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How to Brand Yourself as a Hairstylist
Learn how to leverage SMS and social media marketing strategies to brand yourself as a hairstylist.
Learn how to leverage SMS and social media marketing strategies to brand yourself as a hairstylist.
As a hairstylist, the word loyalty is part of your livelihood. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of women and two-thirds (65%) of men have stayed loyal to their hairdresser and have not visited any others in the past year.
To a hairdresser, customer loyalty is how you stay in business year after year.
With over 580,000 hairdressers in the US, you don’t earn loyalty just by giving a good haircut. You have to brand yourself as an experience worthy of a return visit.
If you can brand yourself successfully, clients will reward you with generous tips, referrals, and steady business.
In this guide, we’ll reveal what it means to brand yourself as a hairstylist as well as the tools, tips, and tricks you’ll need to put plans into action!
Branding yourself as a hairstylist begins with establishing a personal brand.
A personal brand is often referred to as the story of you, or the way people describe you when you’re not in the room.
Think of any of the top hairstylists in the world and their personal brand comes to mind immediately:
Branding yourself as a stylist begins with figuring out what your clients will tell their friends about you.
The key to determining your brand? Tap into what you do best, no matter what it is.
If you’re an expert colorist, your personal brand should revolve around showcasing photos of your beautiful color transformations.
Are you a bubbly personality? Let that be your brand—you’re the girlfriend behind the chair.
Once you determine what you’ll be known for, it’s time to learn how to share that with the world.
Photo Credit: Newoldstamp
You need to market yourself as a hairstylist just as you would any other product or service. Otherwise, your gorgeous talents will stay between you and the salon chairs.
Your two best tools to do this will be social media and SMS.
Did you know the odds of someone doing business with you increases by 51% if they read something positive about you on Facebook?
In the words of marketing guru Seth Godin, “you can use social media to turn strangers into friends, friends into customers, and customers into salespeople.”
It’s also a well-known fact that text messages have a 98% open rate making it one of the fastest and most effective ways to reach your clients.
Combine the two strategies together and you’ve got the perfect spaces to splash your brand out into the world.
These three photo-heavy platforms are the best ways to visually showcase your work.
According to Pinterest, more than 35 million beauty tutorial Pins have been added by nearly 7 million people. Also, more than 9 million people have added “hair cut” or “hair color.”
By ensuring your brand and style is showcased well on Pinterest not only will you be providing a service to a new audience looking for inspiration, but people will seek out your services directly if they see an exact style on your page they want to achieve.
In order to see success on Pinterest you’ll want to pin things to your profile at least five times per day and ensure your images are optimized for the platform (image is 2:3 or 1:3.5 with a minimum width of 600 pixels).
83% of Instagram users discover new products and services on the platform. The odds of a new client checking your page before booking an appointment are astronomical. You want to be sure your page is active with client photos that give people a good idea of what you offer.
Photo Credit: Sprout Social
Similar to Instagram, Facebook accounts for 80.4% of U.S. social referral shares. Plain and simple this is where your clients will send your friends to find out information on your pricing, hours, and services.
Now that your new (and existing) clients know where to find you on social media, you need an effective way to communicate with them. Enter SMS.
As you already saw the open rates for SMS are staggering. But people don’t just open texts.
The average click-through rate on text messages is 36%, and the conversion rate of SMS hovers around 45%.
In comparison, spa and salon emails have an open rate of 21%. Plus, the average response time for a text message is 90 seconds—compared to 90 minutes for email.
However, managing all your clients from your personal phone can be difficult. Not only does it run the risk of being unprofessional, it never gives you a break.
Who wants a client texting them with a 10:30 p.m. split ends emergency on date night?
A professional text marketing platform not only gives you access to a text-enabled number, but it comes with a host of other helpful features like:
Still looking for inspiration? Here are just a few of the ways stylists who use SimpleTexting leverage SMS in their business.
It may seem like a full-time job in itself to brand yourself as a hairstylist. But the good news is, so much of the work done upfront will drive momentum down the line.
Once your brand is established it’s all in the maintenance!
Want to get started today? We offer a 14-day free trial for any new clients who want to give texting a go. No credit cards, no commitments!
Because simple solutions are kind of our thing. 😏
Meghan Tocci is a content strategist at SimpleTexting. When she’s not writing about SaaS, she’s trying to teach her puppy Lou how to code. So far, not so good.
More Posts from Meghan TocciWith a delivery rate of 98%, SMS is one of the most reliable forms of communication. Here’s everything you need to know about text message reliability and how to measure it.
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