Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 21. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, this show is a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, roundups of our most recent salon owners marketing tips & tricks, all the latest in and around Phorest and what upcoming webinars you can join. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Phorest FM Episode 21
This episode is a round-up of all the most popular Phorest blog posts through the month of March. We share different marketing ideas for April, ways to prevent the members of your staff from stealing client details, how to boost engagement on your Instagram profile, and more.
Related:
- 3 Surefire Ways To Prevent Staff From Stealing Salon Client Details
- Should You Be The One Paying For Salon Training Courses?
- 10 Tips To Perk Up Engagement On Your Salon Instagram Profile
- Which Salon Hashtag Will Actually Reach Your Audience?
- Hop Ahead Of Competitors With These April Salon Marketing Ideas
- 15 Salon SMS Templates To Breathe Spring & Easter Into Your Campaigns
Audio
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM Podcast, episode 21. I’m your host Killian Vigna and today I’m joined by co-host-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Zoe Belisle-Springer.
Killian Vigna: This week’s episode is all about our monthly round up. We’ll also go through some SMS campaign ideas that you can use to keep your salon busy throughout April, and as always we’ll top off the show with our upcoming Phorest Academy webinars. This podcast is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Now, let’s get into the show.
Hey Zoe how you gettin’ on?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Good. Good. It’s Monday morning.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, so, our monthly roundup. Nice quick one. So, what is the most popular blogs of the month? The most read.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Most popular, I’d say, so the ones that got most traffic, that got the most views, that were most engaged with, I suppose.
Killian Vigna: Cool, so what blogs are we talking about here today, then?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: The first one, you’ll probably remember this one. We talked about it not too long ago so, the three sure-fire ways to prevent staff from stealing salon client details. So that was the one that Connor wrote about building a brand, hiring and checking references carefully. He was also mentioning that you can prevent staff from having access to those details by putting access codes and stuff into your software.
Killian Vigna: So it’s like if you’re using a pen and paper, obviously it’s the details [crosstalk 00:01:27]
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. They’re in the book.
Killian Vigna: They’re in the book. But by using software or just some sort of even a lock, if you are pen and paper, use a lock or something. I don’t know. Just kinda lock it down. Picture locking a book.
And the bonus tip with that one was about, don’t just rely on your staff to bring in clients. Rely on yourself. It’s your salon, at the end of the day.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Exactly. So, reach out to your clients when they first come in. Set the tone. Introduce yourself. If you’re not extremely comfortable jumping in front of a camera or speaking publicly, you can also just reach out through email, SMS, on social media, and all those kind of external ways, I suppose.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, start off slow. Hide behind the screen for a while until you get more confident, start using cameras and stuff like that. And that kinda brings us on to… You’ve hired the right people, and you know, I suppose, you’ve developed your own brand that clients are coming because it’s your salon. Now it’s the issue of who should be paying for upskilling, I suppose.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. So, this was the monthly guest blog by Michelle Bolger from ESA Consultants. She was discussing who should be paying for training courses. If you hire your employees and say “I like this and this, but eventually I’d like you to go up to that kind of level. And if I’m offering you this course then it’s this value, you can’t really leave before six months or something”.
Killian Vigna: Yeah well you have to kind of have to look back on it. Even if you’re doing internships or stuff like that. The whole idea is that people are looking for personal and career development. They’re gonna want to know that if they’re going to a company that they are going to be able to keep working up that ladder, and not even working up that ladder, but learning new skills the whole time. So it’s a case of, do you pay for it or do they pay for it? And you are going to retain your staff for longer if you do offer that training, and that was just putting those procedures into place [crosstalk 00:03:28]
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And being reasonable with those procedures as well. Like she was mentioning, if the cost of the training was fifty quid than you cannot stipulate that the employee has to give that back if they leave within two years. You know, use common sense at that point.
Killian Vigna: Kinda weigh up the fees first before you go, “Y’know, you have to pay” or “I have to pay but you have to stay so long”. But that is the norm as well though. If you do cover someone’s training, it is the norm that you ask them to stay for two years, but that’s kinda when you’re looking like the hundreds to thousands… So just keep all that in mind.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So, that was the second one that was very popular. Now the third one was, ten tips to get more engagement on your salon Instagram profile. That one I remember we ran through on one of the episodes, we ran through point by point. And so y’know it was like, if I name a few of them, you had switching from a normal profile to an Instagram business profile. That only takes not even ten minutes. So quick and it’s free.
Killian Vigna: But it’s very important as well because people do use their personal page, but you don’t have the added benefits of the whole added “contact us” or “book here” or anything like that.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah and realistically if you have that business profile, a client or potential client could even just call you straight away from Instagram. Not even have to look your phone number up from Google or anything. Just call you straight from the app. So it is really handy, in fairness. Now there was post consistently and interact with other users, and advertising and hashtags was two of the tips.
