Salon Marketing Website » salon content website

Content Based Salon Website… Why It Will Make You More Money!

David Glendinning — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:46:40 +0000

First up… what’s a content based salon website? Basically, it’s a website that is full of content related to your particular theme/niche. Not just any content… but content that is valuable to the reader.

Let’s look at the typical Salon website. It usually has something about the Salon, a list of services offered and maybe a little about the features of each service. By features, I mean something like this (I’ve crossed out the Salon name so as to not embarrass them)…

“xxxx Salon is a unique salon specialising in cutting edge Hairdressing & Hair Removal techniques & technology.

We utilise only the very best products, proven techniques and technologies. An appointment at our salon will be quality time spent with a hair or beauty professional offering you the highest quality products and intelligent advice to ensure you achieve your objectives.

Our aim is to provide you with a truly special service to ensure you feel 100% satisfied. Our creative, experienced hair stylists and therapists are provided with constant training, to keep up to date with the latest trends & styles.

We understand that providing you with personalised communication is the key to your satisfaction. We guarantee that you will be absolutely delighted with our services & products. This is the xxxx experience.”

That’s taken direct from a Salon services page. What do you think… pretty much the same as everyone else and full of features and “mindless dribble”.

Makes you really want to turn up and try out what that Salon has!

Now, is that a “content” based salon website? Probably not!

To further expand the meaning of a content website… it’s one that is continually added to with relevant content. A content website “grows” over time, with more and more content.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say your Salon does Brazilian Waxing… Now, from the same website as before, here is what they say about their Brazilian waxing service…

“Our Salon do hundreds of brazilian treatments a week, and the therapists will ensure that the customer is totally at ease and comfortable throughout the session. Any questions that the client may have can be addressed during the treatment as they talk the client through the process.”

Are you starting to see my point? Is that interesting? Most Salon website content is rubbish!

Let me show you an alternative. I’m not going to include the whole article here, just give you a link to read it for yourself. The article is titled “Brazilian Waxing Exposed: Let ‘Er Rip’” Just click on the title to check it out.

I must admit… I’d expect that this particular article has been written by a journalist so it’s probably not something you could do yourself straight away. But what about “5 most common questions asked about a Brazilian Wax”… I bet you could write something about that. What about “Brazilian Wax after care”… Again… I bet you could write that!

If you went down that path… continually writing relevant content… do you think your website would start to be a little more interesting?

It most definitely would!

And it would start to appeal to your website visitor… and make you more sales!

How do you manage that on your website. You can get the content, but how do you continually get it on your website without needing to pay a website person a small fortune every time it needs to be updated.

Easy! I’ve said it before… you start blogging! You setup your website with blogging capabilities and then simply logon to your admin area, insert your article and hit the “publish” button. Refresh your website and voila… it instantly appears.

That’s how a Salon Success Website is setup. In fact that’s how this website has been setup… as a Blog.

There are many other advantages that a content based website has… and I will discuss those further next time.

Until then… here’s to successful salon website marketing.

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Salon Website Content? Try This Super Strategy

David Glendinning — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:37:09 +0000

Stuck for content on your Salon blog part of your website. Well… try this for a great salon website strategy - “Your Customer of The Day”

Now, before I get into that strategy let’s just go back a little and touch on something I’ve talked about before.

What’s the main purpose of communicating with your clients? To me, it’s about building the relationship part of your business with your client base. It’s a well known fact… the better the relationship, the easier it is to sell… and the more profits for your business.

And when you get it right, you don’t actually have to try to sell!

Let me explain. When you work on building a relationship with your clients, you create trust in what you say… your clients will listen to your advice and buy on your recommendation.

When you say buy this product because you believe it to be the best, they will! And when you explain that the value in this service is far more than how much it’s going to cost them, your client will buy!

All you need to do is continue to communicate with your clients. And what’s the best way to do that… through your website.

I’m not talking about the traditional style of website. You know, the glossy, static type of website where the content stays the same for months, possibly even years. I’m talking about the Web 2.0 style of Salon website, where the content is updated regularly, maybe even daily… through the use of a Blog!

Can your website do that? Allow you to regularly update it through a Blog that can automatically get sent out to your client list?

Very few salon websites can! Those who have a Salon Success Website solution can.

Now, let’s get back to the “Customer of The Day” strategy.

Imagine this. Each day you select someone as your “Customer of The Day”. You take their photo, you describe who they are, where their from and the type of treatment / service they get in your Salon each time they visit. Now get this right! Of course you tell them that their photo is going on your website for a week or so and you’re going to have it up there for all your clients to see.

Some may not want you to do that… many will! Respect that, and only do those that approve of you doing it.

Does it have to be each day? I would… but you may want to do it each week. As long as it’s regular and consistent.

How powerful a tool is that? It’s a great strategy. It builds a relationship with your client base. They enjoy reading and seeing that stuff. And it’s very easy content to create.

And I bet that the first Salons to start using this strategy will get a great response form their client base. Plus you will continue to get great traffic coming to your website each day to see who the “Customer of The Day” is. And this traffic will be exposed to your offers displayed on your website.

I got the idea for this strategy from an email I received today from another marketer. OK, it’s not original… but many great marketing strategies aren’t. Figure out what’s working somewhere else and apply it to your business today.

And that’s how easy it is to apply a proven marketing strategy to your salon website.

Go do it now… and let me know how it goes.

