Breaking - New Stats: How are new clients finding out about your salon or spa?
18 December 2013
We all know as salon and spa owners how useful it is to ask, "Where did you hear about us?".
It gives you an indication as to how effective your marketing is and which clients are generating the referrals. The difficult part is tracking it. As part of your client card on Phorest's software, we track the "Where did you hear about us?". Here's a breakdown from over 1,000 salons in the UK and Ireland and the best ways of getting your salon found and building your brand.
The three big WOWSERS:
1) Referrals are actually MORE effective than Google when it comes to finding your salon. Among the salons profiled, 370,000 clients stated Google as the place they came across the salons compared to almost 507,000 who stated they were referred by a friend.
Tip: The point is this - having a website and Facebook page/Twitter account is ultra important but the power of old-school word-of-mouth cannot be taken for granted. Focus on your existing clients and wow them - that's the most effective way to get new clients through the door.
2) Facebook is twice as effective at getting your salon found compared to your website: 92,000 clients stated Facebook vs. 40,000 for the salons' websites.
Tip: Embrace social media! Having a website alone is simply not enough. In fact, if you had to choose one, you'd be better off having a Facebook page. However the combined effectiveness of having a great website and a great Facebook page cannot be replaced by either of them alone.
3) Even flyers ranked higher as a source of getting new clients than some of the biggest daily deal sites including Living Social, showing a real decline in the amount of people buying services on daily deal sites and the amount of salons and spas using them.
Tip: ANYTHING is better than a daily deal. According to our stats, staff have brought twice as many new people to salons since the start of the year as daily deal sites!
Conclusion:
To put this all in perspective, your clients are your most powerful marketing tool. Better than any search engine or social media site. Getting new clients is a pointless exercise unless you can hold onto them. The salons that are performing best are the ones to who are embracing all opportunities to get new clients, but have mastered retention marketing i.e. they have focused on their existing clients and those clients have generated referrals through word-of-mouth and social media.
Another expected trend that's going to rock the boat is mobile. More and more salons and spas are getting apps. It's a smart move. Outside of calls and texts, 82% of peoples' time is spent on apps vs. only 18% of time on mobile websites or browsing the web. It's going to be your new shop front!
Connor Keppel is the Marketing Manager at Phorest. You can contact Connor on
0207 100 9290 in the UK or 01 874 7800 in Ireland or by email on connor.keppel@phorest.com
