New hair salon owners disappointed with social media marketing service

Fonecta admits that its internal communication failed.

The owners of the Mondo Bellezza Benessere hair salon, founded in Helsinki in August 2023, decided to invest in Facebook and Instagram marketing to improve their visibility and to attract clients. To their disappointment, the service did not meet their expectations.

The marketing for the barber’s and hairdresser’s in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, was geotargeted on Helsinki city centre, thereby failing to reach the salon’s potential clients locally.

“After a couple of weeks, we were surprised when we still hadn’t heard anything back about our marketing from Fonecta. In the beginning, their agent wasn’t even able to tell us where the marketing had been geotargeted,” salon owner Pia Still says. She runs the salon with Daniel Qepi.

Two weeks passed, and she made another enquiry.

“I wanted to know where the marketing was being geotargeted, because that’s essential information. That’s when I heard it had been geotargeted at the wrong area. We don’t really get clients from Helsinki city centre.”

The monthly cost of the marketing package was as much as €700. The price varied according to the amount of ads shown.

“At that stage, I tried to cancel the contract, but that was no longer possible. We had signed a six-month contract. We then had no other option but to pay.”

Still was surprised by the response she got from Fonecta customer service.

“They said they were really busy because they had a lot of clients. But we’re clients too. I feel that we spent €700 a month on nothing. On top of that, we had to come up with concrete marketing steps. You’d think that would be part of the service.”

Fonecta’s response

Antti Tukia, a sales director at Fonecta, apologizes for the situation.

“We have clear models for both providing our services and for situations where a client says they are unsatisfied with our service. Our client’s ad criteria, such as geotargeting, are part of our core expertise, and they are always done based on the client’s business goals. If a client wants changes to be made to an ongoing campaign, we naturally make those changes within the limitations and possibilities of Meta. We can’t always fulfil all requests, because companies like Meta and Google place their own limitations on targeting.”

Tukia says that ad criteria are agreed with each client, and that the target audience is confirmed in writing before the campaign is launched.

After Yrittajat.fi contacted Fonecta, the company contacted its client and agreed on compensation.

“In this case, our internal communication and our processes failed, which understandably our client found regrettable, in addition to the error itself in the targeting of the campaign,” Tukia says.

“We’ve ended the entire campaign and compensated the client, as they requested.”

Edit 17/1/2024 12.50: Information about agreement between parties on compensation added

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