Because of our industry, we don't need to be using Facebook ads like other companies. We only want people who could come and sit in our chair to see our ads. Today I'll share some proven strategies and tips to get the most out of Facebook ads as a stylist.

The types of Facebook ads

How to advertise on Facebook

If you already have a Facebook page for your salon/personal business (and you should), you can head straight to the Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager to create your Facebook ad campaign. If you don’t yet have a business page, you’ll need to create one first.

We’ll follow the steps for Ads Manager in this post as I find creating and managing your ad campaigns easier there. 

Step 1. Choose your objective

Log into Facebook Ads Manager and select the Campaigns tab, then click Create to get started with a new Facebook ad campaign.

Facebook offers 11 marketing objectives based on what you want your ad to accomplish. Some are completely not useful to us and our industry, so here are the most important objectives to us as stylists:

• Brand awareness: Introduce yourself to a new clientele/audience.
• Reach: Expose your ad to as many people in your audience as possible.
• Traffic: Drive traffic to a specific web page, app, or Facebook Messenger conversation.
• Engagement: Reach a wide audience to increase the number of post engagements or Page follows, increase attendance at your event, or encourage people to claim a special offer.
• Messages: Encourage people to contact your business using Facebook Messenger.
• Conversions: Get people to take a specific action on your website (like subscribe to your list or buy your product), with your app, or in Facebook Messenger.
• Store traffic: Drive nearby customers to brick-and-mortar stores.

Choose a campaign objective based on your goals for this particular ad. Keep in mind that for conversion-oriented objectives (like sales) you can pay per action, but for exposure objectives (like traffic and views) you will pay for impressions.

For this example, we’ll choose the Messages objective.

After clicking Create then Messages you will see a screen like this

You can choose to name the campaign if you would like then click Next.

Step 2. Set your budget and schedule

On the next screen we will choose our budget, when to run our ad and who our audience should be.

For us as stylists we don't need to advertising to millions of people as it's not feasible to think everyone 1000 miles away will come see you. 

Because of that we don't need to have a high budget as most of it will go to waste. I recommend starting out at $2.50-$5 a day and working up to $30 a day MAX.

Step 3. Target your audience

As stylists this step is important and very different than what others will tell you that you should do. Instead of having a goal audience of millions, we will just be targeting a very select group of possible clients. 

So this step is important. Who is your target clientele? 

Are they men or women? What age? What do they enjoy doing? Who do they follow? All of this would be super valuable when going to target your audience. 

To create your audience hover over "Create New Audience" and choose edit.

Here are some ideas of possible audiences that work awesome for our industry. This is what is often referred to as a "Marketing Funnel"

Cold audience (Never met you or heard of you)-

Location: Your city and several surrounding areas you know others travel from. (make sure to delete "United States")

Age: Your ideal clients age. Try to keep it within 10-15 years.

Gender: Ideal clients gender.

Warm/Hot audience (Has seen you online but never been in your chair OR has seen you but is not a return client yet)-

Location: Your city and several surrounding areas you know others travel from. (make sure to delete "United States")

Age: Your ideal clients age. Try to keep it within 10-15 years.

Gender: Ideal clients gender.

This is where it gets fun! Scroll down to Custom Audiences then click Create New beside that.

Now choose Facebook Page and Everyone who engaged with your post (Make sure the Facebook page selected is the correct one)

 Now your ad will be shown to everyone who has visited your business page, liked a post, shared ect.

You can see how this would be valuable as these people have already expressed interest in you!

You can continue and do the same steps above for your Instagram account if you would like.

Step 4. Choose your Facebook ad placements

Scroll down to choose where your ads will appear. If you’re new to Facebook advertising, the simplest choice is to use Automatic Placements.

Click Next.

Step 5. Create your ad

First choose your ad format, then enter the text and media components for your ad. The formats available will vary based on the campaign objective you selected back at the beginning of this process.

You can get quite creative here! I recommend using something with bright colors that will grab the eye. Show off your most beautiful work.

Use the preview tool at the right of the page to make sure your ad looks good for all potential placements. When you’re happy with your choices, click the green Publish button to launch your ad.

You can also choose to use an existing post. This is great for showcasing your recent promotions to your community. 

TIP: When creating an offer to get people into your chair, shy away from discounts. Instead add value! Say "Free bottle of Olaplex with every blonding service this month" or "Free haircut with all chemical services"

KEY TAKE-AWAYS AND TIPS

Need help, don't understand, or just don't have time?-

If you ever need help with something for your business there are tons of super affordable free-lancers out there that do amazing work. Literally anything you could think of there is someone qualified and ready. Personally I use Fivver but there are other sites like UpWork that have the same services.

Use content that has worked well in the past -

 We all have that one photo that people go crazy for. USE IT! You know it works and others find it stunning so you know future clients will too. Above we discussed how to use an existing post for our ad. 

Keep target audience small -

Since we are location based we need to only be targeting those in our area that we know would make great clients. Try to keep audience size between 5,000-200,000 depending on your area.

Don't waste your budget - 

Again, because we are service based we do not need to be spending as much as other online companies. Try to keep your budget between $2.50 - $20 a day.