Do you even need a website? with Phil Evans

Our industry is obsessed with social media, and it may feel that something as old-fashioned as a website has no relevance in your salon marketing anymore. Here to convince us otherwise is the MD of Salon Guru, Phil Evans. Let's get him on the show, shall we? Phil, welcome to the Build Your Salon podcast. Thank you. Thank you for the invite. You're very welcome. It's good to have you on here. So I've started by saying that we're obsessed with social media, and I'm hoping that you're going to bring a few arguments as to why people should still take something like a website seriously. But before we do, for people that haven't come across your work already, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience? Okay. I have been working in the software industry since I was 20. So for decades, I started in the computer industry, designing software for businesses. And about 20 years ago, a friend of mine in Liverpool said, who had a hair salon, do we need a website? It was the new thing. Websites were starting to appear. And I had a look. I said, yeah, it looks like this is a really good move. You should have a website. So I created the first website that I'd ever been involved in. And we launched that in Liverpool. That's still a client, which is lovely. So they're still with us all these years later. From that one first salon website, we got a second one in America. The first one was in the UK. And now we have 240, approximately, hair, beauty and aesthetics in all parts of the English speaking world. So the UK, Ireland, North America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and everywhere else where they speak English. So you've seen a real curve then as far as the uptake of websites and technology is concerned. And I can remember I actually swapped our domain for a haircut way back in the beginning. We had a customer who worked in IT and she said, you're going to need a website one day. So how about I buy you your domain name in exchange for a haircut? And that was way at the beginning. That would have been about 20 odd years ago at a time when salons didn't really have websites. And I think we were a bit ahead of the curve. And then we seem to have got to the stage now where a lot of people are thinking that it might be something that's kind of optional. And we hear these wonderful stories of people making a huge fortune and building an entire empire just off the back of Instagram or Facebook. So what do you think is driving that change? And what should we be thinking about when we're making decisions about whether websites are important? And over the 20 years I've been involved, I've seen the big changes. And that's the appearance of social media, which was like 10, 12 years ago.

I remember setting up the very first Facebook page for a salon. And it does play an important part. But I'm probably going to challenge the thinking with numbers. Because for me, numbers is the most important thing because numbers prove a fact. If I can show that over 20 years and 240 odd salons, by far the biggest thing and most important thing is Google. And it's still Google and that social media plays a small part in the growth of a salon business. Then that to me is honesty because it's proved by fact. I can show countless examples. So I think what sometimes catches the attention of the industry, the salon owners, because it's very aesthetic, because it's a way of showing what you do, particularly for hairdressers. For hairdressers, it's got a visual attraction. But in terms of generating clients, which is surely what this is all about, you're going to spend money and energy or something. Make sure that it helps you grow your business. And it's not just a distraction. We'll get into the detail, I'm sure, in a minute on that. Okay. So I get that my own personal belief is that social media actually isn't brilliant at getting you clients. And I know that I'm kind of shouting in the face of lots of people that would shoot me down. I think it's great for deepening connections with existing clients and taking that journey further. But as far as attracting new clients, I don't think people go from watching dog videos to suddenly deciding they want to book a haircut or get some Botox. And it's hard to search and find local in that way. If somebody is really serious about, let's say, they want prices for balayage, they'll probably go to Google and then they're looking for prices, examples. They might look for before and after examples from around the world. But when it comes to choosing a salon, they want to go and have a look at what the salon looks like, what the team looks like, the prices, when are they open, their work. So there's a lot of information a client, a potential new client is going to be gathering. And the best way to do that is a website because it's got all of that information to hand. All of the information they need to make that key decision. So why do you think it is that so many people have fallen out of love with the idea of a website? Is it just that we love the idea of something shiny and new over here?

