How a Small Salon Collected 200+ 5 Star Reviews, 13000 Likes Just in a Year Without a Penny Spent?

Opening your hair and beauty salon business is exciting and at the same time challenging experience. When you are young and inexperienced but full of positive energy and innovative ideas, you know for sure: you’ll make a change.
But what happens after the emotional ribbon-cutting ceremony?

You face the whole infrastructure of running a business — staff management, finances, documentation, procurement and of course, social media.

Every successful business owner knows that in the modern world if you run a business, you should establish a digital presence.

At OD Blow Dry Bar we were firmly determined to have a sustainable, genuine relationship with our customers, so we created a very special social media marketing strategy that aligned with our core values and beliefs. We defined the following values, which had to become the cornerstones for our social media roadmap.

Authenticity

Transparency

High-quality Content

Openness to Learning

Innovation

Being authentic and genuine matters. Seriously.

We had decided that we would show what we really do every day on Facebook. Post photos of our work, speak about ourselves. Real clients, real cases, no photoshopping, no filters, no stock photos. We wrote genuine, authentic texts with clear, branded visuals showing the interior of the hair salon, atmosphere, the process of the work.

We didn’t try to look more professional than we really were, we just showed how we made things in a genuine, comprehensive way.
When posting on social media, we did not think how many likes the post would collect, our first concern was like “Hey, can this particular post give value to its reader?” And you know, it was rewarded. The results spoke for themselves.

Tip: try to post on Facebook and Instagram every day.

By the way, according to SproutSocial best times to post to Facebook is Wednesday at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Keep your best post for Wednesday!

Transparency: No “PM for the Price” for Your Customers

Yes, we clearly understood that the Facebook algorithm had changed, that organic reach was low, and not writing the price or hiding other details could lead to more engagement. But we chose another option, the option of giving full information. All the posts contained detailed information about the treatment, the name of the artist, material, price, the length of the process, etc.

You may be surprised, but that worked too.

Tip: If you have products to sell, use the Facebook Shop to showcase your products. Write the full description of every product. You can also link the product to your website there.

Yes, Quality Content Still Matters

In the era of paid promotion, ads, and influencer campaigns some businesses started to neglect the quality of social media content.
And again we promised ourselves, that we would never, ever post poorly written content. All the posts we wrote were not for search engines, but for humans, were engaging and valuable, answered specific questions and were written without spelling mistakes.

Then comes the most important feature: Relevance. All the content posted on social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram in our case) should have been relevant to the beauty salon industry. This was the reason every single follower on our page was in our target audience.

Tip: Use engaging posts for social media: the best performing ones are before and after photos, quizzes, polls, posts showing the process (better in a video format).

Every Customer Counts

When running a business, mistakes are inevitable, but the thing is, are you ready to admit them and become better, more professional, change yourself and change the attitude towards certain things? Being flexible and adaptable, to learn from and with others, friends, staff, customers. Don’t be afraid to speak about your fails and mistakes publicly. The truth is that speaking up about a certain problem and discussing it with your audience on the Instagram page or Facebook group creates a story, helps to establish a closer, warmer, more genuine and strong relationship.

Regardless of the business type, customers will always be the most valuable stakeholders you will ever have. Love your customers, cherish your customers, always listen to what they are speaking about your business. Never ignore customer feedback, even if negative.

All the reviews on the Facebook page or elsewhere should be answered in a timely and professional manner. Show your customers that you take care of them, and you will have their loyalty as a reward.

Tip: Use Mention for social listening, and keep the track of the digital mentions of your company.

Stop the Paperwork, It’s Time for Innovation

Everything started with FEEDBACK.

Customer feedback mattered most for us, as customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are crucial for success.

Well, we were constantly asking the customers to leave a review and rate us on Facebook, tried to follow up on the complaints and solve them quickly. We printed surveys and used customer feedback for staff optimization, the choice of the products, service and quality improvements.

But it was hard. Really, very very hard. The printed papers were lost, we did not have a systemized structure for issue solving, and we were not able to see the whole picture of customer satisfaction and estimate the results.
At this point, we decided we needed innovation. We created and developed our own system of rewarding the customers, which works on Facebook Messenger.

Our clients were happy and enjoyed the fun process of leaving feedback, rewards program, smart reminders, birthday and Mother’s day congratulations. We identified who our happy clients were, and started to send them automated requests to review our page on Facebook, and as a result, we started to collect 5X more positive reviews than before. Leaving reviews was fun and easy, so the clients enjoyed the whole process!

This is the point we understood we had created something valuable and helpful and made it available for other salon owners in the beauty industry.

In the end, we just want to remind you once more: being genuine in a relationship with your audience is the key. Build your Social Media strategy for your audience, not for numbers and statistics.

Don’t overwhelm yourself with everyday tasks which can be easily performed using technologies and innovative ideas.

Be awesome at customer service, provide quality services and post content which is useful and valuable.

Listen to your existing customers and use their feedback to become better and stronger, earn their loyalty and love.

And yes, we are here to help, to motivate, share our experience, give some tips and tricks, help you to be more innovative and successful.