How does your beauty business find new clients? Have you ever asked yourself how your clients (your tribe) find their way into your chair? Figuring out your salon’s customer journey is the key to attracting an endless stream of similar clients to your salon. The Trust Funnel is a client’s journey to your chair.
I like to “reverse engineer” how clients find a beauty business to share with beauty business owners where to focus energy and marketing dollars. The goal of marketing is for YOU to be on the radar of potential new clients when they search for beauty services in your area.
There are the 3 “places” you need to have an online presence so that your potential customers are able to find you:
1) Google Business Profile
2) Social Media
3) Professional Website
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4) Testimonials
Only once you are found by a potential customer do you have the opportunity to try and wow them into booking.
What do potential guests do before they commit to a first-time appointment or purchase? Research! How do they research? Online with a quick Google search for a particular beauty service term.
Your business has to show up in this search to begin the client journey.
Everyone has the opportunity to wow potential clients online and create a steady stream of new clients…
BUT, if you don’t even have a presence in each of these online spaces potential customers will never find you.
Where do your potential salon customers go to look for an answer to their needs?
Do you think you have a good enough presence there to get their attention?
Are you losing potential customers in the process of them searching for you?
In 2023, when you need to search for anything, you look it up on the internet. Well, so do your potential clients!!!
A potential client is never going to make an appointment with you/your beauty business without first doing some research.
POTENTIAL CLIENTS RESEARCH TO BEGIN THE CLIENT JOURNEY
1. DO IT WITH A GOOGLE BUSINESS PAGE
If it’s researching a business or seeking reviews the essential presence to focus attention on is the Google Business Page. Make sure this page looks professional with images of your location, both inside and out – as well as content such as blog articles to attract clients to your website.
POTENTIAL CLIENTS NEED TO SEE AN ONLINE REPUTATION TO CONTINUE ON THE CLIENT JOURNEY
2. DO IT WITH A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
Attract them to your social media page, and then clicked over to their website to confirm your decision to make an appointment/or purchase an item.
Once your potential customer turns to one of these online presences and does a search for salons in your local area and you pop up, you have one opportunity to show your potential customer what you do and that without a doubt they want to pick you over the other options to help remedy their problems and make all of their hair dreams come true!
This means, not only do you need to make sure you have an actual presence on those platforms but you need to make sure you have a website that you are 110% proud of that you can send them to!
POTENTIAL CLIENTS NEED CLEAR CALL-TO-ACTIONS TO CONTINUE THE CLIENT JOURNEY
3. DO IT WITH A WEBSITE
One of the main features on your homepage should speak directly to that brand-new potential client. Not only should a major portion of the homepage be dedicated to making the potential new customer feel welcome but you should help them out by pointing them in the right direction.
This is called a Call To Action (or CTA). The call CTA should be simple so that someone who landed on your page would walk the path you laid out for them.
Did you just think to yourself, what path I have laid out for them?
The customer journey is a path that you lay out for your potential client to take from a local need, such as a haircut or color service, straight into your chair.
POTENTIAL CLIENTS NEED TRUST TO FINISH THE CLIENT JOURNEY
4. DO IT WITH TESTIMONIALS
The last part of the journey is facing the doubt that may surface as they are going back and forth between you and your competitors. Again, think back to when you research a business. You look them up but you see businesses in the area that are similar so you want to know what others have to say.
I highly recommend actual client testimonials throughout your website. This is part of the “research” portion of the journey; it is important the potential guest feels they can trust you and this is another boost of confidence they get before booking. Other places of evidence are Google and Instagram.
If you get this right, your client journey funnel will convince potential guests they need to book an appointment with you and they will wait for your next available appointment and never question your prices. That is the real goal – finding the RIGHT CLIENT.
RECAP
The customer journey starts with the client’s NEED for a hair service (or lashes, brow shaping, facials, you get the idea)
Then they RESEARCH the talent in their local area or ask around.
Once your online profile is found your customer is impressed with your ONLINE REPUTATION.
Walks the easy-to-follow path you have laid out with your CALL TO ACTION.
The appointment is set because you have achieved TRUST!
10-15 years ago the client’s journey to your chair looked a lot different and it will change again in the future!
Now that you have this invaluable client journey information go and look yourself up as if you are a potential new customer! What do you find when you type your business name into Google or Instagram or your Website? Are you proud of what you see?
If not, start by making sure you are speaking to the right person. The key to a successful online presence is catching the right person’s attention.
Start exactly where you are. Make a list of every little detail you want to improve in your client journey funnel and start checking things off. Don’t stop until you are proud.
NEED HELP?
As a beauty business owner, there is a myriad of roles you play in addition to practicing your craft (hair, nails, lashes, etc). You are also in charge of doing things that feed your business such as being your own content creator, social media manager, and building a website built to convert. Feeling overwhelmed? Hire the “salon marketing specialists” at BeautyMark Marketing to attract your dream clients.
Make sure to follow BeautyMark’s Blog for weekly salon marketing tips HERE
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