And I know in the salon industry, we do love shiny new things. Or is it because we're not using our websites properly? What's driving the kind of love loss there? Mostly you're not using the website properly. I spend my life talking salon owners, whether that's in hair, beauty or aesthetics. I spend my life looking at websites that we've not built. And I immediately see what's lacking and therefore it's not performing. But also they won't know it's not performing because I will say to most salon owners, how busy is your website? How many people were on your website last month? 90% of salon owners will not know the answer. Now, how can you evaluate the importance of something if you don't quantify it? It's like, for me, it's like talking about your stylist, which is your most profitable stylist or member of staff? If you don't know their income numbers, you won't be able to answer that. So I think knowing the numbers of your website and your social media and how many clients it generates will help you make the decision. And I've got a lot of numbers I can quote to you, but a good salon that's doing everything. And I've got 200 salons that do it all. They'll do Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, emailing, text messages, websites, the whole gamut of digital marketing. But from amongst those salons that do it all, still 80% of their new clients will come from Google. Even if they've got a great Facebook and a great Instagram, it's Google where clients will go when they're serious about, I'd like to make an appointment or I'd like to find a salon and not just browsing pictures. So 80% of your business is coming from Google. So you really must pay attention to it. And how easy is it for me to get that information? Do I need to be particularly techy to get those kind of figures? Yeah. Your web champion should tell you that straight away. It's the most fundamental number that any web company should be able to quote at you. And you're looking for visitor numbers, not hits or other kind of made up numbers. Visitors. How many visitors were on your website last month? And once you know that, take it a little bit further. Where did they come from? So if you, let's say you had 10,000 visitors, which is a busy website. I had 10,000 people last month. Where did they come from? How many came from Google? How many came from Facebook? How many came from a link in an email that I sent them or a text message from my software? Once you start to break it apart, you'll likely find that, well, 80% of your traffic should be coming from Google. But if you're not running your website well, and you're not sitting at the top of Google, it'll be a much lower number. So that's the next problem. They'll identify how busy the website. And for most salons, it's not busy. They'll have a poor performing website.

The next thing to do is to work out why. And we do something called a Google rank report. So imagine you're a client in Manchester or New York, doesn't matter where you are, and you're looking for a salon. Most clients then will get out their mobile phone, possibly their computer at home, and they'll search. And they'll search for best salon or salon reviews or balayage prices on their mobile. Do the same. Do that for your town, your area, your city. See where your salon comes up. If you're not number one or two or three, you're invisible. So for all these people, tens of thousands are searching. If you do not rank at the top of Google for a whole range of phrases, your website's invisible. And therefore, you're not going to get the traffic. And how much work is it to get a site to the top of those Google rankings? It's work. It's work without a doubt. We are the experts in this. There is no other company in the world that has as many clients in this industry as we do and has done it for so long. So we actually find it really easy because it's our job. Like you, cutting and colouring hair. I couldn't do it. You can. You're the expert. For us, it's really easy. But the principle now is for a good website to rank at the top of Google for a particular service. Whether it's fat freezing, you're an aesthetic clinic, whether it's balayage, whether you're a beauty clinic and it's facial. The way to get to the top of Google is you want to, first of all, persuade Google. So let's say you're in Manchester, we mentioned, and you want to be number one for balayage. The way to do that is have a great page about balayage. Lots of information, lots of before and after pictures, prices, how long it takes. Frequently asked questions. How long does balayage last? How is it different from ombre? Because what we're trying to do is persuade Google. Anybody searching for anything with balayage, this is the best page within 10 miles. Because then you could dominate Google for balayage phrases for the whole of Manchester. Or Tampa in Florida. Or Sydney in Australia. Wherever you are, search for those phrases for service. And if you don't rank, the answer is to have a page that talks about it in detail. A nice natural page that explains what it is and how you offer that service. And if you do it better than anybody else in the area, you'll be number one. So are we ultimately going to end up with these big unwieldy sites then with lots and lots and lots of pages each pointing to a different service? Or are you encouraging people to kind of prioritise?

Partly you are because how else will Google know that you're the best balayage in Sydney? Because it's looking at your website and it's trying to make a judgement. It'll look at things like reviews. It'll look like things like inbound links. But the most important thing for Google is the information on the website. And if you just talk about balayage briefly, you know, in passing, then why should you be number one? It's got no idea. So it's a machine and it's learning. So it is looking for content. So the next thing is to make that content also really engaging for the client. Because if you're getting lots of traffic from Google, but then your page is awful, you're not going to get the client. If you've got a page that's dominating Google and then tells a great story, lots of before and afters, lots of information about what you're going to get the client from it as well. So it's actually, it's kind of a good process because it makes you look at all of your key pages on your website. Does that do the job I need it to do? This way Google gave me the top spot, this way the client to pick up the phone or make an online booking. And is this a process that takes months and months and months or can we start to see results relatively quickly once we start getting the right things in place? Really quickly. I mean, the good thing about Google, it is a machine. So it learns quickly. We'll often launch a website and within a month, we send the first updated rank report. In other words, this is what you were ranking before. This is what all those phrases are now doing. And within a month, we start to see some really good movement. Within three months, often we're showing dramatic changes that really surprise the salon. Within a year, I would hope we've at least doubled your traffic to your website. And what else marketing can do that? Where else can you get that kind of increase? You know, no, no press release, nothing putting the local papers is going to do that. Your website, it can do that. And what we often does. And is it a game that anyone can win? Or are there some markets and some phrases where you just aren't going to beat those top three because they're very big salons with big budgets? Yeah, the generic phrases, as I call them, can be more difficult. So if you want to be number one for hair salon in London, you've got enormous competition. But if you want to be number one for hand-tied weft extensions in West London, absolutely, straight away. You can do that, no problem at all. I've got a really good salon in Tampa, in Monaco that specializes in hair extensions. They've got 217 phrases at number one on Google for Tampa and for the whole of Florida. Because we talk in great detail about all the different extension fixing methods, types of hair, after treatment, toppers that they do, which is the hair loss.

