Welcome to the Salon Owners’ Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 3. 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 3
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, salons have an opportunity to capitalise on the biggest day of the year for selling retail — Black Friday. We offer tips in this episode to help salon owners prepare to make the most of it. We also discuss the importance of investing in your staff, and the positive results you will see from that. Lastly, Phorest’s marketing manager Connor Keppel is in to speak about five common marketing mistakes made by salons.
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Killian Vigna: Welcome to Phorest FM podcast, episode three. I’m your host, Killian Vigna, and today I’m joined by Zoe Belisle-Springer. This podcast is a weekly round up of our latest marketing tips and tricks for salon owners, what’s been going on in and around Phorest, and what new webinars are taking place. This podcast is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
So today we’re talking about fun marketing ideas to boost Black Friday retail sales. We’ll be talking about what happens when you invest in your salon staff training, and our marketing manager today will go through 5 common salon marketing mistakes every salon owner can avoid. We’re going to talk about the latest Phorest salon software feature to go live this week, and we’ll talk about our upcoming webinars in the Phorest academy series. So let’s get started. Welcome to our exclusive to clients Phorest FM podcast. Thanks for tuning in.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Hey guys.
Killian Vigna: So I’ve messed your name up in the past two episodes. I actually have your name typed out here in phonetics here, “Belisle, Belisle, Belisle.”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well done.
Killian Vigna: Belisle. All right, so let’s kick it off. So, the first thing we’re going to go through, the first blog this week is the fun marketing ideas to boost Black Friday retail sales, because that’s an upcoming one there.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, definitely. So Black Friday this year falls on November 25 so that’s pretty much just 14 days away and retail is probably the most number one thing you could increase sales on that day, to be honest. So there’s a lot of in-salon ideas for events and such and then there’s one or two for online promotions as well, and then you also have one that kind of mixes both, so it’s just kind of like a challenge: buy this kit, try it out, try to use all the products at once, kind of thing and send us your snaps about it, kind of thing. It’s just a way to interact in-salon and online.
Killian Vigna: And we know it says Black Friday and Black Friday’s a big massive thing over in America, but for clients over in Ireland, UK or anywhere else, is something that they can take part in as well now?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah it’s growing, it’s definitely growing. I personally come from America and it is pretty huge. I’ve seen people go insane over this but-
Killian Vigna: Climbing on top of people on people.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, pretty much. But it is definitely growing over in Europe, and I’m sure you can witness it. You’ve probably witnessed it in the last two years.
Killian Vigna: Last two, three, four years, even, that’s when we’ve started really seeing it. Like it wouldn’t be as crazy as in America, but it still seems to be something that everyone in Ireland is getting on board now.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, definitely.
Killian Vigna: Or you could even, like especially with the salons, you could even make your own twist and say, “White Friday” or something like that. Kind of get away from the hustle and bustle of-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly. There was one of the ideas I highlighted was an email campaign kind of going. The boss is away for the day-
Killian Vigna: I saw that one.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I’m putting everything on sale, you know?
Killian Vigna: There is a disclaimer on that one though, don’t-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Don’t actually put everything on sale, but there’s like twists to kind of hide the discounting thing. It’s not really a discount, it’s just packaging things in a more interesting way for clients to buy them.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, because we want to, it’s not about discounting your services and stuff. You wouldn’t go into a doctor and ask for 10% off, so you want to stay away from those sort of things.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly-
Killian Vigna: It’s just workarounds.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You’re kind of making yourself a magician there, you know?
Killian Vigna: Cool. And again, that one, in two weeks, so get started on your planning, your strategies for that one straight away, because that time is going to creep up.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Real fast.
