Marketing Mistakes That Make a Big Difference In Getting New Clients

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to The Modern Hairstylist podcast. I guarantee you that you have some sort of blind spot or you've made little mistakes along the way when it comes to your marketing that is holding you back from getting as many new potential ideal clients as possible, and in this episode, I talk about a ton of different small marketing mistakes and solutions to those mistakes that I commonly see in hairstylists' marketing funnels. So, this was a live class that I taught to my membership of Modern Stylist Movement, and therefore, you will hear all the things that I shared with them.

And then at the very end, you're gonna hear me answer a question about specializing and figuring out how you can define your niche, and then also make sure that you're using non-hairdressery language to be able to connect with people and gain trust with people so they're more likely to want to work with you. So, if you are ready to uncover your blind spots and make sure that there is nothing in your way of getting as many new potential ideal clients as possible, then let's get into it. Let's go. I basically compiled a list of mistakes and then just little things that are suggested or things that you could, quote-unquote, "fix" to make a big difference in your marketing funnel.

So, um, we're gonna start off with number one, which is sometimes it's not about what's in your funnel, but how you're getting people into the funnel, right? So, a lot of the times people will be like, "Oh, well, I ... M-m-y website's not good enough," or "My website might not, mustn't be the reason why I'm getting clients," or, um, "My social media posts, I don't know if I'm posting the right thing," or, "It's not working. I'm posting every day and I know that I'm, I have a clear idea of who my ideal client is and I'm posting all the content that they would enjoy, but nobody's booking an appointment."

At the end of the day, sometimes it really just comes down to are you actually getting eyeballs and traffic to the things that you've set up in your funnel, right? Like, are people actually visiting your website? Are people actually finding your profiles, whether that be your Google My Business profile, your Instagram profile, your Facebook business page, or just your website directly, right? And so, that comes down to the awareness part of your funnel, which isn't necessarily always something that you set up, but it's actually actions that you take to make it so people show up and find you.

Like, you're getting in front of people's faces, but then simultaneously, you've done what you've needed to do to make it so you are as findable as possible, so you are, are, are l- as likely as possible for somebody to stumble upon your profile. So, the questions become, or the things that I want you to think about are, number one, what are you manually doing to get more attention to your funnel? There's a lot of things that we can do manually as business owners and as marketers to be able to draw attention and more people to become aware of us so that they actually visit our profiles and our websites. Manually, this could look like the really classic example that I don't necessarily fully recommend, but I don't think should be necessarily, uh, taken out of the question is, like, business cards, right?

But more, a more modern example is are you going out into your local geotags on Instagram of your local area and commenting on people's posts who live in your local area who may be your ideal client? So, you could go into the location feature of your Instagram search and you could go into Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and find just normal people in your area who are just posting these posts, and you could comment on them, those posts. You could start following them. You could start to create a little bit of a relationship with them so that way they see you and they know that you exist and they're constantly seeing and hearing from you.

Everybody else in the comments is also going to be seeing your profile, so you're directly placing yourself into people's atmospheres so people actually know you exist. And if you comment and you start to leave genuine comments like, "Oh my God, your dog is so cute. What breed is this?" Right?

Then it actually will get response and create more trust and authenticity and relationship between you and that person, right? So, that's just another example of something that you can manually be doing to get more attention to your, to your funnel. Another thing is, are you showing up in the places in which your ideal client would show up? And we figure this out with data and research.

So, currently, with Chief Marketing Hairstylist, the very first thing that I have you guys go through is sending out a survey to your ideal clients and then figuring out if they were to find a new hairstylist today or a new salon today, where would they go, right? And then what would they search? So then therefore, you have real data based upon what your ideal client who you're trying to multiply basically, right? What they would actually search, and then therefore, you're able to show up in the spaces in which they would show up.

And this goes beyond just social media. If these people are oftentimes showing up in some sort of local events, right, how can you get in those local events? Let's say that there is some sort of club, uh, that is local to you, right? And this is a club that's for busy working moms and maybe that's, you know, the, your ideal client or whatever it may be.

Reach out to the organizer of that club and see if there's any sponsorships or advertising opportunities, or literally just offer them, "Hey, your group is people who I wanna take care of and people that I'd like in my chair. Here's a coupon for everybody who wants to join," right? And so then therefore, you are sharing these opportunities and you're getting in front of these people's faces that you know are your ideal people, and then of course, also join the freaking club. Like, go to the events that these people are existing at if that's i- if that's your style, if that's what you'd like to do, right?

