Get More Facebook Engagement
Are you happy with your Facebook engagement?
Do you measure your Facebook success on how many clicks, likes and shares you get?
Why is Facebook Engagement even important?
Is it actually responsible for bringing you any business?
We’ve put together some simple tips to help with your Facebook Engagement organic reach.
By optimising your Facebook Page and the time you spend on social media, you will get results. You can now build audiences for your advertising using Engagement Audiences. We have a post on that here.
These tips are easy to incorporate when you are scheduling your weekly and monthly social marketing. Get your team on board and check over the following things when posting for optimised Facebook Engagement.
But before we start, if you just want to get down to business, take a look at our Free “Done For You” week of Facebook Posts.
Come on over and access them HERE.
Firstly the 3 big must do’s with salon social.
1.Be consistent.
Being consistent will give you an edge on haphazard posters all day, everyday. Facebook rewards the businesses who use the platform often and regularly.
2. Have a plan
Your fans and followers will look forward to your posts if they have an expectation that you will deliver a mix of interesting content in varying formats.
Try
- Behind the scenes shots.
- Transformation posts.
- Client shares and images.
- Links to your website or landing pages.
- Any video!!
Then analyse your results.
Look at your engagement and see what posts get engagement. Study other businesses and see what works on their pages.
3. Get your team on board with content
Don’t have a haphazard approach to your content. Make sure it is branded and easily recognisable. Your brand should have one voice.
Images must be the best you can do. Take time to get them in a well lit area, even set up a selfie station if you like.
Make sure the team are taking enough images regularly for you to use.
Encourage customer involvement to post and share when they are in the salon. Or incentivise them to post reviews.
Tips to Implement for added Engagement.
Ask a Question
One of the simplest and most effective ways to get people talking is to ask a question. Do you like this style straight or wavy? 
Who likes this new colour look?
Pixie or long, what suits her better?
Here are some more examples to try:
- Specific: What’s your favourite…?
- Tips: How do you…?
- Experiences: What’s your favourite moment from experience/memory…?
- Edgy: Do you think…? (controversial question)
- Direct: Why do you…?
- Events: Who is going/Who attended…?
- Timely: Today is…, so what are you…?
Add it to an image and you are set to go. Just make sure you chime in with responses. This sends your post to the top of the feed again. FB loves engagement, so they will show your post in the feed of your friends.
Post When Your Fans Are Online
Post when your audience is most active. Check your Facebook Insights to find that data. To access it, click the Insights tab and then click Posts in the left menu.
By default, the dashboard shows data for when your fans are online. You can adjust the date range to compare blocks of time so you can see what times of the day your fans are most active.
Try posting at different times to see what works best for you. Late at night when it’s not so active can work well. If the engagement gets up then it will still feature in the morning when more come on line.
You can schedule posts easily on FB.
Use ‘Stop Scrolling’ Images
Use relevant, colourful, and high-quality images. If you want to spice up your photos but don’t have Photoshop-level skills, try free tools like Canva.
Before and after shots are always a great choice and there are many phone apps that take this to the next level. Be on brand and watch the text… Facebook does not like that!
The terms and conditions change frequently so keep up to date if you can. Posting before and afters is one thing, but using them in ads is a different story.
You don’t want too many rejected ads as it is not good for your account and you can get banned very easily!
Photos that evoke an emotion will connect you to your audience and encourage sharing too. Share content and tell stories that pull at people’s interests, emotions, fears, and even their dislikes.
I call it being Extreme, Controversial and True!
Brand loyalty doesn’t come from a product; it comes from a customer’s joy at experiencing a shared sentiment or finding a solution that works that you introduced them to.
Include a CTA
Whats a CTA?
Marketing and advertising lingo for ‘call to action’.
Remember the point of any kind of marketing is that you want your audience to do something and you gotta tell them to do it.
Use a call to action in every post, whether it’s to learn more, book now etc. Link to your website so that you can get your potential customers over there and build audiences for retargeting.
Post Frequency and Type
If your Facebook Engagement is frustrating you after all the work you put in, then it might have something to do with your post frequency. Posting too little… 2-3 times a week won’t help you establish relevance with Facebook’s algorithm and you’ll be fighting for space in your audience’s feed.
On the other hand, posting too often can hurt you if the posts are ignored. Facebook tries to show users the most interesting and relevant content from everyone they follow.
To find a sweet spot, try posting 1-2 times each day at the times your fans are most likely to engage.
