Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you weren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success, but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer. Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists. I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re talking about eight ways to market yourself as a hairstylist in this economy and market yourself without discounts and market yourself without putting off a price increase you should have had nine months ago, and market yourself without feeling like a bad person for trying to grow your business. Like seriously, putting yourself and your business first in the smartest way possible. I’m going to do an entire podcast episode on the economy and the way that this industry is villainizing the economy as the enemy. The economy is not your enemy right now. And I know that even in saying that people are gonna come for me, I’m here for it. Because whenever there’s a crunch season, which I started calling The Great Divide in 2022, we are deep in it, we’re feeling it now.
When I first started talking about it four years ago, I sounded delusional because everything was so good and so high that when I said wait for it, in a few years the industry is gonna split. I sounded Dululu. And now we’re in it and it’s, it’s very real. And what happens is when there’s a split like there is right now, there’s two sides. And one side gets noisy and one side gets real quiet. And the side that’s doing really, really well right now, and by the side, I mean hundreds of thousands of stylists and salon owners, and I know you don’t believe me. If you’re not on that side, that’s totally okay. I understand. That side gets very quiet because the side that is in the struggle is hurting and sometimes desperate and vocal in their pain and that is so understandable. But how tone deaf does it feel when there’s this whole other side and it’s not a small amount.
It’s a large amount of stylists in small cities and small communities, not just these big areas at small price points and medium price points and large price points and everything in between and not just extension artists and literally everybody. There’s this huge chunk of the industry that is making more money than ever before, that is more in demand than ever before, and they’re keeping their mouth shut because when those stylists tell their stories and when those stylists openly say, “Gosh, like, I’m really thankful my business is going really well right now.” The other side who’s really struggling and confused says, “Well, that’s nice for you. ” And they become a target and those who are doing well right now just want to keep their head down and do good work and stay on the path they’re all because they’re doing so well. The side of the industry that’s really hurting, which is probably 60% of the industry, maybe 70%, is crying out for help.
And for those of you who are like, “I need to fill my chair in this economy, and the economy scares me. ” In this episode, I’m gonna give you strategies you can use so that you can join the seriously hundreds of thousands of stylists and salon owners right now who are making more money than ever before. I’m gonna share with you some of what they’re doing. For those of you who are like, “What Britt’s talking about is not right. The economy is hurting all stylists. I have another episode coming with data to support the fact that it is not. ” But for this one, I wanna give you strategy so that you can start implementing it and trying it so that hopefully once that episode comes out, you’re like, “Wait a second, maybe she’s right.” And, and maybe, maybe you won’t think that way, but just in case you do.
So if you are a stylist who’s feeling like, “You know what? I know that it’s not as easy to build a clientele as it was just a few years ago, like 2020, end of 2020 into 2023 was the easiest season to build a clientele this industry will ever see.” The second easiest time was 2016 to 2019. The first easiest was end of 2020 to 2023. We are settling in back to normal, but because we were in this kind of like eight year high, it feels extra painful to now have to go back and put in this large amount of work that we didn’t necessarily have to over this glory season that we won’t see again at least for another decade or more. So as we settle back into this new normal that’s gonna be around for a long time, I wanna share with you the strategies that are really gonna make an impact for you.
These strategies are supported by a PDF download where we’ve summarized what I’m about to talk about if you’re listening to this in real time. So if you’re listening to this at the start of 2026, there’s also a PDF to support this. I shared the link to get it at the very top of this episode, so go back and listen if you missed it. If you’re listening to this episode down the line, that resource has likely expired. It was short term only. But if you’re listening in real time, there is a PDF that supports this as well, so you can get a full breakdown. The other thing I wanna share is I did not come up with all of these strategies. This episode is supported by Coach Nine, who’s amazing. She’s been working with Team Thrivers for several years now. She’s extremely experienced specifically in marketing and social media, and so she came up with these success strategies that I’m gonna share with you today.
So strategy number one, I think is the lowest hanging fruit, and it’s consistently show the right content on Instagram. We’ve exited the era of post as much as possible. Remember how for a few years, like depending on who you’d follow, they were like, “The key to success is posting a ton of content.” We’ve closed that era, what a relief. And now we’re in a quality era and an era of posting the right stuff, not just whatever stuff. When I say the right stuff, not, not whatever stuff, let me tell you some of the wrong stuff to start. Retail promotions, generic graphic posts that say things like happy holidays or whatever. Anything like that, we can completely skip. All of that is very filler content. The reason why we don’t do retail is because retail sales in a salon aren’t generally happening on Instagram at scale.
