5 S T E P S T O

SALONADVERTISINGSUCCESS

By Hardbox Marketing

55 STEPSSTEPS TO SALONTO SALONADVERTISINGADVERTISINGSUCCESSSUCCESS

STEP 1

Set Up Local GoogleSearch Ads

Set Up Google DisplayRetargeting Ads

Set Up GoogleAccounts

STEP 2Actively Build

Google Reviews

STEP 3Install Conversion

Tracking

STEP 4

STEP 5

www.scaleyoursalons.com

IntroductionEvery day, I see salon owners making the same marketingmistakes over and over again…

If you’re reading this, you likely already know the importance ofmarketing your business. In today’s world, simply having abrick-and-mortar store isn’t enough to build an amazing,highly-profitable business…

The truth is – you need to actively promote your salon to attractnew, life-long customers and continue growing month-on-month.

To make sure you actually read the entirety of this guide, I’vepurposely kept it short and sweet. Each step is actionable andwill help you increase revenue from today onwards.

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1 - Set Up GoogleAccounts

The first step is super simple – but 100% necessary. Setting upthese accounts alone won’t help you grow your business, butdoing so opens up a world of marketing possibilities.

Here are the accounts I recommend setting up (if you haven’talready):

Google My Business

Setting up a good Google My Business (GMB) profile isabsolutely essential for any brick-and-mortar business …especially salons!

Having a GMB profile allows you to pop up when people searchfor things like 'hair salon near me,' or 'hair salon Camberwell.'

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A good GMB profile will have a detailed description of yoursalon, your services, your opening hours, your contact details,links to your website and links to your appointment bookingpage. (YES – HAVE AN ONLINE BOOKING SYSTEM. DON’TMAKE PEOPLE CALL YOU TO BOOK AN APPOINTMENT!)

Finally, you can use your GMB profile to build a tonne of 5-starreviews and stand out from your competitors. (I’ll touch on thatshortly.)

Google Search Console

Google Search Console allows you to monitor how yourwebsite is performing on Google’s organic search and providesrecommendations as to what you can do to improve yourappearance on Google and bring more relevant traffic to yourwebsite.

The top position on a Google results page gets 33% of all clicks,and results on the first page capture around 80% of all clicks.

Being on the front page of Google for relevant search termscould be game-changing for your business.

For example, imagine if you owned a hair salon in Bendigo andyour website was the one that popped up first when peoplesearched for ‘best salon Bendigo’.

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If 1000 people searched for ‘best salon Bendigo’ per month,you’d get an additional 300+ potential new clients visiting yourwebsite every single month – simply because you ranked firston Google for a common search term.

Having a Google Search Console account will allow you tomonitor your search traffic and see how you rank for differentkeywords (e.g. ‘top salons Bendigo’). It provides the data youneed to help you get on the first page of Google for relevantkeywords.

And if you don’t currently have a website … please … do yourselfa favour and get one right now. You’re only hurting yourchances of growth without one.

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How many people visited your websiteHow long people stayed on certain pagesWhy people left your websiteHow people navigate your websiteThe demographics of your website visitors (e.g. age, gender,location etc.)And much more.

Google Analytics

Similar to Google Search Console, Google Analytics providesyou with data related to your website. However, instead of onlyproviding data related to organic Google search results (i.e.,Google Search Console), Google Analytics provides you withmuch more in-depth data about all of your website visitors.

Google Analytics allows you to track everyone who visits yourwebsite and provides you with lots of useful data to help yougrow. For example, you can learn:

You can also track certain actions on your website. Forexample, you can track how many people bookedappointments through your website and can see where thesepeople came from.

All this data will help you make more informed businessdecisions.

Finally, if you have Google Analytics set up, you can sendtargeted ads to everyone who visits your website. (I’ll touchmore on this later.)

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Google Ads

Having your Google Ads account properly set up allows you torun ads for your business. Even if you don’t want to run adsevery day – if you have your Google Ads account set up, youcan run an advertising campaign whenever you’re offeringsome kind of limited-time promotion.

I’ll go more in-depth on this in steps 4 and 5.

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2 - Actively BuildGoogle Reviews

“He who has the most social proof always wins” –Someone smart ... probably

Consider the following GMB profiles for two different hairsalons.

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If you were searching for a hair salon near you, and these twooptions popped up, which would you choose?

You’d most likely choose to go to Jacob’s Hair and Beautybecause of the amazing social proof they have. They have anaverage rating of 4.9 stars from 412 reviews.

Conversely, the second salon (I’ve covered their name forobvious reasons), has an average rating of 2.9 stars from 8reviews.

Potential customers see this! They choose which salon to go tobased on other people’s reviews.