Mix it up too. Do theme days where you post Testimonials, Transformations, Tips and Tricks, Product of the week, Staff highlight, motivational posts and funnies.
Try to get a schedule going and do it the week ahead, one for each day. Then you can throw in the other posts that fill that out. Things like industry news, great reviews, salon wins, fashion news etc..
Try Salon Scenes With Live Video
Visual content is much more likely to be shared on Facebook, and this is especially true for video. Facebook Live makes it easy to stream live video to your audience, anytime you like, to leverage that engagement.
Videos uploaded from your phone later can be hugely engaging for your fans. Most people love behind the scenes. So don’t be shy and get the phone out regularly in your salon.
Recycle previous High Engaging Posts
Fans don’t see everything you post on your Facebook page. Occasionally dip into your archives for an engagement spike.
Look at your Facebook posts from a previous week or month that got comments and post that content again, but tweak it so it’s fresh.
Recycling posts allows you to spotlight popular content that some of your fans may never have seen.
Share Valuable Curated Content
Your audience knows when you’re promoting your business, and if you do it too much, they’ll start losing interest. To mix it up a bit, source high-value content relevant to their interests. Be a helpful resource for your fans.
Use a tool like Picmonkey to curate content for specific audiences. It’s free and pulls relevant hand-curated content. Alltop and BuzzSumo are also recommended for finding popular content to share.
Post a Quiz or Poll
A quiz or poll can be a fun. Focus on current developments in your industry or topics that are relevant to your audience. Interactive content can drive substantial engagement.
Use Audience Targeting for Organic Posts
You can target a custom audience for your Facebook posts just like you target a specific audience with your ads.
The upside is your content is more likely to be seen by the people you want to get it in front of. It also costs nothing to set up a custom audience for your organic posts.
Bringing relevant content to your fans is a big help with engagement. Not everyone wants to see bayalages or straightening tips.
If this option isn’t enabled on your page, here’s how to turn it on. Go to your page and click the Settings tab. Under General Settings, you’ll find Audience Optimisation for Posts.
Click Edit and make sure this feature is turned on. This custom audience option will now be available whenever you post a status update to your page.
Encourage Fan Content
Encourage your fans to share photos. Either of them at your salon or using your products or hair related things on your page. Set up a post and get everyone to post a pic of them doing something associated to you or your products and services.
Tag customers in your posts and stories.
This is a fun way to spark engagement and chat with fans. To go one step further, run a contest or offer a giveaway to encourage more shares and comments.
Be careful about this and read the latest terms and conditions to stay within what FB allows. They hate click bait!!
Host Contests and Giveaways
Not many types of posts get as much attention as a giveaway or contests. The best part about giveaways is they could potentially cost very little.
Give away your services, a gift voucher or get your product reps to help you out with a goodie bag.
You can also reduce your costs by partnering with another business giveaway. Your favourite local restaurant or gift shop may be keen to cross promote with you.
Reach out… Once the giveaway is live, it can be promoted on your partner’s social pages as well as your own for extra reach.
Boost Your Posts
A boosted post can help get your best content in front of your target audience and spark some engagement. Extra bonus, the more people engaged, the greater the organic reach.
If you have a blog post or other website content that gets traffic, post that to your Facebook page and boost that post.
You don’t need to throw hundreds of dollars at it; give it a modest boost of $5 and target the people who like your page and their friends.
You can make up target audiences in your area too and boost to them.
This tactic can be especially effective if you’re sharing valuable content with a lot of great tips, like a solution to a styling problem or an answer to a question.
If it gets results it’s worth spending a bit of money on with FB. The fans then go to your website and start engaging with your pages.
Over to You
This list of ideas should help you fill your calendar with a good mix of content types that is likely to promote engagement among your Facebook followers. Keep your Facebook posts short for maximum effect. The ideal character count is about 50 or fewer.
Longer form content does have it’s merit for ads and information posts. Test what works best for your business.
Keep in mind if you want engagement, you need to post and respond to your fans every day.
Schedule, but don’t forget this is a social channel people go to to be entertained.
Don’t automate your social presence. Go for the human connection and provide value, and you’ll see your engagement rise.
Attract customers and Keep them coming back easily!
“Done for you” Tried and Tested Facebook Post Templates.
Click HERE.
Planning and Goal Setting
Do you plan out what the year ahead will look like?
How about the next quarter or even month?