Those, that local network marketing can be so powerful. And then have you considered a referral program that gets you posted on a broad spectrum to your local areas? Uh, uh, a good old referral program of ask your family and friends to come see me and I'll give you a discount just doesn't work anymore unfortunately, but what does work very well is getting your clients to post about you, because all of your clients have a massive network of local people who follow them.Right?

And nobody is going to trust somebody for a recommendation more than a close friend or family member. And so, if you can get a client to do the advertising for you, that's when really beautiful magic happens. With our brand ambassador program, which is our, our, our, our modern day referral program strategy, what you're doing is, is you're incentivizing your current clients to then post on their social platforms and then reach hundreds, if not thousands of people in your local area for you, and that's making it more likely for people to actually want to work with you, right? It's also a much easier and more likely to happen ask than asking your clients to send family and friends.

That is just outdated and it feels awkward, for the client and for you, right? But if you have this incentivized program in which you have your clients doing the work, you can reach a lot of people and you're much more likely to convert them, and your clients get your really loyal clients who are willing to post and refer you are also getting taken care of as well and rewarded for doing so. So, we have that strategy available for you now on Modern Stylist Movement. It's called Brand Ambassador Program.

Sometimes it's not about how your funnel is set up, what you're posting, what's on your website. It's actually about, are you getting traffic to the things that you've created and set up? And what you should be doing is constantly tracking the analytics that you have, seeing how many visitors you got to your website to see if those things are consistent, to see if you see patterns, and to see if you see changes in your conversion rates of how many people came to your website and then how many people actually applied. But that's a whole other class and we can get into that another time.

But just remember, sometimes it's about just making sure that there's eyeballs and human, human beings to actually see these things instead of you just posting into a void and nobody seeing it, right? So, my next thing is that I still see very often, even though I talk about it all the time, is a non-s-, uh, SEO-optimized bio, and this majoratively goes for Instagram, but I want you to think about any other space in which it could be searchable. So, like, your Facebook business page name could be another example of this. What you want to make sure of is that every single term that you use in digital spaces in which you could be searched and found, that you are using as many terms as possible to be able to make it most likely that your ideal client will find you, right?

The, this, this is the difference of you completely not showing up to the perfect person or not. Like, I can not tell you the amount of times that me as a consumer get so frustrated because people don't properly maximize the opportunities that they have with their SEO when it comes to their social media profiles. So, the way that we figure out what we wanna put in this bio is, of course, first off, like I shared earlier, getting the data. So, asking your real clients, the real local community and network that you have of ideal clients, what terms would they use to find you specifically as the type of hair stylist that you are And then also, how would they describe the location that you are in as well, too?

Because you may put some sort of city or location or whatever it may be in your bio, but maybe the majority of your clients would actually call it a different location, right? So, it goes down to the nitty-gritty of that and that's where you can get really smart data and make really smart decisions with your marketing, is just using the words that your clients are most likely to use. Uh, you would be so surprised how similar a lot of us are as human beings and how when you start to get data and understand repeatable behavior, then you're able to use that to your advantage as a business owner to be able to put yourself out there, get yourself in front of those people and stumble in front of their faces with the things that they're most likely to do, if that makes sense. So, getting that data is so important and it's so helpful for you.

So, make sure that you understand what would your ideal clients be most likely to search and then make sure that you're putting that in that bio or in that name, the searchable name or handle, so you're most likely to show up. You should be using almost all of the characters that are available for you to use within those spaces. So, let's say that the amount of available characters for you to be able to use in an Instagram handle are 50 max Then make sure that you are using all of that space. Do not let it go to waste, because the more words that you have in there, the more likely you are to show up.

Another thing is using brand names and taking up prime real estate, let's call it your Instagram bio. Here's the thing with using brand names, all right? Clients don't know brand names 80% of the time, and it, and it differs per specialty. It d- it depends on the type of brand that you're using.

Sometimes you being associated with a brand can actually create a negative connotation in your ideal client's brain. What I'd much rather you do is, is solidify yourself as a brand and you be the reason why somebody comes to see you, versus you advertising that you are a blank stylist and associate yourself with a brand, okay? It's much more scalable and also it has less risk of negative connotations. For example, I'm sure that there's a lot of people, and by the way, if you still go by this and it's still working for you, great, but we all know that there has been a fair bit of controversy around DevaCurl recently, right?

