Blogging has grown substantially over the years—and although blogs are no longer the hot new form of communication per say, they have picked up some serious speed with the rise of social media. 

If you haven’t already launched a blog for your business, it’s time to get started! Blogs are one of the most valuable tools business owners have in their toolbox. A blog essentially acts a publishing platform for your business, and it creates the perfect avenue to market directly to your prospective clients at little to no cost. 

If you still need convincing, you’re in luck because digital marketing expert Joey Donovan Guido is here to sell you on the concept of blogging and to offer his best tips and tricks for taking your business blog and running with it big time. 

We introduced you to Joey on our Beyond The Technique podcast, but if you missed his previous interviews we’ll give you a quick recap: Joey owns his own online marketing business, Cuppa SEO, in which he helps businesses improve their searchability and master all aspects of digital marketing. 

Before this major business venture, Joey dipped his toes into the world of blogging and was the writer behind “Daddy Brain,” a blog that gave its readers a peak into the thoughts, feelings and struggles of being a modern-day dad. Although he has retired his popular “dad blog,” he’s still very active in the blogging scene. He publishes content under his business name, Cuppa SEO, and works to help other businesses get their blogs up and running as well. With his expert industry insight, Joey spills his best blogging secrets to get you excited about creating content for your business.

Blogging: Good for Business in More Ways Than One

There is much to be said for publishing a blog under your business name because, regardless of what your business is, does, or sells, a blog is a great way to build a network of customers before they even walk through your door. 

Joey reminds us that blogging is not for the purpose of selling or pushing a specific product onto our readers, instead, a business blog should be used to build relationships with your clients. For salon owners, blogs can be the perfect way to preview some of your services for new clients, and to continue that candid conversation long after their time in your chair. 

Google Loves a Good Business Blog

On the marketing side of things, what a blog does for your business is absolutely invaluable. It’s a way to connect with clients. It’s a useful tool in helping them find your business and it could wind up being the cherry on top that really seals the deal in their decision to seek out your services.

This is where SEO comes into play. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is Joey’s jam. It’s exactly what it sounds like, it is the science behind enhancing or optimizing your searchability—or essentially an attempt to get the big dogs, like Google, to notice you. 

SEO is so important to your business because in today’s digital world everyone turns to Google for recommendations, and if you provide the services that a potential client is searching for, you want to ensure that your business is listed among those top hits. 

Well, we have good news—Google loves a good business blog. If you’re pushing out content, even just once per week, Google takes notice. After a few weeks, you start to build up some credibility and suddenly your blog alone has bumped you up from the third page of hits to the first recommendation.

Boasting About Your Business? Put It in Writing

A lot of the fear around publishing a blog comes from business owners who are afraid of the writing component. Joey encourages his clients to change their thinking—don’t view blogging as a writing assignment, think of it as another platform for communicating about your business.

At the end of the day, you know more about your business and your industry than anyone else. If you’re a salon owner, you likely can’t help but get excited about the services you specialize in and you could gush about your team or your best clients all day long. Take that same energy and put it down into words—it’s as simple as that. 

You don’t have to be an amazing writer to produce a popular blog, you just have to be pushing out content that you’re passionate about, and the writing will come naturally as a result. 

Get Crafty with Content Creation

When it comes to writing a blog for your beauty business, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are so many beauty blogs out there, you could easily look to other savvy salon blogs for some ideas and find fun ways to spin them to fit your salon. 

Gentle reminder: no one is expecting you to produce Pulitzer prize-winning blog posts. Your efforts should simply be put toward adding value for your readers. Focus in on a few topics that you know are relevant to your client base and run with them. 

Quick Tip: Sometimes the best blog posts are the ones that focus in on just one micro-topic. This could be a piece on your salon’s specific technique for cutting curly hair or a product review of your new beard oil, and just really cover that topic in full. These posts are super easy for your readers to digest and they’re just short enough to leave them wanting more!

When It Comes to Blog Titles: Clarity Over Creativity

Perhaps the most important element to each blog post is the title. You could be publishing some incredible must-read content, but if that title doesn’t scream “click on me!” your readers won’t think twice before scrolling on until something else catches their eye.

Titles are your attention grabbers, they are the primary vehicles driving traffic to your blog posts, but at the end of the day—clarity always trumps creativity when it comes to titling your published pieces. 

Again, this has everything to do with SEO. If you want your blog post to pop up on Google during a relevant search, Joey says you had better throw the dog a bone and insert a few keywords into the title to increase your chances of being found. Think about the content of your blog post and dig deep to determine the main topic. Once you’re able to pinpoint the true premise of your blog post, you can begin to build off of that theme in order to brainstorm a more creative title.  

The best thing you can do when launching a blog is to simply put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think about your target audience, all of your clients, past and potential, in order to determine what kind of content will be the most relevant to them. As long as you include your clients in the conversation and have a little fun with it, you’re going to benefit from publishing a blog under your business.     

For more insider tips on starting your business blog, listen to the podcast that inspired this blog, episode 158. Be sure to also check out Cuppa SEO’s website and business blog for more expert advice on all things digital marketing.