Killian Vigna: And if you’re not sure what hashtags to use, you literally just Google what hashtag, like Hootsuite, any of those sites. They give you a full list of the most popular hashtags from each month as well.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. We even have a blog actually, “Which salon hashtag will reach your audience” I think was what it was called? We rounded up the best hashtags according to different categories for spas, barbers, any kind of categories in the industry really.
Killian Vigna: Yeah so identify which relate to yours most and latch onto it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly. So that’s available on the blog as well. Other than that you had a few other tips. Running contests, give-a-ways, using Instagram story was one of them. If you were going towards the pay feature, then it was about running Instagram ads through Facebook basically.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. So now that we’ve hopped into April we also have April salon marketing ideas. So you have a little tool kit up here?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah so in there there’s a month worth of inspirational quotes to use in your salon basically for your staff. To inspire either customer service, more sales…
Killian Vigna: Keep them riled up.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly. And then you have fifteen Easter email subject line ideas. You have eight special offers graphics, so that’s for like World Health Day, Earth Day…
Killian Vigna: So its not just Easter this month?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No, exactly. Yeah, there’s lots of holidays in spring. It’s really really good to prep your campaigns well in advance because they all kinda tie in straight one into the other…
Killian Vigna: Kinda like a trend going through them, or a flow going through them.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. So you can definitely hop onto the train. You also have five Easter Facebook covers/graphic designs as well. In the blog itself there’s many many ideas listed. So without having like graphics or anything you can at least get an idea of like okay, what can I do in my salon? What can I do on social media? What can I do through email? Through SMS? Just written ideas to tailor it to your business.
Killian Vigna: And then you have your final blog then is…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well that’s actually not part of the monthly round up but I figured that it would be a fun one to slip into this episode.
Killian Vigna: Well it makes sense.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly so fifteen salon SMS templates for spring and Easter specifically. There’s ten SMS templates you can use for spring specifically.
Killian Vigna: Specifically.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. So for instance, if I give maybe one or two examples here. Golden rules, so client’s first name- come rain, come shine, you can get hair like Gigi at salon name. So you know, tapping into that sun-kissed hair style and stuff like that.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. Summer glow and all about color and stuff.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, and that you can promote your online booking. You could promote refreshing color. It’s all about rejuvenation and refreshing looks and stuff. Making yourself look young I suppose.
Killian Vigna: One thing to remember here like, you have like fifteen templates here but they are templates so don’t look at it and go “Oh, I don’t actually do that in my salon”.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Look at it and go “Okay, how can I adjust this to my salon or to my client?” Don’t look at it and go “That’s not for me.” Kinda tweak it out and change it. They’re templates at the end of the day. They’re changeable.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah exactly. There’s ten for spring specifically then there’s five for Easter. So if you’re still planning your Easter campaigns, you can hop onto that. Or if you are a Phorest client, then you can get a hold of Luke and Shauna?
Killian Vigna: Yeah our SMS team… They’ve actually just uploaded their new SMS’s today to the system but they’re… So this is for clients, anyone using the Phorest salon software. They’ve uploaded some SMS templates. I’ve uploaded a kind of Easter email template as well. So you’ll see that all in your system. They’ll also send out a monthly marketing or a monthly SMS marketing guide so basically they’ll send out a collection of templates and you can get back to them and go “yeah, I want that, can you send that one out to my clients?” Hit up the SMS grow team and they’ll be more than happy to help you devise a good SMS strategy. Just also on this blog, we do have the SMS marketing game plan e-book which I highly recommend downloading because…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Because you wrote it?
Killian Vigna: Well yeah. Always, always promote your own work, obviously.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No in fairness it is really really helpful. If you’re not really familiar with anything that has to do with SMS marketing, keep that on your side when you’re doing it.
Killian Vigna: Yeah because there is that whole attitude of “Oh SMS costs money and I’ve got two thousand clients, I’m not going to send an SMS to two thousand clients.” You’re dead right. This e-book is all about how to target it and filter your campaigns. So when we say SMS campaigns, you’re only sending out to about fifty to one hundred clients, and that costs you virtually nothing. Like it’s only a couple of cents, a couple of pennies. So if you download this e-book from Zoe’s blog the “15 salon SMS templates to breathe spring and Easter into your campaigns…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s on the main page of the blog.
Killian Vigna: On the main page of the blog. Things that you will find in that e-book are… It’ll highlight the benefits of SMS for your salon, identify the difference between email and SMS marketing. And bear in mind that the best performers actually use both.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And they align both strategies.
