Hair Stylist Marketing Follow Up
The Results are In!
Sher Part Two
It’s been a little over a month since our last blog which was about marketing one of our hair stylists online. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you go and do so before reading the rest of this post. It’ll make a lot more sense that way trust me. I’m excited to share with you what we’ve been able to do with Sher’s Salon Website in only a little over a month! We essentially implemented some of the things discussed in the previous post onto Sher’s website and gave her some strategic tips on how to better maximize her exposure online. There was no additional funding, paid advertisements, or funny business involved. All results are organic and sustainable! Last Saturday when I spoke to Sher, she told me that she’s booked out for the next 2 weeks! Let’s see how much of our work resulted in this happening.
Quick Recap
Sher Mizushima has been a stylist for 13 years. She specializes in hair coloring techniques such as balayage, ombre and also does hair extensions in the La Jolla and San Diego area. She never had a website prior to working with us. As far as social media goes, she had only been using Facebook and Pinterest casually. My goal was to get her ranked on search engines for Balayage, Ombre and Hair Extensions utilizing Local SEO techniques. It’s always best to concentrate your SEO efforts onto several specific items vs. spreading yourself too thin and trying to rank for everything.
The Game Plan
When we designed the site, I had my business partner/developer/resident nerd build it in a way where I could fluidly change things around for search engine optimization. The site needed to be mobile friendly and had to be fast to load on both desktops and mobile phones. We build all of our websites this way because Google now takes into consideration user experience as part of their ranking process. I gave Sher a list of items that she needed to work on but was careful to not give her anything too far out of her comfort zone. I didn’t want to take away from her free time and more importantly I wanted the tasks to become a natural part of the process versus it becoming a burden. She was already familiar with Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Into that list I also added Yelp. To be frank, Facebook hasn’t really been a primary focus, so we shifted our strategy to Instagram, Pinterest and Yelp.
Yelp does not allow you to solicit for reviews. It’s clearly stated in their terms of service and is highly frowned upon. I embedded the Yelp widget onto her website to bring awareness to her Yelp page. Fortunately, she truly is a fantastic stylist and her customers immediately started pouring in the positive reviews.
I set her contact forms up in a way where she would receive text message notifications when ever someone filled out an appointment request. Responding to those “leads” as soon as possible is beyond critical. I cannot emphasize this enough to you: If you get a lead through a website, drop what you’re doing (unless you’re holding a baby) and call it immediately.
SEO is certainly a long term strategy, but how quickly we saw results even caught me off guard.
To measure data, I’ve used Google Analytics which is free and highly effective. In Part One, I had listed what I would be tracking utilizing the analytics. In this post, I’m going to break down the data and tell you what it means.
Number of Unique Visitors
Why is the number of unique visitors important? Because it tells us how many “different” people visited Sher’s salon website. In the image below you’ll see that I’ve highlighted total visitors, the number of unique ones, and the percentage of which that are unique visitors. It’s not that the other metrics aren’t important, I’m just focusing on keeping this as simple as possible for all of you.
This data goes back to March 1st which means there is about 40 days worth of numbers here. So over the course of 40 days, Sher has had 67 different people visit her website.
Where the Traffic is Coming From
This is where things begin to get interesting. The analytics data will show us how people are getting to Sher’s website.
What this means is 29 unique people entered in the website; shermizushima.com directly into their web browser (last column). 13 of them found her through a search through Google, Yahoo or Bing. 12 came by way of a referral from another website. And finally 7 people found her through Social Media outlets.
SEO Data and Search Queries
Less than a year ago, Google decided that it will no longer provide exact key phrase information. In the past you would be able to see exactly what phrase was typed and clicked into Google to reach your website. Google and other search engines have decided for many reasons to make “secure search” a priority. With that being said, there is still a way to identify popular phrases your site is ranking and showing up for.
In less than two months we were able to get Sher ranked on the first page for Balayage in La Jolla, and Balayage in San Diego. Keep in mind that search results vary by locality. So you might not get the same results we do outside of San Diego.
Mobile vs. Desktop Computing
The numbers below tell us one thing, having a mobile ready website is absolutely crucial in the hair salon industry.
If more than half of your visitors are using a mobile phone or tablet to find you; you better be ready to capture that audience! Imagine the potential amount of business you’re losing by not having a mobile ready website!!! No one wants to pinch their screen to zoom in on your website!
Geographical Info
Obviously where your customers are finding you from is important. As a salon, you don’t want to attract business from across town, let alone a different city or even state (unless someone is visiting of course). This is where the phrase Local SEO comes in. You hear it often, but what it really means is optimizing the site to attract nearby potential customers vs. all across the board.
Conclusion
Its safe to say that there’s a lot of business to be had out there. It may not seem like a lot at the beginning, but to have 67 new sets of eyes look at potentially doing business with you is a huge win. We were able to get Sher several new customers as a result. A couple of them came in for a balayage, one she said distinctly contacted her to fix up someone elses mistake. Sher also mentioned that her social media activity has resulted in old customers reaching back out to her again, and that her Instagram account serves as a way for her current customers to remember to book an appointment. What’s interesting is that she’s now wanting to tap into the power of Twitter. This isn’t something she was really interested before we started all of this but I’m looking forward to helping her out. As powerful as a tool Google Analytics is; not everything can be tracked from using it. I’m extremely happy with the results we’ve been able to achieve in such a short time, and am confident that they will continue to get better. SEO is a long term strategy and can have a snowball effect. I’ll keep an eye out on the results and share them again in a few months down the road.
We Are Open for Business
The Salon Nerds are now actively taking on new clients. We have pricing information available on our website and we will be priced very aggressively for a short period of time to help us gain more exposure. I’m confident in our ability to help each and every one of you gain great success through online marketing. As always, please share this if you liked it, and make sure to ask any questions below!
By Ali Mirdamadi