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 Siva, 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 Siva, and this week we’re talking about the big shifts that I’ve noticed trending in 2026 when it comes to salon marketing. And I wanna share that the foundation of this episode is not based on vibes or like my personal opinion of what I did was I analyzed the social media activity and accounts of salons that I know for a fact are scaling financially and are hiring really effortlessly. So one of the benefits I have is that our Thriver Society members and specifically Thrivers leaders submit financial reports to us when they are applying for our acknowledgements through X Club or they wanna come to our live events or retreats. And so people aren’t just like self-reporting their revenue. We’re able to see tax documents that verify, you know, what salons are growing quickly, what seven-figure salons look like, all of these different data points where we can see, okay, this doesn’t just like look really cool on social media, this is actually growing the salon by $300,000 a year or whatever.
Uh, the proof is in the pudding for me. So what I did was I took a look at the fastest growing salons, the ones where I can see the team is growing, the revenue is growing, the profit is strong, like 14, 15% plus. And I looked at the patterns of what these salons are doing. I also took a look at the salons where the following is big, but the profit margin is small. And I took a look at the salons where the following is big and the feed looks good, but the revenue’s not growing. So I really took a look at the cross section of like, okay, based on what I can see is happening in these different businesses, what are the patterns I’m recognizing? And that’s what I’m bringing to you. So couple things to note. If you are a stylist, not a salon owner, this is still very relevant.
The reason why I’m talking to salon owners about social media is I don’t think I ever have. I think on this podcast specifically, it’s only ever been to stylists. And the social media strategy when you’re just a solo provider is a little bit different than when you’re showcasing a team and you have to hire and there’s all different target markets, right? It’s just gonna be a totally different approach. So I think for the first time ever, I wanna talk about salon marketing and what is trending in 2026 when it comes to growing a team, filling their chairs, hiring, you know, making your team feeling appreciated on social, all the different things. Before we get into what’s working, what’s not working, I wanna get into the different phases of marketing that any salon goes through and this is not like scientific. I’m just gonna use basic terminology so that you understand kinda the reference points I’m making.
So there’s three phases I wanna talk about. There’s the building interest phase, the we’ve got enough demand phase, and the we’re creating vibes phase. So when I look at the salons and I’m looking at their financial data and I’m looking at like who’s got it, and they can almost kinda do whatever because they’ve got it going on, those salons can create vibes. The average salon today, like 85% of salons cannot just create vibes. But when I look at the efforts that most salons are making on social media, it’s vibes for days because creating vibes is very fun. It feels very creative. You’re like, “Well, this is our expression. This is how we like to showcase ourselves.” If you wanna have social media that’s just a creative expression, that’s fine. I coach sales and salons to use social media to leverage building clientele and revenue. If you wanna use social media as a way to build your chair and build your book and gain more, you know, money and clients and all the things, we can’t just create vibes, unfortunately.
We have to either build interest or sustain an account that’s already producing enough demand, meaning that it’s already proven to be effective. So I’m gonna be mostly talking to the salons that still need to build interest and the salons that need to have enough demand. I will talk about the vibes as well though. So building interest, if the average stylist in your salon is getting less than three new guest requests generated by the salon specifically every single month, you’re still building interest. That’s extremely low interest. Whether you’re a booth rental salon owner or an employee-based salon owner, you should be providing your stylist with at bare, bare, bare minimum, three new guest requests a month. That would be like the building interest phase, like the we’re trying to figure it out phase. Now, why do I say booth rental salon owners should be filling chairs?
Because if you’re not filling chairs, they might as well go to a suite. So if you’re looking to have the best, brightest booth rental stylists, you being able to fill their chair is gonna allow you to increase rent, attract stronger stylists to your team, fill your chairs faster, cover your overhead, turn a profit, all the things. If you’ve just created a beautiful space, it’s gonna be very difficult to make that profitable as a booth rental owner unless you’re providing more. So providing clientele is one of the fastest, easiest ways to do that. When I talk about the, we’ve got enough demand, enough demand is around 10 to 12 new guest requests every single month per stylist. Eight to 10 is good. If every stylist in your space is getting eight to 10 new guest requests monthly, you’re in good shape. 10 to 12 is excellent.