So if you tell a great story in great depth, you can be number one for all the phrases. But the generic phrases, salon, beauty salon, will be more difficult and will follow later. Always start with what I call the service phrases, because that's where most salons don't do that. They don't go into that amount of detail. So you can get a really quick win. And is this something that we tie into a broader marketing plan across the year for the salon? Or is it something that sits quite separately? Yeah, I mean, for most of our clients, in fact, for all of our clients, one of the things we impress upon them, this should sit at the center of your marketing plan. Because if you're planning, let's say we're planning the start of next year. We're now talking to our clients about, well, you've got February, so you've got Valentine's. January, so you might want to do a January relaunch. Get rid of all of Christmas things, relaunch in January. Look for new clients. Perhaps run a campaign on Facebook and Instagram to bring them to your website. But now you've got this wonderful, informative, beautiful looking website. Bring people to it. Just emails, text messages, Instagram, Facebook. But now you've got a great central resource that everybody will visit to find out more. So with a rolling plan, we normally do three month plans with all of our clients. So we know exactly what the plan is. And it's great because it also then will define what else you're going to look at. If we say your three month plan for the website has this for Valentine's Day, that's also what will go out in your emails. That's also what you'll send by text message. So it kind of gives you a whole marketing plan for the whole year with just your website set at the center of it. And then does that plan also tap into any offline stuff or is that purely a digital effort? We do the digital plan, but that covers most things for most sellers now. But if part of it, if you want to put a post up in your window for Valentine's Day or Valentine's gift vouchers, it'll be the trigger because your plan will say, OK, January, get ready for Valentine's Day. What are we doing? We're doing an email. We're doing a Facebook offer. We're doing a gift voucher. It's very easy to then build on the back of the offline stuff. But when you think about it, there isn't that much offline anymore. Poster in the window. Yeah, I actually I'm a big fan of offline marketing purely because there isn't very much.

And I think there's some opportunity there. And I think so, for example, I encourage my clients, you know, if you're if you've got a campaign for something expensive and you want to target your top spenders, put a stamp on an envelope and put it through the post because nobody gets letters that have got handwritten addresses anymore. So it's quite easy to stand out in that sort of way. Whereas it used to, I'm sure you remember, it used to be if you were on holiday for two weeks, you couldn't open your front door for all the stuff that have been stuffed through the letterbox. It's just not the case now. So it's a relatively quiet space. I think offline marketing. OK. And is this something that is going to cost a huge amount of money for salons? Is there anything that they could be doing themselves, for example, or is it something that's, you know, kind of accessible for everybody? It is. I mean, it's accessible for everybody. We do a lot of websites for chair renters or booth renters in America. We do a lot of that. So it shows that it's affordable whether you're a person working alone or you're a multi-location salon group, which we also do. There's a there's a package. There's something to suit you, but you can start yourself. That's the first thing I will say. Know your numbers because the first thing you need to do is evaluate. Where am I? Where's my website? Where's my business? So on our website, salonguru.net, there's a button in the top right free Google rank report. Go there. Give us your details. We will send you for free a detailed. This is just for your website. It'll be personal to you, your town. How does your website perform? Because that's the starting point. If you're number one for everything on Google, you don't need my help. If you're not, if you're number 10 or if you're not in the top 50, you're completely invisible. And then the conversation starts. Okay. Which is the most important phrases? Which services do you really want to get a lot more business for? Then you need to plan for content. Add the pages to your website. You can do this yourself. You could take my rank report and go away and add all the content yourself to your website. Most people do is come to us because we can do it quicker, more straightforward. But start the process. Don't be scared of what the end result could be. Therefore not even do the first step. Where is my website? How does it perform now? Get that free Google rank report. And where do you kind of see this going next? You know, we've kind of seen the rise and rise of Google and websites. And then that's been, I've made the argument that it's been kind of eclipsed quite wrongly by social media. Is there anything coming on the horizon that you see might be the next shiny thing for people or might even enhance our digital marketing efforts? I mean, I've been doing this 20 years and it never stops changing.

