Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? 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 aren’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 hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva and we’re going to kick off a little series today. This is something I’ve never done on the podcast in nearly 300 episodes. I thought we would do a little four-part series centered around my Hair Stylist Marketing Funnel.
The Marketing Funnel is something that I created and trademarked way back in 2012, which is a decade ago now, which is bonkers. And this became the foundation of not just Thrivers Society, but literally everything I do and I realized that there was this consistent customer path and journey that literally every single guest walked before choosing to go in and see a stylist or a salon owner.
Now there’s different variations to it. Just like if we were taking a trip across the country, we could take different exits and junctures and road stops and still end up at the same destination. The Marketing Funnel works like that too.
I coach to the Marketing Funnel super deeply in Thriving Stylist Method and I’ve talked about it at a glance in a lot of my free trainings and a little bit here on the podcast too. But we’ve never really done a deep dive into each layer in an innovative and applicable way. So I thought what we would do over the next four weeks is individual episodes dedicated to unique layers of the Marketing Funnel with the hope that you’re able to listen to each episode and implement strategic changes to your business that increase your clientele flow, your perceived value, and set you up for massive success.
If that sounds like fun to you, amazing, ’cause it sounds like fun to me too.
When we talk about the Marketing Funnel, it’s part of my Hair Stylist Success Hourglass. The Hourglass is comprised of two parts, the Marketing Funnel and the Retention Funnel. If you know what I mean when I say hourglass—for whatever reason whenever I say hourglass, I picture the Wizard of Oz. I don’t know why. But when you look at an hourglass, essentially it’s sand passing through from almost one circle or one bulb to another, right? One is on top and one is on the bottom. So when we look at the Marketing Funnel, it sits on top of the Hourglass and then the Retention Funnel sits on the bottom.
Now I talk a lot about the Marketing Funnel ‘cause it’s the fun, sexy stuff that everybody likes me to talk about. However, I can teach you all the greatest marketing in the world and if you can’t retain anybody, you’ll never make any money. You’ll be exhausted and you’ll look super cool on Instagram, but you won’t make any money. That’s the reality of actually a lot of people in this industry right now, which is super unfortunate.
But we’re going to focus right now on the top half of that hourglass, which is the Marketing Funnel. And on that top half, there’s four different layers.
At the top, we have the Awareness layer. This is how people find out that you even exist, right? Could be through a referral, somebody drops your name, somebody finds you by hashtag, you’re running ads. There’s a lot of different ways that people would become aware of you. They drive by you on the street, right? If you have a salon at street front, that could be awareness.
So at the very top of this Marketing Funnel, we have what I call the Awareness level, people finding out that you even exist. Once people are aware, if we’re lucky enough, they become interested. So below the Awareness level is the Interest level. And on the Interest level is basically everything that’s social media, so Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, the NextDoor app, review sites like Google Business, Yelp, all of those things are social media, okay? That’s the Interest level.
If somebody’s become interested in us and we’ve done enough of a good job of convincing them that we’re badass, then the next thing there will be is a desire to work with us, right? They became aware, then they were interested, now they desire to be a part of our business. This is what we want them to do, right? So once they desire to become a part of our business, they start taking action steps to make that commitment.
Now they’re still not sold on you yet, but there’s a curiosity there and they’d like to make it happen. The only thing that lives on the Desire level is your website and to me, the desire level is the biggest break for most people because the website is either non-existent, non-functional, or just not doing what it needs to do to be the number one salesperson in your business, which is what it should do.
That’s the Desire level. We won’t get any of those layers right, meaning Awareness, Interest, or Desire, if we haven’t clearly defined our Opportunity level.
All of those things I just mentioned, all the marketing, the website, the social media, the getting your name out there, all of that is for nothing if the Opportunity level is wrong, because all of those layers of the Marketing Funnel are working to provide the opportunity for you to build a connection with a new client.
Now, you know this as well as I do. Whenever a guest comes in to see us for the first time, it’s not like they’re your client for life, right? 70% of guests only see a stylist one time. That’s average retention in our industry. That’s average. Isn’t that wild?
What’s funny about that is that since that’s the average for half of stylists, they actually retain less than 30% of new clients. And then for the other half, they retain more than 30%, but that’s the average.
We know that every time a guest chooses to come in to see you, it’s simply the opportunity to earn their business long-term. Now, when we want to keep those return visits coming in, we dip into the Retention Funnel, which like I said is the second half of the Hourglass and we’re not going to get into that on this series. If you’d like to hear more about it, you can leave me a rating or review and say, “Give us the Retention Funnel” and I’ll be sure to add a series for that as well. But we’re going to start top level.