When we get to the place of creating vibes, there’s a salon owner I’m referencing who has a large team and she said, “I can fill the chair of every single stylist on my team in 90 days or less.” She’s like, “They don’t have to lift a finger. I have so much demand for this salon that it’s like our reputation carries us and I can take someone from zero clients to full book in 90 days.” Okay, then that person can do whatever the heck they want on social. But when I look at that salon and what they’re doing, they are leaning into their brand. They know who they are. They’re do – still following a lot of the rules I’m gonna talk about today. So it’s not to say that they can just be wild with it, but it’s kind of like they know the rules well enough to break them.
Most of you listening to this, like 85, 95% are not there. So while it’s harder to play by the rules, it’s also what’s gonna fill the chair. So when I look at the big marketing shifts salons are making in 2026 to actually drive revenue, the first thing we have to talk about is that Google Business is the number one platform to focus on. If you’re still focusing on Instagram as your number one, you’re playing a 2019 game. We’ve been coaching to Google Business since 2017 here at Thrivers. I told my, my students at that time, I was like, “Be an early adopter. Get them on it now because the time will come when it’s everything.” And now we have salon owners and Thrivers who have 800 five-star Google reviews, 1300 f – star Google reviews. I mean, they’re at the point where their clients are just flowing in.
They don’t have to do hardly anything. Now, Google Business is not a set it and forget it platform. It still has to be nurtured every single week. We teach how to do that in Thriving Stylist Method. But if you are not leveraging Google, you are missing out. It is so much easier to build off of than any other social media platform. It is incredibly effective. It indexes well on AI platforms. Like Google is the money shot. The best time to start it was 10 years ago. The next best time to start it is today. So if you’re not figuring out how to use Google Business to fill your chairs, we are, we’re really missing out. When I look at the fastest growing salons, it’s like the number one priority on their business. They’re nurturing it as leaders. They are getting their team involved. They are actively showing up on the platform every single week, leaning in heavily because of the way it impacts SEO, GEO, which is the generative engine optimization, which is how AI is indexing businesses.
It leans into all of that. So Google Business is number one. Most of these other tips are gonna be primarily Instagram focused because I do think secondary to Google, Instagram is still an amazing way for a salon to attract clientele. We are seeing trending less video, which is interesting. So we started reporting in around 2021 that reels were being artificially inflated. Remember when everybody on Instagram was making, like, funny dancing videos and, like, goofy trending videos? I started noticing that, like, bad content was getting really pushed and pushed, like, in countries that weren’t US-based and, like, forced in front of audiences that didn’t really make any sense. And I saw the patterns of a platform trying to create buzz around a type of content that maybe wasn’t creating traction itself. And it was in 2023 or 2024. Instagram came out and publicly said it was always artificial inflation.
So Instagram made their own comment on that. It’s not to say that video content doesn’t work on Instagram. It does. But in local small business, it’s not what the average consumer is looking for. It doesn’t mean that video can’t work. You can’t just make a random video. It can’t just be you, like, videoing you foiling a client’s hair. Like, it, it has to be done so well to be effective. Gone are the days where you can just, like, take a stab at it and hope it works. Video content works, but only if it’s produced really well and with purpose and intention and you know what you’re doing. Now, salons that I see who are creating amazing video content are doing incredibly well with it. These are also salons where the owner no longer takes clients. They have a lot of capacity to run marketing. And so they’re able to do video in a great way.
If you’re not able to go all in on video and really learn what’s working on the platforms and make serious video content, I would just table it. It’s not really trending for local small business to go that direction right now anyway, so it’s a nice thing to put a pause on until you can figure out how to leverage it properly. Video does work, but making, like, funny, silly trending videos or bad videos or using poor composition videos is only gonna work against you. So put a pin in it until we can do it properly. Now, next, what is working really well is carousel posts. And that’s not just in our industry, it’s in any industry. So carousel posts are, like, the multi-photo posts that you can do on Instagram. You can actually do them with video as well, but what’s working really well is photo posts.