Now, there’s exceptions to that rule, of course. And we see influencers who are doing that, although the influencer economy is tanking, but that’s a different topic for another day. It’s not to say that you can’t sell retail on social media, but if I was to talk to most of you and say, “Hey, what’s your goal this year? Where does most of your money come from? And what’s your primary purpose? Are you primarily trying to sell more retail, primarily trying to get more target market clients?” Most of you would say, “Well, primarily more target market clients.” Great. That’s the content you need to be posting. So when you look at our content split, on Instagram specifically, it should be 50% of your work and who you serve. Okay? Target market clients ideally with faces, great photo composition, clean background. Video is amazing too. We actually, again, if you’re listening to this in real time, we have a bootcamp that’s coming up in February of 2026 where we’re gonna talk more about what content is working right now with real examples, more details to come on that, but keep an eye in an ear out.
If you wanna know what to post, we have some resources coming for that as well. 25% of the content that you post on Instagram should be you and/or your team. So if you’re a salon team, 25% of the content should be featuring y’all. If you’re a solo stylist, 25% of the content should be featuring you, which I know for a lot of us can feel uncomfortable. As service providers, we are the face of our brand. The human connection that we offer is what our clients keep coming back to us for. One of my favorite things to say is, uh, great hair is easy to come by and incredible human connection is rare. And so seeing more of you on social is what your clients are looking for. Your clients understand that you do good hair. They like seeing, you know, strangers hair on your Instagram, that’s fine.
They mostly love seeing you. 25% should be you and/or you or in your team. 25% should be what we call brand boosters, which is your space, guest experience things. Sometimes it’s training and tutorials. Again, we’ll talk more about that in the upcoming bootcamp we have coming out if you’re listening to this in real time, but 50% your work and who you serve, 25% your face, you, your team, and 25%, more ambiance, amenities, guest experience, your space, et cetera. That paints a really great visual of the business, who you are, who you serve. Now, that leads right into suggestion number two, which is every time you post on any platform, you should be speaking to your target market client. And not just talking at them, but speaking to them. And when we speak to a target market client effectively, we’re agitating their struggles and their pain points.
So there’s a lot of sales psychology that shows that any of us invest money when we feel pain. We are very unlikely to pay for things if we’re not feeling pain. We buy lunch when we’re hungry. We buy a new pair of sweats when we’re cold and we want to be cozy. Clients pay to have their hair done when they have two inches of gray roots and it’s driving them nuts. So I want you to think about what are some of the pain points that your clients experience. For example, if you are somebody who does great coverage, you’re somebody like for myself. I’m a brunette. I don’t get any highlights at all. I just get gray root coverage. If you were trying to appeal to me, you would talk about soft blending and grow out. You would talk about how when you do root touch-ups on me, you create a natural highlight using the color that you formulate versus an all over opaque finish.
You speak to me as the brunette. I wanna see somebody who understands how to create dimension in my hair without adding foils. If I were to see somebody on Instagram talking like that, I’m interested. You’ll likely gain my business. What a lot of us do on social media is we say, “I’m good at hair. I’m good at hair after after. Look at how good this is, transformation, transformation, I’m talented.” There’s some weight to that, but because those who are looking at your social media were not there for the consultation, they don’t know what you talked about, they don’t exactly know what the client’s goal was, it’s hard for them to save from a picture if you actually nailed it or not. Versus when you’re on social and you’re talking about pain points that your dream clients struggle with, solutions that you provide, your personal experiences with struggles, success stories and like real transformation stories from existing clients, you become more human and more relatable.
What’s working on social media right now is authenticity and vulnerability. I understand that AI is coming for us. The anti-artificial intelligence is human connection and vulnerability. So just showing after photo after photo after photo after photo is not gonna do it. We have to really get human with it. The trick with getting human with it is you can’t get messy with it either. So it does have to feel elevated and professional when we talk about those who are not being affected by the economy right now, it’s those that are really embracing showing up on social with that right content split, quality photos. Doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t even have to be a professional photographer. You don’t have to redesign your space to get a great picture anymore, which is really nice. It’s a huge relief. But you do have to be speaking to clients in a way that they don’t feel like you’re talking at them, you’re talking with them.
