Salon owners, rejoice! Victoria’s premier beauty expo is only months away, and it’s gearing up to be a meeting of the most revered in the business.
Twenty Look ‘N’ Learn-style education sessions and hands-on workshops will be at the industry’s fingertips, led by renowned experts in the beauty industry who will be sharing their tips and techniques to help beauty professionals take their careers – and their businesses – to the next level.
Esteemed digital marketing coach Heather Porter will be hosting two compelling business seminars at Beauty Melbourne, ‘6 Essentials Every Website Needs to Increase Conversions’ and ‘4 Practical Steps to Profitable Facebook and Instagram Marketing’. Heather will equip visitors with an arsenal of practical strategies to enable them to develop successful marketing campaigns to skyrocket conversions.
In the lead-up to Beauty Melbourne, we asked Heather a few questions about how effective digital marketing can take beauty businesses to the next level.
How important is having a beautiful, user-friendly and efficient website for generating leads for your salon?
It’s extremely important. Salons primarily focus on attracting female clients, most of whom probably love using Instagram, and are not only used to nice aesthetics, but have come to expect it with the brands they want to do business with.
The trend for website design in the beauty space is about individuality and unique eye catching visuals. The best way to do this is to stop using those stock photos you see on every beauty site. Instead, consider hiring a photographer to take photos of your salon and ask a client or two to come in to be your models for a photoshoot in exchange for free treatments. Then you are capturing a look that is uniquely you and shows off what your salon looks like.
It’s also really important to have a user-friendly and efficient site. This covers a few areas such as speed, simplicity and easy navigation. Up to 80% of people who visit a use their phone, so your site needs to look good on a phone and load really fast, because if it takes longer than 3 seconds many visitors will leave.
In your copy you need to get straight to the point about how you can help someone, what you are known for and what you offer. Text should also be set up for scanning because so many people won’t read long text fully. Make sure it is broken up with spacing, headlines and images throughout. Look to simplify your navigation menu and remove any unnecessary wording. In marketing we say, “A confused mind won’t buy”, so your job as a website owner is to try and remove clutter to prevent overwhelming.
Can I attend your sessions at Beauty Melbourne if I am not super tech-savvy?
Yes, my sessions are focussed on the non-techy person. Attendees of ‘6 Essentials Every Website Needs to Increase Conversions’ will receive a framework they can use to either do themselves or hand to their web team. You will get access to loads of examples and ideas of what the websites that are getting the most leads and sales do.
How can having active, creative and current social media channels benefit my beauty business and increase conversions?
You need to be where your market is, and they are on social media. 2.37 billion people log into Facebook each month and 1 billion log into Instagram, and they’re ready to buy. Check this out – on Facebook an average user clicks on 8 ads per month and e-commerce click-through rates have tripled in the last two years. On Instagram 67% of people aged 13-35 discover new products and services on Instagram and 72% of users have bought a product they saw on Instagram.
Now that you are convinced it is worthwhile, and once you are there, you need to give the algorithms what they want, or post in such a way so that Facebook and Instagram show your updates. In a nutshell this means focussing on using the different types of posts, like images, videos, slideshows, polls, live videos and stories. You also need to focus on getting engagement so your posts create conversation. Make sure you are also engaging with others by reacting to or commenting on their posts. It is ‘social’ media, after-all.
It’s getting harder and harder to have your posts be seen too, so considering using ads can be helpful getting your messages to the right people at the right time and increase your conversions. The key thing to consider is not to make assumptions about what will work for you, and to test all different types of posts and content.
Do I need to be creative in order to produce compelling content?
This is one of my favourite questions because I am not really creative myself. There are apps and tools you can use so you can make content that is as good as what any creative person would post. The key is knowing how to use these tools. That’s why I will be sharing not only apps that Facebook recommends you use, but formulas on creating posts that “stop the scroll” and get people to take notice.
Beauty Melbourne takes place 28-29 March 2020 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC). Early Bird ticketing ends 11.59PM AEST, Friday 14 February 2020. Tickets are available at www.beautymelbourne.com.au
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