And creating a series of photos within one post, whether it be before and after, or a series of several amazing afters of a client, or showcasing your team in a fun way. Carousel content’s working really well. It’s getting amazing engagement. Instagram’s giving it really nice reach. So carousel content is good. The reason why love salons struggle with it is because to have carousel content, you have to have a lot of content. You’re putting six photos in a post instead of one, right? So for the salons that are able to pull off high volume content, and we’ll talk about some of the ways that they’re doing that, carousel posts are working really well. Great engagement, great reach, great for getting new clientele, those are working. When you talk about captions, what’s working for salons right now is also, like, GEO optimize, optimize for AI captions. Instagram became publicly indexed about a year ago.
And when that happened, your Instagram post can actually be found in local small business search, ChatGPT search, all kinds of other search that wasn’t available before. It can also still be found on the explore page and that kind of thing. But if you’re using smart captions and you’re, you can’t be keyword stuffing, you have to be doing captions in a way that makes sense and that all of these platforms are able to pick up. If you caption smart, your reach on a post can go so far. So what a lot of salons do is they make their caption almost like kitschy, like you’re speaking your own language, or you include formulas or talk about brands. Like literally do not waste your breath with that kind of caption. You want the caption to be speaking to the local client who might see your post, who might consider booking with you.
That’s who we should be talking to in every single caption, telling stories about the client that the, the post is about. That’s working super well. So if you’re, if you’re trying to figure out how to make captions work, those are some strategies to lean into. Next, incorporating professional photo shoots quarterly. Professional photo shoots from salons have been trending for almost a decade. I mean, a really long time. Almost since, like, the inception of social media, it’s been a good idea. We are seeing a huge upward trend in this. Some salons are doing it monthly. Quarterly kind of seems to be the minimum when you’re looking at large format salons. So developing a relationship with a professional photographer. And listen, I know you can take amazing photos on your phone. All of that is great. The difference with having a cadence of a professional photographer is A, it’s gona give you social content for days.
B, it sets you apart in a much more professional way and standard. You can get behind the scenes in action shots that are much more difficult to capture when it’s just an average salon day. You can have all of the stylists come in ready for a photo shoot. You can have specific clients come in to be models. There’s just so many things you can do in a much more controlled environment. You can make sure the salon is as clean as possible. You can do themed photo shoots. You can do all kinds of things, right? Building that relationship with the professional photographer and doing the quarterly photo shoots. When I look at salons that are growing fast, that is a common thread. I see that every single time. So that’s a really huge one. Next, and I can’t emphasize this enough, not relying on the stylists for the content.
No more. So what happened was social media launched in, like, 2015 in a meaningful way. You know, Facebook was around before that, but it was, like, personal. 2015 was kind of the turning point when we started using things like Instagram for business, Facebook for business, and then ultimately TikTok for business and Google and Yelp and all these things. When that happened, there was a power shift. And stylists were no longer reliant on salons to build clientele. They were like, “Buy. I can do this myself.” And when that happened, we saw so many stylists go independent. We saw so many stylists go into studio suites, right? ‘Cause they could build it themselves. Well, salons still were telling stylists, “If you wanna build a clientele, you have to do it yourself.” And that was actually a big turning point in the shift in industry dynamic that kind of went unspoken for a really long time.
And it made salon owners really frustrated. And candidly, I understand. I totally understand. It is so much harder to be a salon owner now than it was 20 years ago. It just is. The game has changed. The expectations have changed. The awareness has changed. The game has changed. The rules have changed. The bad news is it’s harder to be a salon owner. The good news is the profit potential and the revenue potential is so much higher. You can actually run a legitimate, scalable, potentially sellable business as a salon owner for maybe the first time ever. But the way in which you have to do it is you have to run it like a business. And you won’t find other industries where employees are responsible for sourcing all of the clients. Like, when you look at somebody like, who’s like a realtor, most of the time, yes, they have to find their own clients to start, but they’re contractors.
And when you look at realtors who go through brokerages, sometimes they are employees and it is a network. And part of the reason you go to the brokerage is you, you do get more exposure and you get more opportunity to build more clients and the business helps you to do that. When you think about other trades, like somebody joins an electrical apprenticeship, they’re not also expected to build their own clientele. Like the business is bringing in the demand. And then the people they hire on are serving the demand. If you go to work for a contractor, they’re the ones who have built the demand and you’re working for the person who has the demand. In a salon, we’re like, “Come work for us, be the employee and also bring all the clients.” It’s a bit of a tough sell these days. So what we’re finding is salons are actually taking their power back and not in a resentful way in a badass way.
