Inbound marketing is a non-intrusive way of helping potential clients or customers find your company. Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing strategy focuses on providing helpful information to a smaller audience, which is more likely to buy the company's product or service. The inbound marketing content tends to be educational, engaging and entertaining and is often presented before the visitor is ready to purchase. According to Hubspot, Inbound marketing methodology is meant to attract, engage and delight, resulting in returning customers.
Say you have a store selling makeup products, for example. An excellent inbound campaign might include a YouTube channel with makeup tutorials showing how your products can enhance the customers' looks. Or, if you sell DIY products, step-by-step tutorials on how to use them will increase interest and help build trust in the product. Another good inbound marketing strategy would be asking satisfied customers to write a review and include a picture or short video of the product. People are more likely to buy a product that has helped others solve their problems.
Inbound marketing can also be applied to local businesses. I have prepared this report comparing the inbound strategies of two popular London Hair Salons, Taylor Taylor London and Foster London Hair Salon, to show you how they use the inbound methodology to attract customers.
Presenting information such as a list of services and prices on a business's website is vital for marketing, including inbound. Both salons have done an excellent job making this information concise and easy to find. In addition, both websites are user friendly and contain high-quality images relevant to the business. Another vital part of inbound marketing strategies are CTAs (Calls To Action). Both salons have a BOOK NOW button on their websites, making booking an appointment easier.
Neither of the two websites is fully optimised for SEO, which means that they won't rank well on Google and other search engines. Both sites have failed Google's Core Web Vitals Assessment, as they take too long to load.
The page title of Taylor Taylor London's website is the correct length (59 characters) and contains relevant keywords, which is good SEO practice. However, the page description is too long (475 characters). I recommend shortening the page description to between 100 and 160 characters while keeping keywords relevant to the business.
In addition, the title tag and meta description seems to be the same on every page, which is bad for SEO. There are also multiple H1 (header 1) tags. For search engine optimisation purposes, it is vital that only one h1 tag is used on every web page. Multiple H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags are fine.
The alt text is the same on all four main images on the home page. It is also too long. Icons don't have any alt tags at all. I would recommend adding alt tags to the icons and rewriting the other alt tags so that they are unique, contain relevant keywords and are around 120 characters long.
Foster London uses the correct character count for its page title and description, and the text uses relevant keywords. However, there are multiple H1, and the other header tags don't contain valuable keywords. Images have alt text, but it is not optimised for keywords. I would recommend optimising all header and H1 tags to contain relevant keywords.
Blogs are beneficial for inbound marketing as they are a non-intrusive, informative way of attracting potential customers. Taylor Taylor London's website hosts a blog with helpful and entertaining content such as haircare advice and pictures of fashionable hairstyles. However, the blog has not been updated in a long time. It would be good to add new, engaging articles to the blog regularly.
I could not find a blog on Foster London Hair Salon's website. I would recommend including a blog and regularly updating it with helpful and entertaining articles about popular hairstyles, haircuts, hair colours and accessories. Haircare advice could also be beneficial.
Both salons have a good social media presence, with Instagram being their most successful social media. Being a visual platform, Instagram is brilliant for beauty and hair related businesses. Taylor Taylor primarily shares single images of finished hairstyles and occasionally short videos. I would recommend posting some carousels with before and after pictures for variety. Foster London uses a mix of carousels and short videos, which feature before and after pictures and sped-up videos of the hair colouring process. This is a great Inbound Marketing strategy as it results in higher engagement.
Both businesses also use Facebook, although Foster London hasn't updated their Facebook account in a few months, and Taylor Taylor posts the same images they use on their Instagram page. Out of the two salons, only Taylor Taylor seems to have a Pinterest account, but they haven't updated it in a long time. Foster London is the only one with a Twitter account but hasn't posted anything to it recently.
Taylor Taylor has a YouTube channel, but they rarely update it. The content is engaging, but the channel might benefit from hairstyle tutorials and haircare advice, which the visitors would find helpful. In addition, sped-up videos of the process of hair cutting and colouring could also increase engagement. The salon also has a Vimeo account, but they rarely update it.
Foster London's TikTok account is amongst the best examples of their Inbound marketing strategy. Some of the videos show helpful before and after looks. There are also entertaining sped-up videos of the hair colouring process. However, the salon does not use YouTube. It might be a good idea to create a YouTube channel featuring similar content to attract a more mature audience. TikTok is primarily used by a younger audience, as explained in this Evolution of the Internet report.
It takes time and effort to create an email campaign. Still, if implemented correctly, it is a great Inbound Strategy as it allows the business to send regular newsletters to potential customers. The newsletter should contain helpful and entertaining information along with news about the company, events and special offers..
Taylor Taylor has a pop-up window that allows website visitors to sign up to their newsletter to hear about our latest products, events and promotions. However, the salon misspelt the word promotions. I would recommend correcting the spelling.
I could not find an email marketing campaign on Foster London's hair salon website. It would be helpful to create an email campaign and add a pop-up window that prompts visitors to sign up to their newsletter. To get more subscribers, the salon could offer a discount to anyone that signs up.
Both salons appear on Google Maps, which is one of the most important tools used in digital marketing campaigns as it makes local businesses easy to locate.
I could not locate a Google My Business page associated with Taylor Taylor. Google created Google My Business to make local businesses easier to find, contact, and review.
Foster London Hair Salon has a Google My Business profile, which is good practice for local businesses and helps with Inbound Marketing and SEO. There are images on the page. However, the salon has not added any posts to it recently. Updating the account with news about the salon, etc., would be beneficial.
Reviews of Taylor Taylor hair salon can be seen on Facebook, Salon spy and Yelp, helping build trust, which is a key to Inbound Marketing strategies. However, I would recommend that the salon set up a Google My Business Page, making reviews easier to find in one place.
Foster London has reviews on their Google My Business page, Facebook, Nice local, Yelp and All In London. They have also included some of the reviews on their website. This is a good Inbound Marketing Methodology as potential customers find reviews helpful, knowing they can trust the salon.
Taylor Taylor London should consider updating their blog and adding new helpful and entertaining videos to their YouTube Channel. In addition, their Instagram account could benefit from carousels with before and after pictures. They should also set up a Google My Business page.
Foster London Hair Salon would benefit from adding a blog to their website, posting helpful articles. They could also set up a YouTube Channel and add content similar to their TikTok videos. They should also consider creating an email campaign, perhaps offering a discount to anyone who signs up.
Both salons could benefit from posting new engaging content on their other Social Media accounts.
Most importantly, both businesses need to improve their websites' on-page SEO significantly.