Killian Vigna: So fast. So that brings us on down to the next one, which is, what happens when you invest in salon staff training. How do you go about it, why should you?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So that one was inspired by salon owner summit speaker 2016 … Antony Whitaker. So it’s kind of like a ripple effect, the way he sees it, right? So when you invest, loads of salon owners can feel like investing in salon training can be quite expensive, but in reality, the return on investment is so huge. So, when you start investing in salon employees, then they’re going to grow personally and automatically put their trust in you and then it moves on. It’ll affect your client retention rates, it will affect eventually your profits, obviously. It will affect the quality standards in your salon, clients’ journeys, and it’s just a very positive thing to do. The return is just amazing.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, because we talking a lot client retention, but like client retention’s all well and good, but you’ve got to be able to retain your own staff too.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah definitely.
Killian Vigna: If I was going to go to a salon and week-in, week-out it’s nearly a new hairdresser or someone like that, you’ve got to start thinking to yourself, “What’s going on here now?”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And investing in your staff is a way to, you know, retain your own staff, because if you believe in them and their capacities of growth, then they’re going to put their trust in you as well. They’re just going to be more inclined to stay with you.
Killian Vigna: That goes back to the initial hiring process too. You’re hiring someone to do a job that, you trust that they can take full control of that. You don’t have to be over watching or kind of looking over them the whole time.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah
Killian Vigna: That’s the point of a good employer is to hire someone that they can trust will take care of it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, yeah definitely.
Killian Vigna: Cool. So, now it’s going to bring us on to our Phorest salon software marketing manager, Connor Keppel, who’s going to talk about the five common salon marketing mistakes every salon owner can avoid. So-
Connor Keppel: Great, so-
Killian Vigna: What are they?
Connor Keppel: So there’s a couple of different, I guess different common mistakes that we really see and funnily enough, I actually wrote a post basically a very similar post a couple years back, and it actually hasn’t changed over the last few years, the same mistakes. We can all make small marketing mistakes, but the ones that I think really are the most damaging mistakes are ones that tend to affect the value or your service and the average price that people pay for your services and retail. So a couple of things first of all. A common one I see on social media on the likes of Facebook is continually discounting. Now I see this offline as well. But the temptation, when you’re trying to like, you know, sell more retail or get more people through your door, you naturally think, you know, “How can I do it?” And one of the first places you always go is “If I make it cheaper, more people will come through my door.”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so you basically, on Facebook right, it’s just kind of like a post saying “Oh, we’re having this day sale” kind of thing.
Connor Keppel: Exactly, exactly.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, yeah, Right.
Connor Keppel: Couple of problems with that. Firstly is, services like hair and beauty are largely speaking a luxury. They’re not a commodity, so people want a quality service. They want to have that relationship with a particular person. They want to be in the hands of an expert, and they want to look great. So, it’s not like electricity, where you don’t care who provides your electricity, you just want it 20% cheaper. But you do care who’s doing your hair, who’s taking care of your skin. So like-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You kind of become they’re friends in the end.
Connor Keppel: You do, definitely. But you’re also putting a lot of trust in them because, it’s like somebody said to me, you know. If you get a bad taxi, say you get a bad taxi trip. That might be like a guy who charged an extra five quid because he drove a long way around or he never stopped talking. You get a bad haircut, and that’s like really bad because you’re walking out, it’s a really personal thing.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: Because you’ve got that for at least three weeks (laughter). So I mean, the reality is, a discount isn’t actually an effective way always to generate more sales and it does come at a price, and that price is unfortunately you’re lowering, you’re just saying to people, “The only way I can get you through my door is by lowering the value of my services.” And that in itself is, in this particularly industry, can be like a fundamental problem.
On that then as well, all of the things I see are generally speaking around loyalty programs and daily deals. So, you know, it’s 2016, we’re still talking about daily deals being bad. If you look at even some of the daily deal sites like Groupon, Groupon has bought Living Social. All of the share prices of these massive, massive giants are falling rapidly and they’re laying off staff, and so on. And the reason is because they’re not sustainable. So, what they do is, obviously, they ask you to massively discount your services with the promise of getting new people through your door. Of course a lot of salon owners and other businesses with salon owners turn around and go, “Well you know what? If I can get them through my door, even if I make no money on the first batch of them, if I get them through my door, I know I can keep them.” And there’s two fundamental problems with that. Number one is the behavior and the type of people who are attracted to daily deals are discount hunters, okay?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: And a discount hunter is not worried about that amazing conditioner you’re going to use or that like extra 10% you put in to their skin. It’s about getting an okay job done at a low cost, and that isn’t generally speaking a sustainable type of customer that you want.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, they wouldn’t be typical customer to come back.