Yes we know it’s busy… busy… busy… but unless we take a good look at what worked and what didn’t we will just be doing more of the same and getting the same results. We all want growth.. right!
Fail to plan… Plan to fail.
So here’s some things to look at…
and then do the Assessment Exercise below to make this year or month, the time that you blow your mind and your goals.
1. How was your time management?
Did you delegate, automate and train your team? Do you find this difficult?
Taking time to talk to your team, find the jobs you need to delegate and getting them involved is necessary for you to be a leader in your business.
Do you need to hire an assistant, manager or even a VA to help with tasks that are bogging you down and stopping you stepping into the leadership role your business needs?
Did you pass over tasks just because you were overwhelmed? Did you choose the right person to delegate to? Have you made yourself vulnerable and lost leadership? Are things being done within your framework?
For these procedures to work well you need to have a system of frameworks that everyone can go by. Do you need to create an updated procedure/operations manual?
Spend time on your salon culture and vision so you come from a crystal clear place and everyone knows what the expectations are. Yes we said spend time… Spending time here will save you in the future even though it may be hard to carve out initially. This is a job leaders need to prioritise.
Take the time to meet with your team too and plan out who does what, where you need to delegate, what can be automated and also what needs to be shelved!
Are your team meetings productive and enjoyable?
Read our blog about productive team meetings HERE.
2. Did you invest in yourself?
Is it time to take a course to learn a new skill that could elevate your salon business?
Are there areas where you lack skills and it’s limiting your business growth?
How aware are you of what’s holding you back and making you play small?
Ask yourself some simple questions and do the Leadership Questionnaire. Do the worksheet in the Resource Library and map out your Leadership qualities.
GET A COPY OF YOUR LEADERSHIP SKILLS QUESTIONNAIRE HERE.
3. How much did you invest in your team and your business?
Isw your branding looking a bit circa 2014… What about your website?
If you have invested in your business, how has it played out with your team and customers.
- Did you do any surveys?
- Do you need to get some feedback?
- What do the numbers say?
- How were your team appraisals?
4. Learn something new but not really implement it?
Team building workshop, productivity course, customer service and sales training… all sitting waiting for your attention?
Taking courses and workshops sets you up for growth, as do reading books or attending masterminds but… implementation is the key. All that knowledge stuck in your head is useless.
But this is where it gets hard. How do you find time to set out that new strategy or business idea? Do you have a Salon Owner Strategy Session each week? This would be a great start.
5. Is there balance between you working on and in your business?
Do you focus on the numbers in your business regularly?
For example
- Do you know how many new clients came in the door?
- How much did they spend and did they rebook?
- What marketing efforts did they come from?
- How about productivity and utilisation?
- Did your team grow their sales skills and customer retention?
6. Do you have products and services your customer wants to buy?
How long has it been since you looked at your services and packages?
Have you surveyed your customers about what they want? Is your business customer-centric?
Have you created a business that suits you and what you want to create or have you ignited the entrepreneur in you and thought about providing services that a customer wants to buy.
Moving into leadership and thinking like a business owner is crucial for growth and success
So many hair stylists/therapists turned business owners make the mistake of thinking like a stylist or therapist rather than a business owner. It’s the biggest reason salons and spas fail to grow and eventually shrink and die. You are basically just owning a job!
7. Are you measuring your goals?
How do you goal set and do you achieve them consistently? Do you regularly assess where you are performing well and what needs attention?
We recommend a monthly revisit is the minimum for keeping on track when dealing with business goals.
We highly recommend breaking your working cycle into 12 weekly or 90 day blocks.
Ask yourself these questions and apply to which time frame you are working on.. year, quarter, month or week.
- What worked this year, quarter, month and what didn’t?
- Who and what am I grateful for this…?
- What do I want to be happy for this time next…?
- Can I serve better next…, if yes who?
Start with these simple points and get them written down.
Remember the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of the questions you ask yourself.
So be brave and ask the questions that will help you get to where you want to go. Take some time over this and bring INTENTION to your planning and goal setting. Start with where you want to be and work backwards.
Your turn…
Ok so now you have answered these questions and have a grounding about what went on… and how you want the next period to look.
Assessment Exercise.
Get a piece of paper and do this simple task. Write down all your wins from last year, quarter or month. Why it was a win and what you learnt from that win.
Then look at the losses or things that didn’t really go as planned or never made it of the to do list. Why was that a loss and what did you learn from that?