Knowing that the Opportunity level is the base of this funnel, it’s also the foundation for our business and if you get the Opportunity level wrong, all the social media in the world, all of the awareness about you, the conversations being had about you, your beautiful website, will never produce the amount of revenue you want them to.
You might look cool, you might look fancy, you might even be popular, but the money won’t be there. Dialing in this Opportunity level is critical for literally every other function of the business.
What lives at the Opportunity level? Branding and we need to brand in a way that doesn’t make us feel great, it makes our clients have peace of mind. That’s when a brand is done well.
A brand is not a representation of you at all. A brand is a representation of your target market client and what they’re looking for.
So this week that was the longest introduction of all time. This week’s episode is dedicated to the Opportunity level and I wanted to talk specifically about creating more opportunity for you to grow clientele and branding in tough or competitive markets. As per ush, this episode was brought to us by an incredible listener who left me a rating and review, and submitted a question.
This is the question that was submitted. “I love your podcast and all that you do. I’ve been following you for many years and the part that I get caught up on is target market. I’ve struggled with this for a long time. I live in a community with about 20,000. It is oversaturated with long hair, balayage, color guest salons. That’s who my target market should be. Not that I’m in love with my current target market either. I have a pretty good men’s short haircut kind of clientele, but I don’t necessarily think I love doing that type of guest, but there’s definitely more of a need to have that type of salon in my community. So I guess my question is this: Do I change it up a little bit and make my target market more men’s short haircuts because I know there’s a real need for it? Or do I go all out and focus on the longer balayage color clientele because the market in my community is asking for it even though it’s highly saturated?”
This is such a great question. So one of the things I say a lot is that great business is built in the gaps. There’s no better, easier, faster way to build and grow in business than to offer what nobody else is offering that there’s a tremendous need for, right?
If I was to open up a pizza restaurant in my community—my community right now is a community of, I think it’s around 10,000, something like that. We’ve got I think six pizza restaurants already. If I was to open up another pizzeria, no matter how much people like pizza, we’re already all good there. Nobody needs more pizza. We’re all set. So even though there’s tons of kids and families in my community, people like to eat pizza, we’ve got enough of that to go around.
So it could be argued, “Well then, Britt, why would you open up a pizza restaurant? It’s overly saturated. Instead you should open up a burger joint ’cause maybe we don’t have as many of those.”
This is an oversimplified way of looking at what this stylist is asking about. She knows that a lot of clients in her market like the balayage long hair color and there’s an oversaturation of it, kind of like the six pizza joints. There’s a huge need for short cuts, men’s cuts, maybe more precision services, i.e., the burger joint. But she’s like, “I don’t even eat burgers so is that what I should be doing?”
We’re going to dive into each for a second, but what I want to really drive home is that even though smart business is built in the gaps and if you were to bring in a business advisor, they’d be like, “Well, obviously do the burger joint. There’s such a need for it and your community. The market’s there, people would love it.”
If you’d hate it then don’t bother because any business that’s not founded from a place of love, joy, and passion is never going to be successful.
One of the things I talk about a lot is I consider myself to be a visionary. I have, probably legitimate, a half a dozen business ideas that I think would do pretty well right now in our marketplace and all of them serve gaps. All of them are things that I don’t see anybody else doing. The reason I’ve not launched them is I’m not passionate about them and the way that I’m passionate about what I’m doing right now. I could do them and they’d be successful and I’d make money, but I wouldn’t have fun doing it, so to me it’s like what’s the point?
I know a lot of people who have dove into business ventures chasing money or chasing like, “Well, this is what people like so I’m just going to do it,” and I’ve watched them make a real mess of their lives because they weren’t doing what made them happy.
To this stylist who’s wrestling with “Listen, there’s a need for precision cuts, but I don’t know if I like doing them,” I want you to ask yourself two questions. Is it that you don’t like doing them because you truly just don’t like the work that has to be done? Or do you feel like you don’t like them because maybe you are not educated about them as much as you could be? You’ve never found them to be joyful, but also you’ve been putting them into this box because you’ve been chasing the fun, sexy stuff, which by your message and by your definition is balayage long hair color, right?
A lot of times we think that that’s like, oh my gosh, but that’s everything because it’s popular. But is that really what brings you joy or are you just thinking like, “Well, that’s what the people want, so that’s what I should do.”
