These days, you can’t just grow a business quickly without the help of online marketing. Almost every industry can benefit from this, including small businesses like barber shops.
If you’re a barbershop owner yourself, now’s the time to dabble in the world of online marketing so you can start promoting your business to your target audience. To help you with that, here are some effective tips that will help you with marketing efforts:
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1. Decide which social media platform to use
With how massively popular – and effective – social media marketing is, it’s not surprising for thousands of companies and brands to compete for their audience in their preferred platform. After all, your audience has the highest potential to become your customers.
So before you start your marketing campaign, you should first decide which platform you want to promote your brand.
There are various platforms to choose from, each offering its own unique means of engaging its users. There’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and a whole lot more. You want to decide which platform your potential customers often use.
Of course, this is easier said and done. The best you can do at this point is to analyze your competition and find out which platforms they’re mainly using to reach out to their audience.
2. Hold contests and giveaways
This might sound counterintuitive, especially for new barber shops, as the purpose you’re promoting your brand is to gain customers who will pay for your service. However, holding contests and giveaways is actually an effective method of gaining new followers and engaging existing ones.
After all, people love FREE stuff, and this is a good way of bringing in new followers to your page.
In this case, you can reward a few winners with a free haircut. This can work in your favor since they’ll be able to spread the word about your business as long as you did a good job and satisfied their needs.
Think of this as a minor investment with major potential returns.
3. Showcase before and after photos
Social media marketing is mostly about show and tell. If you can’t show your audience how good your skills are, how could you expect them to avail of your services?
One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is to show before and after photos of your clients. Of course, you have to ask for their permission before posting, but the fact that you only need to use your phone to do this makes it really convenient.
Besides, it’s capable of making an impression right away. As long as the haircut is done properly, it should be able to create traction on your page and reel in potential customers.
4. Run an email campaign
Social media isn’t the only place that you can promote your barber shop. In fact, email marketing still proves to be really effective when it comes to reaching out to potential customers.
However, running an email campaign might not yield the same results as promoting your brand on social media. Still, it can yield positive results given enough time. Just make sure that you craft a well-written email so your target audience won’t think of it as spam.
5. Engage your customers and respond to their reviews
Customer engagement is a really effective tool in keeping your customers and attracting new ones. This is especially true when it comes to customer reviews and testimonials.
Ideally, you want to encourage your customers to write a review about your services on your page. At the same time, you have to respond to those reviews, regardless of whether it’s good or bad.
Let them leave a review based on their experiences, thoughts, and opinions. If they’re satisfied with your service, they will gladly do so. However, if their experience was somehow negative, do your best to come up with a resolution.
This is also a good way to learn from any mistakes you might have and even further improve your services. The more you encourage your customers and followers to leave comments and reviews, the more you can engage with them.
The Key Takeaway
If you think online marketing is only for online brands, then you’re gravely mistaken. Nowadays, online marketing is for everyone, regardless of which industry your business belongs to.
Not only is it effective, but it’s also one of the most inexpensive methods of promoting your business without having to resort to flyers, banners, and posters. You can even learn some valuable information from your customers that you can use to improve your services.
With these tips in mind, you want to come up with a strategy on how you can reach out to your target audience and engage them. Of course, you should first start by establishing your brand’s online presence on a platform of your choice.
