[VIDEO] Want your salon business on top of Google? Try THIS…

[VIDEO] Want your salon business on top of Google? Try THIS…

For any local business like a salon or spa, the most valuable online real estate you can have is a position in the “Three Pack” of Google listings under the map.

These businesses get more than 90% of the phone calls and website visits:

Smart salon owners (like our Member salon, Allura in Berwick, Victoria) know that being in the Three Pack isn’t just the luck of the draw, it’s about setting up your Google Business Listing (GBL) with just as much love and care as you might put into your own website. 

In this video, watch as I show you just one of those ‘love and care’ processes – tweaking the pictures before you upload them to your Google listing. 

Comment below if you need help with this. 

And here’s a bonus – fill in the form below and our team of digital marketing specialists will give you a detailed Website & Google Business Listing Health Check for your business (a $245 value – FREE!) 

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Voice Search: Getting Your Salon Business Found on Google

Voice Search: Getting Your Salon Business Found on Google

VIDEO BELOW: How to capitalize on the move to Voice Search in 2020

You’ve done it yourself, right?

You’ve picked up your phone, and demanded something like “Hey Siri (or her Android equivalent), find me a seafood restaurant nearby…”

Thanks to smart phones, and gadgets like Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home, 2020 is the year that voice search will start taking over from ‘old-fashioned’ practises like typing in a search term using a keyboard.

And that has huge implications for how your salon or spa business is going to be found in Google searches from now on.

You already know that unless you’re found on the first page of Google searches, you may as well not exist.

Well, the coming voice search boom is beginning to up-end many of the ‘rules’ that govern how businesses appear in search results.

Here’s a short grab from a live Q&A session with some of our Client Attraction System salon members as our former Director of Online, George Slater explains how all businesses will have to update their online presence for voice search…

(Members can watch a recording of the whole webinar here.)

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Case Study – how to profit from another salon’s database.

Case Study – how to profit from another salon’s database.

It’s all very well having a Salon Business Plan. But if that plan doesn’t include specific details about how you’re actually going to find clients, then it isn’t worth much as a plan. 

Here’s a great example of how to ‘put a salon business plan into action’.

George and Kim Astropalitis were in a quandary. Their Chroma Hair Studio business in Highgate Hill, Brisbane was faced with a huge opportunity, but they just weren’t sure how to capitalize on it.

A salon in the next suburb had gone out of business. George had a hunch the failed salon might possess a very large database of past and present clients, since it had been operating for many years. But how to get hold of that database? And what to do with it if he did?

The answer to the first question was simple. He just called the owner, and asked if she’d like to sell her client list. Clearly unaware that the real value of any business is ‘in the list’, she agreed to sell the client roll…for basically lunch money, a few hundred dollars.

But what now? George signed up as a Client Attraction System member, and with the guidance of our Facebook Group, got to work on a carefully-planned strategy to wring as much value from the new database as possible.

First, creating a special ‘hidden’ page on the website and then, developing a series of email and SMS messages directing the target market to that page.

Within two weeks, Chroma Hair Studio had nearly ONE HUNDRED new clients. And that’s just the start. Here’s George on video, describing what happened, and how they did it.

 

To learn ideas and use proven, ready to download marketing templates like George, learn more about the Client Attraction System

Read the interview:

George: So a salon in our area, regrettably, you know, these things happen and they close down. We were able to contact the previous owner. And we were able to buy her database, her computer and database list of clients on.

We’ve taken that and we’ve imported that into our, our Point Of Sale software system and we’ve started a series of campaign with, with Greg’s guidance in terms of offers and how we should structure things.

And we’ve got a series of email and SMS happening and that’s going out to the previous clients of that salon that closed down.

Greg: And what results have you had so far from that, George?

George: Yeah, pretty good, um, what we’re going out by email and SMS at the same time. We did our first round of all sending out about 10 days or so ago. And in that first round we booked around 80 clients looking for appointments with us. And of course, we’re trying to do all the right things internally and you know, get the re-bookings right and get them returning again. And we’ve just, today, done our second round of marketing and again that’s via email and SMS and the phones are running hot again this morning. I can see that in terms of people filling in online forms, and in the first couple of hours this morning, we’ve got 15 or 18 forms (filled in) for us to call people back and book them in. And the girls informed me that the, the phone has been running off the hook again at the actual salon where people ringing to take up the offer and book appointments in.

Greg: And so what are the numbers you bought a database, you paid a few hundred dollars for a database of how many clients?

George: Ah, so look, they had 10,000 – about 10,000 people in the database, not sure how up to date the database was. I suspect some of that was quite old, may be irrelevant, but nonetheless, it still gives us another name or number that you can reach out, that you can, you can, you reach and make contact.

Greg: And how many do you think you’ve reached out and actually made contact with?

George: In terms of the people who’ve rung and made appointments, I’d say that we’re approaching 100 or past the hundred mark. So you know, that’s a hundred new people coming into our salon from a couple of marketing campaigns.

Greg: And a hundred people at say, $1,000 a year each if they stay on?

George: Yeah it’d be nice to keep them as a regular. You know what we’ve got to get ourselves a benchmark of what we’d like to retain of those people are but yes, certainly if we retained a hundred of these people as a regular client, yeah, it would have to be worth $100,000 or $150,000 a year to the turnover of the business.

Greg: So, the process you went through was you set up the offers on your website and then you emailed the client base you SMSd them with links to that page on your website?

George: Yeah, we created like a hidden page on our website. We had the offers on there, we had a video that you recommended we do, and that actually has gone really well. So we did an invitation, a welcome video and then of course, we just used the link to that secret page on our website and that went into the SMS’s and the email. So they were clicking through essentially going through our website and then from there they could either fill out a form or they could just give us a call. Salons and spas close down every day, every week, all over the place.