Okay? Next, if you are a more seasoned stylist or any stylist really, and you’re, you’re struggling with schedule gaps, something that’s really trending right now is mini and maintenance services. So we’ve been coaching to these since 2016. They’ve always been a winner. They are really surging again right now. So what would be a mini service or a maintenance service? Just a face frame or a hairline highlight, a partial root touch up, which we talk about how to do in full and thriving stayless method, but you might be able to connect the dots on that as well. Tone and treat. For the blondes, like we know that lived in blondes have been a thing for a long time and living it in longer is becoming trendy right now. But we also know that, you know, four to six weeks in, what that blonde looked like at initial visit doesn’t look the same now.
And, you know, these blondes can be using purple shampoo or toners at home as much as they want to, but they’re never gonna get back to where they were. We all also know the power of an amazing gloss or a glaze or a toner where it makes the hair easier to style for a time. It does refresh that initial color that they love and inviting guests to come in at the six week mark just for the glaze and toner is really impactful. It’s working really, really well right now. Express haircuts are trending right now. So in a time and in a season where, again, let’s stop blaming the economy for a second and realize that people just don’t have as much time as they used to. Like the world is moving faster than it did five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago. So offering mini and maintenance services, and again, that ends up speaking to the pain point of, “I know you’re busy.
I know you don’t have a ton of time. Let’s get you in to make your color feel refreshed without you spending, you know, three hours in here every two months. What can we do in between those long visits to make you feel refreshed?” Next, another banger of a marketing strategy that’s working really, really well right now for silos who are growing fast is choosing a weekly content day or a monthly content day. So this is something that I’m watching people use to radically fill their chair and grow clientele. So you can choose one day a week or one day a month, depending on how busy you are. If you’re super busy, maybe it’s one day a month. If you’re still building a clientele, I would do this one day a week. When I talk about getting great video content or getting great photo content, you’re like, “Britt, I don’t have time for that.
Like I’m just trying to get through my day and serve all my clients and get home and cook dinner and I get it. ” So what’s working really well right now is choosing one day a week, one day a month and using it as a content film day. You can, if you want to, offer your clients a discount to come in on that day with the agreement that their appointment will take longer and you will be taking videos, photos, capturing content that you can use not just for that week, not just for that month, but for an entire year. So when you look at today’s fastest growing stylist, they’re content batching. They’re reposting stuff that they post four or five months ago. Do you know that the average follower only sees 10% of your content or less? Most people aren’t obsessed with our brands the way that we think that they are.
And so for you to repost something you posted six months ago, 60, 70, 80, 90% of your followers didn’t even see it the first time. There’s no harm in that. So this is a really great way to batch content, and if you’re listening to this in real time, in the PDF, we have some really great strategies for how to pull that off. Okay, next. We are seeing a huge resurgence in Facebook groups. Like I cannot say it enough. People were leaning into the narrative that Facebook was for grams and grams, and I totally understand, but for the 10% of the industry who was like, “That’s fine, you back out slowly and I’m gonna lean in. ” Oh my gosh. Facebook groups and Nextdoor primarily. I know so many stylists who are literally filling their books on just those platforms, and these are like Gen Z stylists.
These are not like just Gen X or Boomer stylists. These are like young, hungry stylists, next door Facebook groups, and not by saying, “Come in and get your hair done for free.” Just by using these groups for promotion, huge success. When you look at Nextdoor specifically, like if you’re, if not all communities have it, but if yours does and it’s banging, open up your app and just type in the word hairstylist. In a lot of communities, there’s posts of people asking for great stylist recommendations several times a month. And then you’ll also see stylists who are promoting themselves there getting a lot of active interest. So Facebook groups next door, Reddit cannot be ignored. So Reddit, um, and ChatGPT, which we’ll be talking about soon, are both becoming these really powerful community-based search engines, and there are amazing conversations happening there. Getting involved in Reddit, jumping into the conversations, I’m watching stylists primarily right now in larger communities, there will be a feed that opens up about like, “Hey, is there a stylist who specializes in reds or something?” And you’ll see stylists jumping on and kind of like vying for a position like, “I do, here’s some of my work, I’d love to chat with you, come in for a free consultation.” It’s incredible to really see what’s coming up on Reddit, which is a community chat platform.
