Reviews: A Guide To Managing Your Salon Presence Online

Getting new clients is, as many stylists can attest, a constant battle. However, because you spend so much time investing in your craft and staying above the latest trends and styles, you may not have that much time left to spend worrying about attracting new clientele into your salon.

The trick is that you don’t actually have to find new clients; what you need is to make it possible for them to find you. This starts with your online presence. By managing your businesses’ online presence correctly, you can attract new business and maintain a good relationship with your already existing customers.

Start with your business’ website

Your salon website is the first place that you need to make sure brings you clients without too much of an effort on your part. It is, of course, important to have a presence on the Internet, but the actual problem that many salon owners face is directing traffic back to their websites. You need to think of your business website as a hub, where you can use social pages, directories, and review sites to create a community around your styling expertise.

Your domain name is your first spot – try and keep this in line with the name of the business or, if that’s taken, find a way to differentiate it from other businesses with that name. So, if your business was called The Hot Spot but hotspot or thehotspot is taken, then go with your name plus your location, like thehotspotlocation. Next, when you create the various pages of the website, make sure that you were differentiated from other similar businesses. You need to underline what makes your business special, as well as your location because this will help your business get discovered when potential clients look online for salon options in their area.

Keep your content fresh

It goes without saying that it’s vital to the success of your business to keep your information updated. No customer likes to come in expecting to pay a price they saw online, and then find out that the price has actually been increased. This is a sure way for your new customer’s impression to be affected negatively, which means that they will be unlikely to return.

If your website has a blog, it’s always a good idea to keep it updated, so make sure you don’t neglect it. You should try to post at least once a week so that your potential audience can return to look for new tips or any other types of insight based on your experience. Finally, if you have any particular seasonal offers on your website, make sure that you update them regularly because nothing looks worse than Christmas specials still promoted in May.

The importance of reviews

Positive reviews are one of the best ways to grow your salon business, because more and more people are searching online for beauty and hair businesses, and most of them read reviews before choosing a place to have their hair or beauty treatments done.

It may be difficult for newly established salons to get their first reviews, but there are ways to ask your clients for feedback. For example, you may add in-store signage to tell your customers to check out your profile on various websites and leave positive reviews if they are pleased with their experience.

It’s always a good idea to listen to the client feedback on their experience because it’s the little things that count. By getting lots of reviews, you can understand what your customers feel about their experience in your salon, and what can you do to improve and get more clients on the door.

What are your top tips for managing your reviews online? Share your tips with us in the comments on Facebook and Twitter.

Salon Gold also provides insurance for salons . For further information, please visit our Salon Insurance page.