Killian Vigna: It’s like eighty-one percent of our top performers align SMS and email together. So it’s not one or the other. There’s not real competition there. And then demystifying, so what’s SMS marketing and then what’s automated transactional text, so your appointment reminders, stuff like those will go to the client to reconnect for anyone using the Phorest salon software, which it automatically does your whole SMS campaigns. And again, small targeted ones so…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Targeting people who haven’t been in in a while. Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Yeah very high return on investment because it’s costing you very little. A couple of other things then, learn the true value of SMS and the golden rules to structuring the perfect SMS, or we’ll we say the perfect SMS. It’s a good strong SMS. So yeah that’s pretty much all that blogs then for this month. Which was your favorite?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I don’t know.
Killian Vigna: I really like the prevent staff from stealing salon client details. ‘Cause it is a big issue.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That is probably the one that was… Even through email, the most clicked through.
Killian Vigna: Oh really?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah definitely. Of the month people just kept… they were really interested in that topic so…
Killian Vigna: So it’s clearly an issue then?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well apparently so. My favourite, it’s kinda hard to say but I really enjoy… to be honest, I really enjoy how our guest writers bring outsider knowledge and things into our blog. I’d say Michelle’s one this month was probably one of my favourites. Yeah.
Killian Vigna: That’s the one should you be paying for salon training courses.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly. But I suppose I always have good fun doing those marketing tool kits as well though. Designing the graphics and stuff.
Killian Vigna: Well you certainly put a lot work into them, and I always rob your content, so everyone else rob her content, too. Why do your own work when Zoe’s doing it for you? Curating we call it, curating.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So in terms of webinars I suppose, ‘cause we’re already there, yeah?
Killian Vigna: Yeah so we’re in the first week of April, so we don’t actually have any running this week.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No exactly but the next one’s …
Killian Vigna: And I’m looking at the amount of registrants here. I think the last time we talked about it was…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It was one hundred and seventy-four, I remember.
Killian Vigna: One hundred and seventy-four? Well now you’ve just increased by another nineteen? Twenty? It’s too early to for maths.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah so Monday, April tenth. You know all of our webinars are always hosted from three to four pm UK Ireland time and at ten to eleven am US eastern time, so New York area. So Monday April tenth, the salon retailing master class that I’ll be giving and then on the Wednesday April twelfth is your online reputation webinar with Chris Brennan.
Killian Vigna: That’s a really good one, because he will actually go through your online reputation audit as well so you can actually get a good idea of how to analyze your own salon online. So how people treat, rate, react to you online.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well analyse, and also have guidelines to… If something’s not as good as you’d want it to be, he’ll give you insights on what you can do to make it better.
Killian Vigna: Exactly. We regularly do it, especially with the online reputation team. We’ll check up a salon basically we Google their name and we see what Google thinks of you. So Facebook reviews, Yelp reviews, Google reviews, because at the end of the day, if I’m going to go to a salon or a barbers or anywhere like that, I’m going to want to know what people are saying about it. Is it worth going to? Just like for anywhere, any kind of coffee shops or even for food, you’re always relying on referrals. That’s a really good webinar as well as the salon retail master class, how to upsell.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And how to create a retail culture in your salon so those are the webinars coming up next week.
Killian Vigna: You can access through Facebook.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You can access them through Facebook there’s an event page on Facebook, a tab. You can go on there and click take it. Obviously it is free, don’t worry, just click “tickets” and it’ll take to you to the page to save your spot there.
Killian Vigna: And it’s also online, so you’re not actually having to go somewhere.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I suppose that’s the easiest way to describe it.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, so it’s free, you can do it from your bed, and its open to everyone, so get on board. So as always, if there is any particular topics, or if you have any questions you want answered…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah speaking of which, actually in April… now I don’t know if I’m suppose to say this, but a little exclusive for people who are listening, we are going to start talking a little bit more about balancing parenting life and work life. So if you’ve gone through that and want to share your experience at all, don’t hesitate to write to us, and we can see what we can do.
Killian Vigna: Yeah please do let us know because myself and Zoe, we’re not mothers but we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well I’d hope you’re not a mother now.
Killian Vigna: I don’t know, I’m just skipping over that. Because it is easy to see women business owners but at the end of the day, they also have families, so how do you get that work from the…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And even dads as well.
Killian Vigna: Everyone. Anyone who has a family who is in business, how do you manage that work life balance?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: ‘Cause it is a topic that everybody feels alone in the situation, but in reality, most people go through it, so why not share the experience and try to make things better?
Killian Vigna: As always, if you’ve enjoyed the show, it’d be great if you could leave us some feedback on iTunes or PodBean.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Or anywhere really.
Killian Vigna: Anywhere, just say yay or nay. Do you like it, don’t you like it? Why are you listening?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Listen have an amazing week and we’ll catch you next Monday.
Killian Vigna: Enjoy.
Thanks for reading!
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