So more training on that coming, um, we’re actually talking about that in the bootcamp coming up soon, but do not ignore platforms like Nextdoor, Facebook, Reddit. I think what’s like trendy and exciting right now is Instagram and TikTok, but what happens is when, when the majority of people are focusing on what’s trendy, the smaller portion is focusing on the gap that’s left behind and that gap that’s left behind is really profitable. It’s funny, if I were to say, generally speaking, what generation has more money, Gen Z or millennials or Gen X? For the most part, not always, people are gonna say more like, you know, elder millennials, Gen X probably have more money than a Gen Z. Probably, not always, there’s exceptions to every rule. Well, if Facebook is for grams and grams, and assuming there’s some grams and grams or more Gen X, I know there’s boomers in there too, if that’s where the money is, I don’t know why we’re not chasing the money.
When we look like a, at a platform like Nextdoor, it’s a lot of homeowners, so they probably have more money than the kid who’s still living at home with mom and dad. So targeting these platforms where the money probably lives is a smart idea. Next, Google and Yelp are non-negotiables. We started leaning in heavy to Google Business in 2018 and Thrivers. It is now the number one small business search platform. So for my members who seven, eight years ago really started doubling down on Google and now have four or five, 600 Google reviews, it’s so easy to fill their chair. The best time to start with seven years ago, the next best times to start is today. We are seeing more distrust in social media. You might have experienced it yourself as well. When distrust in social media happens, we see more trust in places like Google and Yelp and again, ChatGPT, which we’ll talk about at a later time because, and Reddit.
Why? Because Google, Yelp, Reddit, and these places are places where the people are talking about the businesses they like, the businesses are not promoting themselves. I’ve used this example before, but it’s worth saying again, if I were to come on this podcast and be like, “I’m a great business coach. Those who work with me double their income. I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m the person who’s gonna help you grow your business.” 2% of you would believe me and 98% would be like, “Oh, sure.” If I had three of my students who I’ve helped in the last six months come on this episode and say, “So Britt doubled my income in the last six months. I live in a really small town, about 30 miles outside of Milwaukee, and I’ve been in the industry for three years. I was struggling hard when I met her, and in six months I have more than doubled my income.
I’ve moved out, I just bought a new car last month. Who do you believe more? Me or that stylist? That stylist every single time. You need to be using that mindset with your own clientele. If you want to gain new clients, you need more Google reviews. We are living in a time where we believe the words of strangers more than the words of the business owner. We just are. And so strangers, for me, would be your other clients in your business. I don’t know your other clients, but if I can go on Google or Yelp or Reddit or somewhere else and see amazing glowing reviews, I believe it. Now, here’s what’s tricky about reviews. You putting reviews on your website, you putting reviews on social media and you having reviews on your online booking page are about, I’m gonna say like 70% less effective than reviews on Google, Yelp, and Reddit.
Why? Because we know those can’t be falsified. So love those platforms or hate them. They can’t be falsified. People get really annoyed that Yelp filters reviews and then they’ll leave bad reviews up. Instagram does the same exact thing. That’s how the Instagram algorithm works. Like I shared earlier, way less than half of your followers are seeing what content you post. You know that. You follow way more accounts than what shows up in your feed. It’s the exact same thing. But when we look at Google reviews or Yelp reviews or Reddit, it is what the people have to say. And there’s a piece of us that believes what the people has to say, and you want more people talking about you on all of those platforms because it does help with local search, it helps with indexing, it helps with everything. Next, make marketing a team effort.
If you’re a salon owner or a manager, we want to empower our team to make content. I hear a lot of salon owners say like, “Well, my team doesn’t make content or they don’t support the social media.” The days of do as I say, not as I do are gone. If you as the owner are not an expert on social media, do not expect your team to be. If you are not actively engaging and creating content every single week, do not expect your team to be. And if you listen to this episode and you’re like, “You know what? I’m gonna actively engage in making content.” And you do it for four weeks and then you become annoyed because your team still hasn’t jumped on board, you’re the one who’s gonna quit. You need to be consistent for four months, six months, nine months, a year, and then your team will hop on board.
That’s what leadership looks like. You lead, they follow. They’re not gonna believe that your ideas around social media are gonna work until you prove that they do. It’s much easier to get people on board with a strategy that’s working than convincing them that if they do more, if they try more, then maybe things will turn out better. That’s a pretty tough sales pitch. You educate yourself first. You become the expert. When I say expert, you’ll know that your marketing efforts are working when you’re driving 10 or more new guest requests per stylist per month to the salon. That’s when your marketing efforts are working. Anything less than that, there’s probably room left on the table. There’s areas and opportunities that we can lean more into. It could be in our messaging, could be in the content that we’re posting, could be that our prices are wrong, could be that our branding is wrong, could be a lot of different things.
