Authentic Marketing: Your Business Voice

When advertising online, especially on social media, you must make sure that your efforts match your salon or spa’s personality by speaking with an authentic business voice.What is an “authentic business voice”? Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you are the owner of a beautiful day spa that wants to start a social media push to connect with local clientele and fill up your appointment book. Your spa has dim lights with scented candles flickering in sconces, plays Beethoven over the speakers and has a babbling waterfall in the lobby. The spa’s last marketing campaign was an ad in the local magazine circular that featured an older woman receiving a relaxing massage.

When you start advertising on social media, you decide that you are going to target Millennials. So, your posts have beautiful young people with tattoos and piercings, images of industrial buildings with faceted windows showing multi colored bright lights… you may even throw a Pokémon or two into your posts. It’s catchy, it’s flashy, it’s beautiful and you are ready for the business to start popping! Initially, there is some additional foot traffic and then suddenly it begins to dry up and your current client base is shrinking. You’re now in worse shape than you were when you began. What happened? Where did you go wrong? Well, you didn’t speak with your authentic business voice.

There is nothing wrong with being a “Beethoven, scented candle, waterfall” spa. In fact, that’s probably even preferable in most geographical areas for the types of services you offer. While your spa’s environment can be extremely appealing to people of all ages, it certainly isn’t what you advertised. What you advertised is NOT who you are. The people that were drawn by your new advertising immediately realized they were hoodwinked and your traditional clientele didn’t even recognize the advertising as you! Your brand has become muddled and it has negatively affected your bottom line.

That doesn’t mean you have to forego advertising to a new client base, they just have to know who you are before they decide to book an appointment. Speaking with an inauthentic business voice is similar to speaking with a fake accent, eventually people will notice the difference. No bait and switch. But you can use your authentic voice on new PLATFORMS to reach different groups, just remember the following:

1. Know Yourself. Be familiar with your business, your clientele, and your image the way others see it.
2. Write Like You Talk.
3. Use The Active Voice. This makes you appear alive and energized.
4. Intersperse some personal stories about your business, it helps people connect.