Each year women spend a fortune on beauty treatments and products. Whether it is more specific procedures like lip augmentation or the occasional and needed hair cut, the truth is that there is a growing and diverse pool of potential customers waiting to be reached. But where can you find them?
That’s easy – on Facebook! With the rise of social media and the growing popularity of social media platforms such as Facebook, it has become much easier to reach very specific target audiences and engage with them. The best way to do so? I would say Facebook ads.
What are Facebook paid ads and why are they important to your salon business?
Let’s admit it – unless you happen to live under a rock or have never used Facebook, you most likely have seen a Facebook ad before while scrolling through your feed. They are shown as ‘sponsored posts’ and have been paid for by the page owner.
The best thing about a Facebook ad… only people who actually care about what you have to offer will see it! By this time you are probably wondering how this works. Keep on reading and I promise that by the end of this article you will know the answer! But first, let’s start by explaining why Facebook paid ads is precisely what your beauty salon wants and needs!
PDF Topic: "How to Advertise Your Business on Facebook"
Beauty salon competition is cut-throat
Everybody knows that there is no other intense competition as there is in the retail beauty salon industry. And there’s two types of salons – some are using up-to-date marketing tactics and understand why Facebook ads is important and then there are salons which prefer to stick to the old-school traditional marketing tools like coupons and word-of-mouth. While both tactics have their pros and cons, when it comes to capturing new leads, Facebook ads prove to be way more efficient, fast and a good value for money. Chances are your competitors already understand this, so you need to catch up with them!
Facebook knows what you had for breakfast this morning…
Well, not literally, unless you actually uploaded a picture of your cereal and coffee on Facebook this morning along with a #Foodie hashtag. However, Facebook does in fact collect valuable information of the consumer behavior of each of its’ users – the time they usually log in online, the type of pages they follow, their specific interests, the type of posts they engage with, even the type of products they consume. Boasting such detailed pool of information, Facebook turns into an oasis for businesses which have problem reaching the audience they aspire to reach!
And if that is not enough... statistics show that people generally spend their time on social media, rather than TV, radio or any other type of media. Which means, there’s a lot that Facebook ads have to offer.
So... what is the best way to advertise on Facebook?
Before you begin remember that this is long-term process – using sponsored posts through a non-polished Facebook page won’t do you that much good. Which is why before you get to create and publish a Facebook ad you need to make sure that your salon business social media channels are well taken care of.
Now that your social media presence is all pretty and informative, you can start by following this three-step plan.
First – getting awareness from the right audience. If you are new to Facebook, you probably want to popularize your salon brand and your page. Which means that you need to set a wider target audience than the people who already follow your page. In order to achieve this, make sure to select the option ‘friends and friends of followers’ which will target an audience with similar interests. If you want to be more specific, you can get into details like specifying that you target people who have an ‘Interest’ in ‘hair extensions’ or ‘lip augmentation’, for example.
Second, getting the right audience to engage with your brand. Now that you have put your name across, you want to make sure that people remember it – and that they engage with your brand. So how do you do that? Retargeting!
Retargeting is basically reaching the same audience again, as a way to remind them of your salon and what you have in store for them. Now that you have specified your desired target audience, you may begin to create engaging, fun and memorable advertising campaign. Just go to ‘Ads manager’ and click ‘+Create’.
Which brings us to the final step... call to action.
Okay, let’s say that you finally got your audience’s attention. What do you do with it? Convert it into action, of course! Which means that you need to add a very specific call to action message while you are creating your Facebook ad. For example, let’s say that you are advertising a Valentine’s special deal right before the big day, your call to action might be “book your appointment now before our slots are full”or “come see us in store and get a free make-up on us”.
Knowing how to convert people’s clicks into actual actions is the magic of marketing wizards and now you know the trick too, so why not go and try it?
