Your Marketing Can’t Cut Its Own Hair: 4 Keys to Effective Marketing
4 Keys to Social Media and Email Marketing Success
Imagine this: Your client arrives and is welcomed and treated to hospitality. You’ve done your consult, draped them with a cape and taken them to the shampoo bowl (or completed any other preparations you need to make).
All of the set up has been done.
And then you step back and wait for the magic to happen.
And so does your client.
No matter how amazing and thorough your preparations are, you couldn’t set everything up and then step back and hope that your client could cut or color their own hair.
Preposterous, right?
While it might be a ridiculous scenario, as an analogy, it might be right on the money.
When it comes to your marketing, you may have set up programs then stood back and hoped that – somehow – they would accomplish themselves. Programs like social media pages and email contact lists.
Effective marketing is characterized not by genius ideas or clever catch phrases, but by consistent and constant activity.
So many small businesses, including salons and spas, got excited about Facebook, or Twitter, or Pinterest and set up profiles, posted like crazy for a day or two – or even a month or two. They told their clients to “like” their page and built a following by posting provocative, fashion forward, educational, inspirational or otherwise intriguing photos, step-by-steps, videos, seasonal top 10 lists and other status updates.
And then they dropped off the news feed, squandering the engagement marketing ground they had gained and their opportunity to continue to build brand awareness and gain mind share with clients and prospects.
So many small businesses, including salons and spas, dutifully and systematically collected the email addresses of their clients with the understanding that they would send those clients email updates with special offers, referral rewards, events and other opportunities. And maybe they even sent a few. But then that, too, fell by the way side.
Or maybe they collected email addresses for weeks, or months or even years, and never sent a single email because they weren’t sure how to go about it or were afraid they might irritate someone if they actually followed through with what they said they would do (and received permission to do).
No matter how great a job you do setting up your social media profiles or in collecting emails for your contact database, your electronic marketing can’t work itself any more than your clients can cut or color their own hair.
It’s time to get in the game!
Here are 4 game changers that can help get your social media marketing and email marketing out of the set up phase and put them to work as an effective part of your salon marketing toolbox:
1. Assign responsibility for what needs to get done. In writing. Social media and email marketing activities should be a written part of one or more of your team’s job descriptions. Identify deadlines and measurable benchmarks.
2. Set aside scheduled blocks of time for research and writing and make this a formal part of your own job (not just something you’ll do when you have “free time,” which, as you know, doesn’t exist!)
3. Create a weekly and monthly posting calendar. Make sure that your calendar also defines prep time (or you’ll come up to your deadline for posting with nothing to post).
4. Measure results, every week. And don’t just read reports, track results over time. Set goals for numbers of followers and subscribers. Reach. Open rates. Click throughs. And – of course – sales!
Your marketing won’t (and shouldn’t) do itself any more than your clients will (or should) do their own services. Setting up pages and collecting emails is simply not enough. If you want the positive results that marketing can produce, the marketing must get done!
The 2013 Salon and Spa Marketing Calendar has incredible content for your social networks, email newsletters, blog and website – content that can get your salon found more often in 2013. Available for $22.99 in print format on amazon.com and for the first time ever, the 2013 Salon and Spa Marketing Calendar is also available for Kindle – at just $9.99!
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This applies to ALL small businesses, not just spas and salons! I especially like this line, “Effective marketing is characterized not by genius ideas or clever catch phrases, but by consistent and constant activity.”
Consistency is totally the key!