How did you decide what marketing to do?
Discussion
I am having a discussion on another forum about this and thought I'd 'cross post' the subject here. It revolves around a woman who has just bought a beauty salon and who is wondering what to do to grow her business. There's a wide range of 'suggestions' but I thought it was quite a good subject to post here and applicable to every new/growing business.
My Fiancee owns a Hair & Beauty salon and I do all of the marketing so it's something that I'm very familiar with.
The big ones for a salon are Facebook / Instagram / Social media, a decent website which is SEO optimised for your digital stuff.
But the biggest one is word-of-mouth, referrals etc, Hair & Beauty is a quiet personal thing to a lot of people and no matter how flashy your marketing, if you're offering bad services or impersonal service you won't get repeat custom.
If someone gets a great treatment they will tell (show off) to all of their friends, which is a much warmer lead than advertising on the back of busses etc.
The big ones for a salon are Facebook / Instagram / Social media, a decent website which is SEO optimised for your digital stuff.
But the biggest one is word-of-mouth, referrals etc, Hair & Beauty is a quiet personal thing to a lot of people and no matter how flashy your marketing, if you're offering bad services or impersonal service you won't get repeat custom.
If someone gets a great treatment they will tell (show off) to all of their friends, which is a much warmer lead than advertising on the back of busses etc.
Akiraprise said:
The big ones for a salon are Facebook / Instagram / Social media, a decent website which is SEO optimised for your digital stuff.
^This, first and foremost. Create a Facebook business page for a kick off, it is totally free and the bare minimum you need these days for the sort of business in the OP.You can then choose to start advertising and FB ads can be targeted, very easily, to catch the right demographic and geographic (i.e local in the case of the OP) location(s). The right content, with just a few quid thrown at it - even just £10 to £15 - can generate decent publicity.
The other free thing is to create a Google "my business" page, with a map location listing.
The other thing, for local B2C businesses is to find out what free papers or publications (e.g. parish or village magazines) are circulating. These can sometimes be worth a go, but they will be more expensive than the above and will only work well in conjunction with a decent website and Facebook presence IMHO.
Every year we say we will write a marketing plan and set a budget. Then we always seem to be busy and no plan is written and we decide what marketing to by gut feeling and what shows sales staff mention as being good to exhibiting at.
We do always spend on SEO on an ongoing basis.
We have tried employing a marketing consultant but it didn't seems to free up any time and I felt the money we spent on them was better spent on marketing.
We do always spend on SEO on an ongoing basis.
We have tried employing a marketing consultant but it didn't seems to free up any time and I felt the money we spent on them was better spent on marketing.
Sunnyone said:
We have tried employing a marketing consultant but it didn't seems to free up any time and I felt the money we spent on them was better spent on marketing.
Very good point - something we have experience of.At the end of the day, a business owner ought to know their business, product and market better than any external consultant. That's not to say all marketing consultants are 'bad' but they can only help and direct you and, without guidance, may make foolish assumptions about your business and its targets. And they do take a fair bit of managing and sometimes, on a limited budget, it's easier to DIY.
I own a few premises which are occupied by hair&beauty people including one for gents only.
They all seem to do very well from a very similar MO. There MAY be an element of passing and local user trade, but every one of them is like a self-contained community of people who are in communication via one social media platform or another - predominantly Facebook. At one level they are real life friends who associate outwith the business. And the business owner just happens to be the hairdresser etc of the group who all the group use as a kind of semi-social activity.
The gents barber is a full-time gang hut. Mates and mates of mates. Never empty and usually pretty busy. I'd say way more than 50% of his biz comes from that
'community' thing. Almost entirely linked by social media, and the rest of it is word-of-mouth.
But another one is a HUGE community and her business has overspilled from its already pretty large premises into another premises and has recently taken over most of the rooms in a business centre I own with a different beauty-type function in each room. AFAIK her only 'marketing' is the continual Facebook site. Actually she's the Scottish girl who was briefly on the last series of The Apprentice. Didn't acquit herself very well and was first to get 'fired'. But she's an able girl alright, and has grown this 'community' into a really quite large and successful operation. There are absolutely loads of them. Pretty well a production line stereotype of likeminded females (it's 100% female). But that's how its marketed theses days. If you can call it marketing. Socialising on Facebook + word of mouth.
Of course there's still the essential element of providing a quality service. That's crucial and key. Because if you've not got that no amount of social activity is going to keep even your friends interested in using you.
The thing these and others have in common is that they aren't doing any other form of marketing at all, including even having websites.
They all seem to do very well from a very similar MO. There MAY be an element of passing and local user trade, but every one of them is like a self-contained community of people who are in communication via one social media platform or another - predominantly Facebook. At one level they are real life friends who associate outwith the business. And the business owner just happens to be the hairdresser etc of the group who all the group use as a kind of semi-social activity.
