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 are wrapping up our series on the marketing funnel talking about brand awareness, last but not least.
Everybody’s forgotten marketing funnel component brand awareness. So when we’re looking at the marketing funnel visually, brand awareness would be at the very, very top.
Three weeks ago we talked about Opportunity, which is at the very base of the funnel. It’s like branding, target market. Just above that we have Desire. When somebody desires to be a part of your business, but they’re not a part of it yet. The only thing that lives there would be your website in the case of our type of business and industry. Then above that we have Interest. That’s everything social media. People hang out with you on social media, watch your content, consume your content when they are interested in you.
All three of those are critical components. None of them will pop off if you don’t have enough awareness.
Does anybody feel like they’re doing everything right on social media and yet their follower count is stagnant? Raise your hand. Yeah. You feel like you’ve built the beautiful website, but then you’re like, “Yoohoo, over here!” Nobody’s finding you. Lack of awareness.
Here’s the thing. So as I go into this episode, everyone’s probably like, “So wait. All I need to do is more awareness?” If you are driving awareness to an ugly marketing funnel, you are wasting your time, energy, effort, and potentially money. Where awareness is like the jet fuel to the engine. However, if the car or the jet plane or whatever it is is built poorly, it’s still going to crash and burn. Like you can throw as much fuel on the fire as you want to but if it’s not built correctly, it’s never going to take off.
As I talk about awareness, please know that if you did not spend time deeply getting to know your branding, target market, messaging and dial in all of those components, this is never going to work. If your Desire level, meaning your website, is dated, has the wrong information, is poorly formatted, it’s not working to build your clientele for you, none of what I’m about to say is going to work. If your social media is looking like a hot mess, you’re exhausted by it, you don’t know what to do, you only have 15 online reviews or less, the last time somebody reviewed you was seven months ago, your Instagram is kind of just okay, you’re not really on any other platforms, nothing I share here is going to help.
However, if you have a funnel that looks great and you can’t quite figure out why it’s not working, this may be what you’re missing. Nobody is going to randomly stumble upon your Instagram. Nobody is going to find your website by chance. You can work on SEO for sure and try to come up higher when somebody searches “best salon in Fort Wayne, Indiana,” very possible. But generally speaking, the marketing funnel is the most controllable way to get more traffic consistently.
So what lives on this very top level? This is anything that drives awareness to your brand.
Let’s go back for a second. How did you find me? How did you become aware that I existed, that I was a human being, and that I do what I do? I’ve got this podcast and you might want to check it out. For some of you, you’re like, “Well, a friend told me about it.” Cool. Some of you might have found me initially on the app called Periscope. What’s up, OG followers, I see you. I started, we called it ‘scoping back then, back in 2015, so that was a long time ago. That was one way some people became aware of me. Some of you saw an ad that I paid for hit your feed, right? That’s how you came aware of me. Some of you may have seen me speak publicly on a stage somewhere. Some other brand may have shouted me out. Those are all ways you may or may not have become aware of me. Those are all Awareness level strategies.
How does somebody become aware of you? Let me give you some examples. Foot traffic, meaning your salon is in an area where people either—and when we say foot traffic, we can mean wheel traffic also. People walk by, drive by, visually, see your place in space.
Now if you’re in a studio suite, seeing the outside of a studio suite building is not foot traffic. Not ever. Nobody’s like, “Ooh, that building.” No, they want to see who’s inside it, so foot traffic for studio suites, not so much a thing,
But if you are an individual salon, you’re a booth rental salon, you’re a commission salon, and you have a killer location in a downtown area where people are walking by when they’re on their way to get their morning breakfast burrito or whatever, foot traffic can drive awareness to your brand. Not everybody’s got it, but it is one awareness tool.
Referral programs are an awareness tool. I could share with you here on this podcast the best referral program in the world. It is going to do nothing for you if you don’t have a well-built marketing and retention funnel. Anybody have a referral program and they think it’s pretty good and they wonder why they don’t get 10 or 15 referrals a month, which is the going rate? And people all the time are like, “Well, how many referrals do I need to be seeing if I’m working two days a week?” 10 to 15. When somebody is getting 10 to 15 new guest requests a month, that is an indicator of a really healthy business as a stylist or salon owner.
