We are now in the digital age, where much of human interaction now takes place on the web, no exception to this is the web marketing and communication business, which of the Internet and especially social media have made their main playground.
However, the digital universe is overpopulated by businesses, freelancers, and artisans, and not knowing how to get around can doom one to oblivion and the waste of time and energy, as well as money.
Having a serious, consistent and organized web presence increases authority and professionalism, intriguing those who do not already know us and building loyalty among those who are already customers. This article will look at what the pillars are to achieve this, keeping in mind that each area has its own unique characteristics.
Do hairdressers, salons and hairstylists need web marketing?
The answer is simply yes! Rather, the question that is more complex to answer is how to do the web marketing . Going around social networks, it is easy to come across all kinds of content, and by now even the least communication-savvy know when a post creates interest and interaction and when it is just ornamental to one’s wall, being immediately shrugged off.
The goal is just that: to make what you publish create interest and curiosity in those who distractedly observe it while sitting on the couch or waiting for the bus.
As for the hairstylist world, it is common to see the classic before-and-after photo. But is it really useful?
No! There are millions of such photos on social media, and looking at them they all look the same; yes, it’s a nice cut, the hairdresser did a miracle, look at that beautiful color! But it doesn’t say anything about who made it, it doesn’t create curiosity in knowing the author, the viewer just enjoys a nice cut, maybe admires it, even envies it, but it ends there.
This was just an example of what web marketing does not mean.
Optimize your social channels
On the net now, social networks proliferate. To begin with, we need to understand the characteristics of each one, from how they work, and crucially, about the type of audience that frequents them. Therefore, the first thing to do is to figure out what the target audience is.
For example, for a ladies salon, in a metropolitan center, the target is almost certainly female, aged 30 and over, with high income and schooling: in this case the channels to keep track of will be facebook, instagram and twitter; for a young hairdresser doing men’s trend cuts, the socials to use will be instagram and tik tok, and so on.
For each of these channels, caution must be taken depending on how they are used, but there are common strategies for all of them that should be adopted in advance.
To optimize means to bring to maximum efficiency, and for a business account it means first of all to eliminate private content, such as photos and posts that have nothing to do with the business: that is why it is advisable not to use your personal profile, but to open one dedicated to your business.
Here you will find all the advice you need! For anything you can turn to professionals!
You need to have a logo, recognizable and always present, to use as a profile picture, and perhaps, in the case of Facebook, use a photo with the entire staff as the cover image.
Avoid any overly personalistic content. Humanizing is fine, it makes the customer feel more comfortable when they come in person, but too much would bore them.
Now that the salon profile is well cleaned up you can start thinking about what to put in it.
Developing an editorial plan
The editorial plan is the communication strategy you want to adopt. As mentioned above, it cannot be only before-and-after photographs. You have to alternate between different types of content:
- popularized content, showing particular techniques, performed firsthand. This will give the person looking at the post a way to become curious and stop and watch, drawing attention to both the technique itself and the person who is performing it.
- Friendly content, such as greetings around holidays and anniversaries
- purely advertising content, the famous before and afters, obviously showing the best work and that required specific skill.
- Attractively present promotions and discounts. This is a key point, to be placed strategically at particular times of the year: Christmas, Valentine’s Day,etc.
It is important, however, to know well how to alternate this type of content.
The importance of constant presence and retention
Regardless of the type of social media one has chosen to use (here the advice is not to want to overdo it. Of the many, it is good to choose only a few, at most three, and work on them following the particular grammar proper to that social) it is important to have a constant presence, for a twofold reason.
The first is that those who are already clients of a particular salon will be inundated with posts from competitors on a daily basis, and it is important that they see ours consistently as well, lest they forget why they chose us.
The second reason is thegoal of marketing: trying to grab new customers. Those who are not already, definitely have their own trusted hairstylist, and it is arduous for them to change it easily. The purpose of marketing for a hairdresser is based simply on this: trying to convince someone to change the salon they trust.
To do this he needs to be convinced, and the best way to do this is to be continually stimulated by interesting posts and advertisements that make him think that the change could bring him benefits, which can be both economic and qualitative.
This is why the mix of content type we talked about above is crucial: alternating between promotions, results and professionalism will definitely have some impact in final conviction.
Consistency then will make the difference, and this is where the editorial plan comes in.
A customer, or potential customer, will expect to see our posts with increasing curiosity after a while.
The advertisements
Another key issue is paid advertisements. These allow us to reach out to those who do not yet know us. The strength of this content is that it is targeted to those who are already interested in a certain type of topic. However, it is not entirely automatic, and the skill of the proposer is to choose well and wisely the parameters to feed to a social network.
The advantage of doing this for in hairdresser marketing is that the listings will target the same type of clientele that already frequents the salon or social profile.
After taking all the steps described above, you will be able, thanks in part to the tools of the platform itself, to trace the special characteristics of the users who already like us.
In setting up the advertisement, it will suffice to indicate these parameters, such as place of reference, age, and interests, to target the advertisement to the type of audience that might be most influenced by it.
Click here to discover all the other articles on our blog.
