What does your salon’s Facebook look like? Is it pumping with potential clients dying for a seat in your chair? Or is it a graveyard filled with stale content no one noticed you posted three months ago? If so, it’s time to start thinking about Facebook ads for your salon. 

According to Buffer, engagement and organic reach have dropped 50% for 20,000 Facebook business accounts. That means top brands have to post at least 132 pieces of content each month to remain seen by followers.

Well, you’re not a top brand. Nor do you have time to drum up content daily. You’re a small business owner, with picky clients who need your attention now.

So how does a frustrated stylist with limited time revive a struggling page? If you feel discouraged from running your salon’s Facebook and want to give up, try a geo-targeted ad campaign to bring in ideal clients and increase bookings.

Let’s discuss what geo-targeting is, how to develop a killer ad strategy from industry professionals and fill up your calendar with the right customers.

How Geo-Targeted Ads Work

With Facebook’s geo-targeting ads, you waste no time networking or marketing to people who’ll never book you. Remember the last potential client that wandered into your salon requesting a specific look, only to be disappointed when it wasn’t on your service menu? Or it was just a service you hate doing. It’s time to put an end to that.

Location targeting promotes the right message to the right customers at the right time in the country, state, city, and zip-code you decide. This means your salon’s Facebook attracts quality leads who’ll feel instantly connected to your brand; as opposed to a mixed-bag of followers who aren’t sure if you can serve them.

Facebook targeting also offers categories to market your salon to:

• Everyone in a location
• People who live in a location
• Recently in location
• People traveling in a location

Your customer’s location plays a huge role in how they interact with your brand, social media accounts and ultimately how they book an appointment with you.

There are over 80,000 salons and barber shops in the united states. If randomly posting dull content on Facebook produced a lackluster community or sales from followers—don’t be surprised.

If you’re going to grow your business, buckle down now.

You have to outshine your competition with aggressive advertising. You have to earn engagement.
With online users, 26% are more likely to make a purchase when clicking an ad, an ongoing funnel to your StyleSeat will save time building clientele and bring your salon’s account back to life.

Planning Your Ad Strategy

Your campaign is only as good as your strategy and level of planning. Here are a few steps salon owners must map out before spending a single dollar on advertising.

• Understand your brand: Before you launch your ad campaign, have a strong grasp of your brand and unique personality. Are you humorous and want to add comedy to your page? Or smart, witty, and love to exude sophistication? Sharpening up your communication style to customers will stop followers from scrolling past you in a crowded feed.

• Choose a goal: Set realistic goals. You can drive traffic to your StyleSeat, but what will make your audience click book? During back to school season, instead of promoting your salon to everyone in your city, show ads to incoming college students; aiming to bring in 50-60 new clients during the semester. Adding specific numbers holds you accountable to results; while vague goals allow you to chicken-out if you don’t reach them.

• Discover your special customer: We all need the right customers to grow our salon. The ones that’ll keep your schedule full each month and hype up your finished work on social media without asking. You need raving fans. Whether you provide Instagram-trending styles or focus on traditional South-Asian bridal looks; targeting correct audiences will determine the success of your advertisement. You can create special customer segments and target each group differently.

• Location and income: Where do your ideal clients live? Will they travel 30 minutes over someone down the street? You want local customers but only if they’re right for your business. Targeting cities miles away to find leads with larger household incomes willing to pay for 5-star treatment will strengthen your ad strategy. Prove you offer a superior customer experience, and you’re worth the travel and time. Choose location wisely.

Don’t break the bank: Facebook ads are expensive. That may be the reason you’ve avoided them for some time. Rachel Pedersen, CEO of SocialWorks Digital states you can run video ads for as little as $150-$200 starting out. Ease your way into the campaign as you experiment with different formulas and audiences. If you notice your campaign building traction, investing more money should be your next step.

PRO TIP: Run ads to existing customers first! It’ll take a while to build trust with new leads, but many existing clients are on Facebook. Popping up in their newsfeed will be a nice surprise, and it’s a great time to push scheduling an appointment before you’re too busy. Gather up client email addresses, names or phone numbers from your database and add them to your custom audience list.

The Anatomy Of A Perfect Facebook Advertisement

Have you come across an ad so relatable it was creepy? You know the ones where it sounds like you wrote it yourself. This should be your aim when crafting an ad for clients. Get inside the minds of your customer to learn how they think.

Let’s take a look at how you can nail your geo-targeted ad:

Best ad format for salons

• Link ads: These ad types take customers directly to your online booking page.

• Videos ads: Video content dominates Facebook. The best length for video ads is 15 seconds while grabbing viewers attention within the first 6 seconds. A time-lapse showing your hair styling process would give viewers confidence in your skills. Offer a quick tip on what other salons are getting wrong with their customer service to push them to check you out in person.

• Multi-product ads: Carousel or Canvas ads allow you to show multiple salon services. Display fresh haircuts, skin facials, and hair coloring all in one go.

Ask clients if you can use photos of them for an ad with their testimonial as a headline. This increases authenticity and connects viewers to your brand.

Writing your advertisement

The writing in your salon’s advertisement should consist of:

1. Your service/special offer
2. How does it benefit
3. Call to action

These elements should be covered at the appropriate times with correct placement in the ad. The best ads are ones that draw you in and excite you to learn more. Finding a unique angle to invoke fear, humor or emotion into your audience is sure to trigger reactions.

Example:

• Is your hairstyle turning away job offers?

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PRO TIP:  Adespresso surveyed 30,000+ headlines and found titles should be 5 words in length with descriptions 19 words total. Make sure your writing is conversational and don’t be afraid to use slang or forgo grammar rules to relate to audiences.

How long should ads run?

As an independent stylist, you have zero money to burn. You launch your campaign and need to see results fast. So how do you decide when to scrap your ad or continue?

Two weeks should be enough time to see if your campaign results are matching goals. Higher priced services need more time to warm up customers to your brand before they feel comfortable handing over money.

If your results are lackluster after 2 weeks with no spike in engagement try:

• Testing a new customer demographic
• Adding better photography
• Expanding or shrinking location size

Facebook’s algorithm needs time to read your audience and get the targeting just right. Any new changes take more time to see results. Patience is your friend.

Measuring conversion rates

The point of geo-targeting is to increase the compatibility of your brand with potential customers. With Facebook’s data, everything you need to organize groups of people is available.

Views, likes, and comments are nice, but as a business owner, you have overhead—and they don’t pay the bills. What you need to look for are click-through-rates and conversions.

Wordstream reports for the beauty industry, Facebook ads have a conversion rate of 7.10% and the average cost per action is $1.81.

Try A/B testing two promotional ads and see which brings you better CTRs and conversions. Never stop tweaking your campaign as your brand, customers, and marketing trends grow.

Turn Engagement Into Sales

Never forget how excited you were launching your Facebook page. How you felt to write your business name, create a logo and add a few company photos up to feel legit. Everyone knew you were a boss.

If you’ve wasted time delivering content without organizing your customer base and advertising to their specific location; now’s the time to begin.

Geo-targeting will allow you to jump right in front of people who want to pay you, get your sense of humor and vibe with your content the most.

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