Should I Have A Facebook Page For My Salon?

Having a Business Page on Facebook is something that people ‘do’ – right? Well, most do. We start our salon, we set up a page and invite friends to like and share it. Then we wonder why the phone is not ringing off the hook, so we post specials on it.

This seems to be a really common situation in Beauty.

Here’s the thing – posting special offers continually on a Facebook page (or any social platform) is like being the boring person at the dinner party who only wants to talk about herself. 

Social platforms are about getting people involved with what you are doing – sharing your passion and your expertise.

For most ‘Business to Consumer’ businesses, the Facebook page is one of the very first portals people visit to see what you are about. If you show them discounted offers and spelling errors, they will make a decision that you will not like about you.

If you show them you, your team, your product ingredients and why they matter to you, your busy schedule, and your fabulous newly fitted treatment room, they will feel they are getting to know you.

Using Facebook Live oreven videos, while scary – triples this effect.

Like every aspect of your business, your social platforms need a plan behind them. A written plan is best. And your results need to be checked regularly against the goals in that plan so that the future plan can be optimised: more of what was successful and less of what wasn’t. Social Marketing is a moving target. Every aspect of it changes continually – content review is so important.

Start your planning process with your goal. What do I want to get from having a Facebook page for my business? Is it clicks to website, is it awareness of my brands, is it because I am a new owner and I want people to know that things have changed – think of Social as another window in your storefront – one literally where people are willing to line up and chat with you and other people about your business. Where else can that take place? No other medium allows this opportunity to have a multidimensional relationship with strangers.

So – if you had a bunch of people standing in that window in real life, chatting with you (you leading the chat) – what would you say to them? If it’s ‘Come on In and Try This’ – then you need clicks to the website as your goal. Following that thread, if you give people a link to find out more and they take it – what will they see? Are you updating your website content to exactly meet the expectation of the clicker before posting the link? If not, you’re not making the most of that ‘window’ – that is the same as asking them in to chat more, then ignoring the topic to be chatted about.

You can (and you should) use Google Analytics to literally follow people around your website. You don’t find out their names – they are a code to you, but you can view which days at what time and which pages they have visited (in the sequence viewed) – this will tell you if your leads are being successful or not. You can view this information for a block of people for patterns, or as one person at a time for a more targeted campaign. This is how you find out if your ‘click to web’ campaigns are converting to enquiries or not. Setting up Google Analytics Conversion reporting is the same as checking if your therapists are rebooking or not – it’s a key measure.

This is all really important information because ALL marketing is designed to alter people’s behaviour and the first step in that process is understanding it. Now you are seeing that there is far more to this than posting a link. Follow the results and continually improve them by planning smart moves based on knowledge. That’s how you grow a business.

The next thing Salon Owners say or feel after they have posted material is ‘no one is interacting’ or ‘no one has viewed’. Here you need to remind yourself why Facebook (and other social platforms) were created. They are about people connecting with people, so act accordingly. Pages that spam their followers with nothing but offers will be denied newsfeed placement. End of story. Pages with extremely clever engaging content including rich keywords and fabulous images will get a much higher organic newsfeed distribution. However, to get really good newsfeed distribution, you need to put a small ad budget behind your posts. By small, I mean tiny. If you don’t want to do that, don’t have a page. If you don’t have a page, you are closing a blind on that interactive window. You need to really consider your goals and plan accordingly.

Social advertising is by far cheaper per click than Google advertising, and is often more meaningful and more successful in generating interest in your area of business – because it’s interesting – but only if it is executed to a plan and with clear and specific filters for targeting (that’s the topic for a future blog on Social Media Targeting).

Coming back to the two key questions ‘Should I have a Facebook Page for my Salon’ – the answer is YES. You should, but you should plan the content carefully and in advance, and you should analyse how successful that content has been and plan to include more of what has worked – you will find that people want to see who you are, what you believe in and connect with you – be human, but of course be professional.

In answer to ‘Why Aren’t People Buying My Special Offers Off Facebook’ – the answer is pretty much because this is not what people want to see. Change your content strategy and you will find engagement increasing and your occasional Facebook offer will be seen and appreciated by many more people. For my page of around 5,500 likers when I sold the business, so often I had people wander in and be fully conversant with a product or a treatment that I had been posting about, but not once had they interacted with a post – they felt they knew me and knew the business because they had been following the page for some time – so don’t worry if no one likes or shares your posts – for every single person that ‘reacts’ to one of your posts there are a hundred others clapping and cheering – trust me.

This has ended up being a lot lengthier than I planned – the shades of grey in Social are what I love the most about marketing – ask questions – drop me an email or post here! Let’s chat!