Optimize your online presence with these key strategies and stand out to potential guests.
In today’s digital world, your online reputation is more crucial than ever with many potential guests going straight to Google or other search engines when they want to find a new salon or spa near them. With studies showing that almost half (49%) of Americans say that they were influenced to choose their current hair salon based on the business’ online reviews and online reputation, it’s clear that if you want to attract new guests, how you show up online matters. While taking control of your online reputation can seem overwhelming and time-consuming, if you want to show up high in search results, there are a few key strategies you need to be focusing on – and an all-in-one reputation management platform like ezRepute handles them all automatically.
1) Clean up your business listings information
To understand why this is important, it may help to understand how Google determines which local businesses to show searchers. When potential guests search for a spa or salon ‘near me’, Google will actively search addresses close to the user’s location and consider several factors to provide relevant results, prioritizing listings with accurate and up-to-date details, as well as those that contain beneficial information about the business. So, for your salon or spa to be deemed legitimate and trustworthy by Google, and potential new guests, consistency is key. Keeping your information accurate and consistent across many online directories reinforces your identity and trustworthiness for search engines, dramatically increasing your chances of ranking higher than your local competition. Beyond this, if a potential new guest does discover your business online and finds missing or outdated information, you run the very real risk of losing them to a local competitor whose information is available and accurate. In fact, 73% of customers do not trust local businesses with incorrect information, so ensuring phone numbers, addresses, opening hours, and websites etc., are all accurate is critical to attracting new guests.
2) Optimize business listings for local search
As well as having accurate information, optimizing listings with relevant keywords and categories helps search engines understand the nature of your business and what you offer, allowing them to display your salon or spa in relevant local search results. While this might sound like a lot of work, ezRepute automatically improves local search engine optimization (SEO) and updates your information across 50+ listings sites to build an attractive and consistent presence for all business locations on Google, and wherever else your guests look.
3) Manage and respond to guest reviews
A whopping 92% of people check out a local business’ online reviews before making a buying decision, and they are influenced by not only the reviews themselves, but how (or if) you respond to them. Of course, with hundreds of review websites out there there’s no way a business could manually check every site or have time to respond to them all individually, but negative reviews - especially when left unanswered - can be very off-putting for potential guests.
By not responding, you're showing the guest that had the negative experience that you don’t care enough to rectify it, and indicating to the potential new guest reading it that you don’t prioritize guest satisfaction. With ezRepute, you can connect listing sites including Google, Facebook, and Bing, to see and respond to reviews directly from within the platform – and set up templates and conditions to respond automatically so you never miss a review. This proactive approach allows you to address any negative comments promptly and engage in meaningful conversations with guests.
And the reviews on sites you’ve never even heard of? Fortunately, the right salon or spa software will help you stay on top of this easily too. Although these sites may not get as much traffic, being aware of these reviews and the sentiment of what’s being said is extremely useful, and ezRepute scans for reviews across 250+ sites and pulls data to create insights in one single dashboard.
4) Deliver exceptional guest experiences
This may seem obvious but delighting your existing guests leads to glowing online reviews and high ratings – which can’t be underestimated when trying to attract new clients.
Volume, star rating, and frequency of reviews all help Google assume that it's serving its users well by showing your business when they search for a great salon or spa near them.
Beyond this, 91% of 18–34 year-olds now trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and positive reviews act as social proof and build trust and credibility for your business – helping you stand out from local competitors in the search results.
5) Analyze insights and take action
You’ve implemented the strategies above, but how can you tell if what you’re doing is working? Tracking analytics is a great way to do this, but too much customer data can be overwhelming and make it difficult to decide what action needs to be taken. A platform like ezRepute can help you analyze AI insights from reviews across locations and turn the unstructured data into actionable feedback. It also lets you create categories and keywords to get insights on specific areas, like a new treatment or updates you made to improve the ambience, and gives you insights into all reviews mentioning these topics. You can also use these insights to find out which franchise or location works best or create keywords for staff member’s names to see which employees are performing well.
6) Benchmark against competitors
As well as keeping track of your own salon or spa’s reputation, you should also ensure competition isn’t getting ahead by analyzing your competitors' online reputations. After all, you want to be the clear choice for new guests searching online.
With one single dashboard, ezRepute gives you an entire snapshot into your competition by displaying the same insights and analysis for direct competitors – allowing you to benchmark against national and regional competition and see what you can do to outshine them.
Conclusion
Your online reputation plays a critical role in attracting new guests, and by optimizing your online profiles, actively managing reviews, and monitoring your competitor’s online reputation as well as your own, you can boost your salon or spa's visibility, credibility, and appeal to anyone searching locally.
While this may seem like a large undertaking, ezRepute will take care of all of this, while you focus on delivering the exceptional guest experiences that keep your reviews glowing. Ready to take your online reputation to the next level? Reach out to sales@simplified.io today for a free ezRepute demo.
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