by Greg Milner | Feb 19, 2020 | Online Marketing
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The holy grail of online marketing for any small. local business like a salon or spa is…top spot on Google!
If you’re not visible on the first page of search results, you may as well open up shop in the middle of a desert. Page TWO is nowhere.
When our team at Worldwide Salon Marketing sets out to ‘optimize’ a business for Google search, one of the very first things we do is to check a business’s “NAP” details.
That is, making sure that wherever a business is mentioned anywhere on the internet, the NAP or “Name, Address & Phone number” are set out exactly the same everywhere.
Why? Because if Google’s automatic robots see any discrepancies, they get confused – and that can damage your chances of appearing on top of search rsults.
In this video, I show you how to go about checking your NAP details.
FREE “Your Business Online” Health Check – Get more customers & clients! Fill in the form below and we’ll comprehensively analyse and report back to you on your online assets – website, Google Business Listing, and what needs to be done to make sure they’re ‘pulling their weight”!
by Greg Milner | Aug 2, 2019 | Salon Marketing Online
Enter your website’s address here to get your FREE, comprehensive (30+ pages) Functionality Report – a $245 value – and find out the key changes that’ll turn your website into a sales and lead-generating machine.
It seems to have become fashionable – particularly in the hair & beauty business – for many owners of these businesses to put all their marketing eggs in one basket.
More and more, we’re hearing from salon owners who declare “I just use Facebook,” or “It’s all about Instagram these days.”
And worse, many are either letting their own websites go, or not even bothering to get one built in the first place. This is really, really short-sighted, damaging thinking.
Here’s why:
- Of all the digital media platforms you can use – and the list is a long one, including but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Yelp, Google and a dozen others – your website is the only one you can completely control.
- Facebook, Instagram, Google etc – they are all controlled by the companies that own them. They can and do change the rules, often. And they can drop you like a stone, without notice. Your account can be cancelled, your access to it blocked, or the whole platform can go down. If that’s the only media option you have to reach out to your market, you’re toast.
- Think all those people who ‘like’ you on Facebook and Instagram are your prospects and customers? No, they’re Facebook’s customers. Only Facebook as direct access to them, only Facebook has their direct contact details.
- Your website, on the other hand, is the only digital asset over which you have complete technical and creative control. You alone decide what it looks like, what messages it carries, what functions it performs, when and how it is updated, how many pages it has, how many images it contains, what experience your visitor has, and whether or not you want to link it to other parts of the internet.
- Your website is the only digital asset under your control that you can use to generate leads and sales the way you want to, rather than the way Facebook or Instagram or Google wants you to.
- Unlike Facebook, Instagram and all the others, your website gets people away from all your competition, to focus on only you and your business. Once they’re looking at your website, they’re not distracted by the next salon’s post on Facebook, or another salon’s tweet or Instagram photo.
- On social media platforms and search engines, all businesses look pretty much the same. Thanks to the platforms themselves, it’s very, very difficult to make a stand-out statement when you’re restricted by the necessary guidelines of Facebook or Instagram. (You can’t change Facebook’s layout, or background colors. It’s blue, and always will be.)
People might find your business using a Google search. But they won’t understand what you’re about unless and until they can click through to your website, and see your business the way you want them to see it, not the way Google or Facebook wants them to see it. The very first thing people will do when wanting to find out about your business is look for, and at, your website. Quite simply, if you don’t have one to visit, you are very unlikely to get their business. It’s that simple.
Having your own website is security for your business. Imagine the unthinkable – that one day, through market changes, technical disaster, or legislative changes, suddenly Facebook and Instagram were wiped out, simply disappeared from our screens. Where would that leave you if you had no website, or it wasn’t functioning properly? Dead in the water.
So yes, it is madness for any small business to be without its own website.
But even if you have a website, is it set up to do its job properly?
- Is it visible – on the first page of Google – when your prospective clients are searching for a hair salon, beauty salon, a massage, a facial, a haircut, in your local area?
- Is it easy for people to find your phone number and call you, on their cell phone?
- Is your site set up properly to send you free leads?
HERE’S AN EASY (AND FREE!) WAY TO FIND OUT:
Enter your website’s address here to get your FREE, comprehensive (30+ pages) Functionality Report – a $245 value – and find out the key changes that’ll turn your website into a sales and lead-generating machine.
by Greg Milner | Aug 25, 2017 | Rich Salon Owner Podcast
IMPORTANT: if you find this podcast useful, please leave us a review.
By far the biggest marketing issue facing most owners of small businesses, like salons & spas, is one that seems simple at first glance. But if you can’t solve this challenge, everything else is almost meaningless.