In fact, Jacob’s Hair and Beauty could probably charge twice asmuch as the second salon and STILL attract significantly morecustomers.

Building lots of 5-star reviews on Google is the easiest way toaccelerate the growth of your salon. You don’t have to have anyspecial marketing or sales skills – you just need to ask peopleto leave a review.

Of course, there are ways to incentivise reviews and quicklygather copious amounts of social proof. I’ll touch on thesenow…

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Free haircut

Introduce 5-Star Review Incentives

The best way to get more reviews, more quickly, is toincentivise people to do so.

A simple method could be to give people an on-the-spot 20%discount if they leave you a 5-star review.

It may seem like a lot at the time; and yes, you’ll decrease yourprofit in the short term. However, in the long run, after you’vebuilt tonnes of 5-star reviews, it’ll pay off massively.

Here’s how you do it…

After you’ve finished serving a customer, make sure they’rehappy with their hair (or whatever treatment you’re givingthem).

If they are happy with the work you’ve done, simply saysomething along the lines of,

“Hey [insert client’s name], I’m trying to build reviews for mybusiness right now, so I was wondering if you could leave us areview on Google. In fact, if you pull out your phone and leaveus a 5-star review right now, I’ll even give you a 20% discount

on the haircut you just got.”

If you didn’t want to offer a discount, you could run some kindof monthly competition and enter everyone who leaves you a5-star review. The competition prize can be anything you want.

Some common examples include the following:

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Haircare treatment kitFood hamperGift voucher to your storeGift voucher to a different store

You can be as creative as you want here. People will happilygive you a 5-star review if you incentivise them to do so.

If you’re not comfortable offering a discount or a competitionentry in exchange for a 5-star review, then at least start askingevery person to leave a review. Make it a habit!

You’ll be surprised how many people actually go ahead andleave a review if you just ask them nicely. (Although, I alwaysrecommend offering some kind of incentive, if possible.

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3 - Install ConversionTracking

Imagine blindfolding yourself and trying to throw darts at adartboard…

Sounds insane. Right?

This is exactly what most salon owners do. They spend moneyon advertising without having any way to measure the resultsfrom the ads.

You may hit a bullseye with one ad, but you’ll never know. Youmay also miss the mark entirely with another ad. But onceagain, you’ll never know.

Sure, you may visibly be able to notice an uptick in businessafter you run the ad. However, relying on such a method isrisky and prone to error. There could be a million other reasonswhy you gained (or lost) customers during a certain period.

You need to have a sure-fire way to track the results from yourads. That way, you know exactly what ads are working andwhat ads are losing you money.

Continuing with our dartboard analogy – you’re able to useyour eyes to see where the darts land (i.e., you’re not throwingdarts blindfolded and hoping for the best).

The best way to track the results from your ads is to set upconversion tracking…

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How To Set Up Conversion Tracking

If you’ve followed the previous steps and have already installedGoogle Analytics on your website, then you’re already 50%done.

All you have to do now is set up custom conversionactions/goals within Google Analytics; and then, if you’re usingGoogle Ads, connect your Google Analytics account to yourGoogle Ads account.

Showing you step-by-step how to do this is beyond the scopeof this ‘cheat sheet’. The purpose of this guide is to tell youwhat you should do – rather than showing you exactly how todo it.

If I was to show you exactly how to do everything mentioned inthis guide, this document would be 5 times longer! However,you should be able to find other information online that willwalk you through, step-by-step, how to implement everything Imention in this guide.

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4 - Set Up LocalGoogle Search Ads

Now that you’ve (hopefully) set up your Google accounts(mentioned in steps 1 & 2) and implemented conversiontracking (mentioned in step 3), you can start running localGoogle search ads!

Google search ads are the ads that pop up at the top of thepage when you’re searching for something on Google.

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For example, in the image above, you can see that when Isearched for ‘best computer stores’, the first two results wereads.

The beauty of Google search ads is that you only pay for the adif someone clicks it.

This means that you only pay when someone actually visitsyour site. You can also choose to only target search terms thathave high ‘purchase intent’. For example, if someone searchesfor ‘hair salon near me’, it’s highly likely that they’re interestedin getting a haircut or some kind of hair treatment…

So, with Google Search ads, you can get in front of thesepeople when they’re ready to buy, and you only pay whenpeople actually click on your ad…

Let’s do the math here.

Imagine you’ve set up a Google search ad that triggers everytime someone in your area searches for ‘salon near me’.

Let’s say you pay $2 per click.

Let’s say you can get 1 out of every 7 people who click on yourad to book an appointment (i.e., a 14.3% conversion rate).

This means that you’re spending $14 to get someone to bookan appointment.