Don’t judge yourself here… just give yourself space and get it down on paper. This is an amazing exercise to do to help you break through the clutter and reward yourself, plus learn more about how you operate.
The quality of your life is directly affected by the quality of questions you ask yourself.
You can do this for all aspects of your life.
Here’s some suggestions.
Business, family and home life, health and wellness, community and contribution. Do each category on a new page.
Then burn it… haha… no seriously, put that baby to rest.
The next year, quarter or month is all about starting with a clean slate, on a new page with a fresh mindset.
Do this exercise with your team. It’s a great way to work through how everyone perceived wins and misses in your business.
Next… look forward.
Whatever time frame you are working with, break your next goals down into projects and tasks. Reverse engineer what you want for yourself and your business.
Get your tool of choice and get the time blocked out now. Schedule family, business and time for yourself.
Look at these things when goal setting.
- Are you someone who underestimates or over estimates how long things take?
- Do you delegate or abdicate?
- Will your systems support your ideas?
- How do you perceive challenges?
- Are you stretching or being comfortable?
- What is the overall value of the goal?
Find out how your mind works and step up to be the CEO of your life.
Get your Free Leadership Guide HERE.
A guide to help you create a year of successful business decisions.
Hiring and Firing Staff
Hiring and firing staff is the job we hear most salon owners struggle with.
It’s understandable, you are affecting peoples lives but… it’s a thing you must get right for success. Hiring and firing is a crucial task for a business owner so everyone can thrive and even though it may seem like it, it’s not personal.
Develop your hiring skills and learn to identify an under performer quickly, so they can be on their way to find something or somewhere that suits them better.
Let’s look at some of the things a wrong hire can do for your business
- Undermine your ethics.
- Create toxic energy within the team.
- Lower the standards.
- Create a culture of accepting underperformance.
- Drive away customers.
- Breakdown trust.
- Drive away performing team members.
- Break systems and procedures.
- Drain resources.
- Cost you time and money.
Basically ruin everything you have worked on to create success. It can be a challenging time identifying and removing the toxic elements, retaining your respect and trust plus put a team back on the right track.
Read our blog about Hiring and Onboarding new team members here.
Defining your culture and values plus having a vision will assist you in the hiring phase. Read the Salon Vision Blog here.
Do you have a team member causing your salon to be unbalanced?
Whether a new hire is not working out or a longstanding team member has shifted in performance you need to deal with this head on
If they have not taken up the challenge to perform better despite your encouragement you may decide that they are just not hungry enough for whats on offer.
We use 3 tests to decide what the problem is.
- Are they in the wrong seat on the bus?
- Are they on the wrong bus?
- Are they even in the right vehicle?
Let’s unpack this a little
Wrong Seat.
Not everyone wants to be a balayage queen, stock controller, team trainer or mens cutter.
Have you given opportunities to your team because you need help with tasks but they just aren’t suited to them?
They might never be a great trainer of the juniors but are excellent at growing and developing a loyal client base. They might love the admin roles but hate doing colour.
It’s up to you to make sure all your team have opportunities to grow in their own lane and reach heights in areas designed to suit them and which suits your business model. As the leader it’s your job to identify their strengths and develop their talents.
But initially the wrong seat on the bus can cause a lot of distress and disharmony. Work with this team member to get them in the right seat. If your business does not have a seat for them though, you need to reframe their expectations, restructure if they are valuable enough to keep and get them in a seat that works for everyone.
GET YOUR COPY OF THE LEADERSHIP SKILLS TOOL HERE.
Wrong Bus.
Your salon and business framework will not suit everyone.
The procedures are to strict or casual. Your leadership style to loose or controlling. The products not green enough or the back room too formal.
Sharing values and defining a culture that represents your individual salon is important so you get the right people on the bus. We talk about this important hiring detail here.
Interviewing well will hopefully avoid taking someone on who does not share your culture. Work through an exercise on creating a salon vision here.
Wrong Vehicle.
It’s a common thing. Hair dressing is just not for everyone and despite repeated attempts to ‘try’ and a desire to want it, it’s impossible to get someone to perform who just is not motivated and ambitious enough.
They may have come into the hairdressing world for a thousand reasons but the reality is it’s tough work, suited to a special few who can handle the public, creative disciplines, team work and energy required.
It’s a skill to recognise this within someone and the sooner you can relieve them from your business the better.
You can’t want it for them more than they want it for themselves.
