing, it must never be lost to you that the online clients you target also have a life outside of the internet. They live in both worlds, and so should you!
So, there are three bases that you need to cover if you want to maximize your salon’s discoverability: Google, social media, and offline. Let’s cover these three bases in three comprehensive tactics:
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For this tactic to work, you will need a professional business website. A good website isn’t necessarily expensive to create and maintain, especially now that there are tons of free web development tools on the internet. Web designers are also quite affordable these days.
With a website in place, now ensure that it is optimized for visibility in search. This is how to get your salon to appear among the top search results through SEO:
Google is by miles the biggest search engine. For this reason, the first place to register and claim your business listing has to be Google My Business. GMB makes your salon visible to searchers who look for “salons near me”, “best nail technician in my area”, and “open salon in *your location*”, among other localized keywords. You should update your GMB account with details such as your salon location, business hours, and services offered. That done, optimize it with images of your happy clients as well as stylists enjoying their work.
Other places you need to register your salon include:
Your web content should be of great value to Google searchers, this goes without saying, but quality without relevant salon keyword phrases isn’t of much help to your visibility. There are many ways of generating the perfect keywords for your salon web content:
Use online keyword generation tools.
Where to place your keywords: Page titles, page headers, page meta descriptions, title tags, and evenly throughout each one of your pages.
The phrase “show me your friends and I will show you your character” is very relevant in SEO. Being “friends” with websites that Google trusts is enough to convince the search engine that your website is trustworthy as well. That is why you should have other websites, notably, beauty products’ manufacturers and high-authority beauty blogs, link to your website.
Note: The surest way of getting links from other websites is to write guest blog posts for those websites
How do your web pages adapt to the small smartphone screens? Google understands that most of its users are on mobile, so it promotes the websites with the best mobile user experience. Hire a reputable web designer to help you adapt your content to the small screen.
While at it, ensure that none of your pages take more than 2 seconds to load. Online users are so impatient that over 53% of them will drop off if your web pages take 2 or more seconds to load. You can optimize your webpage load time by working with a reputable web hosting company. Another way is to minimize your use of high-resolution images. Use small but quality images.
Invest in quality salon software that makes it easy for clients to check your schedule, book appointments, verify your inventory, reserve products, and make payments conveniently from any device. Ensure that the scheduling system is mobile-friendly because most of your online traffic comes from tablets and smartphones. Also, ensure that the booking page is beautiful and custom-branded for a higher visual appeal.
How easy is it for social media users to find your content? First of all, you have to ensure that your content is entertaining, helpful, and relevant in order to attract many comments, likes, and shares. But then, as we already mentioned, good content alone will not make your social profiles discoverable. Good content is just one small cog in a much bigger wheel called social media optimization. The other cogs include:
Ensure that your visuals are of the best quality, that they are trendy, and that they are shareable especially on WhatsApp. Hire a professional photographer to help you take the best client photos. While at it, ensure that your salon décor is Instagram-worthy for better visual appeal. And lastly, create fun and shareable memes and GIFs in order to encourage people to download, share them on WhatsApp, and add them to their Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp stories
This is straightforward: Use paid ads, especially on Facebook, to promote your content.
There are several tactics that will help you optimize your profiles’ visibility:
Geotagging will drive your social media discoverability in two ways. One, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram will display more of your geotagged content to users living in and around your location. That makes your content more discoverable to users who can actually visit your salon. Two, your happy customers can geotag their user-generated content, making it easy for their followers to locate your salon
When you mention an authority account in your photo caption, the photo show ups under that account’s “tagged photos”. Followers of that account will discover your salon through that photo. That’s if the photo is relevant, informative, and interesting enough for that audience.
As we mentioned, the internet users you target with your digital marketing campaigns are ordinary people who lead normal, ordinary lives outside of the internet. You will, therefore, give your salon discoverability a boost by investing in offline marketing tactics. Take a look at these 5 classic salon discoverability techniques
First of all, advertise your salon through local print media, podcasts, TV, and radio. Secondly, harness the power of repetition through consistent and repetitive use of familiar marketing phrases and visual materials. Repetition is annoying, no doubt, but it forces people to pay attention.
Online marketing is impersonal. Face-to-face marketing is personal. That is why you should make an effort to meet potential clients in person. You can, for example, organize a hair and beauty event and invite your social media followers to attend. For example, you can invite your followers to join you as you give free salon services to the homeless or an assisted living facility. The closer you can get to people’s hearts, the more they feel attached to your salon, and the more they will advocate for your brand online.
First of all, get a logo, choose your brand colors, and create a strong mission statement. And if you don’t have a catchy name for your salon, go ahead and create one. All these factors combine to create a recognizable visual image that sets your salon apart from the crowd.
To cultivate your brand identity using your recognizable visual image, ensure that all your marketing materials display your colors, logo, and motto. That includes business cards, email greetings, letterheads, brochures, employee uniforms, and receipts. Online, ensure that your website, social media profile pictures, and photo backgrounds all emphasize your visual identity.
You can, for example, be a TV or radio show guest where you teach people about at-home hair, nail, or skincare. You can also write a column in a local beauty magazine. In the end, share your social media handles and website URL to encourage viewers, listeners, and readers to follow you online.
Pro tip: Link your offline and online marketing content through QR codes. Ensure that your business cards, brochures, receipts, and other materials have a QR code that people can scan and be directed to your social media profile, website, or booking page.
There you have it! These 3 free tactics are easy to implement if you agree to put in the work. The important thing to remember here is that enhancing discoverability isn’t a one-time affair. You have to consistently put in the work. You have to keep tweaking these tactics and adopting new ones in order to stay at the top.
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