What are the Benefits of Social Media

Have you ever thought how social media can improve your business with no extra costs? Facebook and Twitter are all great channels to increase your visibility among your clients, to engage them and to raise your brand awareness!

Facebook, for instance, can be used to tag existing and potential customers, encouraging engagement and discussions. In the digital world, sharing

has also become easier. If you want to publish important information, news or relevant content to your business, this will be only one click away and accessible to everyone.

Did you know that over 60% of customers go to social media for customer service because this is quicker and easier to use rather than sending emails?  This is a good service you can provide to your actual and potential customers to raise awareness and build solid relationships with them. Why not try it?

Eventually, Facebook and Twitter offer a geo-target service. For instance, if you would like to expand your business to a specific area, Facebook and Twitter provide you with the tools to share your news with a specific audience based on their location.

If in the past, salon owners have always looked for the quickest way to reach their customers, nowadays social media allow you to share, engage and target your audience all in one place and faster.

Salonspy - The Salon Essential!

Adam from Salonspy.com came to spend some time with us in the office and give us a bit more information about his website and what it can do for salon owners.

So Adam first and foremost, tell me what is Salonspy?

Salonspy is an online platform to harness the power of word of mouth! It takes your clients opinions and shares them with everyone else. If you think of one client telling their friends to come into see you because they think your amazing – that reach is quite small as they only have so many friends – but put that recommendation on the internet and everyone has the opportunity to see that! Salonspy is the Hairdressing and Beauty worlds equivalent to TripAdvisor! It will integrate into the SALONGENIUS system to automatically text your clients to ask for a review after the competition of their appointment. This effortless system has been proven to motivate the team, increase a salons online presence, attract new customers and ensure that you are retaining existing customers. 

Why should salons and spa’s use Salonspy?

Here are some of the Key Benefits:

• The platform provides a safe environment to generate reviews - if you get a bad / fake / unfair review on Google / Facebook / Yell - they are incredibly hard to deal with or have removed. By sending your customers to one location, you can manage that account easily. 
• Performance of employee’s - praise during one to one’s or training issues identified by their reviews
• The salon will receive an email notification when a new review is published
• Salon owners can reply to all reviews or if necessary dispute reviews
• Motivate the team by sharing reviews on social media, stylist of the month for most positive reviews etc.?
• Facebook integrated Recommend a Friend system
• Great google ranking (SEO) so your reviews are as high up on a google search as possible!
• You can identify unhappy customers and rectify any mistakes before they are lost clients.
• Ability to link the reviews to your own website which update automatically on your webpage.
• Share reviews on social media
• All reviews are humanly moderated, spam is never published, negative reviews are considered carefully before publishing. 
• Free membership - saving £420 per year on Salonspy fee’s by simply being a SALONGENIUS user.

Can the reviews be trusted?

Quite simply – Yes! They are trusted because a text is sent 30 minutes after a bill is paid in SALONGENIUS after a client’s appointment prompting the client to leave a review so we know the review will be real.

Why would you get more reviews on Salonspy – I can use Facebook or Google reviews?

We conducted an experiment with a SALONGENIUS customer over a 6-month period – the first 3 months they left their clients to review off their own back using Google, Facebook and Yell.com. Over the 3 months they received 8 reviews. The second 3 months they used Salonspy and text all clients as they left the salon – the salon received 86 reviews – you can’t argue with the numbers.

Historically 2 types of people will leave a review – either a client who is very happy or a client who is very Unhappy! Salonspy is designed to capture the views of those in-between clients who don’t think to leave a review because they are used to great service! By prompting your clients for a review they are more likely to leave one for you!

How can Salonspy ensure quality reviews and cut out the spam?

When the review is submitted it goes to a back office area, where it is humanly monitored and moderated before it is published. Each review is checked for family friendly content, no swear words, names are removed from any negative reviews and personal attacks are not published at all. The reviews need to be seen as beneficial to the salon so they add value either from a marketing perspective to share the love or from an improvement perspective to learn from any criticism.

But what about any negative reviews?

Nipping negative reviews in the bud as quickly as possible is very important. When a new review is published the salon will receive an email to let them know a review has been left. This allows you to respond as quickly as possible. Salonspy is set up so the salon can respond to any feedback however once this has been done the client cannot then respond again so alleviates any slanging matches on the salons page. At the end of the day if a review is particularly bad pick up the phone and speak to the customer!   

Isn’t sending texts to every client really costly?

The open rate for a text message is 98% compared to 13% for emails so you are almost guaranteed that your client will read your message. For each message you send out you are potentially getting all these benefits:

1)      You can reach out to your clients and engage with them outside the salon making them feel valued

2)      You are asking your clients to leave a review which you can either share on social media for marketing and advertising or use the comments to focus training or development for the staff.

