5 NEW Tips to Grow Your Salon Business WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

What if the best social media plan for you is no social media at all? Here are my five tips on building your business without socials. Hello, hello, hello my salon friend, Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. It's a little bit warm here in the UK and I'm just waiting for the first person to complain about the heat, given that we had about 11 months of winter. Anyway, what are we talking about today? Well, we're talking about socials and I'm very often accused of hating social media. I don't hate social media, but what I feel is that we have a bit of an unhealthy relationship with social media, particularly in our industry. And that's because I see lots of salons using socials as the only marketing pillar in their business. Firstly, I think that's kind of dangerous. I think putting all of your eggs in any basket is a really bad idea. Just ask anyone who's ever lost their Facebook or Instagram account. They will very often say that they wish they put a bit more effort into building up a list of clients somewhere else. But also, I feel that we're leaving some money on the table. I think there are lots of opportunities for us to market our businesses and enjoy more success if we bring in some other marketing pillars as well. So you may not want to turn your back on social media altogether. But there is a small and increasing number of people who are doing just that. Maybe it's because they are realizing that social media has a negative impact on their mental health, for example. And I know that that's something that I feel personally. And I've worked really hard this year on spending a lot less time scrolling and a lot less time on social media. By definition, that means I'm turning up on social media a lot less in my business as well. But maybe it doesn't mean that you want to turn your back completely. Maybe it just means that you want to bring in some other stuff, too. So that's what I'm here for today. I'm going to share my five tips on building your salon business without using social media. And it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to go completely old school, though. We're going to talk about that in just a second. In fact, my first tip before we leave the world of online altogether is that there's more to online marketing than social media. There's an awful lot more out there. For example, I see lots of people putting hours and hours and hours of effort into social media.

And yet their websites are a little bit crap. And they're not really putting the effort into these fundamentals. In fact, I see some people that are building their social media following and don't even have a website at all. They've literally just got a quick link in bio. And I think that's a mistake. Again, if you ever lose your social media accounts, you're going to really wish you had somewhere else that customers can find you. So we need to have some web presence. We need to have an online presence away from social media. I think something that's kind of fallen out of favor, and I think it's a bit of a shame, is blogging. And I'm not suggesting that we get to the stage where we're doing a daily blog in order to beef out our websites. But I do think that perhaps once a month you could be putting pen to paper and coming up with something that not only positions you as an expert, but does you some real favors when it comes to search engine optimization, too. So we could be building content that helps your customers find you without going through social media. Let's not forget that most people on social media aren't looking for salon services. Most of them are looking for photos of their friends and family or stupid videos of dogs. So where do they go when they want to find a salon? They're going to ask for recommendations. More on that later. And they're also going to jump onto Google. So let's make it easy for Google to find you. Tip number two, while we're still talking about technology, is I'm a huge fan of email marketing. I think that social media has a purpose in my business and its purpose is to build my email list, because that's the list that Mr. Zuckerberg and his friends can never take away from me. That's the list of people that have opted in to hear from me. And I think they've got the highest potential of turning into paying customers, too. Lots and lots of salons neglecting this as an idea. They've got lists of email addresses for existing customers, but they're not building lists of potential customers. So my tip number two is to dive a lot deeper into email marketing. Very, very hard to annoy people with emails these days. If you get to the stage where you're sending two or three emails a week even, I don't think you'd get lots and lots of unsubscribes. I don't think your customers would get fed up from hearing from you. In fact, think about some of the brands that you've opted into

or some of the brands that you've bought from in the past and how often you're hearing from them. I bet it's a lot more than the once a month that you're doing with your email newsletter. Tip number three is to go old school. So we're going to come offline for this tip and think about some of the stuff that we used to do in the good old days before we had social media. And yes, I've had a salon long enough now that social media wasn't even a thing when we first set up the salon. In fact, it was an event for a salon to even have a web address. And I can remember getting our web address in exchange for a haircut, actually. We had somebody who was very early on in web design and they swapped a haircut for our domain, which has been ours now for over 20 years. But what did we do before then when we did some of the offline stuff? We did some of the stuff that I don't see anybody doing anymore. Now, that's got two advantages. Firstly, it means the prices of some of these things has come right down. But secondly, it means that we're not shouting into a crowd. Think about social media. It's a very noisy, very busy place, very hard to stand out, particularly if you're not going to make yourself look like an ass dancing on TikTok. So where we can stand out a lot easier is a less crowded space. When, for example, was the last time you received a letter through the post with a handwritten envelope? Now, I'm not suggesting you could afford to do that for every promotion and every offer that you put out there. But if, for example, we were launching a high-end service and we had a very specific idea about the type of customer who might enjoy that service and it was going to be worth our while, why not put something in the post? I bet no other salon in your area is doing something like that. So have a think about some of the offline stuff. And I'm talking about not only putting stuff in the post, but also the spaces in our salons that are underutilized, about posters in the window, so using our window space very effectively, placing adverts in local magazines. Perhaps we've got billboard space, which you can rent billboard space, for example, particularly digital billboard space. Very, very cheap. And you think about some of the places where you see those billboards. Lots of people staring at those billboards when they're in gyms, questioning their life choices. And you could be standing out there for not very much money at all. So have a look at the offline space. Have a look at some of the old school stuff. Something else that I used to do in the old days, and I must admit I'm not a huge fan of,