I mean each individual is getting 10 to 15 a month. Whether you can see them or not is a structural issue. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about 10 to 15 people every single month are like, “I’m interested, I would like to see you.”
Some of you might say, “Well, what if I’m in a very small town?” If you are in a very small town and you are already booked to the maximum, so much so that you cannot possibly take on any more clients, you’re having two to three price increases a year, and you’re still growing, you might be the exception.
Anybody else, 10 to 15 a month, regardless of the schedule you’re working is the benchmark we’re looking to achieve.
So your referral program is not working if your marketing funnel and your retention funnel aren’t built correctly, but a referral program is an awareness strategy.
Paid advertising is a strategy. Local network marketing is a strategy. Hashtags are a strategy. All of these things are strategies. I’m going to choose at random which ones I want to talk about today.
Let’s talk about foot traffic, let’s talk about paid advertising and let’s talk about virality. What do you say? And we’ll see, I might sprinkle in some other things also.
Let’s start with foot traffic. Somebody just walking by your salon is no good. For example, I walked by a salon recently and the salon itself is actually cute-ish. It’s in a really good location. Big beautiful windows with sun pouring in. They have some nice retail lines in there. I could see it from the front. And they had this super tacky folding chalkboard sign outside. It was one of those things that said something like unattended children will be given coffee and cookies and whatever left to their own accord. They were trying to be funny, but to me, I was like, Oh my gosh. First of all, it felt a little cheesy to me, but maybe that’s your brand. Maybe your brand is a little bit old school and that’s cool to you. My perception was so do you allow children but they have to be attended ‘cause I do not want to be in a kids’ salon or are you saying no kids allowed ‘cause maybe I’m looking for a family salon. The messaging on it was so confusing. I was like, I don’t get it. I don’t get it. Are you just trying to be funny? I didn’t get the point.
Why would that ever be the first impression you’re trying to make of your business? Regardless of their intention, it’s hard to understand what they were going for. Do you see what I’m saying? Some of you heard that and you’re like, “Oh, I love that saying. I actually would’ve thought that was cute if that was my salon.” Yeah, but even if you had never been there before, we don’t know what the intention was and so really thinking about how I want my salon to be perceived when somebody looks from the outside. Is it cluttery? Is it clean? Is your front door closed? Is it open? How often do you open it? Well-lit? Does it look just like a big retail shop? Can I see the inside of the salon when I’m walking by? What does the signage look like? What does the branding say? Can I tell when I walk by your salon, drive by your salon whether I’m a fit for it or not?
If I can’t walk by or drive by and tell simply by looking through the windows and seeing the logo if I’m a fit or not, you’re missing the mark. You’re missing awareness marketing. Just a sign that says “Blah blah blah Salon” is not good awareness at all because the branding can be off. That’s why Opportunity level, that very first level we talked about, is so critical.
Very few people are like, “I am looking for any salon anywhere to do whatever kind of cut. I don’t care.” That’s not the kind of client I want. The lackadaisical, no expectation, like that’s a tough client. We want clients who know what they want and know what they’re looking for. Your brand is either attracting or repelling them if it’s doing their job. If it’s not doing the job, you’re likely struggling to hire both stylists and find an abundance of clients to come in and see you month after month.
If you’re not getting the amount of clients you would like to be seeing monthly, there is a real chance that your foot traffic, the impression visually from the outside of your salon space is turning people off, to be fully candid.
Foot traffic is really important and getting that appearance and that first impression right and dialed in is critical.
Let’s talk about paid ads for a minute. I was in a salon recently coaching and I brought up Yelp just like I brought up last week on the podcast. I was saying, “Yelp and online reviews are really important when it comes to SEO and building up your brand presence. Whether you like Yelp or not, consumers like it.”