And the way we do a lot of Facebook and Instagram advertising, I'm not keen on social media just to be part of the noise telling the story. It's a great way of gathering your imagery together for clients, but targeted adverts through Facebook and Instagram are wonderful. I love doing it for the clients because we can target women of a certain age within a radius of the salon with beautiful imagery and bring them to this great new website. So that's part of the mix. But I think it will keep changing. We've seen a rapid change and I think it's just going to get faster. I think more things will come. What they'll be, who knows? With the growth of AI, I mean, we're starting to use AI ourselves in the content creation. But just be careful. You can go off and get an AI to write your story about balayage, but it will not feel like a human's written it. And Google will know a human has not written it. So don't fall into the trap of taking the easy answer to get a website written by AI. It just doesn't feel right. If you see any AI imagery that's around at the moment, they're often just not quite right. This very morning, in fact, I thought I would test a Canva AI because I hadn't used it for quite some time. And I asked it for the slide, in fact, the title slide for this podcast. I asked what it would come up with. And I might share it with some people on Facebook, maybe, because it was a guy, handsome chap. Don't get me wrong. Didn't look anything like me. And of course, he had the three arms, which I thought was just hilarious. 20 fingers or something. Yeah. So it's good as a tool. And it's good for sometimes we'll use it to give me more ideas about what else I can talk about around fat freezing. And it will give me some headline topics that I hadn't thought of. Great. Now, as a human, go away and write really engaging content. Don't leave it for a machine. And is AI getting to the stage now where it can help with some of the SEO stuff? Is AI pretty good at analyzing pages and telling you how to improve or does that still need a human touch? It still needs a human touch because now Google's looking for really good content, human content. And there are tools out there. We use them that will measure a page SEO performance. But it over relies on just the metrics, you know, how many H1s, how many meta tags. And that's not it anymore. Google's clever enough to say, this is a great page. This has got lots of information. This has got all the things that will engage a client. So the human touch is really needed.

Where AI is starting to really help is things like the Facebook and Instagram targeting. So I want to reach certain groups of people within a radius of my salon or aesthetic clinic. The AI is starting to be really clever on that to say, here's some clients. Now give me another audience that look like that group of clients. So have the same kind of interest. And now the AI is very good at that to say, those client, those people who are your clients are very like these people. So let's advertise to these people. That's where I think is going to take a lot of the heavy lifting away from us in terms of campaign creation. I made a prediction earlier this year about I actually think AI might be the thing that finally kills social media, because I feel like it's going to be so rare to come across actually, you know, human produced, authentic content. People will get so sick to death for being spoken to by robots that actually we just won't bother looking on a tool anymore. Well, for the first time ever, a client in New York, a hair salon in New York, we were creating some adverts. And I said, can you give me some images? He said, oh, no, we don't, nobody bothers with images anymore. We'll just create some using AI. So we had AI generated images of hair for hair salon adverts. And to me, that just, I think that can be a negative because clients will see it say AI and go, they haven't got any client images. They haven't got any real hair. And I think when you're making a judgment call on, can I trust this salon to do my hair? Real people are still important. But yeah, you're right. It could ruin it. I think it will. And I think I can see people, I can see the content that people show. I think stories are still very exciting because it's that kind of spontaneous, a little bit rough and ready. And I think that's what people are craving now. It's that authenticity and that realism. So if you were going to put your money where your mouth is, Phil, and say, I'm only going to invest in one digital marketing platform, would you say that website and SEO is it? Oh, yeah. By a factor of 10 or anything else. Honestly, I've done this for a long time. And my clients have to trust what I say because they're possibly going to be with me 20 years. We've got many salons that have been with us over 10 years. And I live by the numbers. So I can't say to them something that I don't believe to be true because I have to prove it afterwards. And we prove it. In the first year, it's every month. We send them rank reports, but also traffic numbers so they can see the website building. In the second year, we go to three monthly.

