Are you thinking about doing digital advertising for your salon, spa or clinic? Online advertising is becoming increasingly popular for its affordability and ability to easily reach your target audience. However, you’re probably wondering whether it’s worth your time and investment.
To help you decide whether or not to advertise online, we asked salon digital marketing expert, Kirsten McHarg of Savvy Salon Marketing, what the key benefits of digital advertising are for salons, spas and clinics.
Here’s what Kirsten had to say about the key reasons to advertise your hair and beauty business online.
1. Digital advertising is market driven
The beauty of digital marketing is that it’s market driven. This means that clients and potential clients leave clues about who they are, the city they live in, their preferences, their likes and dislikes, and all of this information can be gathered and used to inform your marketing and create specific audiences to advertise to.
For example, you can show a specific advertisement to females aged 18-35 living in a particular region that have an affinity for hair and beauty. Digital advertising enables you to get very specific and targeted with whom you’re marketing to, based on demographics, user behaviour and their likes and dislikes.
2. Digital advertising is data driven
Digital advertising enables you to make data driven decisions based on what the market is telling you, which takes the guesswork out of your content, ads, strategies and so on.
For example; if you advertise your business on a billboard it’s difficult to know the impact that campaign has. However, if you run a Facebook ads campaign you’ll get real-time feedback through how that campaign is performing by looking at the data.
3. Digital advertising is affordable
Advertising online is low cost compared to traditional advertising channels like print, radio, television and billboards, which gives you more budget to be able to ‘test, learn and adjust’. That means you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
Taking things slowly and testing copy, images and different calls to action can be done affordably and effectively as you learn what your target market responds to best.
4. Your customers are shopping and looking for services online
Digital advertising enables you to reach your ideal customers where they’re spending time online. People turn to Google to look for a local hairdresser, beauty therapist, nail technician and so forth, or they find new businesses on social media, so it’s vital that you have a strong online presence and can advertise on the platforms your ideal customers are spending the most time online.
5. Advertising online gets results
I recently carried out a campaign for a salon owner who wanted to get more clients. We spent $200 per month over three months using Facebook and Instagram paid ads, plus a combination of organic posts to Instagram to increase her Instagram followers, presence and engagement.
The first month was about testing to find out what worked. We ran a series of short campaigns with little end result, but gathered a lot of data to inform the following campaigns in terms of creative, targeting and copy.
The last campaign we ran was a lead generation campaign that resulted in 61 leads for the salon!
Are you ready to start advertising online?
Digital advertising (and any form of marketing) takes time to generate results. So be patient with your digital advertising, optimise your campaigns over time and the results will come!
If you want to get started with online advertising for your salon, spa or clinic, read our guide: How to get started with digital advertising in 8 steps.
If you need a marketing expert specialising in the hair and beauty industry to help you, get in touch with Savvy Salon Marketing.
For more marketing tips, view our marketing guide for salons, spas and clinics.
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