Task Force
Master the net
Websites are proving their worth as cost-savvy sales tools
Already a cost-effective marketing method, websites have become an even more important way to communicate your message in a tough economic climate. Hmhair.co.uk, the Headmasters salon group site run by PR director Laura Hinton and marketing director Emma Freeman, has found huge savings for the salon chain.
“It has seriously reduced our print costs and enabled us to be more immediate in communications,” says Emma. Reducing the need for fliers and letters, Headmasters primarily uses e-shots, which have proved highly effective. Emma says: “Takings are up 5.2 per cent, and the number of sales by 3.3 per cent, based on the same four week period colour sale last year.” And this is not the only success the website has seen as it recently claimed its third successive Most Wanted BEST ONLINE SALON award and boasts 50,652 unique users a month.
So what’s attracting users? “We make our website accessible, easy to navigate and we steer away from Flash animation in favour of uncomplicated, unfussy layouts,” says Emma. “We also drive traffic to the site through competitions in our magazine and on social media to reach new audiences.”
But the group is always trying to stay ahead of the game: it recently completed a huge overhaul of the site. “This is something that most businesses who rely on their website as a key sales tool need to do every three to five years. Even as little as three years ago most people were not viewing websites through mobile devices,” says Emma, so how have they changed? “We have now integrated news, videos, magazines and features into a new blog area. It can be updated from mobile devices, so our PRs can blog on the go. It makes our news area immediate and much more interesting.”
Recent years have also seen the growth of social media, which Laura explains is: “Imperative to building a brand and client relations, it is cost-effective, informal and offers a more interactive experience. Blogs, Twitter and Facebook give you the ability to increase loyalty and expose clients to information they wouldn’t necessarily find on a website or brochure.” And the best thing is it’s completely free! So how can you maximise this? Laura explains how Hmhair does it: “A Twitter feed runs across the bottom of our new blog page and we now have Facebook Connect, so our clients can interact with easily by commenting on blog posts using their Facebook ID.”
But the key thing is to remember to ensure updates are regular and simultaneous: you will lose fans if social media says one thing while the website says another. And make sure your hard work online leads right back to the salon – where you can keep hold of visitors with free membership offers. “The HM Club is one of our biggest marketing initiatives and was solely launched through the website. The club gives discounted hairdressing to members during off-peak times to fill our salon downtime. We now have 37,000 members and that number is growing on average by 600 members a week,” says Emma.
Action plan
– Make your website easy to use – avoid Flash technology and always link back to the homepage.
– Attract followers by offering competitions and incentives.
– Completely overhaul your site every three to five years to keep up with consumer demands.
– Utilise free media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to create a dialogue with clients.
– Make sure your site feeds back to your salon with special offers and members clubs.
