Social Media Marketing is so important to Salon businesses, and here's why!

You may recall back at the beginning of the year we shared our social media predictions with you and also a few tips on how you could implement certain features in to your social media campaigns. As 2016 is drawing to a close, we just wanted to re-visit these points again so you can evaluate how you have used our pointers over the year and also, so you can use them during your Christmas marketing before forward planning for 2017! You’ll find below our points from last year (in pink) in which we have gone on to expand on these a little bit further, just to reiterate how you can apply these methods to your marketing over the festive period and the coming year…

- A picture speaks a thousand words so it’s no surprise that 2016 is set to see some huge growth for businesses on various platforms including photo based apps such as Instagram and Pinterest. Any business can make themselves visual but you need a plan to find success using these apps.

Instagram and Pinterest are two of the best way to tell a story through photographic media, and for salons this is imperative, as the majority of your marketing is visual due to the nature of your business. With Pinterest, their popular categories and national events are a great way to get your content out there for the consumer market to view, and with Christmas just around the corner, Pinterest is a fantastic social channel for you to upload and share your festive-style treatments!

- Speaking of Instagram; although Facebook purchased Instagram just under 4 years ago, it is only until 2016 we will see a huge merge in the advertising element of the platforms. Facebook ads are now pushed to coincide with Instagram ads meaning that now strong visual content is imperative for successful lead generation. Instagram now offers the ability to pay for sponsored content but also a “shop now” button meaning the platform is completely taking out the middle man, ‘the search engine’. You can even share audio and video footage on most platforms now such as ads, tutorials or web casts. Think about what you can offer to the market to promote brand awareness.

Whether you take advantage of the Facebook and Instagram advertising tools or even if you just have your company social pages to share content on, Facebook and Instagram are impetrative accounts for all business to have of the hair, beauty and tanning industry. Especially over Christmas and in to the New year, you can upload imagery, audio and video footage to users, and even boost these posts so that audiences with a similar like range will pick this up on their newsfeed. Boost posting doesn’t cost much at all, and you can put a daily budget on this so that you’re not over-spending, meaning it is a manageable form of marketing. If you’re still new to this, head over to Facebook ads manager where there are lots of step by step posts to help you along the way.

- Julie Ellis (Social Media Week, 2015) confirms the point above by stating that many users “are skipping the search engine and performing their searches directly on social media”. Obviously search engines are still a popular way to find information but this is a huge point to highlight since many people put their trust into accessing sites where they can see using customers of the chosen brand. Twitter, for example allows an advanced search to see product “problems” which means businesses are more accessible than ever, as are reviews.

The above statement is still very true, businesses need to make sure that they are active on all social sites and with a strong page for each channel at that, so if consumers are searching for you through either ‘Facebook search’ or ‘Pinterest’ for example, when they land up on your social page they need to be able to see that everything is up to date and that your content is regularly refreshed. This adds value to your company and deems you more trustworthy, in which bag yourself a few client reviews on there and you’re at the top of the game!

- This leads us to the importance of social media reviews. The searches conveyed through social media will be focused on finding product and also reviews on product, which means you need to ensure there is a business push on engagement and/or reviews. Even if your business has backlash, you need to learn how to deal with it. Micah Soloman (Forbes 2015) lists the 5 best practices to use when handling social media complaints or issues, in which everybody should be taking into account now on verbal based platforms. Especially on the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

According to econsultacy.com 77% of UK shoppers consult reviews online before making a purchase, in which the same applies to buying a service. The more reviews you can generate from clients to appear on your social feeds, the bigger the increase in your brand awareness and company value. It’s like going back to basics, ‘word of mouth’ promotion was one of the main methods of marketing a couple of decades ago, and reviews have the same concept, except this type of verbal feedback is on a bigger scale by being viewable online.

- According to Statista (2015) there will be an increase by 16.7 million on smartphone users in 2016 is the US compared to 2015 and a further 12.6 million increase into 2017- though this point isn’t only relative for social media. Have you noticed the amount of retail giants that are mobile optimised? It should have hit home before 21st of April 2015 when the Google Algorithm came into play but we cannot stress enough the importance of optimising your phones for your consumers. 2016 is only going to grow with the amount of users accessing sites with their handheld smart devices, which means you need to up your game before you lose the potential customer. 

According to Google, the majority of Google searches are now carried out through a mobile device, which this proves to all businesses that the switch to mobile is even more apparent and probably is going to be the preferred search method moving forward. It is therefore very important that if you have a website, you make sure that this is optimised for mobile, as also then if a link to your website is shared on a social media page you then have the comfort of knowing that your website is easily accessible and viewable to consumers on their mobile devices.

- Facebook Ads will improve their targeting reach which means you NEED to know your customer. You might think you already do but what are their stereotypical interests, what do they read, buy, watch etc.? How are they accessing your site? This can be sourced through Google Analytics as long as you are using a URL builder to measure every type of marketing activity you partake in.

A great way to find this information out is to have little feedback cards for clients to fill out at the end of a treatment, or even maybe a questionnaire for them to fill out online. And we can fully appreciate that getting people to fill these things out can be quite difficult, so maybe even offer a small incentive or run a competition for every person to be automatically entered in to if they provide you with feedback? Once you have gathered this info you can then use it to help you target a specific area of interests on Facebook when you are using their Ad creator or boost posting, to ensure that you get the best ROI through the targeting reach.

- According to Chuck Frey (Content Marketing Institute, 2015) Twitter has “255 million active users” that “send more than 500 million tweets a day” however, it doesn’t make it right for everyone because the stereotype is much younger. So you’ve researched Twitter, tried our Twitter Top Tips guide and set-up and run an account for a year and still just aren’t feeling it…That’s okay. Not every platform was made for your business. Invest your time in areas that you are succeeding. Don’t get us wrong it’s important to have an active profile across the platforms but if you invest your core chosen platform whether this be Facebook or Instagram you really will see growth.

Twitter is a great platform for those quick fire messages to be posted as and when you think them up. However, it is still true that with 500 million tweets a day, it is easy for messages to become lost among other tweets very quickly. Therefore, have an active account on there, but in terms of your visual and advertorial content, it may be that Facebook and Instagram are your best ports of call to really determine growth.

- Did you know that “49% of people aged over 65+ are active on social media sites”, (PewInternet 2015) with a huge 89% of 18-29 year olds also active. It is therefore by far quickly becoming the fastest and most efficient way in which to reach anybody, whether that be your friends, family, companies or clients of a business.

This quote still speaks for itself and is the main reason why all businesses should have active and regularly refreshed profiles on a wide range of social media channels. In this day and age, social media helps to create brand awareness, provides consumers with a place to instantly communicate with you and also builds up company credibility…so if you’re not already on social media, after reading these points it is definitely the next step for your business!

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