Knowing that it is something that Google indexes, that consumers are using, it’s something to keep in mind. This stylist was saying, “Listen, I want to like it, but I actually spent several hundred dollars on Yelp ads a few months back and it didn’t work out for me.” I said, “Okay, let’s dig in. How many reviews do you have?” I think she said something like 20, so it wasn’t like she had a small amount of reviews. She had some reviews and I was like, “Okay, that’s cool.” I said, “How much did you spend on Yelp ads?” I think she said like $600. I said, “Okay, cool. How many clients did you get?” She said, “I think of the $600, I only got one client.”
When you hear that, were you “Oof, bad deal?” Because when I heard that I was like, “Score.” But you have to think of it this way. If she ran the Yelp ads, spent $600 and got one client, let’s imagine that client is a cut-color and they pay $150 per appointment and they come in four times a year. Cool. In one year that client has paid for themselves. That $600 ads investment has paid off. If they stick around for 10 years, you’ll make at minimum $6,000 on that client.
However, you should be getting price increases, so it’ll actually be probably more like $7,500 or $8,000 for a $600 investment. If you put $600 into the stock market and got $8,000 back, would it be worth it every single time?
I said with the Yelp ads or with any kind of paid ads, it’s a long game. If you’re retaining whomever you get, generally speaking, it pays for itself and then some, but you have to think of it as a long game. As I was saying that, you could see her wheels turning and she was like, “Okay, I see you.” I said, “But here’s the other thing. I would expect a greater return on Yelp ads if you’re putting $600 in.” I said, “However, I also would not have put a dime into Yelp ads until you had at least 40 reviews at a minimum.” Because what’s happening when you put money into any kind of advertising, Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, Google, whatever, all it’s doing is driving eyeballs to your marketing funnel. If your marketing funnel is soft, you might as well just burn the cash in your backyard ‘cause it’s not actually going to do anything for you.
Paying money for ads doesn’t build your business. Paying money for ads drives awareness to your brand. When you pay money for ads, people are going to check out your social media, check out your online reviews, check out your website and then judge you. That’s all that paid marketing does. If you have not laid a foundation for those paid ads to work, don’t even bother paying the money.
Now when we look at marketing, marketing always costs us one of two things or both: time, money, or both. That’s it. You have to spend time, money, or both in order to build a business. There is no set-it-and-forget-it business, I don’t know of one. I can’t name one example of a business that doesn’t have to spend time or money in order for it to grow. When you do paid ads, you’re choosing to spend money instead of time. That person had to cut a $600 check, but then they just set it and forget it and a new client came wandering in.
For some of you, if you could get your reviews up, that would be a pretty sweet way to be getting referrals every single month, right? Now for some of you, you’d like to dabble in Instagram ads or Facebook ads. I have to warn you, both Facebook and Instagram ads have changed radically in the last two years. At this point in time, I am not suggesting them for local small business. I don’t think it’s a great idea. However, if you are already getting 10 or 15 referrals a month from your social media efforts and you want to crank it up a notch, you can try dabbling in those. Just make sure you are ultra consistent on the platforms because again, all you’re doing is driving awareness to whatever already exists.
Okay, let’s talk about virality. Anybody dream of going viral, making a great video or making a great post and it goes viral? I personally don’t. I don’t dream of that at all. The problem with virality or going viral, is it amasses a lot of eyeballs and traffic. Very rarely does that actually turn into revenue because those who are seeking solutions to problems will actively find you. They don’t need to see you do a viral video or photo or post to find you. If somebody is actively seeking solutions and your funnel is built well, they’ll find you without a viral post. It doesn’t matter.
For me, if I were to pick up, let’s say I picked up 10,000 followers in a week because of some kind of viral content I posted, I’d likely be in trouble. My algorithm would likely start trending downward because those 10,000 people didn’t all follow me because they’re super in love with my business and what I offer. Most of those people don’t even know me. They saw one video or one post and were like, “Oh, she’s funny.” “Oh, she’s cool.” “Oh, I hate her.” You have to realize that when something goes viral, you also get haters. And so I get 10,000 people who are following me for a variety of different reasons, and it is very unlikely that all of them will engage with my content the way that those who found me through more legitimate awareness would. What will happen is my post will be pushed out to the test market as it’s always done. Those who found me through virality are like, “Who’s this chick again? Why am I following her?” They don’t engage. They start to unfollow and I’m actually going to start trending downward.
