How to Use Geo-Targeting to Grow Your Salon Business?

By Mariska Treurnicht, Field Education Manager, Modern Hair & Beauty

“I want to leave the world a more beautiful place through building and uplifting others, educating with purpose and cultivating love and appreciation. “- Mariska Mariska is the Field Education Manager for Modern Hair & Beauty. She’s passionate about God, in love with her family and dedicated to her job. Her mission is to spread light, Wella love, and good hair days. Her desire is to make a positive impact: to live a life of integrity and empathy. Those who know her can vouch she always reaches out to people with a smile and friendly attitude and treats them with respect. Her speciality is beautiful hair colours, mixing crazy formulations and styling hair.

Geo-targeting refers specifically to targeting potential customers on Google and social media by their location. It’s especially important to salons because you want to gain LOCAL customers. In other words, clients in your immediate area, city, or region. Geo-targeting is widely used in pay per click advertisements on Google, and when you advertise on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Targeting potential clients via their location has many benefits, one of the most significant being that you can utilise your advertising budget more efficiently.Advertising to “everyone” (for example just boosting a post to all your followers) limits the effectiveness of your ads because you’re not talking to the right people in the right place - and essentially this determines how many new clients you gain from your efforts. Simply put, even if someone in Durban thinks your content is excellent: follows you and engages with you - but your salon is based in Cape Town – you won’t convert them into a regular, paying client. Similarly, if someone is in Pretoria and likes your pages and content, but you’re in Sandton, they’re not necessarily going to book with you.

More than advertising to the right clients, there are a few other factors that influence the effectiveness of your online advertising.These include how well your content and website is optimised for search, tagging content your location on social media, and consistently creating high-quality, and relevant content suited to your target audience. When you run ads on Google, you must ensure your website is easy to use, optimised for search and usability, and that the content is relevant to the audience you’re targeting. However,for most salons, geo-targeting on SOCIAL MEDIA is the best place to start to gain local business.

Geo-targeting on Facebook and Instagram There’s a lot of information that Facebook (and by extension, Instagram) makes available to businesses about potential clients. It allows you to set up paid ads that you can tailor for specific people. You can easily set up a geo-targeted ad from your Ad Manager, which is connected to your business page. Keep in mind that the more relevant your content is to the people you’ve chosen to target, the better your ad will perform. Consider the below when creating your ad. Creative The ad creative refers to both the media (image, GIF, video) and the text (copy) you use. What you show and what you say influences whether people will take note of your ad, will stop to read it, and finally take an actionsuch as book at your salon. To make your creative effective, it needs to speak directly to your target audiences pain points, how you solve them and tell them how they can get what you’re offering. Another element to consider is that around 88% of Facebook traffic is from mobile (and even more so Instagram). It means that your ads will be far more effective if it’s been created for and optimised for this platform.

Setting up your ad When you set up your ad, set demographics such as age, gender, interests and most importantly, the geographical AREA. For example, if your salon is in the Cape Town CBD you can target only that and the immediate areas around it. You can also exclude areas in which you don’t want to show your ad.

Monitoring and adjusting You can view how well your ad is performing by checking the results via your Ads Manager. If you find that you’re not gaining traction, you can adjust it by expanding the area you’re targeting, excluded more places, or changing other demographic information. You can even adjust your creative!

Will Geo-targeting really work for your business? Yes, yes and one more time yes! A website or social media page that offers personalised content and adjust to the needs of the user achieves greater loyalty with its customers and better internet positioning. Geo-targeting provides the opportunity to reach the right person, with the right message at the right time. In a time, such as this where the aftermaths of the recent COVID-19 pandemic are creeping into your business, you need to be smart in our approach.Drive content aimed at the right target market, with a visual and a message that inspires engagement and encourages action in a subtle yet genuine way. For more information on how to use Geotargeting for your business, visit the Facebook and Instagram Business Help Centre. Sources: www.adespresso.com; www.facebook.com; www.instagram.com; www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org Keen to expand your knowledge? Contact our education teamto book a Zoom session or salon day. About Modern Hair & Beauty Education We're inspired when we witness stylists sharing ideas, skills, and a commitment to their craft, even more so when these moments of collaboration produce renewed creativity and excitement! It's precisely why our Modern Hair & Beauty Education team facilitates an environment where this is possible. They inspire, challenge, and encourage stylists to try new techniques, bring their creativity to the training room, and give clients more than the standard salon offering. Our team ensures that stylists are up to date with new trends, know the latest colouring and cutting techniques and have expert technical knowledge of our products. We are passionately empowering our stylists and believe the key to sustainable career and salon success is education. Follow Instagram Facebook