So, let's say you've made your entire brand DevaCurl. Your reputation as a hair stylist is tied to that name now and anything can happen with that brand. And so next thing you know, there's tons of lawsuits coming out about how people are losing their hair because of DevaCurl, allegedly, and then they are now associating you with that brand So, it's risky. I don't give a shit what brand you use.

If you're using DevaCurl or not, I literally do not care. I don't know if that thing, those things were true. I think those things are very nuanced. I do not give a shit.

I'm just sharing with you from a marketing perspective why this stuff mattersNow, here is the caveat to this, all right? The caveat to this is if it's a brand that you get requests because of, like, let's say people reach out to you beca- and they tell you, "I came to you because you use X product or you do X method," and you get that consistently, not just one or two clients, but you've seen a fair bit of your clients actually come to see you literally because you do this brand or you use this brand, that's when you can use it in your marketing. But otherwise, your clients do not give a damn. They really don't.

You can have it in, like, a page on your website that's, like, hidden and in the corner if you want to, sure, 'cause people do kind of want to know sometimes what brand you're putting on their head. But don't make it the very first and foremost thing that you're advertising yourself with. I'd rather you exemplify the value of yourself and your own brand. Does that make sense?

Y'all know my tea with this. I despise stock photos. I absolutely hate them. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.

Here is the tea. If you're in a circumstance in which you do not have photos that you'd feel confident using on your website or on your socials and you just have to use stock photos in the meantime, okay, fine, right? I'd rather you do something versus nothing, right? The thing with stock photos is that it just looks com- it just looks unprofessional.

It makes it look like a DIY circumstance. It makes it not look as elevated as you would like it to be. Y- you can tell when something is a stock photo, right? Like, you can tell when it's not yours.

And furthermore, it especially is bad if the stock photos don't match the rest of your visuals on your website. So let's say that you did get a branding photo shoot done, but you aren't using, like, all of the branding photo shoot for certain pictures and certain placements and you need to use, and you, you, you need to use stock photos to make up for that, right? At least, please make sure that the stock photos as far as the editing, the composure of it, the, the colors, um, the contrast, make sure that it looks similar to the rest of your visuals on your website, because then at least it'll look a little bit more cohesive. And with that being said, I have reviewed some of y'all's websites who y'all have used stock photos, and I was like, "Actually, I will accept this."

So there are rare exceptions in which stock photos are okay, but they have to look clean, professional, high quality, and they have to match the caliber and the, the details of the visuals on the rest of your website and in your marketing. Does that make sense? I would much rather you just not use them altogether and get your own photos, right? Okay, not enough hair on the profile.

I think we have gotten really distracted from the main reason why people pay us, which is to do their hair. Now, there's absolutely space for posting yourself on your profile and posting about your hobbies and having people get to know you and maybe a Canva graphic here and there, whatever that may look like for you, right? Like, like, you absolutely should be putting in other content besides just hair, but the majority of it has to be hair, particularly in today's day and age where attention spans are so short. If somebody is going to be looking or browsing for a hairstylist and they're gonna be doing it on Instagram or through a photo album of any sorts, they are just scrolling, okay?

They are scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. They are not going into every single little post and looking at the captions. The very first thing they're gonna do before they dive deeper is just scroll, and they're looking at your grid from a outside perspective, and if the majority of your grid is not a example of your work and the quality of work that you do, the type of work that you do, then they're gonna dip, right? So we should be posting the majority of our work on our Instagram, and you can do that in multiple ways And let's say that you're gonna be posting a Reel.

Make it so the thumbnail is the hair, all right? Okay, not easy to find the button to inquire about booking. You guys know that I am a big fan of having, having buttons all over the place. There should be a million call to actions all over your website.

Now, does that mean that you have to have the next step button on every page of your website? Not particularly, but where it makes sense, you should have the button, or where you can put it in, you should have the button. And not to mention, I used to teach this years ago, and I don't teach to it anymore 'cause I think it's, it's just honestly unnecessary and it makes this hard to find, and I've seen this on some websites, the whole step one, step two, step three situation where it's like, review my services, do this, that, and the third, and then do this. It's just unnecessary to me, and I feel like it makes it hard to just find the one thing that you want somebody to do, which is book an appointment.