How many of you are salon owners and you’re like, “I’m so frustrated. I have a team who’s not motivated. They’re not marketing themselves and so their s – their chair stays empty.” Okay, so why aren’t you working on the marketing to fill it? We’re just living at the mercy of our stylists. Like if they choose to be lazy, we, we sink with the ship. Like, at what point do we say, like, F that. I’m gonna fill this business. I’m gonna learn how to market. I’m gonna fill the chairs. And now you’re the salon that fills the chairs, offers an incredible environment. You are unstoppable. So you mean I can work for you. You will truly partner with me in building my business. Like, you’ll fill my chair 80% of the way. You’ll provide me with a paycheck. I do have to follow your rules. I have to be a great team player and clean up after myself and teach the classes you want me to teach or whatever it is, whatever the requirements are of, of working in your salon.
You become the place where everybody wants to work. If you find yourself not getting quality applicants coming to work for you, it’s not because all stylists now suck. It’s because the good ones are going somewhere else. And when I talk to stylists and I say, “What are the things you’re looking for? ” The number one thing, the number one thing stylists do not tell me they’re looking for is money. I need money. They say, “I want a place where the salon is filling my books and that my growth can be exponential.” It’s not that they’re lazy or they’re expecting to get more for doing less, but they’ve kind of gotten smart on this idea of time out. I’m your employee, but I also have to be the one who brings all the business. Like, uh, this is where our industry gets murky. This is where we do weird things where we’re like, “You’re a team member, but you’re 10.99.” It’s like it, it really brings to the surface all the kind of funny things that this industry is super normalized.
That’s one of those things too. And when I look at these salons who are scaling fast, they’re like, “F it. If my stylist doesn’t wanna market themselves, that’s fine. I’m gonna fill all the chairs myself because I’m not gonna be at the mercy of who’s lazy on any given day and who’s not. I’m gonna fill the business so I always know that the revenue is coming in. And if somebody can’t cut it based on the KPIs that we talked about over the last two weeks on this episode, then they’re fired. That’s fine. But working for me is an incredible gift, blessing, and opportunity. I’m in the power position and they are attracting amazing talent. So one of the salon owners that’s featured on our series after the last client talks about how she gets 300 plus applications to work for her a year because she does the things we’re talking about here.
Like you become so unstoppable. It’s really incredible. Next, increasing the posting frequency. So without saying who this is, because I don’t wanna blow up their spot or blow up their strategy, one of the seven-figure salon owners who comes to our XClub retreat, some of you will know exactly who this person is, is now posting four times a day coming out of their salon. So I’ve watched them scale over the past few years from like a three, $400,000 a year salon to like a $1.6 million salon. And they are posting four times a day and their content is incredible. And the reason why I’m not saying who it is because I, it’s because I basically just exposed their financials and, and I wanna be really careful with that. But when I look at what they’re posting and how they’re posting, I’ll tell you a little bit about their cadence.
Okay, so I’m scrolling back a little bit. And it looks like after photo of a client in a carousel, after a photo of a client in a carousel, professional photo shoot photo that they’ve clearly done. A celebratory post celebrating a member of their team after photos of their client in the carousel, professional photo of their space, after photos of a client in a carousel, after photos of a client in a carousel, professional photo that looks candidly taken of a team member clearly on the day they brought in a professional photographer to capture photos of the team. After photo of a client in a carousel. Informationable post about what it’s like to work there. Professional photo from a photographer. Celebratory photo of a team member after photo of a client in a carousel, after photo of a client in a carousel, promotional post talking about what it’s like to work there.
So what I like about the way that they’re doing this is it’s a really great mix of professional photography. After photos of clients, they’re leaning heavily into carousels, like we talked about. Lots of posts about what it’s like to work there. And none of them say we’re hiring. Not a single one of these posts says we’re hiring. It’s celebrating the team, featuring a stylist, showcasing the perks and benefits of working there because the perks and benefits are unbelievable. And it’s just leaning into what makes this salon an incredible place to work from a cultural standpoint, team standpoint. It’s pretty amazing. Lots of group photos of the team. So what I’ve noticed a lot is salons will be like, oh, well, we feature our stylists and I’ll look and every stylist gets like one feature a year. Or there’s like two group photos in a year.