I want you to really ask yourself what is it that you want to do? And I want to talk about saturation because you mentioned that. There’s two different types of saturations when we look at business and economics. There’s microeconomic saturation and there’s macroeconomic saturation and they are not the same.
Let’s talk about macroeconomic saturation first because that’s the one we cannot overcome. There’s nothing we can do about it. So macroeconomic—let me make this into real-world terms. To me, when I look at something like cable television, that’s a macroeconomic saturation issue. That happens when demand for services or products decreases across an entire industry. How many of you are still going out and buying DVDs when movies are released every week? Movies are released every week. Did y’all know that? Are you rushing out every Friday to buy the new DVDs? How many of you stopped paying for cable television in the last few years and now just use the streaming services? We’re watching professional sports leave cable television and dabble in platforms like Amazon Prime and Hulu and all these other places because cable television is slowly dying as the market becomes saturated with streaming services instead. Cable is in trouble because its only option is to become streaming platform.The people just don’t want it anymore.
So when we look at macroeconomic saturation, the streaming services dominated essentially viewership and destroyed everything else. Cable television has no choice but to evolve. They can’t just keep forcing us cable and hoping it’s going to work.
That’s one type of saturation. The type of saturation we can do something about, which is the situation this stylist is in and many of you are in is called microeconomic saturation. This is more like what I was talking about with a pizza restaurant. Maybe my community has six pizzerias and so the idea of me opening up a pizza joint sounds illogical because you say, “Well, Britt, you already have six pizza restaurants. You only have 10,000 people in your area. Why would you add a seventh?” Which is exactly what this stylist is wrestling with.
Maybe there are already 20 specialists in her area doing the long hair, the balayage, the color, the extensions that she mentioned are very popular in her market. So why would she be the 21st? Because microeconomic saturation is almost like an illusion.
What happens in microeconomic saturation is something called a category king always emerges. I like to call it category queen as a proud woman myself. But category king is the actual term for it in economics and there’s always going to be a winner. Sorry, I know that we don’t love that the world works in winners and losers, but it does and a winner will always emerge and so you should not be scared going into a market that is quote unquote saturated.
For me, I see business as a game and so I say okay, “I know there’s a need for this. I like it. These are the kind of services I want to do. How do I position myself so that I’m the clearcut choice and all of the other perceived competitors literally melt away?”
Yeah, maybe there’s 20 other people who can provide you with a similar end result hair wise. “We all do long hair, we all do balayage, we all do color, we all do extensions, but they don’t do what I do and here’s why.” And that’s where the game gets interesting. And this is where the Opportunity level, the branding, the messaging, the voice, the positioning wins every damn time. I can’t say it enough.
How many of you follow 15 Instagram accounts where more or less, the hair looks the same? More or less? Can we just have a moment? I just want to have a second here for a minute. Can we agree that truly there are maybe 20 hair color results, generically speaking? I know there’s nuances, there’s tones, there’s placement, there’s all these kind of things. But put yourself in a client’s shoes.
Y’all, clients don’t see color and dimension in the overly complicated way that we do. They see brunette, they see highlights, they see blonde, they see platinum, but they see the world in a really simplified form. So when a client is looking at all 20 of this stylist’s competitors on social media and they all do long, blond hair, that’s how a client’s mind works. We see it with all of these nuances and application techniques and depth and placement. Y’all, they don’t see that. They don’t have the trained eye that we do.
Now some of you’re like, “My clients do.” You’re talking about seven clients. Yes, seven of your clients see it that way. I get it, that’s fine. The other 93 don’t see it. They’re just happy you do long, blond hair. I’m going to be honest with you, okay.
We trick ourselves into thinking that clients see the nuances that we see. They don’t and so to stand out in a market where the end result is similar, what we have to do with our branding and our Opportunity level of our Marketing Funnel is showcase things like Zone of Excellence, X factors, brand messaging in a way that nobody else can beat. In a way that makes us so exceptionally unique. It doesn’t matter if there’s 50 competitors ’cause you’re the one who does it different.
If I were to ask you right now who’s the stylist that you admire the most, what’s your dream salon to work at? When I ask those questions, most of you thought of those names, those people, those businesses because they do things what? Different. They do things different. They show up different, the message is different.
One of the words I love to use but hate to use, I have a real love/hate relationship with the word “vibe” because I think it’s almost intangible sometimes. I’ve really worked in Thriving Stylist Method to make it tangible. But there’s this energetic vibe that just exists in some people, in some businesses that you get down with and a lot of other businesses aren’t creating vibe. They do good work, the hair looks fine, price points within the range, but there’s no vibe there. No vibe, no brand message, no X factor, no Zone of Excellence, no winning.