Connor Keppel: No, not the typical-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: They’re just going to look for the lowest price the next time.
Connor Keppel: Exactly, exactly. The second problem with it is is actually how the daily deals themselves are set up, and this is going to bring me on to marketplaces as well. But daily deals will very often … The way they work is, you sign up to a daily deal, okay? And you say, “Okay, I’m going to get a blow-dry for 20% of what it normally costs.” You know, okay, so you might think “I’ve got that person through my door.” But that daily deal company will actually come back six weeks later when you were due to get that blow-dry again and probably offer you something very similar in a different salon. So the way that the actual daily deal site works is like the daily deal site is almost like the virtual salon, it owns the client, and it’s moving people around from salon to salon and using the actual physical parameters of the salon.
So you never even actually own the client in a way, even though they have come back though your door, because that daily deal site is going to actively hunt that person before they even think of coming back to your salon and move them on again.
Killian Vigna: It’s almost like a lease, isn’t it? Because like you compete with so many other guys who are discounting so you’re like renting that client just for a day, and then they’re gonna go off and start hunting for all the other cheaper ones.
Connor Keppel: Definitely.
Killian Vigna: So which means people are undercutting and undercutting. It’s constantly getting lower on the prices.
Connor Keppel: Definitely, definitely. And it’s a race to the bottom. But also, I think personally speaking, it can be very brand damaging to see, like if- There’s a lot of people on these daily deal sites. I mean, their entire-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Would you say at least 50% of salons would be on daily deal sites?
Connor Keppel: Not anymore.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Not anymore?
Connor Keppel: There was like a huge- In Ireland and the UK, probably not 50%, but probably 20% of salons might have tried it, or 30% at some point. It actually, being honest, it devastated a lot of salons. It actually closed a lot of salons because what happened was, particularly during the recession, right? So the recession hit Ireland, for instance, and just to use Ireland as an example. Daily deals were being sent out. People who would normally go get services done were like, “Wow this is so cheap.” They go into the salon. The salon then is like doing those services but it’s actually not making any money on them. It’s basically, for that want of a better word, really like peeing off their existing clients because they’re like, “Hey wait a minute. I’ve been coming here for five years and you’re giving this person the same services at half the price?” And the second thing that is well it just, literally all the people are working away really hard, servicing these clients who are making you no money, and it’s just a really, really bad model.
That’s kind of more obvious probably now, but the one that’s a bit less obvious are marketplaces, okay? So marketplaces are like listing sites. So if you want the equivalent in terms of other industries, you could look at like your Hails, your Ubers, your Just Eats, your Air Bnbs. They’re marketplaces. So, the marketplaces are sold and a lot of salons join marketplaces on the promise of client discovery, okay? And that’s what they say. So they say, “Are you finding it hard to rank on Google? Are you finding it hard? Well don’t worry, when somebody searches ‘hair salon’ in Nightbridge, London, you’re going to rank on this side and you’ll be listed on this side.'” So you’re getting great exposure and you’re getting lots of new clients through your door. That is, largely speaking, true, that part. It’s the other part that they don’t tell you about. So what they-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Of course.
Connor Keppel: It’s what they don’t tell you about. [crosstalk 00:12:25] What they don’t tell you about it typically, a lot of these listing sites and marketplaces, they take a bigger charge on your first booking and they take a much smaller charge after that, okay? So for instance, what they might do is … You know, they might say, “Okay, the first person that books a service, if that service is 100 pounds, we’re going to take 20% on the first service, and then after that, we’ll only ever take one pound per booking for each person.” So, imagine then Zoe goes in, right?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Right.