But that’s the benchmark. If you’re seeing 10 new guest requests per stylist per month, coming to any salon or any individual stylist, you’re in a sweet spot. That’s a good thing. That’s healthy demand. Anything less than that, we, we have to kind of go back to the drawing board and troubleshoot what’s going on. If you want your team to be more involved in making content, you have to make it easy and fun for them. You have to teach them. You have to show them. You have to be detailed. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed too is I remember when I was in the salon, it was kind of like figure it out. That was the training we were given. There was, there was definitely ideas that were shared, but it was like, you know, you’re gonna have to figure out what works for you.
This, I’m gonna say generation, but I don’t mean a specific age group. I mean, stylists today don’t want to be led by a leader who says figure it out. They want to be led by a leader who has figured it out and is happy to mentor them alongside. Otherwise, they’ll just work for themselves. Like if you’re not gonna mentor them and show them, there’s too many opportunities for them to work on their own, so they’ll just do that. If you want to have a real team and you want the team to work in alignment and with shared goals and shared focus, you as the leader have to be the one who’s holding their hand and showing them the way. That’s what real leadership looks like. And social media can be so fun, like seriously so fun. I look at our social media team here in our business and often I’m envious about like the conversations they get to have and the way they get to dream and design.
And man, if a post doesn’t go off and everybody on my team is like, “Wow, they did so amazing.” It’s a really like glorified opportunity. Like you really can get all the love in the world and the impact that you can make when marketing is good is massive. It is gratifying in a unique way once you make it work. Social media and marketing only sucks when it’s not working. Like when it’s working, it is such a rush. So figuring out how to make it work and getting your team excited about it will be huge for you in 2026 and beyond. Lastly, something that’s worked really, really well is a few weeks back, Coach and I and I did an episode together. It was 4:15 and it was how to keep serving when the market is down. It was about a community beauty give back campaign.
We’ve watched Thrivers do that and see real success with it. That’s been huge. So if you haven’t already listened to podcast episode 415, for those of you who really are like, “You know what, Britt, I know you’re here saying the economy’s fine. It’s not fine. We are hurting over here.” Listen to podcast episode 415 because it’s a really great way to give back to your community, reach out and lean into those who really do need help right now, who really are in a financial bind while still putting food on your family’s table. Something that’s really common in our industry is when everybody’s down, we feel like we need to be down too. Like, “Oh my gosh, everybody around me is financially suffering. I better suffer as well.” When you look at who joins our industry, there’s a strong alignment in those who go into haircare and personal services, nursing and teaching.
You’ll find a lot of people who will say like, “Oh, I used to be a preschool teacher, now I do hair, or I thought about being a nurse, but I decided to be a hairstylist and said.” That’s because those are all servant roles, giving, serving, caring, self-sacrifice in every single one of those jobs. If you join the industry as a stylist, you love the creative, you love the design, but you love to serve. And when we love to serve, there is an element of self-sacrifice. That’s also the basis of resentment and the reason why a lot of people end up having to lead the industry is because they’ve self-sacrificed so much that they can’t even take care of themselves. You’ve ever heard the saying you can’t pour from an empty vessel? Like if you’re giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and never filling your own tank, what will you have to show for it in the end?
Like at, at some point this does have to be a real business. You do have to really build financial security for yourself. And that’s, that’s the point of business. That’s what being in this industry is really all about. We all join this industry to have incredible opportunity and life balance and do work that we love, but also have financial security and stability, which is very possible for all of us. As a quick summary in Roundup, we talked about eight ways to market yourself. One is going to be really leaning into social media, specifically Instagram and posting the right content in the right split, speaking to your dream client and their pain points, not just talking at them, showcasing mini and maintenance services, having weekly or monthly content days if you’re struggling to batch content right now, leaning into places like Facebook groups Nextdoor and Reddit, which are popping off right now, treating Google and Yelp as non-negotiables.
If you can only show up on one platform, let it be Google and Yelp. Seriously, pick one, lean in there. I’d much rather you lean into a review platform than anything else. Learn how to use it. Leaning into a review platform doesn’t mean asking for reviews. That’s like 15% of the work. Learn the other 85%. I’m here and happy to help if you need any help. Make marketing a team effort if you are a salon leader. Understand how marketing works. Understand how social media works. Lead your team to the finish line. And if you do really wanna support a struggling community, start a community give back campaign. Listen to that podcast, episode number 415. It’s been powerful already. I know it will continue to be. As we always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