3)      You gain a review which has been humanly moderated, monitored and published on a dedicated website for your salon.

4)      Salonspy ensures your reviews are easily and readily found and are as high as possible on google searches meaning they are going to be read!

5)      You can also respond to each of your reviews either to thank your client or to put a problem right.

6)      The review can also be used to motivate the staff, create awards and recognition for hard work!!

7)      Salonspy also integrates with Facebook for your clients to then recommend their friends so you will potentially get some new clients too!

Not bad for 8p eh!?

Don’t forget Salonspy is FREE for any SALONGENIUS customer!!! Saving the salon £420 a year! There are no contracts or hidden costs – all it costs is the price of a text message to each of your clients J

If you would like to sign up just drop us a line on either
01202 311826 option 1 or email us on sales@salongenius.com.

The SALONGENIUS Awards 2016

Salon Visits!

The SALONGENIUS Awards 2016 were to recognise and support the hard work, achievements and initiatives of our customers in the hair and beauty industry. This is our first year we have had the awards, we had some amazing applications and really enjoyed reading about our customers and hearing all about your salons.

The Categories we judged were for the Front of House Team of the Year, Manager of the Year, Retail Salon of the Year and Salon of the Year. There was £500 up for grabs for Salon of the Year and £250 for the other categories.

We had a great time going through all the applications and seeing how each of the salon businesses are being so successfully run and how each of the salons are so different! After lots of deliberation we announced our winners for our four categories:

SALON OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by Kennet Equipment Leasing): Evolve Hairdressing York – This application was so beautifully presented, obviously a lot of time and effort had gone into putting the application together – if the same amount of effort goes into looking after your clients and business the salon must be a wonderful place to be. You can clearly see The salon has an amazing business, they are also utilising the SALONGENIUS system to the full. Well done to a fantastic team and over all our Salon of the Year!

FRONT OF HOUSE TEAM OF THE YEAR: TONI&GUY Shoreditch - What stood out for us was your incredible percentage of customers who are loyalty card holders! The Front of House team are clearly utilising the SALONGENIUS system to the businesses benefit! Congratulations – keep up the good work!

MANAGER OF THE YEAR: TONI&GUY Canary Wharf - Claire is clearly a very dedicated and passionate Salon Manager and this can be seen in all aspects of the business. The team are so complimentary about Claire and she obviously looks after the salon and the team impeccably.

RETAIL SALON OF THE YEAR: TONI&GUY Canary Wharf – We were so impressed with your pop up stands and the turnover these events generate. The salon has a really strong initiative system for the staff to keep the team motivated. The salon training and support each member of the team receive is clearly working!

As part of the awards prize giving we visited each of our winner’s salons to present them with their trophies and their prize money. We had such a good time visiting our clients and seeing the salons!

Our most recent visit was to Linzi and her lovely team at Evolve Hairdressing in York, where she was presented with the Salon of the Year Award. Jemma presented Linzi with her award and their cheque from Kennet who sponsored this category. The salon was absolutely buzzing, you could clearly see what an incredible business Linzi and the team has developed. Charlene on reception really uses SALONGENIUS to its full potential and has trained all the staff very well so they are all using the system correctly! The clearly cover all the bases in the salon with a fantastic front of house team, incredible retail sales and a business model that clearly works wonders! Well done Evolve you truly shine!

Here is Linzi and Charlene receiving their award with New Business Consultant Jemma Giddens from SALONGENIUS.

We also had a wonderful time at Toni&Guy Canary Wharf meeting Claire to give her the Manager of the Year and the salon’s Retail Salon of the Year awards.

 

Claire gave us a tour around the salon which included the beauty area and the secluded backwash area with their ‘signature lemongrass scent.’ Their retail area was very impressive and it was clear to see why they are so good at retailing their products as the shelves were being constantly updated and restocked. We talked to the staff about using SALONGENIUS for their stock control – needless to say they were utilising the system to the max!

T&G Canary Wharf Front of House Team collecting The Retail Salon of the Year Award with Sales Manager Sian Barnes from SALONGENIUS

Our next stop on the awards tour was at Toni&Guy Shoreditch where we met Stuart who showed us around his gorgeous salon and told us about the inspiration around the salon’s clean cut feel! The salon is very in keeping with the rest of the feel of Shoreditch and you can tell Stuart is very proud of his salon! We talked with the now award winning Front of House team about their loyalty scheme and the dedicated barbers area downstairs – we loved the barbers chairs they are beautiful! The team seemed really pleased with their award and its now in pride of place at reception! Keep up the great work!

       Here is Stuart and The Shoreditch Front of House Team receiving their award. 

Thank you to all the salons who entered The SALONGENIUS Awards and also to Kennet Equipment Leasing who kindly sponsored our Salon of the Year category!