Connor Keppel: It’s your first time getting your hair done in that particular salon and you pay 100 pounds. Maybe the listing site takes 10 or 20 pounds out the first time, but when you book the second, third, fourth time, they only take a pound each time.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: So they’re saying to you, “We’re taking a lot up front because we’ve discovered that client for you, but from there on, we’re only taking a Euro or a pound per booking.”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: But the problem is, think about the business model here, is that they want you to book in for the first time, in as many salons as possible because then they get the 20 pounds up front every time, or the 10 pounds. So again, what they’re actually doing is they’re moving you around. So what I would suggest to anybody who doesn’t believe me, that’s on a listing site, sign up or get someone like your brother or your sister or someone to sign up to a listing site, book into your salon, and then watch the emails that they start getting six or eight weeks later from the actual-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s a really interesting, yeah I didn’t think of that-
Connor Keppel: From the listing site, and they’re gonna send you the offers, I guarantee you for other salons that are very, very similar because they want to get that 20% each time. So they have to move you around as much as humanly possible.
Killian Vigna: So they’re different from the daily deals in the sense that you’re not offering big, massive discounts, but your clients are still being shipped from door to door.
Connor Keppel: Definitely. [crosstalk 00:14:00] I don’t necessarily think they’re quite as bad as daily deals, it’s just straight up bad and very obviously bad in so many different ways.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: But that’s kind of almost, that’s what kind of what makes marketplaces almost worse in my opinion, is because they’re so much more Machiavelli. It’s so much harder to- you wouldn’t think it. You would naturally think- Phorest had it’s own listing site called Xanadu in 2010, 2011.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: And we thought it was a great way to get new clients for salons. And we soon discovered when we tracked the behavior of clients, now we weren’t sending them offers, obviously because that just wasn’t in our interest because we’re a salon software company. But we said we’ll give them a marketplace where all our salons could display they’re salons. And what we discovered was, even if you’re not sending them offers, the shear fact that they’re going to a listing site and they’re booking and seeing other salons there. And maybe there’s one of the salons that’s slightly cheaper-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: They just end up moving themselves as well. So even if they’re not being forced to move-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: They kind of just do it naturally.
Connor Keppel: Yeah, they do it naturally.
Killian Vigna: And it’s almost like throwing your own clients into a pit to kind of compete against each other, isn’t it?
Connor Keppel: Definitely. It’s actually, you know what, one of the worst things that I see, and I see it again, I see it so often is, and it’s crazy, people going into salons and they say, you know, “Would you like to rebook now?” And the person would say maybe “No.” And they go, “Okay, well when you are thinking of re-booking, go check us out. We’re on marketplace X.”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So they-
Connor Keppel: So in other words, they already have loyal clients. The loyal client has never heard of this marketplace, and now you’re sending him to a website that has all of your competitors listed on it, so that’s a really common mistake.
Killian Vigna: You may as well just meet them at the door and go, “Well actually there’s another salon across the street. If you want to check out them then come back and let us know.”
Connor Keppel: These are easy mistakes to make and they are mistakes that we’ve all made. Like I said, Phorest itself, we had our own marketplace at one point … And it was beginning to make money, but we tracked the behavior of these people. So we’ve actually tracked other marketplaces too. So one that we tracked, for instance, was here in Ireland and we tracked, we opened up, I’m not going to bore people, a thing called an API. So basically anybody who booked on the marketplace, they went in on the appointment screen if that salon was using Phorest. So we tracked the behavior of people who came through that marketplace and we figured that out. A good … The best of the clients, only about 3 or 4% of them were ever going back to that salon a third or fourth time. Like 3 or 4%.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s insane though.
Connor Keppel: So it’s insanely low. So, the reality is is that it’s just not the best way to get discovered. The best way to get discovered is by having great social media. The best, best way to get discovered is true referrals.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: The marketplaces are, it’s an easy trap to get into because the promise of getting more new clients, and then the fear of missing out by not being listed with your competitors is really strong. But I would urge people to really think about it. Stand back and think, “If that side is taking a much bigger percentage the first time, it has to be in their interest and move people around to get that as often as possible.”