And that challenge is a massive one. It’s
GETTING FOUND by people searching for hair and/or beauty services in your area.
Getting the attention of your prospective clients and customers has been the biggest issue for business owners for decades. And the rise of the internet has made the problem far more complex. Which is why, in this audio 14-minute recording of the first chapter of my book, Rich Salon Owner, I’ve broken it down into simple stages.
If you’re NOT getting a steady flow of new clients and customers who find you when they’re looking for what you sell, then this podcast is a must. You may well find yourself slapping your forehead and gasping “Dammit, why didn’t anyone tell me this before!?”
But all is not lost. This podcast will ‘clear the fog’ around your online marketing, and turn complex processes into easy-to-understand ideas.
Listen to it in your car, doing the ironing, pruning the roses, whatever…but grab it now, on iTunes or Android. Enjoy!
Show Notes:
- 1. The only THREE ways new clients are going to find you online
- 2. A simple check you can do yourself, in 10 seconds.
- 3. The big mistake most salon owners make with online reviews.
- 4. The salon that gets more than 150 calls every month from this one strategy
- 5. How to make sure new clients find YOU first.
- Resources:
- Need help getting found online? Call Worldwide Salon Marketing head office on 618 9443 9327
- Get a FREE detailed audit of your online ‘findability’ here: http://worldwidesalonmarketing.com/analyzer/
by Greg Milner | Sep 9, 2015 | Online Marketing, Website Marketing
by Greg Milner, CEO Worldwide Salon Marketing
As the owner of a company which builds and maintains websites and online marketing systems for hundreds of salon & spa businesses, I get a LOT of questions thrown at me from salon & spa owners totally confused about what matters online.
And that’s understandable. Online marketing is part science, part alchemy, practised in a long, dark tunnel populated by geeks who communicate with each other – and with those who pay them – in convoluted technocrat-ese almost entirely incomprehensible to normal people.
I employ such people, and over the years have learned some of their language. So, in my role as interpreter, I offer the following, in plain English.
What’s Your ‘Most-Wanted Response’?
Okay, so you have a website. For many business owners, that’s where their ‘online marketing’ strategy starts and ends. And it’s a long, long way short of what’s required. You need to ask yourself some ‘non-techie’ questions, and have some clear-headed answers, to questions such as:
1) What’s your website for? If its purpose is purely to look nice and impress your customers, that’s fine. If its purpose is to attract customers, that’s a different story. There is absolutely zero point in spending money building a flash looking website your prospective customers can’t find in a Google search. (And don’t make the mistake of deluding yourself into thinking ‘they’ll easily find it when they search the name of my business.’ They’re not looking for the name of your business, they’re searching for the product or service you’re selling!)
That brings me to one of the darkest arts, SEO or ‘search engine optimization’. It’s largely a manual, tedious, time-consuming (therefore expensive) and highly-specialised process involving technical expertise and up-to-date knowledge. And Google’s rules change all the time. It’s like trying to change a wheel on a moving car.
(And a warning: if anybody approaches you and promises to ‘get you top ranking on Google, guaranteed’, run a mile. Nobody can guarantee that, except Google.)
2) Is your website mobile responsive? 90% of people these days use their smart phones to search for products and services. If they find your website and it’s not configured to fit a small phone screen, it’ll be too hard to read, and they’ll go elsewhere.
3) Can they easily find your phone number? Let’s face it, for most businesses, the most wanted response is an old-fashioned phone call. Yet when I visit many business websites, I gouge my own eyes out with a sharp spoon in frustration at trying to find the damn phone number. It’s often (stupidly) buried in the depths of a ‘Contact Us’ page. Put your phone number – preferably ‘hot’ so it’s click-to-call – right at the top of every page on your site. Don’t make it hard for people to call you.
4) What about all the people who visit the site and don’t pick up the phone? Unless you have a way of capturing their contact details so you can market to them later, you’re wasting an awful lot of hard-earned traffic. The best way is offering some kind of free download – a guide, special report, gift voucher, video or what have you – in exchange for their contact details. Even better, make sure those details go straight into your database, with an automated series of follow-up emails.
(Despite my constant nagging, a former Perth consulting client of mine continued to spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on TV advertising to drive traffic to his website, with absolutely no means of capturing the details of any of those potential customers. Dumb.)
In the real world, a website has only two basic uses: a) to sell stuff, and b) to capture leads and build your database.
That’s absolutely basic, Online Marketing 101 stuff. It’s the tip of a very large iceberg, involving the integration of social media, YouTube, database management, online advertising, mobile apps, SMS and more.
Resource: Many, many of our Member salons have websites designed, built, maintained and search engine optimised by WSM. To find out more, go to www.salon-website-design.com