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Salon Blogging 101

David Glendinning — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:18:43 +0000

I’ve written about “blogging” before. In my recent article “Why You Need To Start Blogging For Increased Salon Profits” I detailed some of the reasons why you should start your Salon Blog sooner rather than later.

Fact is though… many of you just don’t get it! Maybe you think it’s too difficult. Or maybe you’re just too busy being a hairdresser or a beauty therapist along with the other “time sucking” challenges of being a Salon Owner.

So first up, let me tell you what you’re missing out on by not setting up your own Salon Blog.

The more you “talk” to your clients the better the relationship you will have and the more money you will make. It’s true… those Salons that continue to communicate with their clients will make more money!

So, what can you talk about.

Well… I just spent 10 minutes searching the internet and and I found a hairdresser in Washington USA who that has set up a Blog, separate from their Salon website (which by the way is pretty ordinary).

What has she got on this blog? One of the things is that she has a weekly article that shows “Last Week’s Interesting Hair”. She puts up a before and after photo, straight from her digital camera (so there’s no special photography) of how her salon has transformed someone’s “bad hair” into a great looking healthy, modern hair style.

It might highlight colour, a particular cut or how they fixed badly damaged hair.

So they post the article and photo’s to the salon blog and invite people to comment. Many people actually leave comments, it creates discussion, and I bet that it gets people into the Salon to have the same thing done to their hair.

A perfect strategy! Create some interest, communicate with their clients and make money for the Salon with more business.

Also on the blog are articles like “What happened to formal hair?”, “Hair colour trends”, “Hair Straightener Test”, “So You Want To Be A Hair Model”… all items of interest that attract a lot of discussion on the salon blog.

This is a pretty basic looking blog, regularly updated by the salon owner.

Now you do need to have a little bit of skill to set this sort of thing up… but it can be quickly learned, can be inexpensive if you do it yourself, and can be simply started and maintained.

Here’s where the power of the internet comes in!

Just because it’s a blog and setup with blog software, the articles and content are quickly spread around the internet without you really having to do that much.

In fact, I found this website using a “social media search engine” called WhosTalkin. I simply went and did a keyword search on that website and found a lot of website discussion about Salons. The search engine scans the internet and finds blog articles about that particular topic.

That’s not something that can be done by an old outdated “static website” that many Salons have. You must have a website using blogging software, much the Salon Success Website solution.

I plan to continue this topic in future articles so stay tuned. My goal is to have Salon Owners well informed on how to use the Internet for increased Salon profits.

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Why You Need To Start Blogging for Increased Salon Profits

David Glendinning — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:44:50 +0000

I’m often asked by my Salon clients who take up the Salon Success Website opportunity “what is blogging and why would it benefit my salon business”. So instead of thinking up something brand new to write about in my blog here I went and asked Google.

I just love Google… has all the answers… well, to most things anyway!

I came across this article from Gary Bourgeault at the thealphamarketer.com titled “10 Great Strategic Benefits of Blogging“. It had some great points so let me go through them and explain them from a salon owners perspective.

1. Search Engine Marketing

Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines, like Yahoo! and Google. It’s surprising to me that many Salon websites aren’t “optimized” for search engines in their particular market. Let’s say you have a beauty salon in the suburb of South Yarra, Melbourne.

If I go to Google and type in “Beauty Salon South Yarra” will I find your website? I’m finding many salon websites are not appearing in the search engine at all.

Here’s where the power of blogging comes in. Just yesterday I published a blog post “10 Quick Tips for Salon Website Success“. Within 24 hours that article was ranked number 1 in Google for the search term “salon website tips“. And that was out of 307,000 competing website pages that included those search words.

2. Direct Communications

Blogs allow you to speak directly, openly and honestly with your client. That’s a great point! Many Salon websites I look at are what I call “library” websites with each page full of technical stuff about their service. They rarely promote offers, or interesting information.

Blog posts (blogging articles) are ideal for that purpose.

3. Brand Building

The more information and content you provide will build your brand in your marketplace. Your client wants to know what you know! The more you directly communicate with them the more your Salon will stay in their mind.

4. Competitive Differentiation

I could just about guarantee… your competition is not using blogging as a marketing tool. Learn about it and start now and you will be dominating your market ONLINE very quickly.

5. Relational Marketing

Blogging allows you to build a personal, long lasting relationship, online, with your clients. And that leads to more money in your cash register!

6. Exploit the Niches

Most Salons provide a wide range of services and products… each one a different, unique, niche. Let’s say you start a new service eg. paramedical skin treatments. Write a keyword rich blog article, outline the benefits and I bet you will have a search engine presence within that niche within 48 hours. You might even rank number 1.

7. Media and Public Relations

Use your blog to create great content and you will soon become an authority in that niche. Who knows… the media may contact you!

8. Position You as An Expert

You got that right! You will be the ONLINE authority articulating your views and opinions and become the source of knowledge in your niche.

9. Reputation Management

You will be building a reputation online for informative discussion within your niche.

10. Low Cost

Great point… blogs are inexpensive to setup, operate and maintain.

11. It’s Easy to Blog

I know I said there were 10 points, but I always want to provide you with a little added value! You don’t need to be a computer geek to start blogging. The learning curve is small and you could do it all yourself without having to get a web firm to do it for you. Simply log on, write an article and Publish it… DONE!

All the best for 2009.

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