Killian Vigna: And like that, you’re quiet period in January, it can be tempting to go and reacquaint. I want a quick fix, jump on to the daily deals, jump on to the marketplace. That’s why we provide all of these marketing materials to kits, to strategies, to plans.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: The loyalty schemes as well.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, that’s another thing-[crosstalk 00:17:05]
Connor Keppel: Yeah, the loyalty schemes, the attitude of gratitude. Just anything like that. We say it time and time again but we can’t emphasize enough. You should always plan eight, six to eight weeks beforehand. So with January, you’re coming up. Don’t leave it until the last minute. You’re going to be flat out now. Start using the blogs that’s always popping up online.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: Start getting that information together and plan now and you won’t be left in that quiet period down where you feel like you have to a quick fix or quick sale.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You won’t be panicking.
Killian Vigna: Yeah-
Connor Keppel: Don’t panic-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You’ll be in control.
Connor Keppel: And the fact that you’re doing it all for eights weeks means you’re just tapping away here and there. You’re just doing a little bit, it doesn’t become too stressful or anything.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So you’re saying, you were mentioning the loyalty schemes that were often a problem as well.
Connor Keppel: Yeah, so there’s a lot of problems with loyalty programs that are kind of more fundamental problems and then kind of smaller problems. So, smaller problems will be that they’re largely based around discounts, and even like much smaller problems, like a lot of them are on paper and they don’t look particularly well, or they get thrown into a wallet or a purse and they never see the light of day again. But the biggest problem I find with loyalty programs, a lot of people say they don’t work. That’s because they’re not done right largely. So, some of the- And again I see a lot of salons moving away from this, thankfully, but it’s not again, I say that hair and beauty’s not a commodity or it’s not like even something like a small luxury, like a coffee. It’s way beyond that. So a lot of loyalty programs work “Get X amount of points and then we’ll give you a 20% discount on what you’d normally get.” Or, even worse, “Get four manicures and get a fifth one for free.” And the problem with that is, the fundamental thing you’re doing is wrong. You’re discounting something that that client was willing to pay full price for anyway, and you’re actually decreasing average spend per client. And-
Killian Vigna: It’s your classic coffee shop example, isn’t it?
Connor Keppel: Well that’s exactly-
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: That’s the model. And it’s not that, I do believe, I read a piece on that particular approach and I think it may work in certain industries, and discounting works in certain industries, but you cannot compare somebody who’s a styled, a trained stylist, who spends hours and is a crafts person that’s charging maybe 250 pounds or 150 pounds for a high end service.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: And market that in the same way you would electricity or coffee. It just, you’ve got to think about this.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s just not right.
Killian Vigna: It’s a skill you’re paying for.
Connor Keppel: Yeah, and in fact, I would always say, I get asked at seminars, and this is a whole different probably podcast, but I get asked at seminars-
Killian Vigna: We knew this would be two episodes- (laughter)
Connor Keppel: I get asked often, you know, “I have this service, so I have this particular facial, and it is my most expensive facial, but no one ever buys it. What should I do?” And the question I ask is, “Well, what have you tried so far?” And it always comes back to lowering the price. The most successful way to actually get people to buy that most expensive facial, believe it or not, is to introduce a more expensive one above it, okay?
Killian Vigna: Tier, price tier.
Connor Keppel: Yeah, or what’s known as anchoring. Basically what happens is everybody who goes into a restaurant at some point looks at the menu, okay? And they always go, “Well the lobster is like 35 pounds, so I’m not going to go for that, but the steak is only 28 pounds so it’s okay, I’m not buying the most expensive thing.”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: (Laughter) Yeah.
Connor Keppel: If that steak was the most expensive thing, you tend to roll back one underneath it. It’s a natural human behavior, tends to be. And I’m talking about-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: There’s exceptions, of course. There’s people who want to buy the most expensive thing or the cheapest thing. But largely speaking-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, of course.