What Is Guerilla Marketing?

Are you familiar with guerilla marketing? If you’re not, you should be. Entrepreneur defines guerilla marketing as an unconventional way of performing marketing activities on a very low budget. It can be a great business strategy for salons, especially new ones! In this post, I’m going to tell you how I used guerilla marketing to grow my business, and provide you with five simple steps to help you start a guerilla marketing program for your own salon.

First things first – why try guerilla marketing? One good reason is that it can be done on a shoe-string budget. Money can be tight for many new salon owners, and guerilla marketing (if done right) can be efficient and cost-effective. And due to the nature of guerilla marketing, it’s a great way to build brand awareness in your community AND build local partnerships, which can be another powerful tool.

So, with those benefits in mind, I decided to try it out for my own salon! When I started Be Inspired Salon no one in my community knew about us. So, my team and I started to go around to neighboring businesses and talk to members of the community. We gave away brochures and gift cards, NOT discounts (you all know how I feel about discounts). It was a risk to give away gift cards, but we knew that if we could get them in the door it would be a game changer.

That tactic worked, but we needed to step it up a notch. We decided to attend local networking events with the goal of building relationships, not selling services. But here’s the thing, we got a little bold with our new strategy. We attended these events dressed like cocktail waitresses. We had on nice Be Inspired Salon branded shirts and professional name tags, and we carried around trays with free product samples and whiskey glasses to collect business cards. (I said we were bold!)

We definitely drew attention, but in a good way! And don’t worry, we didn’t get in trouble. The hosts of the events thought it was a very clever idea. Anyways, it was a great way to start conversations and get to know the people in our community. We would tell them about the salon, offer a product and ask them to enter their business card for a chance to win a prize. We would alter the prize based on the audience, but usually it switched between a free hair cut or a product bundle.

Take a guess as to who won? Everyone! That’s right. When I first started guerilla marketing, I made everyone a winner. We were new, and we had plenty of openings. And it turned out to be a great success! We started getting new, paying clientele in the door.

Five Steps to Guerilla Marketing

But there’s a little more detail to how I made it happen. Here are the five simple steps you can follow to repeat what I did for your business.

1. Find events. I’m very lucky to live in a professionally driven community. There are always networking events going on. But if you are looking for ideas, check your local business chamber or search for local organizations on LinkedIn. It’s also a good idea to check out Business Networking International (BNI) – they have chapters across the US.

2. Set a strategy. Networking can be intimidating, so it’s a good idea to have a plan before you go to events. First, set a goal of how many people you want to meet and/or cards you want to collect at each event. I started out with 10. Then, decide what you are giving away, and like I mentioned before, personalize it to the crowd. Finally, brand the heck out of everything you give away! I had little stickers made that included my salon logo, address, and website and put them on everything my team gave away. It’s a simple and affordable way to grow brand awareness.

3. Follow-up. This is the most important step to make your program successful. How many times have you had a conversation that ended with, “We should meet up sometime!” Only to never have that happen? The same goes with business networking. After my events, I like to find them on social channels, usually LinkedIn, and I send them a quick note. Something like, “Hey! It was nice to meet you last night. I want to connect.” And if you don’t feel comfortable using a social platform, email is another great option.

4. Set a schedule. Frequency is another key to success. When I first started, my team and I were going once a week. And if you’re thinking I’m crazy, you’re not wrong. It was a lot, but it did lead to results. But I know that everyone doesn’t have that kind of time, so at a minimum, I would suggest going once a month.

Once business picked up, I thought I didn’t need guerilla marketing anymore. I was wrong. I rode the first great wave of new business, and after about six months of no networking, business slowed down. I couldn’t figure out why. I talked to my business coach, and he pointed out that the only thing I stopped doing was guerilla marketing. So, the lesson here is that even when business picks up, you can’t stop networking. You need to keep a consistent frequency, even if it’s once a month.

5. Get your team involved. You don’t have to do it all by yourself. I recruited my Stylists to help for several reasons. First, it can be scary to go to an event by yourself, so the buddy system is never a bad way to go! Second, I wanted them to be more invested in the business. I started to notice that if I met someone at an event, and they came to my salon, they expected to see or work with me. As I got busier, that wasn’t possible, so it was important to have my Stylists at events as well.

We have an event sign-up at the salon with the expectation that at least two people have to go to ONE event per month. This way you don’t have to go every month, but your salon is still being represented in the community.

If done well and done consistently, guerilla marketing can help you grow your salon business! If you’re looking for more detail on how to get your program started, check out “Episode #74  - Have You Been Guerilla Marketing?” on the Beyond The Technique podcast!

Are you a salon owner or manager looking to improve your business? From my experience as an owner and salon business coach, I’ve come to realize that truly successful salons have five things in common. And today I’m going to share those with you!

#1: Opportunities for Growth

Successful salons offer their employees ample opportunities for professional growth. For example, a level system, or a way for a Stylist fresh out of school to get from where they are now to a master level. Having programs in place provides your team with benchmarks they need to hit to continually move up the ladder at your establishment.

