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Maximize Your Digital Marketing Efforts: A Guide For Beauty Salon, Spas and Clinics Business Owners in Dubai And The Middle East

COVID has impacted, and unfortunately, continues to impact a lot of businesses in different sectors across the globe. Beauty salon, spas, and beauty clinics were one of the most hard hit businesses, and sadly only the ones with a robust digital marketing plan managed to weather the storm. 

If you are running your own digital marketing efforts for your Beauty Salon, Spa or Beauty Clinic in Dubai (or any part of the Middle East), then  this page is for you!

The content here is very useful and it is the framework of what any top tier digital marketing agency will follow if they were to take on your beauty clinic, spa or salon as a client!

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As a digital marketing agency, I helped many beauty business owners in the Middle East conceptualize and bring to life their vision and brand.

 

For the sake of this article, I will assume that the overarching marketing strategy and the branding are already done.

 

Now the big question the business owner should ask is: how to let my future customers know about me?

 

The question assumes that you already know your customers as this should be part of your overarching marketing plan. With that being said, I would still want to create Personas (also known as Avatars) to capture, not only who your customers are, but how they behave and what they do.

 

I will share with you an example of a persona. The more detailed you are the better. And do not feel like what you create as a persona stone, in fact you will want to tweak, revisit or create new ones as your restaurant grows.

 

At Digitopia.Marketing we like to give each persona a name and image that fits the persona. Some other digital marketing agencies only Name it. I prefer you name and add an image, this will help you connect and identify with the different personas.

 

Here is an example of what a persona could look like:

 

Mariam She is between 25 and 35. Works as a middle level manager. Always on the go and pretty organized. Looking good and well maintained during the day is important for her and her career. She also enjoys pampering herself over the weekend before going out with her girl friends or on a date night.

 

You may know more about Mariam. But at least for now, you know that she is working and having a beauty regiment is important for her. She is organized, so bookings and timely appointments are important. She likes to look good before going out with her friends or on a date (so how and when you communicate to get Mariam to visit your business for the weekend is important) 

 

Even if you have not yet opened your beauty salon, you should be able to come up with some kind of a profile for a couple of types of customers that you are expecting (based on your location, services, offers, etc). If you still have no idea, then please STOP and get some professional help otherwise you will be wasting your investment.

 

Once you have the personas sorted out, then we go back to the big question of how do we get your customers and potential customers to know about you?  

 

First Step is Awareness.

As the name of the step implies, it is to let people become aware of your existence, and why you exist (should be part of the branding bit).

 

To make them aware of you, you need to have to do the following:

 

  1. Get your Google Map Local Listing done. This is an important component of your Local SEO efforts.
  2. Get on Trip Advisor and relevant review websites. Dubai is a touristy city. Lots of tourists like to read reviews. Also, Trip Advisor ranks well in google, so getting your business piggyback on TripAdvisor is not a bad thing.
  3. Consider running a deal on  Groupon, and Cobone. This is not necessarily the right path of upscale businesses, nevertheless, the footfall will help with the word-of-mouth

 

In parallel to all of this, you need to have a responsive website for your restaurant. A responsive website is one that adapts to the device used to view the website. So if you are on your laptop, you will see the full page as you would normally see it on a computer screen. However the website adapts its self to the screen size. So if you are viewing the website from a mobile phone, then the website rearranges itself in a way that is mobile friendly.

 

Also you need to have your social media pages set up and linked to and from your website.

 

Now that you have a website set up, you need to figure out how to optimize the website to start appearing on Google which will generate you free organic traffic. This is where SEO and Local SEO come in.

 

There are lots of factors that signal to google that your website should start ranking higher. One of the primary ones is you Page rank (named after Larry Page, one of Google’s founders who came up with the algorithm for “Page” rank). Your page rank is influenced by how many websites are linking to you, the location of the websites and their quality. Some of these websites (like business listing websites) will help you with your local SEO, others will help your overall SEO.

 

What you need to do is make a list of the websites you need to reach out to in order for you to get them to link to you.

 

Once your list of target websites is ready, you can then start contacting them. Usually it works by having a guest post on their blog. The guest post will have a link back to your website. Ensure that the link is a dofollow link, otherwise it will not be as strong (technically it does not count, but it helps affirm to Google who you are).