This is one of the best things I learnt after trying to teach a longstanding team member to be more ambitious and try to motivate them. However, it was to the detriment of my business and myself.
It just can’t be that way. Use this statement to check in with yourself and see if your efforts to motivate and inspire are wasted. ‘
Who wants this… me or them?
All in or All out!
In an ideal world the person who is no longer a good fit will decide themselves to move on and this can be encouraged by you in a number of ways. You don’t want this phase to drag on as it can be incredibly detrimental.
However, if you follow these processes from day 1 it will be obvious when things are not working out.
Performance Review Indicators.
Set targets and performance goals in a variety of areas so you have measurable, documented evidence to illustrate your concerns.
Set time frames, use graphs, ratings, percentages, feedback. Data is clear and doesn’t lie and it makes it less personal.
Grade the key performance areas that you rate within your business. Give them a rating and written feedback plus a goal to move towards for the next meeting. With struggling staff do this weekly or even daily.
In my salon we have goals for the first 3 months of a new trainees employ that are measured differently from a senior being employed with a clientele. Established seniors have varying targets and performance indicators depending on their status. They are all individual and break away from ‘all suits all’ mentality. When it comes to needing to monitor performance it is very easy to then identify areas of consistent poor performance.
Everything is clear, they can see areas of poor performance and if there is no improvement or a continued slide then it’s pretty obvious to both parties that this is the wrong bus or even the wrong vehicle. The conversation is easy to begin and lets them talk to you about why they think there is an issue.
If it’s a case of the wrong seat you will see areas of excellent performance. Work this through together.
Team Goal Setting Analysis.
I start each new team member with the task of goal setting. Helping them break down priorities over a time frame and how they are going to achieve these goals.
Have a list of questions that they answer for you about their goals. What they want to achieve, where they see themselves and how you can help get them there. Dig deeper than just target based achievements. Who do they want to become within your business, what are their big bold dreams?
If they are not achieving these goals it can easily highlight issues and let them see for themselves the problems.
Salon Values and Culture Alignment.
This is a first stage interview task but if you have not started here introduce it as soon as possible.
Get them to write down their personal and work values and what behaviours they will need to demonstrate to show these values.
Are they aligned with your business?
Are they currently behaving in a way that demonstrates these values within your culture?
If for example they say ‘Loyalty’ is a value and they are back chatting and complaining about you or other team members then they are just paying lip service to something they think you want to hear.
Is ‘Loyalty’ one of your culture values?
Be smart here and see what comes up… what aligns and where they are trying to pull the wool over your eyes or are in denial themselves.
If you identify areas of non alignment and your values are out of sync with this team member then you are not on the same page and they are not a good fit.
In an interview this is an easy candidate to put aside. With a current under performing team member it highlights, obviously, where this is not working for you both and that it’s time to move on.
Your Business relies on you making successful decisions with hiring and firing.
Your Business relies on you making successful decisions with hiring and firing.That does not mean that you will never make mistakes… it’s part of the course for every business owner to learn through these situations. Stop, regroup and move through it. Lean into it and let it make you stronger.
Getting the right team, aligned with a culture that helps everyone thrive is the key to happy team and invested customers.
If you want more help with Goal Setting, Performance Analysis lets chat over an introduction strategy session.
GET YOUR FREE LEADERSHIP SKILLS TOOL FROM THE salon LEADERSHIP LIBRARY HERE.
plus get access to our interview questions Cheat Sheet.
How to Increase Salon Sales and Profits
Want a profitable salon business?
What are you offering your customers to increase salon sales and profits?
That’s easy you say… hairstyles, colours, shampoo,
but…
that’s where this post gets interesting.
We are not talking about what services you have. We want to put attention on how you offer your services to increase your Salon sales and profits.
How you put together an offer is the difference between an ad campaigns success and failure.
Are you maximising your existing clients and optimising new customer opportunities to increase salon sales?
Lots of business owners make the mistake of putting out offers that they think their customers want. $5 off here and a free treatment there… not really what the customer cares about.
You really need to spend some time crafting offers that will get your customers or potential customers attention. Sell them what they want and give them what they need.
In business terms the benefits of an offer that brings in the customers is like a golden egg.
Staff utilisation is one of the key components to a successful business. You need to put together offers and sell them to your customers to make the most of the work hours you have available
Every hour of downtime is dead time and that costs your business.