Connor Keppel: So never, don’t always resort to the discounts, don’t always resort to giving away things to people for free when they’re already buying them. What you should do, and the program we have in Phorest is called Tree Card, is you build up points for every service or for every pound or Euro or every dollar you spend. So let’s make up an example. For instance, you spend 100 pounds on something, that means you get 100 points. And then with that 100 points, you can claim a free product or service that you’ve never had before. But it works in a kind of surprise or treat fashion. So, the key to it is, from the salon owners point of view, when Mary comes back in and she’s 100 points, you turn to Mary and you go, “Oh by the way, you know you have 100 points, so if I rebook you in today for your blow dry, why don’t you get your nails done?” So you’re giving them a service you think that they would like-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: But you’re also giving them something that they’ve never had before. And you will actually find that if that’s done right, about 40% of your clients should be coming back to buy that at full price the next time around. So it’s, yes you’re giving them something for free, but you’re giving them something for free to reward their existing loyalty. You’re not decreasing they’re average spend and you’re introducing them to new services.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That will-
Connor Keppel: It’s completely-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: They will mostly book it anyways after.
Connor Keppel: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: And we have the data to prove that the majority of the time, people will come back and actually pay for that free experience they’ve received, again.
Connor Keppel: Oh definitely, about 40% of them. If it’s done successfully-
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: If’s it’s done successfully, yeah.
Killian Vigna: So it’s not a case of you’re giving out free services. Your clients will tend to come back in and actually pay for that after. Because they’ve never experienced it before and you’re giving it to them for free, they get to try it out, and then “Oh, have a good day.” They either like it and want to pay for it again, or they don’t.
Connor Keppel: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: And just like you were saying on that, like if you had a really expensive product and you didn’t know how to market it or get it out there, you have the Tree Cards, but now you have the likes of Snapchat and stuff like that. To create brand awareness and say “Hey, if you screenshot this image you can actually come in and get reward points on your card as well, and get the product. It’s just the little things like those that you’ve got your marketing tool, which is the loyalty card, and then you’ve got your marketing plan or strategy, which is using social media, the SMS, emails to get it all out there.
Connor Keppel: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Cool. So, we had a pretty big announcement today and it kind of works well that you’re actually here to talk about it, but a lot of people have noticed a new difference in Phorest’s system this week.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: In the marketing section, yeah.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Connor Keppel: Snapchat. (laughter)
Killian Vigna: Surprise.
Connor Keppel: Yeah so we introduced a basically- Snapchat, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the fastest growing social networks ever, but it particularly is popular among younger audiences, so kind of 30 downwards.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And women a lot.
Connor Keppel: And women a lot, for sure. So it’s basically, you might have used Instagram stories, you’re probably more likely to have used Instagram stories even thought ironically that’s copying Snapchat, but you may have seen it on Instagram-
Killian Vigna: And now Facebook has stories too as well, yeah.
Connor Keppel: And Facebook has stories, so it’s … Basically, you take videos and you send them and you can either send them as direct messages types or they kind of like dissolve or disappear after 24 hours. But what we allow you to do on Phorest, and the kind of challenge with Snapchat is discovery. Well there’s two challenges.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Building a following, yeah.
Connor Keppel: Building a following, and also doing content, but building a following is challenging. So Snapchat is, by design, meant to be used with your friends and within your contacts. It’s not like Facebook where you type in, or Twitter where you can type in anyone’s name-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Or even Instagram, yeah-
Connor Keppel: Yeah, or Instagram and start stalking people. It’s meant to be kind of much more intimate, I guess, network.
Killian Vigna: Which makes it good, because it’s simple to use. There’s not a whole lot of added features or things like that to use.
Connor Keppel: No, it’s-
Killian Vigna: It’s quite straightforward.