Any person is going to go to your service menu and figure out what the price is before they move forward. You don't need to tell them to do that. They're absolutely gonna do that before they go ahead and move to the next step with you. Just focus on getting them to move to the next step and make sure that you have plenty of ways for them to be able to get to the next step and they don't have to scroll down the entire page to be able to find the button to take the next step, whatever that looks like for you In my case, in, in my OG way that I teach, that would be your first service consultation form.

All right? No dropdown menus. People do not know how to navigate dropdown menus, and it can get very complicated if you have a menu item that then has dropdowns below it. It's, it sometimes can be very hard for people to even see that those exist instead of just being able to navigate to where they want to go.

If, if you have multiple hidden pages or just multiple pages that you'd like people to be able to navigate to, I'd much rather you have them do it from a page, like, instead of from a dropdown of the menu item. So, like, there could be buttons on a page that they navigate to from your menu instead of a dropdown menu from the one menu itemNot niched down enough. I know this one sucks for the people who don't have a clear niche. I know it sucks.

I know it's hard. But we are in 2025 and this just increasingly so becomes more and more relevant and important. It is not going anywhere. It really isn't.

And I don't know if you guys saw my social media clip about this, but we did a survey, um, like, a large industry survey, and this was all hairstylists outside of my programs, all over the place, and we, we asked a ton of different questions and I really wanted to figure out, what is the difference between hairstylists that are doing well right now and hairstylists that are not doing well right now? And the biggest factor was hairstylists whose income is growing year over year are hairstylists who are specialized, who have a niche, who are known for doing something specific. So, it's very important that you understand what makes you different, what are you the expert in, what pain point are you overall solving, and why would somebody choose you over somebody else who is cheaper than you? Because this is it.

Okay? This is it. And the way that you figure out what that is, is by asking your clients and/or doing the marketing work and the education to do so. We, we walk through this in Chief Marketing Hairstylist, but for example, let's say that you have a couple different niches.

I have a, a student who is known for vivids and curly hair and X and something else, right? So, whenever we would look at their Instagram or their website, it was really difficult for me to decipher exactly what they were doing, which makes it so an ideal client who, let's say, has curly hair, isn't going to be as likely to book because the entire funnel isn't specifically niched down to curly hair. So, you're missing out on the opportunity to hit every single pain point and really sell that person 100% on who you are as a curly hair specialist because this person has curly hair, right? But if you're speaking to three different niches and three different specialties and three different types of categories of pain points, then your marketing is not gonna be as optimal and it's not gonna be as likely to get somebody to move down the funnel and to take the next step with you.

So, what we did was we went back and we looked at her surveys that she sent out to her ideal clients and we asked them, "In your words, what is my niche? What is the specialty?" And overall, it was curly hair, so we decided we're going 100% all in on curly hair. And that is automatically going to make things so much more focused, so much more easy for you to be marketing because you're just worrying about one thing, and it's gonna make the entire funnel more optimized and more likely to convert, all right?

And then, not to mention, you have to understand what people actually give a shit about and not talk about things that maybe you think that they should care about, right? Um, and again, that's something that you can understand from the surveys that you send out. Do you guys see how the data and the surveying is so important? I keep bringing it up.

It, it fills in a lot of these gaps and it helps you with making these things the best they can possibly be. You guys know, I talk about this all the time, using too much hairdresser language in service menus. Hot tip, give, show your service menu to an ideal client, whether they are an ideal client that you have now or a brand new ideal client that you've never had before. Not your husband, not your sister.

They don't know shit, and they're not the people that you care about, all right? And they will always tell you some shit that's not gonna be helpful, I promise you. Ask a non- ask an ideal person who is either an existing client, better yet a potential new client, or just not a client at all, and ask them if your service menu makes sense to them. And then ask them questions following up with that, right?

Why does this not make sense? What service would you choose if you were looking to get this done, right? Um, do you know what this means? Et cetera, et cetera.

Vet your service menus and the language on your website overall through clients, and not your sister, not your husband. All right? Actually, just don't ask those people for any advice at all, because they don't know shit. I'm gonna see if there's any question.

Carol, go ahead Ah, sorry. Um, I haven't gotten this far yet, but I, I do have a question, um, because I am reestablishing my clientele base and I'm not really even sure what to call me. Even though I'm proficient at many things, I really just want to do simple and easy and, you know, I, I, I'm on TikTok. That's really, if I'm gonna waste my time, that's where I'm gonna be.