Fill dead time by having offers that bring in more customers and promote offers to your existing customers. They will return more frequently, add-on and use more services and purchase extra take-home products.
So let’s dive into ‘Offer Strategies’
Think about how you currently offer your services and what you do to increase salon sales and profits.
- Who do you direct offers too?
- How do you structure offers to reach the ideal new customers?
- Do you offer bonuses or discounts?
- What methods do you use to convey offers to new and existing customers?
- Do you bundle services?
- How do you encourage your team to utilise offers for their sales?
Success is getting the right offer in front of the right people at the right time
Start with this exercise.
Begin with one service that you want to use for an offer.
Write it down.
Decide who this offer is for.
Give it a price.
Decide what discount you wanting to run or what bonus you want to add. Be generous here. $5 off a service over $100 won’t excite anybody.
If your offer is aimed at attracting new customers, don’t worry too much about giving your services away too cheaply. Instead, think about what they will be worth to your salon over their lifetime with return visits. Run some numbers to reassure you. What is your average customer spend for the year? How long does a customer stay with your business?
When you see what a potential new customer is worth, giving an incentive discount for their first visit is a no-brainer!
Of course, you need to cover costs and not cheapen your brand. However, this introduction offer method is used widely within many business structures to encourage the customer in the door so you can wow them.
Used wisely this is an excellent technique. Please note we are not talking Groupon/dollar deals here! These can destroy businesses and will only attract price shoppers who will never value your work or professionalism.
Bonus ‘Add-Ons’ is another technique. What would add value to the service your customers are already having?
A free repair treatment after a colour service, eyelashes with brows, free blow dry a week after a colour service. Product discounts that enhance the service they have spent money on.
More Offer Ideas
How about a bundle. Think what services and products you could bundle together.
What would your customer naturally want to compliment their service? Introduce a service that will enhance whatever they already have.
Have you considered memberships for your salon? This is the ultimate example of bundle services. Give discounts for contracting to a set amount of services each month.
On a small scale, these can just be for regular blow dries or full memberships with all services included.
Bundling services together in a membership for a monthly fee is a way to ensure sales and profits and also secure the customer to the salon.
Ideas to increase sales of an offer
Add urgency or scarcity. Make the offer for a limited time or for an X amount of customers.
Have a countdown timer in the email or use an image in the post that connects with the mindset of something running out.
Think about ways to help them take action now. Why should they care, why do it now!
Add a Social cause if it fits in with your branding.
We will put $2 for every sale of this thing towards helping a cause we follow.
Reciprocity creates a connection. Give and they give back.
Social Proof is a real trigger for building trust. Use testimonials. A video is perfect for this.
Be the Authority. Create a specialist culture in your branding and people will automatically trust you more.
Layer your offers.
New Customers To Kylie – new Stylist – Who
Cut + Colour + Blowdry – Bundle
2 extra blow drys over the next 3 weeks – Bonus
$249 – Price
This week only – Urgency
$4 for each service goes to Breast Cancer Hospice – Social Cause
Look at this incredible colour she did on a customer who took up the package yesterday – Social Proof
In Summary
The offer is not… We have great…. Come to us… We are amazing…
The offer is payment structure, why now? what cause if any, bonuses and bundles?
Think of different ways you can sell and promote the same services and products.
Offers and messaging should be appropriate for different stages of the customer journey, i.e. No Problem awareness, Problem aware, Solution aware, Your brand aware.
Speak appropriately to who the offer is aimed at and be specific.
Testing is the next most crucial stage of making an offer.
Test price, bundle and bonuses. You will find your sweet spot and if you know your customer, it should not take too long. Spend the week asking a few customers and see how they react to a few offer suggestions. Especially bundles and bonuses.
After talking to some of our customers, they said they would prefer discounts off products rather than extra services. Others wanted bundles of their favourite services so they could afford to come more regularly.
Having the juniors or new stylists perform the easier services like treatments and blowdries certainly keeps the salon busy and cements the customer loyalty.
Getting your team on board is crucial as they are the ones in the position to upsell and book the offers in.
Read our Team Meeting Guide to help you engage your team. Also, the guide to help your team Sell and Retain Customers.
Next, you need to advertise and promote your offer.
This is where your copy, image, message, targeting and delivery come into play.
This blog breaks all this down… and then some. It is a free comprehensive guide to advertising and promoting your business.