Connor Keppel: Yeah you download it on your phone and you add your contacts, then whoever is on Snapchat. So what this allows you to do basically is go in, you add your Snapchat account, and also I think you do webinar for those of you who haven’t set up your Snapchat account, we have one coming up soon-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, on Monday.
Connor Keppel: Yeah-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: On Monday, November 14th. Then there’s also one with the National Hair Federation.
Connor Keppel: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s going to be on the 21st. So-
Connor Keppel: Cool. Very good. So, basically this tool allows you to, once you’ve set up your Snapchat account with Zoe or if you have one set up already, entering your handle. You go into the marketing section of Phorest, click on Snapchat, enter the handle for your account or your account name-
Killian Vigna: For your salon account name-
Connor Keppel: Salon account name, yes-
Killian Vigna: Not your private- (laughter). So basically you’ll see in the top bar it’ll ask you for your Snapchat code. Don’t use your own Snapchat code unless you plan on making yourself a massive Snapchat superstar. Well, if you do, good luck (laughter). Yeah, it’s your salon so you do need to create a salon-
Connor Keppel: It’s a nice way to get people to stop doing that. If you don’t want to be a superstar, don’t enter it like- (laughter)
Killian Vigna: More fame for us, but yeah, just create a salon Snapchat code, and that’s what you put in then.
Connor Keppel: And then basically what happens is it sends an SMS on everyone on your database, and it’ll recognize whether they’re on Snapchat or not, and you-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Basically it invites them to add you.
Connor Keppel: Exactly. And you either click on “Add Friend” or you can actually encourage your clients to download Snapchat as well. So it’s a new channel, it’s a really exciting channel, it’s a channel that it’s actually very easy to use, all it requires is a little bit of confidence-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Especially in this industry, it’s so creative and it’s so visual as well. It’s so easy to post content, you have it there all the time.
Killian Vigna: And you actually did up a Snapchat ebook. We talked about it in our last episode-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: But you actually had a case study in it or a salon owner who’s having great success with Snapchat.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh yeah, and that salon owner is Ellen Cavanaugh from Waxperts and ironically, she can’t really Snapchat the treatments and stuff, but she’s still very successful.
Killian Vigna: Yeah because she’s waxing of course, yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly.
Killian Vigna: So give Ellen from Waxperts a follow and just see the sort of content that’s being put up and give yourself an idea. Now, it’s all trial an error. You watch a couple of different people, you find what works for you. You know your clients better than we do. So again, we can just give you this information book. It’s down to you to find out what works and what doesn’t work.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah exactly.
Killian Vigna: Cool. Just to finish off on that then. So we’ve gone through this week’s three blogs, we’ve talked to Connor about common salon marketing mistakes and we have talked about the new Snapchat feature. So, next week’s upcoming blogs, sorry, next week’s upcoming webinars, we actually have the Phorest Academy’s “Becoming a Client Retention Expert.” That’s Monday the 14th 11:00-12:00, Monday, November the 14th. We also have “The Salon Owner’s Introduction to Snapchat.” And then we have two gift card webinars on Wednesday. We have one for Irish/UK clients at 10:00 in the morning on Wednesday the 16th, and one for US clients at 5:00 in the evening.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: But don’t worry, if you don’t remember all of this, it’s all on the Facebook page in the Events section.
Killian Vigna: Or you could just skip back 30 seconds and listen again. (laughter) Don’t worry about it. So, again you can go to the phorest.com/blog to get all of Zoe’s content this week, or you could go to the Facebook Events page to keep an eye on what upcoming webinars are coming. So, I’m Killian Vigna and thanks to Zoe Belisle-Springer-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Hey, you got it right.
Killian Vigna: And to Connor Cappelle. I did, I did-
Connor Keppel: You’ve got my name wrong, it’s not Cappelle, is Keppel. (laughter) Oh wait, this is the recurring theme.
Killian Vigna: Three months, Connor, three months.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: All right, well on that note, have a great week, and we’ll catch you next week.
Connor Keppel: All the best.
Killian Vigna: See ya, buh-bye.
Thanks for reading!
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