But that's constant. We live by those numbers. I shouldn't be putting my money unless I can back it up with real numbers. And I know Google is by far. But the salons that learn the lesson, they'll go, wow, we've been missing out on this for years. But it's pretty straightforward to be number one on Google in my area and get all that traffic to my website. And it doesn't take very long in salon ownership to be approached by lots and lots and lots of people offering services around SEO and Facebook marketing and Instagram marketing and all sorts of wonderful things. Do you think it needs somebody who specializes in our industry? Yes. I mean, I get emails every day saying your website does not rank on Google. I get them. I mean, our website is number one for all the phrases in the UK, in the US, wherever. But these people just send out hundreds of these emails at random, hoping that somebody will click it and think, oh, this person knows what they're talking about. They don't. They haven't looked at your website. They don't know if it ranks because it probably does rank. Our certainly does. These are just spam emails. So be careful not to get caught into a conversation with somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about. You know, I don't mind spending all my time talking to salon owners that don't become a client because I like sharing knowledge. Come to us. Get your rank report. Have a conversation. Learn more because it'll put you in a really good place. Then go off and choose your company afterwards. At least, you know, get that knowledge. My website is performing badly because my traffic is awful because the numbers are. But get that first and then you can make a more informed choice about what's going to be important. When you see the number of people that are coming to you from Facebook and Instagram, I think you'll realize that that's an area not to put a lot of time into. Yeah, I think you're right. And are there any things that you come across when you're looking at websites for the first time where you kind of go, oh, I can absolutely see why this isn't working? Are there things that people are getting wrong quite regularly? Yeah. I call them thin websites. It's basically a website that's got opening hours, about us page, a prices page. And that's about it. Where's where's the two things you're going to need? First of all, how are you going to get to number one for balayage or color correction or fat freezing or Botox or any of the service you provide without that content? And then a customer comes along, all you've got is this thin website with some information about how to contact you. Nothing to persuade them, nothing to show them the salon, the team, the ethos, the work that you do. That's the story that a website can tell brilliantly.

It can really go into a lot of depth for those that want it. For those that just want a phone number, great. It can be there, top corner, phone number, click to call. So it can be quick and simple. If somebody is really researching, they want to know a lot more about you than just your phone number. Super. Well, you've convinced me, not that I take a lot of persuasion on these things because I do love a bit of tech and I do love marketing too. If people have been inspired by what you're saying today, Phil, how can people get in touch with you best? Right. The website, our website is salonguru.net. And on there, there's a contact page with phone numbers and emails. But I think start with that free Google rank report, which is the top right corner button. We'll prepare that and send it over the next week or so. So that's a great point then to have a more detailed conversation because we're talking about numbers and performance and website rather than just me talking. That's a good starting point. There's a link on that page actually to the webinar I did last month, I think. And that goes into a lot of detail. If you really want to understand Google, there's a link on the page where you sign up for the rank report to watch my webinar. 45 minutes of constant examples all over the world, websites before they sorted this, after they sorted it. One year, two years, five years in. What was the effect on their business? That's a really worthwhile watch. Superb. Thank you so much for your time today, Phil. But before we let you go, three short questions that I ask all of our podcast guests at the end. They're supposed to be a surprise, but I think some people probably know what they are now because we've done too many of these episodes. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever been given? Oh, I didn't see this coming. Oh, good. Yeah, I didn't see it coming. What was the advice? I mean, it's the best, I think, and I hope to be self-serving is the best piece of advice I think I give out to people that I live by, know your numbers. Because if you don't, you can't make a judgment on anything. Know your numbers. Okay. Well, you've bypassed my second question then, which is if people wanted to follow in your footsteps, what advice would you give them? Yeah, know your numbers. It should be central. You know, as a salon owner, as a business owner, it's what makes your business work, the numbers.

You know your turnover, you know your staff, your website should be your most productive and profitable member of staff. It'll produce more than anybody else or all the others put together. So know the numbers there, please. And finally, what is the best thing about working with the salon industry? The variety. You know, I can be talking to a chair renter in Albuquerque. I've got a chair renter in Albuquerque one day, and I can be talking to a really big group chain in the UK the next day. And I love that. And often they'll have the same issue. They don't actually understand what they're trying to decide upon. So we start with the numbers always. And from there, it's pretty straightforward. That's really interesting, actually. I find that similarly, you know, I've got a little bit of international reach and everyone's facing the same challenges. Everyone faces the same problems. They all have staff issues. They all struggle to get new clients through the door. They're all trying to increase average bill. It's the same conversations around the world. Superb. Thank you so much for your time today, Phil. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm sure we're going to invite you back on the Build Your Salon podcast again in the future. Good. Thanks, Phil. So there we have it. My chat with Phil Evans around websites and SEO. What have I missed? What would you add? How can we be helping you further with the Build Your Salon podcast? Why not reach out and let me know my email address at the bottom of the screen? Phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to hear from you. Also reach out if you would like to feature as a guest on a future episode. Just seven short days until the next episode. And until then, take care.