though it does yield business benefits. I don't particularly enjoy it. My tip number four is to look at networking. Now, this depends hugely on you understanding who your ideal customer avatar is, your ideal client. Where do they hang out? What kinds of things do they do? Now, for my own salon, our customer avatar is a high-level management person or somebody who owns their own business. So local business networking always yielded really, really good results for us. Now, if your ideal customer avatar is somebody in their late teens and they're a student, then networking is probably not going to work for you. But have a think about who your ideal customer is. Have a figure out of where they might be hanging out. And think laterally. Don't just think job stuff. Are there any local groups that they're part of? Any local hobbies? Any pastimes that run social functions that you could be a part of? Now, where people go wrong is they jump into networking and throw a whole load of business cards out and try and convert people into customers straight away. That's not how networking works. It's a long, slow game. Those who enjoy it absolutely love it. Again, it's something that I always struggled with. But I'm a little bit shy, darlings. Your Uncle Phil doesn't like talking to strangers. And my final tip, because birds of a feather flock together. Tip number five is to double down on recommend a friend. Now, if anyone's ever looking for a brand new salon, even if they don't have any friends in the area, they're going to ask a neighbor or they may even ask a stranger where they get their hair done if they particularly like the look of a service that's been carried out. And I think there's a lot to be done as far as recommend a friend's concerned. And I see lots of salons getting this wrong because they try and do it continually. They try and have recommend a friend running in the salon all the time. The other thing I see people getting wrong is they try and reward people in a very meaningful way for doing recommending. And I don't think that's why people recommend you. Generally, it's because they want to do their friend a favor. It's not because you're handing out huge numbers of vouchers. So by all means, recognize the effort that's gone into a recommendation. But don't feel that you have to be overly generous. I also don't think that we should. And as I've said, I don't think we should be running recommend friend all the time. It's much easier if it's a targeted campaign. So, for example, our recommend a friend program runs for one month every summer. And we're just about to launch it now because it's easier to keep the enthusiasm up. It's easier to keep consistently talking about it over a month. Once you start running a recommend a friend program all the time,

Well, that enthusiasm starts to wane and those leaflets that you had printed get dusted and moved around the salon until they're finally so tatty that they all get put in the bin. And I think so. So I think you've got two bites of the cherry with recommend a friend. One of them is to run it as a targeted campaign for a month each year. Secondly, anytime you've got new clients, I think recommend a friend is something that should feature in that new client journey. Now, you're going to have to do some testing as to the best time for that. It might be that you do a welcome pack and recommend a friend is part of your welcome pack. Make sure you're talking clients through the welcome pack, by the way. Don't just hand it over. Or for us, the sweet spot was visit number three. By the time someone's been into the salon three times, they've enjoyed their beauty services three times. The chances are they're enjoying what you do and they're more likely to be in a position to recommend you. So there we have it. My five tips for building your salon business without using social media. I don't hate social media. I hate some of the things that it does to us and I hate the way that we've put all our eggs in one basket. But to balance the books, next week's episode is going to be all about social media. So you don't have to accuse me of being a one sided coin, my darlings. So what have I missed? What are you doing in your salon that has nothing to do with social media to get your name out there? Reach out, let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com You know I love hearing from my salon friends anyway. Also reach out if you'd like to feature as a guest in a future episode and also reach out with your questions for my Q&A episode. I didn't do one last month because I didn't have any questions in. I've got a couple for this month. So a Q&A episode is in the offing. But I'd love to be reaching out and helping specifically with what's going on with you and your business. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of my wise owl wisdom. Until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty and more successful tips for business owners. All on build your salon.