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Give Your Marketing A Makeover

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Give Your Marketing A Makeover

For small and boutique salon owners, regular clients are often the heart of the business. From driving sales to influencing by word of mouth, customers are critical for any beauty business.

However, growth is both important and inevitable for a new beauty business. The goal soon becomes maintaining your regular customers while constantly growing the brand.

So, how is a salon owner supposed to make it work?

Turn to salon marketing!

Ensuring outreach and retention happens through targeted marketing and market-focused thinking. Finding the best way to extend that focus is often a major hurdle for business owners. Fortunately, salon owners have plenty of tricks at their disposal.

Here are four of the most impactful marketing techniques for beauty business owners.

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Social Media is Key

In today’s hyper-connected world, a business without a strong social media presence is missing out on growth. Most customers use several forms of social media throughout their day.

For success, make your presence known across those social media channels. 

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Your business must have a Facebook page. It creates a centralized hub of connectivity for your customers. Plus, Facebook Ads help put the salon’s name directly in front of new customers.

Be sure to target your specific audience. Younger customers are more likely to use Instagram and TikTok rather than Facebook. Consider going the extra step and collaborating with local influencers. Doing so allows:

  • A known name to represent your brand and products.
  • The salon to connect with hundreds of potential customers.
  • The public to see the skills of the stylists.
  • An “inside look” into the business, which boosts connections with new and existing customers.

If social media isn’t a forte within the salon, consider hiring a social media manager.

Specialized channels like Instagram and TikTok benefit from a dedicated manager. They film and edit videos and pictures, and they interact with your customers online. 

Think of a social media manager as the public mouthpiece of the salon. Their expertise and marketing knowledge helps ensure the salon has an impactful online presence. 

Focus on Your Customers

Salon marketing is all about showing the business to more and more people. However, that doesn’t mean advertising without a strategy.

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Today’s customers are savvy when it comes to marketing. Daily email notices or stale Facebook ads are now a detriment, not a marketing tool.

Today’s consumers want personalized, relevant communication. After all, nearly 80% of customers desire personally-appropriate marketing from a business.

Some key ways to keep the salon customer-centered include:

  • Send emails or texts after appointments asking for reviews and feedback. This provides an endless list of what your customers expect. 
  • Use birthdays and sign-up days for specialized discounts. This is a perfect way to deliver personalized marketing.
  • Delete your generic email blasts. Instead, ensure the emails contain quality, pertinent information that your customers want.

For your in-store customers, gently encourage them to sign up for email and text alerts. It allows your customers to have to-the-minute information, in addition to advanced knowledge on specials, pricing, and even appointment reminders.

Loyalty Programs Build Retention

Social media marketing ensures the salon reaches the masses. Your stylists keep your customers happy through their expertise.

So, how do you get them to stay happy and continue generating positive word-of-mouth marketing?

Provide them with a loyalty program.

Nearly 85% of all customers choose businesses that offer loyalty programs, and a majority feel that those programs are beneficial.

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Points-based programs or accumulated tier models encourage customers to continue visiting. Meanwhile, referral programs help grow your customer base. And since these referrals come from trusted sources, those referred are more likely to remain customers.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to loyalty programs. For example, reward people for their repeat business by providing a free 10th service.

Or, encourage new product discovery through discounts at checkout. Checkout purchasing is already incentivized. Thus, with discounts applied, the customer is more likely to purchase.

As well, don’t feel locked to one style of loyalty program. A referral system and a points system are perfect in the same store.

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Consider, too, combining services for different tiers of customers. This creates an even more personalized program with a higher emphasis on loyalty. 

Focus on Local Communication and Outreach

A great way to advertise a salon is to simply “be there” when relevant. Specifically, work to tie the salon to local beauty events. 

A prime place to start is to host open house events. For instance:

  • Provide meet-and-greets with stylists for increased customer connection.
  • Host product demonstrations (and give those attending discounts or free items).
  • Hold charitable events at the salon, such as hair donations or toiletry donations for women’s shelters.  

Charity, in particular, is a solid way to build connections with the community. Match donated items or amounts. Sponsor local events, like charity races or community festivals.

As a sponsor for community events, the salon is always at the forefront of the public’s mind. 

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Sponsorship also creates new leads and partnership opportunities, not to mention boosting your salon throughout all available channels at the same time.

Becoming a known name within the community is an excellent way to connect with customers. Highlight the salon’s goodwill through charity and community outreach. Customers love a business that proves it cares about them.

Final Thoughts

Marketing for your salon is all about connecting with the customer. From a strong social media presence to a meaningful loyalty program, customers want the experience to be about them. The best way to achieve that is to cater your marketing to the individual.

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Use personalized emails to deliver birthday discounts. Or, focus on customer history to provide specialized sales.

Sponsor community events to highlight the expertise of your stylists. And always ask for feedback from your customers. Understanding what the customer wants is best heard directly from the source.


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MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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