If your average appointment value is $50, then you’reessentially spending $14 to make $50.

That’s a 3.6X same day return on investment (ROI)

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Sounds pretty good, right?

Well … it gets better.

If you treat that new customer well the first time, they’re likelyto come back again and again and again.

Let’s be hyper-conservative and say that your averagecustomer lifetime value is only $150 (i.e., your average customeronly books 3 appointments with you in their lifetime).

This means that you’re essentially spending $14 to make $150in the long run.

That’s a 10.7x ROI.

That sounds pretty great to me.

So, now that you understand the power of Google search ads,how do you begin?

How To Set Up Google Search Ads

To do this, simply log in to your Google Ads account (or set oneup if you haven’t already) and create a new campaign.

Once again, the purpose of this document is to tell you what todo – not show you exactly how to do it. As such, I won’t explainthe step-by-step process of setting up a great Google Adscampaign.

However, I will provide you with a couple of tips that willhopefully improve your results:

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Do NOT set up a ‘smart campaign’. I’ve found that 95% ofthe time, smart campaigns are a waste of money and won’tget you the best results. When you’re setting up a newGoogle Ads account, Google will encourage you to set up asmart campaign. And whilst smart campaigns are okay to start with, ideally,you want to be creating a ‘search campaign’. This willensure that you’re getting the best bang-for-your-buckadvertising and are actually making more from your adsthan you’re spending on your ads (e.g. spend $100 on adsand generate $500).Under your ad campaign ‘settings’, set your target locationas 10km around your business (i.e., 10km radius). This willensure that your ads only get served to people that livewithin 10km of your salon. You can even reduce this targetradius to 5km if you live in a densely populated area.If you’re trying to get people to book appointments, set thecampaign goal to ‘leads’. Doing this will allow Google tooptimize around getting you leads (i.e., enquiries or bookedappointments).Under campaign settings, click on ‘Networks’ and ensurethat only ‘search network’ is ticked. If you have 'displaynetwork' ticked, you’re most likely going to be wastingmoney. Include your suburb/location/city name in your ads. Forexample, if your salon is located in Brighton and you’re onlytargeting people in the surrounding area, then include theword ‘Brighton’ in your ad. You could say something like‘Salon in Brighton’ or ‘Best hairdresser in Brighton’… If someone who lives in Brighton searches Google for ‘salonnear me’ and saw your ad, they’re a lot more likely to click itif you have included the word ‘Brighton’ in it, because itindicates that your salon is close to them.

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5 - Set Up GoogleRetargeting Ads

Now that you are running local search ads (mentioned in step4), you can start running retargeting ads.

But first, what are retargeting ads?

Retargeting ads are targeted ads that are only seen by peoplewho previously visited your website.

You can show these ads to everyone who visited your website,or only to people who took certain actions on your website.

For example, you could create a retargeting ad that onlyshowed to people who have previously booked anappointment at your salon. This kind of retargeting ad wouldbe useful for re-engaging past customers and encouragingthem to come back.

The most common retargeting ad strategy, however, is simplytargeting people who landed on your website but DIDN’Tconvert (i.e., book an appointment). You can send them aretargeting ad encouraging them to come back and finishbooking their appointment. You can even offer an additionaldiscount or special deal that acts as an extra little incentive tocome on back and pull the trigger.

If you’re still a little unsure about what these look like, I’veincluded an example of a Google Display retargeting ad:

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I recently visited Squarespace’s website, and upon leaving, Istarted frequently seeing Squarespace advertisements aroundthe web, encouraging me to come back and start a free trial.This is a great example of a retargeting ad.

You may have also seen retargeting ads on Facebook andother social media platforms after you visited certain websites.The good news is that retargeting ads are extremely effective,and any business can find success with them – even yours.

You can run retargeting ads on any platform, but I’drecommend running Google Display ads.

I’d also recommend keeping it simple at first and onlytargeting all website visitors over the past 30 days. This meansthat you’ll be able to put ads in front of people who havechecked out your site at some point over the past month.

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Serving these people ads will serve as a subtle reminder tocome back to your website and book an appointment.

Before setting up these Google Display ads, it’s vital that youset up appropriate conversion tracking on your website (referto step 3). Doing so will allow you to properly measure howeffective your retargeting ads are…

If some ads are successful, you can spend more money onthem; and if some ads are duds, you can stop them.

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Want Us To Do ThisAll For You?

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Right now, you can have us set up and manage your adsfor ZERO dollars. Zilch. Nada.

You can see the results for yourself, and at the end of thetwo weeks, you can make a decision. If you decide to staywith us, great! If not, we can part ways and you can takehome all of the profits you made in those 14 days. Sound

fair enough?

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