The Barbershop Influencer Marketing Guide
As a barbershop owner, you share the same goal with every other business out there: to make profits exponentially and become a big player in the industry. And as you might already know, your marketing strategy plays a huge role in achieving this. Speaking of which, influencer marketing is the current most powerful way to grow your brand awareness and achieve all of your marketing goals. Primarily, influencer marketing is all about paying social media celebs to promote your services. Popular product designers have been using it for years before now when saloons, barber shops, and other beauty service providers started hopping on the business trend. So, if you don’t know how to get started, read the step-by-step guide below.
STEP 1: Know Your Budget And Marketing Objectives
It may seem obvious that your marketing goal is to get your brand more popular and win more customers. But you want to be specific. Be specific about numbers and reaches and set realistic goals. Put it all into writing. Here’s an example; “I am spending $100 to generate 50 loyal customers from New York and 80 clients from Los Angeles, with each of them paying $30 per haircut”. This picture prevents the wastage of money and efforts. It also guides in the “choosing an influencer” stage explained below.
STEP 2: Find An Influencer
There are dozens of influencers out there: it’s like picking saloon furniture from IKEA. I digressed! The first step is to choose a “good” influencer: someone who posts high-quality content, has previous experience, is on target with your market/industry, and has worked with brands like you. With this in mind, head over to popular social media to create a list of 5-7 potential influencers that fit into your category. Hashtags like #sponsored and #ads will make your search easier on Instagram. Next, verify that the followers of your potential influencers are real. Often than not, when the followers on an influencer’s page are mostly commenting “very good”, “nice post” and similar short feel-good comments, those are likely bot-generated followers. Finally, make sure that your influencer has a large active following and engagement.
STEP 3: Reach Out To Them
At the end of step 2, you’ll probably wind up with a shorter list. Reach out to each influencer via messages, emails, websites, or through any medium that they’ve made available. Keep your first message short and don’t talk about money just yet. Ultimately, you want to find out if they’ve worked with a brand similar to you and disclose your interest in working with them.
STEP 4: Go Into The Details
After receiving a reply from them, it’s time to discuss how the relationship will go and how you want your campaign to work. The best platform to do this is via a video call but it’s not really a thing. Now, over the meeting, some important questions you should ask are how many videos and photos they will take for the campaign and if you’ll have copyrights to those materials for future advertisements. You should also talk about your marketing goals, what you’re offering them in return, your preferred timeline for the campaign, and any other important bit.
FINAL STEP: Launch, Study Results, And Learn
You both ought to have decided on a tracking system for the tracking of your ads’ performance. Though when using social media like Facebook and Instagram, they have a tracking system that shows important metrics and data about your ads. With such a system, you get to know the demographics of your potential clients and figure out your best and worst-performing ads. These info bits will come in handy when running other campaigns in the future.
In Conclusion
Whether improving your ROI or launching a new brand, influencer marketing is one of the most effective methods to hit your targets. But your success rate depends on doing it right. That’s why we’ve created this easy guide for people who run barbershops. You can also check this post to discover how to make your influencer marketing campaign a success during the holidays.