3 easy ways to target local salon clients in your town
Times are weird, but look at you, rolling with the punches! Your salon is in a stage of major change, and your clients have been keeping up with the new-new and cheering you on...but maybe you’ve noticed that there are slightly fewer clients coming in as often. You’ve been really hustling to push client referrals and encourage word-of-mouth reputation building, and you’ve got a few good eggs that are always talking you and your salon up to their friends. You sense, however, that you might need to make a change to get things flowing freely again in your salon. If you’re noticing less foot traffic or bookings, I can help you change the tide today!
Keeping new clients coming in all the time doesn’t come easily or naturally, it’s true. Often, referrals come after years of being in business, and steady foot traffic happens more easily when you have a central, accessible location - which is something that not every beauty business owner can afford.
Maybe your salon situation is even less ubiquitous. Maybe you work in a suite, at home, or own a mobile salon. Perhaps your beauty business is new and you don’t have a big reputation around town yet. If you’re in any of these situations, you know that depending on a word-of-mouth from clients can be challenging and take a long time to develop.
But don’t be dismayed! There are plenty of ways to keep your business growing, whatever your salon situation may be!
In this blog post I want to share 3 of my favourite ways to spread the word around town about your salon, as well as some tips to get started right away. You don’t have to wait for clients to come to you -- here are three ways to be proactive and reach out to target your ideal clients in your town, invite them in to check out your salon, and turn them into loyal customers!
Target local clients with magnetic Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are by far the biggest way that I’ve grown my reputation in the beauty industry. Using Facebook Ads, I’ve had thousands of new people find me, and they’ve also been a big part of growing my revenue. Often, I spend thousands on ads per month, and the return on investment is definitely worth the money spent. But even with small amounts invested, you can get big results. In fact, this is what I teach my students in the Facebook Formula For Salons.
Here’s one of my students Aisling in Ireland, who started running ads for her brand new reflexology and massage business:
After running her ads for less than a week, Aisling had spent less than £10 and brought in 11 new clients! Just a few months ago, no one had heard of her business because she just started. So how did she target clients in her town? She put together a magnetic video and caption, a great promotion, and promoted this post on Facebook and Instagram to her perfect clients.
If you’ve never used Facebook Ads before, here’s the 3-step process we use:
Put together an irresistible promotion - something that’s highly profitable for you, and something your clients will get excited about. Add in some scarcity and urgency too (ie. [example]; include a solid end date on the promotion so that clients rush to book before time runs out)
Write a caption that’s bursting with your personality and excitement to grab interest, and make a video starring YOU! Your clients will absolutely want to see you and know more about you as a person before they book.
Finally, turn your promotion, caption and video and into a promoted post - an ad that will show up on Facebook and Instagram to your ideal clients in town. The cool thing is that you can target exactly who will see your posts! You can choose age ranges, zip codes, people who live or work close to your salon.
Even if you have zero social media presence, you can have thousands of potential clients seeing your posts and promotions. And it’s not just about getting your ads seen - if you set them up right, your ads will also convert strangers into clients.
Use local hashtags to share your post with more potential clients
While Facebook Ads are paid, there’s an amazing free way to target people in your town as well: Instagram Hashtags!
The problems that most beauty businesses come up against when using hashtags are:
Problem #1: They’re not using enough of them: Go into the insights for your last few posts. Click on the post, tap “View insights” and scroll down to see how many people found your post through hashtags. Go ahead, take 30 seconds and do it now. You’ll notice that the more hashtags you use, the more views you’ll get through hashtags. Imagine if you could have an extra 1000 people locally see your post every time you share something on Instagram.
It’s definitely worth taking the time to put together a hashtag list. They just need to be the right hashtags, which leads me to the next problem beauty businesses have with hashtags...
And problem #2: They’re using industry focussed hashtags instead of local hashtags. When thinking about the type of hashtags that will bring in the locals, you need to remember to add the ‘local’ part! It’s going to tough getting clients in your area to come in for a facial or haircut if you’re just using general hashtags like #skincare or #balayage.
Instead, take time to research hashtags like #torontobeauty or #nycbloggers or #chicagofashion -- hashtags that potential clients could come across on Instagram, or even actively search for. Of course it feels nice to get recognition from fellow beauty professionals when you use hashtags that just grab eyes from wherever, but what you really want are likes and comments from real potential clients near you, and hashtags are a free way to target them.
Want to know how to find the right hashtags for your town or city? Click here to read my ultimate guide to Instagram hashtags.
Get found on the map with Google My Business
Google My Business is quickly becoming the #1 referral for businesses. 76% of people that use Google Maps or Google My Business visit a business related to their search that very same day! That is a huge opportunity for new clients that you just don’t want to miss out on.
But what is it, and how do you set it up? Well, you probably already have one:
In that case, how many people are finding your salon every day with Google My Business? It’s really easy to find out. When you log into your GMB account, you’ll be able to access your ‘Insights’ from the Home page, either listed as ‘Performance’ or ‘Insights’ (depending on if you’re using your phone or computer). You’ll see a breakdown of how many people have searched for or found your business through a ‘near me’ search in the past 28 days.
I personally have about 200 people finding my business every day and accessing my website through Google. It brings me a lot of website traffic, email subscribers, and paying customers as well. The great thing is, you don’t need to do any “fancy” SEO stuff to your website -- Google makes it super simple with GMB.
Of course, you’ll need to make sure your profile is attracting clients every day. How do you get your business ranked higher in search results when locals search for “hair salons near me” or “estheticians nearby”?
Maximize your GMB profile for hits by making sure all fields are properly filled out. First, select ‘Info’ from the Home page and fill out all relevant information needed about your business, especially the ‘Services’ and ‘Service areas’ sections. Secondly, be sure to link your website. Third, put up fresh and beautiful photos of your salon to entice people to visit!
Reviews are one of the most important ways to improve your ranking and have more people find you. When you search for a local business, do you prefer to choose one that has 3 reviews and a 4-star rating, or the one who has 28 5-star reviews? That’s exactly why reviews are so important - they help potential clients make the decision to choose your salon over others.
Consider putting a system in place whereby you follow up with every client after their service - whether by text, email, or social media - and ask them how their service was. Let them know how much you’d appreciate if they could give their honest feedback in the form of a review. Send them a link to add a review directly, so that they don’t have to put in any extra time to search for where to do so.
You could also sweeten the deal by enticing clients with a freebie or a prize for adding their reviews online! If you’re not getting the reviews you want yet, spend some time thinking about ways that you can incentivize clients to leave reviews of your salon. You do not want to pay for 5-star reviews (which is against Google’s terms), but giving clients a $10 voucher for any reviews they leave could be a great way to get more of them!
In conclusion
Although referrals and word-of-mouth are amazing ways to scale up your business, you can take action right now, even before the referrals and reviews pour in! And hey, beauty pro - you definitely don’t need to stress that you’re not tech-savvy enough to get the attention your salon deserves online. You can literally quadruple your reach and get new sets of eyes checking out your salon today if you take the steps I’ve laid out! The tools you need to maximise your online beauty business’ presence are all available to you and super-easy to set up.
Even if you have a very small mobile business, or you’re working out of your home, you will be able to target your local ideal clients if you follow these steps. Of course, it’s really important to encourage all your loyal clients to leave reviews and keep spreading the word about your amazing service to their friends and coworkers, but you can get yourself to the top of the ‘near me’ salon listings by using all the tools available to you. Magic is about to happen - get ready, and enjoy the process!