The Phorest training and marketing teams get asked a lot about Facebook referrals. This is a tricky one! Facebook is all about your network right? The more people who like your page, the greater the audience you have. Remember though only 20% or so of people will see any post you put up. That applies to business pages only though, so if you get clients sharing your content, you’re reaching all of their network and that could be hundreds of people!
Creating sharable content isn’t always easy. There is no hard and fast rule. The same applies to people posting glowing reviews about your salon.
Phorest Salon Software Special Feature:
People do love the ‘sound of their own content’. If you’re lucky enough to have Phorest’s Salon Software you have a review feature i.e. when someone books through your Facebook page, through your iPhone app or on your website they are automatically sent a review straight after their appointment asking them to rate it out-of-five and leave a comment. If it’s ⅘ or 5/5, they can share it on their page, recommending you to hundreds of their friends. You can share it on your salon’s Facebook page too or through your salon’s Twitter a/c. This is like word-of-mouth on steroids. Absolute gold.
Having people naturally review you and tell friends about your salon is gold. You’re not asking them to review you so it’s being not being pushy; however, it’s way more credible than most other forms of marketing – real people, telling a real story about your salon to their real friends. How can even the cleverest and most creative forms of marketing compare? Generally, they can’t, won’t and don’t!
What if I don’t have Phorest Salon Software?
It’s really hard to do it without our software and that’s just being honest. Other methods you may have see implemented can be damaging, such as:
You can tell clients to recommend your salon to their friends. Hardly foolproof plus people don’t like being told to do your work
You can run a competition and ask them to leave a review. This is a really bad idea though. It completely lacks credibility!
One reasonable way is if you’re keeping an eye on your salon on Yelp or on local directories out there, people may have left some positive reviews which you can share on Facebook. Nonetheless, if you’re based in Ireland, or outside any major city in the UK, you’re going to struggle to get any traction or comments at all on such platforms and websites.
Don’t forget, people may indeed be recommending you without tagging you so you don’t always know about the positive things being said about you. Of course you know the flipside to this.
The one sure way to increase referrals through Facebook (and Twitter) is by providing an amazing service that people actually want to talk about. If clients feel like they’ve spent hard earned money well, they want to tell their friends on the social platforms. Also, what you provide is so visual – clients who feel great because they look great will only be too happy to share photos. Even if they don’t mention you, people are likely to ask, ‘You look amazing hun! Where’d ya get it done?’. The tough thing about this is the uncertainty. Not knowing who’s saying what (unless you’re tagged) and how well you’re doing.
However Facebook has just launched hashtags, a bit like Twitter. Stay tuned for a post on that soon!
Interested in learning how Phorest salon software increase Facebook referrals? Get a Free Demo…
Connor Keppel is the Marketing Manager at Phorest. You can contact Connor on 0207 100 9290 (UK) or 01 8747800 (Irl) or by email: connor.keppel@phorest.com
