Beauty Salon Marketing

We have mentioned before that Google now accounts for around 90% of the market in the UK. If you have searched for local services via Google, you will have noticed the box that they now display at the top of the page showing a map of the area and links to 10 local businesses that it thinks match your search words.

The diagram below shows an example, where I searched for “beauty salon sheffield”. Notice the yellow-highlighted links to reviews of those salon businesses -

We wil be writing more tips about how to make sure your salon is listed highly in those search results (Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, as it is known to website developers). But where do those reviews come from? And what can you do to influence them in your favour?

City Marketer has an article on Sources of Local Business Reviews, with a diagram showing the biggest players in local search, and their connections to review sites. From the article -

“Online Customer Reviews for Local Businesses can be found in dozens of local search engines and directories. Some local search sites will re-use customer reviews from other sites to provide a thorough selection of reviews for users…

Local businesses benefit the most by pointing their customers to review sites that have the most pull in the popular local search engines… Ratings by customers in online reviews can influence local search rankings, but the ratings may be limited to certain sources… While online customer reviews are not sole determinants of rankings, reviews can make a significant difference very quickly in local searches”

So online reviews of your salon are very important. Not only will they show up when your potential customers are searching for services like yours, in your local area. But, equally importantly, research by the search engine optimisation (SEO) experts suggests that having more reviews is one of the important factors influencing how high your salon website is listed in Google’s search results. Which, of course, influences how likely it is that potential customers will click through to your salon website, or call your salon’s phone number.

How do you get online reviews of your salon?

Ask your satisfied customers to go online and submit a review at one of the review websites… But, which review websites are most important and influential to your search engine rankings (how near the top of the page you are listed)? Which reviews will show up in that all-important box at the top of Google’s search results?

Do a little detective work. Go to Google and search using the kind of phrases your potential customers are likely to use. Put yourself in their shoes. They probably don’t search for the product names or technical terms you use - try phrases like “beauty salon sheffield”, “nail extensions SW10″, “indian head massage north london”… and so on (adapted for your local area, street names, city, suburb, postcodes, etc.).

(Salon Internet Marketing tip - you are probably already asking new customers how they found your salon. If they say they found you on the internet, ask if they can remember what words they searched for. Start keeping track of those search-phrases, they will be a goldmine for you as “search engine marketing” becomes a more important part of a salon marketing strategy.)

When you do these searches, click on the review links that Google lists (or Yahoo, or AOL) and notice the link that Google shows to say where the review originally came from. In the example I showed in the diagram above, following the links shows that the reviews came from Wcities.com, and from the Google Maps review system.

You may need to try several different searches to find the most-used review sites, especially in the UK where people are just starting to create and use online reviews. But this is to your advantage - if you can get your satisfied customers to start posting online reviews of your salon now (on the review sites that Google thinks are important), you will be ahead of the game when other salon owners catch on and start doing the same.