Mm-hmm. And I landed on angry clients about our hair industry. They don't like our prices. They don't like people are just, um, specializing, so they just want to go get a haircut and an easy dye job.

Dye job. Yeah. Um, so I don't really know, you know, when you were saying don't use all the terminologies, right? Like balayage and, like, all the fancy little terms.

How- what's the best way to say- Well, these are two different questions. So, the first question is, what is our specialty, and then the second question is, how do we make sure that we use non-hairdresser language? Would you agree with me? Yeah.

Okay. First question, eh, to answer it, if you're simple, figure out what you can specialize within the simple. So, what are the biggest pain points that people have within the simple? What is it that people don't like about the simple?

If the case is, is that you are somebody who just keeps it simple, then make that your entire fucking brand, you know? But it, but you really want to make sure that you're attracting the people that you want too, so take that into consideration as well. You don't want to just go with what may make you money or what people may be looking for right now. You want to go with what's gonna make you happy at th- at the end of the day.

But once you go through Chief Marketing Hairstylist, I dive into this concept a lot deeper and I give you tons of examples to get your brain going, and it's just being known for something and solving a problem and being the expert in something, or, like, creating an entire experience around something that is solving a problem.Or satisfying a desire, right? So, an example of this is, like, let's say we have, uh, really anxious and introverted individuals who hate talking at salons, right? You create a- your entire brand as a silent salon experience, right?

And, like, dive 100% into that. And some introverted hairstylists would fucking love that, right? So, that's an example of an introverted hairstylist taking a specialty that they know that they're really good at, attracting the people that they would want, and solving a big problem, and making it so it's- and- and making it so they're solving a problem that people would be very likely to pay for. Because people will pay to not experience discomfort.

Yeah, I feel like the best place that I get solid clients are with color correction, and it doesn't matter what. If it's the all the, um, like the pink and the blue or bocce highlights or whatever it is- Yeah. um, just to color correct that, and then they come and sit in my chair and- and then it's an easy maintenance program from there. Right.

But how do you say that in mortal language to the masses? Well, my- my answer to this is you'd want to use language that your- that ideal client is most likely to use, and you get that through data, and you get that through surveying. You know? You survey the people who you may have already done color corrections on and you ask the- you ask them, "How would you describe your hair before you came to see me?"

Let's say it was jacked up. "I fix jacked up hair." Like, that's your specialty, right? Again, I would never want to do that.

I would n- that would never be my specialty, like absolutely not. But if that's what you like and you make a really great point, maybe the upfront work is painful, but maybe it makes you good money, you enjoy doing it, but then the long-term gain of that is badass. Because you may have people who come to see you for the- this jacked up hair and they don't trust anybody with their hair anymore besides you because you're the person who fixed it- fix it. I mean, that could be a really great business model from a marketing and sales perspective.

So yeah, something that you can think about. Um, but again, it comes down to what are the words that they're using? And you'll get that by surveying. And to answer your question of how do we do the non-salon thing, it- again, it depends on the ideal client.

It dep- like some clients are, like if you're gearing towards the simple four-week or grade coverage person, they may use classic salon hairdressery terms because they're so used to them, right? But even that looks different. Like some of them look at that as color retouch or root retouch or the- the- and those could all mean different things to so many different people, right? So, asking your specific ideal client and asking like five to 10 of them and seeing if there's patterns that you see over and over, that's what you want to lean into as far as those words go.

And then vet them by asking for feedback when you create your service menu or you create the website or you create a paragraph or whatever it may be. Have those people review it and see if it makes sense to them, right? All right, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Modern Hair Stylist podcast.

If you heard me talk a lot about getting data and research and surveying clients today, and you really want to lean into the most forward-thinking, innovative, proven strategies to get new ideal clients into your chair, then I have Chief Marketing Hairstylist available for you at the time of recording this right now. You can go to hunterdonia.com and you can find Chief Marketing Hairstylist on my website. It is super accessible, it's very easy to go through, and it's gonna make you feel so much more confident in knowing what to say, how to say it, and where to say it to get as many new potential ideal clients as possible in today's day and age.

So, I highly recommend that you check that out. Again, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. I will catch you in the next one. So much love.

Peace out, girl scout. Bye bye.

End of transcript. © 2024 Hunter Donia LLC.