Greg: So what would you recommend people try to contact those former owners and, and perhaps look at buying their databases?

George: Oh yeah, look, uh huh yeah, buying this database with kind of an off the cuff thought for us, it’s not something that we really considered as a strategic marketing ploy, but based on what we’ve seen already yeah if your thing. Yeah, if you’re seeing a hair salon or beauty salon in your vicinity closing down, it is definitely worth contacting that, that previous owner and seeing whether they’re willing to sell you their client database. It’s definitely been a positive outcome for us.

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New FB Support Group for Hair & Beauty Professionals who LOVE Business!

Join Salon Mavens with Marnie Kallmeyer here. 

Marnie sold her salon business for a big payout

Nearly 14 years ago, when WSM was in its infancy, I met a new Member whose salon happened to be only a few blocks away from our office.

Marnie Kallmeyer had bought my original Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, much to the sneering objections of her husband Peter, who derided it as “just another scam”.
Marnie’s business was really struggling at the time, but she did nothing with the Toolkit for some months, until finally, driven by desperation, she picked it up and started using the tools and instructions contained within it.
Let’s cut to the chase – the business quickly took off, doubled then tripled sales, and Peter had to eat a healthy serving of humble pie. It got better though. Marnie fell over and badly injured her hand, so much so that she could no longer work on clients, and was forced to work ‘on’ the business instead of in it.
She immersed herself in education, schooling herself on all things marketing, subscribing to the work of great marketers like Dan Kennedy, and more importantly, implementing what she was learning.
Marnie became not merely a business owner, but an entrepreneur.
A couple of years after that, she put the business on the market, and sold it – for a solid six-figure sum.
Every year since, I’ve tried unsuccessfully to persuade Marnie to come out of ‘retirement’ (she’s far too young for that!) and make her enormous skills, her no-nonsense approach, her warmth and sense of empathy available to our salon & spa owners all over the world.
This month, I tried again. “Do you just want to fiddle around doing the odd eyelash extension, or do you want to use your knowledge and business experience to actually make a difference in the world?” I asked her.
Thankfully, that must have pushed a ‘hot button.’ So I’m absolutely delighted to let you know that Marnie has agreed to join WSM officially.
We don’t even have a title for Marnie yet. But safe to say, she’ll be intimately involved in guiding our Members, in group video training, in answering questions in our forum, and developing new ways of helping salon owners achieve their goals.
Marnie has been where many Members are right now, at the bottom and struggling to find clear air. She’s also been at the summit of success, and knows exactly what it takes to get there. But more to the point, Marnie is a wife and a mother, just like so many of our Members. She’s been through the School of Hard Knocks, graduated from the University of Having the Shit Kicked Out of You, and came out smiling, despite the scars and war-wounds.
She’s hard-nosed, but soft as butter inside. You couldn’t want for a better industry-specific mentor, guide and Marketing Maven.

Is your salon business CONGRUENT in all areas? Here’s a checklist…

Is your salon business CONGRUENT“Is your salon business CONGRUENT” Online forums are wonderful things to browse around picking up useful bits of information here and there. But no matter what information you glean, it’s completely worthless unless you implement it, or put it to use in some way.

On one forum today I noticed a salon owner asking opinions on whether staff ‘should be allowed to wear facial piercings‘… and that led me to wonder about the whole issue of something called ‘congruency‘…. the ‘quality or state of agreeing or corresponding’ – in relation to business, marketing & sales.

Is your salon business CONGRUENT

Car dealer John Hughes forbids his salesmen to wear sunglasses on their heads – because it’s incongruent with his business philosophy

In my home town there’s a famous old-fashioned car dealer, one of the biggest and most successful in Australia. John Hughes is well into his seventies, absolutely loves his job, and has some policies that younger people might find more appropriate to the nineteen fifties.

For example, John refuses to allow his salesmen to wear their sunglasses perched on top of their heads. He believes such habits only confirm the entrenched public opinion about car salesmen being hucksters. It’s not congruent with his decades-long drive to establish his brand as trustworthy.

When you go to visit your accountant, you’d find it incongruent to see him and his staff wandering around the office in board shorts and T-shirts – yet completely correct for the staff of a theme park to be so attired.

Would staff with facial piercings be appropriate for a high-end day spa in a 5-star hotel? Probably not. In a tattoo parlour? Absolutely. Would hair stylists dressed as though they’re about to go nightclubbing be congruent with a salon that brands itself as a rock ‘n roll ‘destination’? Naturally.

(And there’s a major difference between hiring an employee who is merely competent, and one who is congruent with the business.)

You have to be aware of what ‘fits’, and what doesn’t. Do you market yourself as super-sophisticated venue yet your location, fixtures and fittings let you down? Or you have a brothel on one side and a lumber yard on the other?

At the other end of the scale, there seems little to recommend being ‘cheap and cheerful’ – no appointments necessary, bare-bones prices, second-hand furniture – and at the same time insisting on a website that screams Million Dollar Salon.

Here’s a checklist:

  • What’s the essential message you want to convey to clients and prospects – Calmness? Efficiency? Glitz and Glam? Fun?
  • If it’s ‘Efficiency’ for example, are you always on time? Is your welcome procedure always the same? Do your staff process payments and book appointments quickly and smoothly?
  • If you project an image of professionalism, is this reflected in your staff uniforms?
  • If cleanliness is God, are you a Nazi about the toilets, the floors, cobwebs in the corners?
  • If you’re aiming for affluent clients, do you provide such clients with an experience your ‘average’ clients don’t get?
  • What does your phone manner say about you and your business…for example, do you have a set phone answering procedure, or is it ad hoc?

As always, the Message has to fit the Method, in all things.