 

In parallel (again), you need to be working on your content creation. The more content you have ready, the less stressful the process will be as you move forward in time. As a restauranteur, you need to think of Video content, Image content and Written content (with a focus on Video and Image). A video or an image will showcase the beauty of a new hair color or the perfection of an eye brow. Plan your content out. What you will post when and what captions hashtags you will use for each piece of content. Ensure that you content plan takes into account the different holidays and activities in Dubai.

 

And the last piece of the Awareness component is your own blog. I find that lots of businesses start a blog but never maintain it and I think that it is the easiest and lowest hanging fruit for you to get free traffic as part of your funnel to acquiring bookings and orders.

 

Once you have all of these things set-up and in motion, you will begin driving the awareness up. Please be patient and keep in mind that some aspects take longer to show any results.  

 

The Second part is Consideration.

Consideration is when your audience if engaging with you brand in different ways. Sometimes it could be a question about something related to your restaurant on one of your social media pages. Or it could be a review they are reading on a website.

 

To ensure that you are able to succeed in moving your potential customer forward, you have to make sure that you are addressing all the reviews on Google My Business, or Trip Advisor or where ever you are being reviewed. You can also use paid ads to start directing them through different content and moving them forward down the funnel. Things like a 360 digital tour of the spa or salon, an eMail campaign, or some kind of user generated content can be pushed and presented to your audience.

 

Because each beauty clinic and salon is different and has different audiences, I will not be able to give you a to-do list that is very straight forward. Instead, I am going to list some of the things that you can do during the Consideration phase. You can test which combination you can do effectively.

 

  1. Paid ads (google, IG, FB, Youtube, LinkedIn) Depends on your audience\
  2. Retargeting ads
  3. Location based ads (ads that appear based on where your audience is living or traveling to and from)
  4. Posting and boosting:
    • – 360 degree virtual tour of your beauty clinic
    • – User generated content (could be a review)
    • – Video of a compilation of reviews
    • – A day in the life of your staff
  5. Influencer Marketing
  6. Going Live on social media

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The third part of this journey is Evaluation.

Evaluation is when your audience starts considering your beauty spa, salon or clinic as an option. They will compare your prices with other beauty spas who offer the same services.

From what I have seen, this is very critical part of the journey. Up to this point your potential customer is kind of going back and forth between the different parts of the funnel (going back and forth between consideration and evaluation). As marketers we always say “taking them down the funnel”, but in reality there is a lot of going “up and down” or “back and forth“. What is critical at this point is that the potential customer wants to feel that you are not going to disappoint them. So make sure you or someone in your team is always responding to reviews appropriately. Make sure that someone is always engaging with your audience on your social media pages. Make sure you have properly trained staff who are answering the phone to take orders or bookings. You want the client to feel that he/she is going to have a great experience in your restaurant or dealing with your restaurant.  

 

The last part of your overall approach is the Conversion & Retention.

This is where your audience members become customers of your beauty business. Some of your clients will convert without much effort from your end. Others might need a nudge or two. So at this stage you can give them an offer. It can be a very personalized offer or it can be a generic one.

 

To convert and retain your clients, you need to continuously communicate with them where ever they are to ensure that they are reminded of their positive experience; they want to try it again and they want to talk about their experience with their family and friends. So think of things that help them do that and put these findings and ideas into action using Paid ads, social media, SMS, email, loyalty programs and influencer marketing.

 

Remember this only works if your customers had a great experience. If their experience was great, you won’t have to do much work to get them to become loyal and speak positively about you. In fact most people just want to talk to their friends about their experiences. So if you have done a great job in creating a good experience, then your investment (time and money) in paid ads, social media content and posts, SMS, etc. will not be huge.

 

On the other hand, if their experience was not the best, then you are in trouble! You are going to have to put in lots of work (dealing with the negative reviews and rebuilding the trust again)

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I tried to share with you the steps and the thought process that a digital marketing agency in Dubai would follow when offering their services to the beauty business owners. And though I strongly recommend you to let a digital marketing agency do all the leg work for you, feel free to partake in that journey on your own if you are able to afford to invest some time and energy on this.

I would love to hear some of your thoughts or questions about this. Please feel free to drop me an email with your questions.

Haithem Zaidan

Founder of Digitopia.Marketing – Your Digital Marketing Chaperon

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