#2: Offers Education

Education is key. The most successful salons have training and education built into their culture. And it should be offered to your Stylists at every level. When a new Stylist starts at your salon, do you have a program in place to help them become more developed? What about your seasoned pros? Do you have programs in place to help drive their continued success? It’s important to provide educational opportunities that will empower and inspire your Stylists to become better!

#3: Provides Structure

Deep down, most humans desire structure. While you may have some employees that will always want to do their own thing, this shouldn’t stop you from providing structure at your salon. Structure encompasses a lot of different things including boundaries, expectations and accountability.

An easy way to implement more structure into your work environment is to provide your employees with a handbook or “playbook.” This would include the rules your Stylists needs to play by to be a part of your team. This could also include important information around boundaries. For example, what are your vacation and compensation programs? Are there rules around whether your Stylists can purchase equipment? Or do you provide equipment? Topics like these can be outlined, and boundaries can be set with clear communication and a tool such as a playbook.

You can also use that playbook as a good starting point for setting expectations and accountability. This ties in well with providing opportunities for growth. A successful salon will outline what is expected from a Stylist fresh out of school versus someone who’s been at the salon for a few years. This can include things such as the skill level you expect them to be at, to the attitude and behavior you expect them to bring into your salon. And when you have your structure documented, it helps everyone stay accountable.

#4: Strong Collaborative Marketing

This is a great tactic and one that is a win-win. Successful salons take a collaborative approach to promote not only their amazing salon, but their talented Stylists. It’s a strong effort to help build your Stylists’ clientele while building your business.

Meet Your Stylist is a great customer retention tool to help you do just that, but with little effort and big return. This tool helps you match new clients with the Stylist at your salon that is the best fit for them! And the best part is, you are empowering your Stylists by providing them the opportunity to work with clients that fit in their wheel house of expertise.

If you aren’t using a tool or you don’t have a strong collaborative marketing program in place – you need to make sure you are getting the word out about your Stylists’ talent and help build their clientele! Your business will benefit from the collaboration.

#5: Creates a Team Environment

A strong team environment means there is a strong team effort. There is a parallel between working in a salon and being on a basketball team. When you have a team mentality, your goal is to make sure the team wins – it doesn’t mean you’re the point guard who scores all the points. A great team has a common goal in mind they are all working towards. It’s not about “me and my clients,” it’s about “US and OUR clientele” as a salon. Successful salons don’t compete internally, they work together to compete against other local salons! Successful salons have a team effort that’s constantly trying to build each other up to get to that next level and achieve the bigger vision.

With that being said, do you have a bigger vision for your salon? Have you shared this goal with your team? Before you can create a team environment, you need to make sure everyone at your salon is on board!

So, how do you start implementing these five things? The first step is putting it out there to your team. Call a team meeting and go over your vision, your new playbook, or your new education program - whatever it may be. Make sure to listen to your team’s feedback, they might have an awesome idea for collaborative marketing or a conference they think would be useful to attend. There might also be some resistance, but that’s okay. Don’t let that fear stop you from implementing new things, because in the end, having these five tactics in place will help you become a more successful salon!

If you are looking for more business tips and beauty industry advice, make sure to follow Beyond The Technique, listen to our weekly podcast, and join our private Facebook group.

What is the number one marketing mistake that salons across the US are making? Humor yourself by taking a guess…have your guess ready? The number one marketing mistake is: giving discounts!

This marketing tactic is so prevalent across the US that it’s almost hard to believe, right? Discounts are offered left and right, and we see them all. the. time. You know what we are talking about: “$10-Off Tuesdays” “$20 Off Your First Visit!” “Re-Book Today and Get 20% Off!” We have two words for you: Stop It!

Discounts Devalue

Any verbiage with the word “off” is a marketing mistake that you need to stop making and the reason is psychological. The word “off” actually devalues the services that you are offering. When your salon offers a discount, you are teaching clients that your products and services are worth less. The bottom line: discounts devalue.

Everyone Wants More

Are there ways to build a huge following and clientele without offering discounts? YES!

Instead of devaluing your services, focus on adding value because everyone wants more.

Here are a couple strategies to try at your salon:

• Offer a complementary treatment with a client’s first haircut. This is a great added value for your client and costs very little overhead. Doesn’t a complementary service sound better than giving 50% off? We know it does, and your clients will notice too!
• Gift color protection shampoo and conditioner after a client’s first hair color. As a stylist, you want your clients to use color protection shampoo. To ensure that they do, offer it as a gift! You can even follow-up with the client when they are running low to re-stock (double-win!).

Earn Your Worth

Position your salon to attract the type of clients who you want to work with! To do so, you need to stop competing on price. If you complete on price, you are always going to be a small fish in a big pond. Instead, start earning what you are truly worth. Build your clientele with the slow and steady approach, and you will gain a remarkable following. Today, make a promise to yourself that you will no longer make this marketing mistake and start thinking of innovative ways to gain and retain clients!

To get more industry advice, make sure to follow Beyond the Technique and listen to the weekly podcast--we will see you there!