Don’t Fail. 5 Steps to Advertising and Promoting Your Business
Where and how you advertise and promote your offer is a decision that needs to be well thought out. Do you want to direct traffic to your website? Is using Facebook or Instagram enough? How’re your email skills? Have you nurtured your customers with email or built an audience of new customers to market to? Will hand-delivered flyers get the results you want?
All these techniques have their merits and your decisions will be based on who you want to reach and what the offer is.
Is your salon profitable? Check out the Profitability Calculator and see how your business measures up!
Click HERE for your Free Resource.
Facebook Page ‘How To’ Tips
Do you want to get better results with your Facebook Page?
Optimise your Business Facebook Page.
Check out these videos of Facebook How To’s.
Follow along and optimise your Facebook page.
Turn those ‘Likes’ into bookings and get your viewers to call, message and book at your salon. These videos are concentrating on optimising your page for offers, services, slideshows and clickable cover images.
How to Make your Cover Photo Clickable.
Your cover photo is your biggest real estate on Facebook. Make the most of it by crafting an image that has a CTA and then add links in the description. You can now also have a cover image video. Use that to maximum benefit to engaging your viewer. See how here.
How To Create A Slideshow Ad or Post
Small slideshow videos like this are easy to make and best of all can be used to create an engagement audience of people who watched it, who you can then retarget to. They can be used again and again and are a perfect way to show before and afters, styles in progression and team images.
How to Set up Tabs On Your Page.
These tabs should be filled out and used to the maximum benefit to educate and engage your viewers. They will stay around longer if you keep them interested.
If you just want to get down to business with some
Free “Done For You” Facebook Posts,
How to Set Up an Offer
These are a great way to put an offer out to your viewers.
How to add a Service
These create a neat little icon and description that you can tag in posts and displays on your page.
How to invite people to like your page
Invite likers of your posts and ads to like your page with this easy tip.
How to create a Message Post
Get you followers and customers to message your page when you make an offer or request them to do something.
Once you have your page optimised, you are on the way to engaging more with your fans.
There are many positive things you can do with Facebook that will grow your salon’s customers. It is the cheapest and easiest way to get your name, branding and work out to the world!
We specialise in helping salon owners achieve success with their Facebook presence so that they attract the right customers and keep them coming back… raving fans that recommend their friends.
Customer Attraction and Retention Tips Using Facebook.
Page Tips for MORE Engagement.
8 Easy Steps to Use Facebook to Grow Your Salon Business
Want to connect with local customers on Facebook?
Have you considered targeting them with Facebook ads?
Facebook ads offer a quick, easy and cost-effective way to reach local customers. Discover how to get your business in front of local customers using Facebook ads.
Once you’ve had a chance to play around with Facebook ads, you’ll see that they can be an incredibly powerful tool for your salon because there’s no better way to promote your local businesses than using Facebook ads.
You can…
- advertise on a small budget
- target your ideal customer and your existing customers
- turn campaigns on and off
- promote offers quickly
There’s also the social aspect.
Your customers can help promote your business to their family and friends on Facebook, and we all know how effective word of mouth is.
Better still, running Facebook ads for a local business is also fairly easy.
Why?
Because you know exactly how to target your audience and you know where they live.
Facebook even recently created an entire objective for local businesses.
Before we get start, if you simply want to super charge your week and save time, get a week of free Facebook posts in a “Done For You ” PDF.
Access it Here
#1: Choose Your Ad Type
You can target any type of Facebook ad to a local audience.
Go to ads manager or power editor and select the objective for your ad. The objective determines the type of ad you’re going to run. What you choose depends on your goals, and of course, what you’re actually promoting.
Facebook loves to change just when we get used to it so here’s some recent UPDATES.
Some objectives have now been moved into similar objectives. These changes don’t affect any existing campaigns you’re running.
Local Awareness
Local AwarenessYou can now use the reach objective to promote your business locally. If you previously used local awareness to promote your business, you’ll use reach instead.
Offers
You can now use the traffic and conversions objectives to create an offer. If you previously used engagement to create an offer, you’ll use these objectives instead.
You can now choose new and simpler advertising objectives that better reflect how you plan, buy and measure your campaigns.
Simpler names for objectives
Objectives now have simpler names to help you choose the best objective for your business goal:
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Increase brand awareness → Brand awareness
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Reach people near your business → Reach
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Send people to a destination on or off Facebook → Traffic (website clicks)
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Get video views → Video views
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Collect leads for your business → Lead generation
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Get people to claim your offer → Engagement (offer claims)
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Promote your Page → Engagement (page likes)
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Boost your posts → Engagement (post engagement)
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Raise attendance at your event → Engagement (event responses)
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Increase conversions on your website → Conversions (website conversions)
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Get people to visit your store → Store visits
New objectives
Objectives with the same business goals are now combined:
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Traffic: Send more people to your website or app.