This salon is posting photos of their team every single week, like solo photos of such and such stylists. Like it’s happening all the time. Group photos are happening all the time. It’s just very clear that this is a very bonded group. Yeah, four posts a day. I mean, the way that they’re curating content is incredible. So what I’d imagine is they’re using a method similar to what we coach to. And I, I don’t know this for sure. I haven’t asked directly. What we do is we have stylists at any given salon taking photos of their work and uploading them to a Google Drive and then the salon has access to those photos that they can use at any time. Part of what we talk about, we talked about this last week on the episode, is having social content be a KPI in your salon space.
That can be a huge way to increase the amount of content being taken. So it’s something to consider as well. Next, not outsourcing social media to marketing companies. I watched this trend for the last two years and the content I’m seeing coming out of the salons that out very clearly outsource to third party is so cheesy and it’s like we’ve lost the heart. I was telling, uh, my social media manager and I were chatting today. There was a company that reached out to us asking about outsourcing social media. And I said, “You know what? I’ve always been opposed to outsourcing in our business because it feels like as soon as you outsource social media, you’re putting the business on life support. And just like how life support for a human can keep the person alive temporarily, it’s not sustainable. It’s not the quality of life that they had before.
To me, when you outsource social media, it’s putting your marketing on life support. Like it’s temporary. It can get you by for a little bit. It’s not gonna grow the business in a meaningful way because social media done right is like true human-to-human connection of your brand and business to your potential clients and customers. As soon as you outsource that to third party, you’ve just lost kind of like the point, to be quite candid. Like you’ve lost the connection piece. And it’s been a minute since I’ve watched a salon outsource and increase their interest. The best way, if you’re a salon owner who is overwhelmed by social media, A, you probably don’t know how to do it well because if, when you’re doing it right, it’s not overwhelming. You probably just don’t have a strategy that’s working. Once you have a strategy that’s working, you can train and onboard somebody to implement the system you’ve created, but just handing it over to somebody to be like, “We don’t wanna do this.
Just make it look good.” It might look good. It’s probably not gonna fill your chairs in a meaningful way to grow your revenue by 20% this year. So outsourcing is really fading out and I’m watching the, the salons that are growing fast doing it all in – house. Next, and we just talked about it, leaning into employee showcase and appreciation. Lots, lots, lots more of that. Lots more of that. Like, if I’m a stylist and I’m thinking about working for you and I never see you feature your team, big red flag. I’m like, “Do, does your team not wanna be featured? Do you not care about your team?” So showcasing the work is one thing. I wanna actually, like, see who’s working there. Are they happy? What’s the vibe? What did they eat for breakfast? Like, truly getting to know your team, but not in a cheesy, here’s a real watch Ariana walk through her day.
Not like that. Like, really talk about your team like you are the owner of a business who cares about their team. Like, really exciting news, being professional is trending. Like, taking our career and our industry seriously is super trendy right now because a lot of stylists are like, “F, if I’m gonna make this career work, I have to, like, really make money, like, really make a living for myself. This can’t just be a hobby. This has to be a career.” When you look like a salon that actually takes it seriously, the quality of stylists that you will get applying is, like, 10 times what it is when you look like you’re the salon that’s, like, burnt out of marketing, doesn’t know what they’re doing, just trying to have a good time. If you’re gonna try to attract that quality of stylists, that’s totally okay. They’re probably not gonna be a high producer.
If you’re in the street, in this industry to, like, really generate a meaningful profit and generate revenue beyond your own chair as an owner and really scale this thing, taking marketing seriously is just about the most important thing you can do to not just fill your chair with your salon with clients, but with stylists to serve those people too. So I hope this has given some insights into what’s working in marketing today. I invite you to take a look at the way you’re running your marketing right now, your Instagram, your Google, and beyond, and asking yourself which of these things are you already doing, and where do you have opportunity? All right as I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