The gents barber is a full-time gang hut. Mates and mates of mates. Never empty and usually pretty busy. I'd say way more than 50% of his biz comes from that
'community' thing. Almost entirely linked by social media, and the rest of it is word-of-mouth.
But another one is a HUGE community and her business has overspilled from its already pretty large premises into another premises and has recently taken over most of the rooms in a business centre I own with a different beauty-type function in each room. AFAIK her only 'marketing' is the continual Facebook site. Actually she's the Scottish girl who was briefly on the last series of The Apprentice. Didn't acquit herself very well and was first to get 'fired'. But she's an able girl alright, and has grown this 'community' into a really quite large and successful operation. There are absolutely loads of them. Pretty well a production line stereotype of likeminded females (it's 100% female). But that's how its marketed theses days. If you can call it marketing. Socialising on Facebook + word of mouth.
Of course there's still the essential element of providing a quality service. That's crucial and key. Because if you've not got that no amount of social activity is going to keep even your friends interested in using you.
The thing these and others have in common is that they aren't doing any other form of marketing at all, including even having websites.
Edited by drainbrain on Thursday 23 February 15:14
drainbrain said:
The thing these and others have in common is that they aren't doing any other form of marketing at all, including even having websites.
One thing that all of these businesses could use is a very focused, local Google ad words campaign. Takes some setting up and, of course, they'd need a website too, but I still think they could benefit from it.For these types of businesses, websites are more about style than content and having somewhere to park the very basic business info:
- location
- contact details
- opening hours
- products & services
I had a meeting with the main agent that looks after the Towie / Geordie Shore people on Friday, I was cynical and reluctant but one of our revenue share clients wants to use a reality person.
What I was shown was a demo company set up on shopify (shopify because of its elastic servers) that is live and trading and linked to google analytics, we had access to the site back end and the timetable of the reality insta / FB / tweets strategy.
The products range was 3 items on a template shopify site and with no promotion let's say it did £750 a day when promoted for 2/3 days after sales grow by over 1000% which deigns on the star and number of promotions.
Enough to say I have a meeting on Wednesday with a cosmetics maker of shaving rash cream (men and women) to rebrand it, throw up a shopify template with good pictures and "risk" a trial.
The agency are so experienced now they know what will work and with which "star" and they are very honest.
I'll update how it goes ...
What I was shown was a demo company set up on shopify (shopify because of its elastic servers) that is live and trading and linked to google analytics, we had access to the site back end and the timetable of the reality insta / FB / tweets strategy.
The products range was 3 items on a template shopify site and with no promotion let's say it did £750 a day when promoted for 2/3 days after sales grow by over 1000% which deigns on the star and number of promotions.
Enough to say I have a meeting on Wednesday with a cosmetics maker of shaving rash cream (men and women) to rebrand it, throw up a shopify template with good pictures and "risk" a trial.
The agency are so experienced now they know what will work and with which "star" and they are very honest.
I'll update how it goes ...
We help four main categories of business to effectively and successfully promote their businesses (Retail, Leisure, Automotive and Education) Many of our incoming enquiries are from businesses outside of these four and when we respectfully decline to work with them they often ask what we would recommend for their business. We suggest "have a look at what your market leader does and copy that" All top brands have become top brands by investing their marketing budgets wisely and doing test campaigns in specific geographical areas to monitor the effectiveness of that specific media. If it works they will roll it out throughout the country, if it doesn't work they don't make the mistake again. Not every business can afford TV but all leading brands will use a good media mix, pick and choose which ones fit within the budget you are willing to invest in.
the prescotts said:
We suggest "have a look at what your market leader does and copy that"
good advice...the only thing I would add is look at market leaders across other sectors as well - sometimes a sector can become very hide-bound in how they market - assuming that because no-one else does xyz it won't work - sometimes bringing strengths and approaches from one market to another can be very beneficial...
Edited by akirk on Tuesday 28th February 14:58
I'm setting out on the path of knowing what to spend and where. Last year I quit work and setup my business, basically last year was security contracting but in the background I developed a set of boilerplate ISO27001 policies to sell as a pack at a bloody good price. Basically the product isn't just a set of basic policies, they use absolute best practice (hate that term) which can be tailored.
Looking to get them advertised I have an SEO optimised site but not paid SEO yet as the product only just was completed. I produce blog posts, white papers and get these onto targeted sites such as linkedin.
Those bits I can do myself but the next step is paying for advertising, about to talk to PH about sponsoring a forum and getting adverts into the banner system. Setting up an Amazon store to handle transactions and supply automatically.
Looking to get them advertised I have an SEO optimised site but not paid SEO yet as the product only just was completed. I produce blog posts, white papers and get these onto targeted sites such as linkedin.
Those bits I can do myself but the next step is paying for advertising, about to talk to PH about sponsoring a forum and getting adverts into the banner system. Setting up an Amazon store to handle transactions and supply automatically.
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