Instagram for Hair Business: The Ultimate Guide to Gain More Followers
Up Your After Photo Game to Gain More Client Followers on Instagram
It's undeniable that, as this decade comes to a close, social media has moved past being a simple way to keep in touch and has turned into a job of its own. We've seen MySpace and Tumblr rise and fall, we can spot a filter in a split-second and we no longer have to rely on spending big bucks on ads to boost our businesses. Having a strong brand presence on social media can increase your clientele, networking and overall growth.
The power of promotion is in your hands, and as we're sure you're aware, it's not as easy as it looks. So, how do you know you're posting the right content for your brand? Ask yourself the following questions:
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Who is the target audience?
It's not always the same. Some posts are meant to attract clients, while others attract peers. -
What are your VPs (value propositions)?
Consider your strengths and offerings and how you can creatively showcase them. -
Is what you're currently doing working?
If you don't know how to read analytics, it's time to start. Understanding these numbers will help you understand your audience. This game goes a lot deeper than follows, likes and comments. -
Is your feed consistent?
The answer to this depends on how you've presented your aesthetic. It could be a consistent color scheme, adding a white border or trademark to each image or keeping a balance of various types of content (i.e. an even mix of hairstyles and your salon). Let's say we're not even talking imagery, and you're running a YouTube channel. You can maintain consistency by having themed weekly videos so your audience knows what to expect.
(Please note that the photos in this blog may not include our hair.)
Check out these stellar examples by fellow hair professionals:
Justin Anderson is an icon in many ways, and social media is absolutely one of them. If there's anything his hair account screams, it's "COLOR!"
We're sure this isn't your first introduction to his work, as he's the creative director of dpHUE and easily one of the most well-known celebrity hairstylists and colorists around. However, for anyone who stumbles upon his account and is unfamiliar with his repertoire, it's immediately clear.
Even for his most natural looks, the theme of his profile and career are still prevalent.
To take inspiration from him doesn't mean you must imitate his every move. Not everyone will have access to HD photos, high-profile clientele and cool backdrops, and that's OK. If anything, take away that he gets his brand across with every post, and most of the time, although all three photos in each row look similar, they mostly contain slightly different poses.
Showing his clients' faces allows for a better connection with the picture, and it's a bonus to see how much fun they're having!
These tools will help you build a strong online presence:
Sometimes, all you need is a little faith, trust and high-quality camera equipment. Ring lights can bring you proper lighting any time of the day. If you aren't sold just yet, there are affordable options for both cameras and smartphones for less than $100 on Amazon.
Jamie Dana is a hairstylist taking social media by storm, and she wants you to rise with her! Check out her account to get more social media savvy. She even created a content planner to get you started!
Hair Boss Extensions in Hollywood uses this spot in their salon for all of their after photos! Not only is it a distinct area that only their salon will have, but we have no doubt customers show up ready to take a cute selfie for their own accounts too!
We Want To Promote Your Work!
The digital age has reminded us of something that we learned in kindergarten: sharing is caring. Branding yourself online and creating content is more prevalent now than it ever has been. We know it's not easy when so much—hashtags, algorithms, impressions, etc.—play a role, and we want to help!
Inspirational Instagram Accounts by Hair Stylists
Many people look for inspiration when the new year rolls around, so we thought we would share a few inspiring Instagram accounts from some talented hair stylists.
New Year, New Work Mom
There are so many mothers in the workforce today, and many deal with the constant juggling of family and work, which can invite a ton of stress into their lives. However, being a working mom can also be rewarding.
How to Promote Your Hair Business on Instagram
Let's talk about Instagram
- Hair & Compounds Instagram: If you haven’t already, please follow us on Instagram. One of our goals is to have one of the most inspiring Instagram profiles for our industry. And we’re just getting started!
- Why Instagram? With more than 700 million total monthly active users, IG now claims over 25 million business profiles worldwide.
- 60% of people say they discover new products and services on Instagram.
- 200 million + Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily.
- And ⅓ of the most viewed stories are from businesses.
What does this mean for you?
Well, there are many opportunities to grow your business just by using Instagram!
First off, most people think that Instagram is all about how many followers you have.
Well, I’m here to tell you differently.
As a business it is not about how many followers you have, it's about who your followers are.
With the right audience on your Instagram, you can generate a lot of potential new leads (customers).
Why you should read this blog:
We got started on our Instagram strategy in July 2017, with the goal of growing engagement, increasing the number of qualified leads, and understanding the real ROI (return on investment - aka for every dollar or minute I spend on Instagram, how much money will I make).
In this blog, I am going to show you how we made over 10k in sales from Instagram in just 3 months.
Here’s how we did it:
First, we read a lot of blogs and articles to see what other bloggers and influencers were doing to grow their Instagrams. We watched courses. We asked questions on forums. We took notes. We studied and put in a lot of work to educate ourselves.
Then, we compiled this information and set up experiments to test the information that we learned.
Even though our company, Hair and Compounds, has been around for 25 years, our current marketing team is young, so we try to treat everything we do with the same sense of creativity and urgency as if we were a startup.
We always try to test the thing that will get the highest impact result.
It’s called high-tempo testing. (We’ll explain this in further detail later).
One high impact test we discovered from our research is a growth hack called FLLLC (follow → like, like, like → comment).
How it works:
First, target and identify segments of your potential customers on Instagram (maybe look at your competitor's profile).
The first step of our strategy was to understand who our audience and how to reach them.
We knew that the people we wanted to reach were hair stylists, specifically hair extensionists.
Since we are a business-to-business company (meaning that we sell our products to other businesses NOT to retail), we have a very specific customer in mind when we approach our strategy.
To get started we did a search for:
1. The hashtag #hairextensions
- The result was over 3 million posts tagged.