So to this stylist and to all stylists, rather than thinking about, “Well, what’s the easiest way to capture business in my market?”, the question should become, “What is it that I’m best at and how do I position myself in a way so that there’s no question that if you want what I’m best at, I’m the person that you go to?,” right?
Like I said before, good business is found in the gaps. But I think that so often we focus on service gaps just like this stylist did, right? This stylist was like, “Well, everybody does long hair color and extensions, so maybe I’ll do short hair because that seems so opposite.” Okay, well, that’s a service gap and that’s fine, that’s one gap.
But there’s four others I want you to consider. There’s reputation gap. Some salons have been here forever, right? We call them iconic or they’re like, “Oh they’re a community staple,” right? ‘Cause they’ve been around forever. That’s one gap. So some stylists or businesses can anchor themselves on, “Oh, they’re a living legend.” That’s fine. That’s one gap. If you’re not a living legend, if you’re new to the community or whatever, that’s cool. That’s not your gap.
Y’all, you know what? Not everybody wants to see a living legend. To some people that sounds old, to some people that sounds comforting. It’s a gap and it serves some markets but not all.
Then we have the presentation gap. The presentation gap is the way in which certain brands and businesses do things.
It’s funny, a lot of times people come to me and they’ll be like, “Britt, I’m so pissed. The salon down the street copied my brand.” Okay, well, A), it’s impossible to copy a brand successfully. It’s actually impossible. You can’t do it because a brand has to be built on authenticity, X factors and Zone of Excellence, and no two people, no two businesses in the world have identical of those. It’s actually impossible. So if somebody steals a brand, they’re actually going to fail at it miserably. They’re going to try, but it’s almost like wearing a pair of shoes that’s four sizes too small. It’s never going to fit properly and it’s always going to look a little clunky. It’s going to look like you’re walking around and your feet hurt. That’s how the brand’s going to be. It’s not going to fit the experience.
When we talk about presentation gaps, have you ever seen some brands that are humorous versus some brands that are luxurious? Some brands that are empathetic, some brands that are inspiring, some brands that are spicy, right? We see all these different types of brands. Presentation can be a part of your gap, right?
Then we have the vibe overall, so the energy and the branding elements.
Branding elements are things like colors, shapes, logos. Your brand is not your logo. Your brand is not your colors. Those are simply elements to the brand and we can create distinction within that.
If all of the other stylists in your market who are doing similar services have a soft brand, be the one who has a sharp one. Be the one who’s got those pieces pulled together. Good branding creates confidence. If that’s the gap you’re going to serve, it’s an easy money shot to find success.
Then we have the process gaps. How do you do what you do in a way that nobody else is doing it? The process gap is one that’s interesting to me. In Scaling Stylist Method, we talk a lot about creating your own signature methodology. That’s the process gap. Again, all 20 people could be doing the same thing, but if your process is different, it’s this instinctual talking point.
The challenge with that one is a lot of people think like, “Oh, well, I do it different.” And I’m like, “No, you don’t. I just found 200 other people who do it the same way that you do.”
Here’s what’s not different: an extension application technique. It’s not different because you learned it from somebody. I hope you learned it from somebody. Please get yourself educated by those who have come before you. So you learned it from somebody so at least there’s two of you doing it.
When you’re leaning into a process gap, it has to be so unique that literally nobody else is doing it. Otherwise it’s stealable and then you’ll be the person who DMs me and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, Britt, somebody stole my process,” and then I’m going to come back to you and say, “Well, you shouldn’t have branded on your process. You should have branded on your X factor.” I know how this is going to go. I’ve done it enough times.
So there’s all kind of different gaps. You just need to think about what gap you want to be showing up in.
I want to wrap up this episode on target market and branding by inviting you to think about what services and what clients bring you the most joy, not the most money. If we chase the joy, the money will come. I’ve just been shown that too many times to not believe it to be true. I want you to think to yourself, “Where do I find the most joy? Where do I feel like I’m operating in my best skill? What do I feel the most confident in? What is it that my market wants and how can I show up in such a unique way that nobody else can touch me?” Those are some questions I want you to ponder.
If you need more help, you can head to thrivingstylist.com. I have lots of resources and trainings to help you, but I invite you to really hone in on your target market and branding. This is the core of everything you do. If you want to get your pricing right, your marketing right, all the other goodness, and get that clientele generator pumping, it all starts right here.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