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Conversions: Drive an action on your website. This objective combines the website conversions and app engagement objectives.
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Engagement: Get more people to engage with your business on Facebook. This objective includes the post engagement, page likes, event responses and offer claims objectives.
Boost Post – will serve up your ad with an engagement objective to more of your fans or a targeted audience you have already saved. You can do this from a post on your page or choose Engagement as a campaign objective.
Reach and Brand Awareness – targets people in your area. You can choose one or multiple destinations. The Reach objective lets you maximise the number of people who see your ads and how frequently they can be seen. If you’re looking to build brand awareness the Reach objective lets you maximise the number of impressions your ads receive.
#2: Set Up Location Targeting
Select the location you want to target. If you want to change the location, drag the circle around the map or enter an address in the box below it. You can also adjust the radius you wish to target using the Radius drop-down menu in the bottom-right corner of the map.
#3: Refine Location Targeting
#3: Refine Location TargetingHaving the ability to target ads directly to customers according to their precise location is an invaluable tool for marketers.
But it’s not quite enough. You need to look beyond location targeting.
This should be enough to separate basic customer types, and it will help prevent, say, a men’s barber shop from displaying an ad to local ladies. Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes.
This applies whether you’re boosting a post, promoting your page, or trying to send people to your website. However, it’s far less effective if you operate in a smaller target market.
#4 Use Boost Post Button
Do you post status updates to a Facebook page for your business?
You can boost a post for as little as $3
Boost anything that would be interesting to your audience!
Post before and after photos of your clients. Post a testimonial from a customer… the possibilities are endless.
Boosting a post is a good way to get organic traffic to the post and see the engagement before you use that post in an ad campaign. It’s a relatively cheap way to do some testing.
Post something interesting on your Facebook page and give it a boost to see how your community reacts.
#5 Call Out Your Audience in the Ad or Post Copy
If you’re scrolling through your newsfeed, you’re most likely to stop and read something that’s written specifically for you.
You’re much more likely to notice an ad that has the name of the city/town where you live within the copy. The ad seems more relevant to you.
When you’re running ads to potential customers, use the name of the city/town in your ad! It adds specificity and will catch your target market’s attention.
#6 Create An Event
Creating and running ads to a Facebook event is great way to get people to visit your salon/spa.
Hold special events to teach people hairstyle/makeup, promote a new product or celebrate a new service.
The best part about events is that once people start to mark that they are interested or going, it will show in their friends’ newsfeeds.
PLUS… events are GREAT for word of mouth.
When holding an event, give people a reason to attend! Offer discounts or free food and giveaways, create a theme, make it a party!
#7 Offer A Discount
A great way to catch your potential customers attention is to run a free promotion or discount.
Try a value add on that will attract their attention like… ‘Bring a friend for free’, ‘$10 Gift Voucher for new customers’, ‘Get partial foils for free with a colour and style on Tuesdays’.
Even if the service is a loss leader or just covers the cost, you need to think about the life time value of that customer. Think seriously about what are you willing to give away for free or at a discount in order to acquire a customer?
People who are looking for a new stylist or salon will absolutely respond to the offer because it’s positioned as a promotion.
#8 Remember to Create Content That Educates Your Ideal Customer.
Creating posts that appeal to your ideal customers is ALWAYS a great way to catch their attention.
You could write a blog for your website and link to it, use Facebook instant articles, lead ads, notes, and carousels.
There is also Facebook Live, slideshows, and videos. All the tools on earth to get attention, engagement and drive traffic to your website.
Conclusion
There are many types of posts and ads that can be used on Facebook, whether you are into being techy or not.
Just getting in front of your customers, being interesting and getting their attention is the beginning. Building relationships with potential customers is the name of this social media game and with Facebook you have an incredible tool to be relevant and specific with your ideal customer.
Use this check list every time you post or write an ad. Did you?
- Get specific with your targeting.
- Choose the right type of post/ad.
- Use the name of the city/town in the post?
- Give them a reason to take action now with an offer?
- Give them a reason to engage with you with content?
- Educate, entertain, demonstrate or inform?