2. Other hair suppliers
- You will have to identify a list of your businesses competitors so that you can monitor their activity.
Next, we needed a way of identifying other Instagram accounts as related, which means that these are people who would have an interest in buying our product.
The accounts were classified as related if in the users either mentioned in their profile bio: “hair stylist,” “extensionist,” or “salon owner.”
If the user’s Instagram profile did not indicate this, we then looked at the images posted.
If the images suggested that the users were hair related professionals (maybe it showed a before and after transformation for example), then we wrote down their Instagram profile username in a free Google spreadsheet with a tag that says “related.”
Once we had a spreadsheet of 100 related accounts, the next step was to engage in the FLLLC hack.
STEP BY STEP GUIDE:
1. Choose a user from the list of 100 related accounts and search for their account handle on Instagram
2. Visit their profile and identify 3 pictures that are related to your industry. For us, we looked for images. containing hairstyles, applications, unique hairstyles. Then “like” these 3 images.
3. Choose one of the images that you liked and leave a comment. But don’t just leave an emoji and two meaningless words. Get specific so that the user knows you’re a real person and not a robot.
We tried a number of different comments from simple compliments to detailed questions about the user's post.
The comment that proved to be the most engaging to our audience was “Quick question: What is the most difficult thing about making hair extensions look natural?”
This comment had great success in engaging our audience and allowed us a doorway into understanding them on a personal level.
The results:
We messaged 298 people. 89 people responded. That is a 29.8% response rate. Meaning, for every 3 people we used this method with, 1 person responded!
This shows the power of using a simple high-impact test.
We also saw a 25% follow back rate. You may choose to unfollow the ones who don’t follow back, which is what we did to keep a 3:1 ratio of follower/following.
Also another tip: once the users follow back, send them a welcome message to start the conversation.
This is one of the best ways to show users that you are serious about connecting with them and this is how we were able to generate sales of over 10k in 3 months with a 54% engagement rate.
Now it’s your turn: if you’re serious about using Instagram to grow your extensions business, try out the method above. It works.
And let me know how it goes! Or, if you have any questions about the method, email me at marketing@haircompounds.com !
Stay tuned for more IG hacks. We did this and got 150 leads in a month!
3 Tactics to Convert Instagram Followers into Customers
Here are 3 tactics that you need to implement right away. Whether you are by yourself or with a team of other marketing professionals, you will be able to perform each of these tactics to grow your business.
Tactic #1: Set aside 30 minutes per day to FLLLC.
FLLLC stands for “follow, like, like, like, comment.” It’s exactly how it sounds.
Steps:
1. You open up Instagram.
2. You search for your competitor’s profile.
3. You click on their followers list.
4. You start going through their followers list one by one.
5. For each of their followers, you follow them, like three of their posts and comment on one of them.
6. There is a 25%-33% chance that they will follow you back.
Result: You will get new followers who will be potential customers
You can find your competitors’ followers here:
Clicking on the follower count will bring up the list of followers!
Tactic #2: Send Welcome messages to your followers.
Let’s assume you try doing Tactic #1. You’re going to get potential clients following you on Instagram.
Then what?
You must reach out to them via DM!
The fact that you will send them a personalized welcome message will make you stand out from all the other salons, simply because you took the time to reach out.
I recommend you test 2 or 3 different messages and see which ones get you the most responses. Send one message to 10 people. Send the other message to another 10 people.
Once you settle on a good message, save it so that you can simply copy and paste them any time you get new potential leads.
Send them something exciting. Be personal. Ask them questions. Make them feel like the decision they made to start following you was the best decision they could have ever made!
Perhaps you can start by suggesting a look of hair that you think would suit them!
Result: You will convert leads who are urgently looking for a new look of hair within 1 month.
Here’s an example:
"Hey [FOLLOWER’S NAME OR HANDLE]!
Thank you for following me on Instagram!
I checked out your IG profile, mainly because I was curious to see the different hairstyles you have, and I really think [INSERT YOUR HAIRSTYLE SUGGESTION] would suit your style.
What do you think? Would this look be something you’re into? If so, I’ll send you the latest updates and trends when it comes to these particular hairstyles.
Talk soon.
[YOUR NAME] with [YOUR SALON NAME]”
Tactic #3: Do not stop interacting via DM!
“If a lead does not become a customer within the first one or two weeks, then I must move on to other new leads.”
The quote above is the wrong approach to business!
We all constantly want to go after new leads. The reality is that less than 2% of all leads you will message directly will become customers within the first few weeks.
What’s the solution? Keep sending your leads content that they would find interesting! More than 70% of all of your potential customers will require further communication and engagement for at least 3 to 6 months before they switch over to you!
By continuing to write them messages every 2 to 4 weeks, you are keeping them in the funnel.
Trust me, when the time comes for them to consider a new stylist, you will be at the top of their consideration set, because you would have sent them free value and interesting advice for several weeks!
Result: You will convert a higher percentage of your followers into customers within 3 to 6 months.
Here’s an example:
"Hey [FOLLOWER’S NAME OR HANDLE]!
Because you like creating blonde looks of hair, I wanted to send you a quick maintenance tip that you need to know!
[INSERT YOUR HAIR MAINTENANCE TIP]
Did you find this tip helpful? Let me know!
Talk soon.
[YOUR NAME] with [YOUR SALON NAME]”
Conclusion:
Whether you need help creating a customized and unique look of hair for your clients, or you need help creating a marketing plan to grow your business, our content team at Hair & Compounds is here to help you along your journey by providing relevant information and practical step-by-step guides!
If you need to reach out to anyone in our team, click here to contact us anytime.
We’re always open for suggestions, criticism or just a simple hello!