Virality is tricky. When you look at somebody—this is such a cheesy example, very much an example of my generation. When you look at somebody like a Justin Bieber, that’s somebody who went viral on YouTube in a time when virality was different. It’s just not what it used to be. When reels started happening on Instagram, a lot of you listening are like, “I had a viral reel, I had 300 views.” How did that impact your bottom line? How much profit did you get from that viral video? Probably not much at all.
While virality can drive more eyeballs to your business, it’s never what we should be shooting for. Don’t shoot to make a viral piece of content. It is so highly unlikely to actually drive more profit that it’s not even worth the energy and effort that it takes. Instead just make good shit and the right people will see it. It will get shared in the right arenas. That is such a smarter way to play the social media game and potentially win.
Going viral is not something I ever think you should focus on. However, it can potentially drive awareness to your business.
We got a little time. Let’s dive into hashtags. Hashtags are something that was popular on Instagram more like 2014, 2015, 2016. They were revolutionary. Hashtags were essentially search terms, right? You could put the hashtag #CharlotteNChairstylist and what would happen is clients would go on Instagram and search the hashtag #CharlotteNChairstylist and anybody who would use that hashtag would show up in a search feature on Instagram.
The challenge is—and this is published, you can look it up—less and less people are actually using the hashtag search filters. You can hashtag your photos and videos till the cows come home. Unless somebody is searching for those hashtags, it’s not going to do anything for you.
That’s why it was always a little bit funny to me when somebody would be like, #SevaSalon. Why would anybody be searching for a hashtag of your salon name if they already knew it? You know what I mean? No one’s going to randomly search for, “Huh, I wonder if there’s a salon named Seva Salon,” so why would you make your own hashtag?
Then you say things like, “Well, I’d like my clients to use it when they post photos of their hair being done by me.” Okay, but are they? Are they doing that? Are they using your hashtag? Are their friends looking at that hashtag, chasing that hashtag back to you? There was a time when that game may have worked. We left it seven years ago. A really long time ago.
So hashtags are an awareness tool. They’re meant to drive more eyeballs to Instagram specifically. And TikTok, although for TikTok, it’s more for indexing. When you look at hashtags on something like a TikTok, it’s different, and Instagram is actually dabbling in this as well.
There’s a rumor that hashtags on Instagram are going to fade out, that there’s no set dates. I don’t know how true it is, but it is a rumor because they’re declining in popularity and that the tagging feature on reels is going to replace it.
The way that hashtagging works on TikTok is it’s almost like indexing.
So I’m a member of #CleanTok. If you’re on TikTok, you know what I’m talking about. There’s #MomTok and there’s all these different kind of—if anybody’s ever asked you what side of TikTok are you on, some people are on the pop culture side, some people are on the cleaning side, like I am. I get all the home cleaning tips. Some people are on the style side where it’s like outfits. Some people are on the educational side where you’re getting tons of educator video or educational videos. Some of you are on #HairTok where it’s a lot of TikTok from other stylists, right?
The way that TikTok works is no two feeds are even close to the same. That algorithm is extremely complex, and using tags and hashtags on TikTok, if you use the #hair or something like that, you’re more likely to show up with those who like videos about hair. That is unique to that platform that indexing does work. But the way that hashtags used to work on Instagram and the way that they work now, it’s just not the same.
A failing or a flailing awareness strategy would be hashtags. But what I want you to think about as I listed off all these options—foot traffic, referral programs, paid ads, Yelp ads, local network marketing, hashtags, virality, we didn’t even get into all of ’em. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways that you can create awareness around your business.
How are you letting more people in the world know that you exist? Just creating social posts isn’t going to do it. Just having a beautiful website isn’t going to do it. Just making a referral program isn’t going to do it. What are you going to do to drive awareness to your brand and how are you going to support those efforts month after month after month?
If you need help, Thriving Stylist is always here for you. And as always, if you have any further questions, leave them in the comments under a rating or review on iTunes and I will do my best to feature you on the show.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
