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Top 10 Marketing Tips for Barbers—How to Make Your Marketing Strategy

Top 10 Marketing Tips for Barbers—

How to Make Your Marketing Strategy Sing


Reading the title of this blog post, you’re probably sitting there, shears in hand, thinking to yourself, “I mean, cool guys, but I’m a barber. I’m not a marketing expert.

And maybe, to some degree, that’s true. Maybe you’re super confident in your barbering skills and less-than-confident in your marketing skills—you did go to school for barbering after all, and marketing might not necessarily be the frontrunner in your skills wheelhouse.

Except, here’s an important secret no one (at least no one in the marketing biz) is going to tell you—you don’t have to be an expert to market like an expert. With the flexibility and accessibility of social media, digital advertising, and free online marketing tools out there, gone are the days where you must have a market degree to make your business known. Now, you just need to set aside some time for research, learning, and thinking outside the box.

We’re here to help expedite that process. We’ve included the top 10 marketing tips we believe can help you—that’s right you—with your barbering business. Keep in mind, we don’t think these tips are the end-all-be-all to marketing. Marketing, especially digital marketing, doesn’t have to fit one specific formula—that’s the really cool thing about it. But, we laid out a few creative ideas to get your juices flowing and get you on the right track. Check them out here!


#1 Understand Who Your Audience Is—Know Where to Find Data and Start Learning to Understand It

Here’s the thing about online marketing—if you don’t know who you’re marketing to (or who you’d like to market to), then there’s no way you’re going to be able to create an effective marketing strategy.

That makes sense, right? If you don’t know who you want to reach or who you’re already reaching, you’re not going to be able to come up with a strategy that makes sense to that target audience. That’s where data comes into play. Data is surprisingly easy to come by—especially if you have social media for your business. Even with a tiny-to-non-existent budget, with tools like Instagram, Facebook, and other third-party apps that work in conjunction with those platforms, you can get an idea of who your audience is, what they like about you, what they don’t like about you, and how to best reach them to accomplish your goals. Only then can you build a strong marketing strategy.


#2 Never Underestimate the Power of SEO

While we can’t claim there’s a single, most important aspect to your marketing strategy, we can tell you the factor that’s going to make a huge difference in your company’s success—SEO. Search engine optimization is HUGELY important for how well your business does online and within social media platforms. Sure, SEO sounds enormous and terrifying and like you need to go to school for 6 years in order to understand to—but here’s the deal, once you dive in, it’s a lot easier than you think. We recommend investing your time in some free, online classes or tutorials that give you the rundown. Or, if you’re able to, take some paid classes from professionals. Why? Because when you learn how to properly manage your SEO, you can learn how to truly use google (and other search engines) to your advantage.


#3 Invest in Your Social Media (& In Your Website)

 Listen, even if you’re one of those “I-cant-stand-social-media” types, if you’re hoping to run a successful marketing campaign, you’re going to have to invest time, effort, and maybe even some money into your social media. Why? Because social media can no longer be ignored—it’s where all the marketing magic goes down now, and you don’t want to miss out. 


Build up your social media (which, we promise, gets easier as you go along), create momentum, be consistent, and be who you are. The pressure to create a stunning, flawless social media marketing campaign only exists if you make that your goal—otherwise, you’re just creating a well-thought-out touchpoint to act as a link between your customers and your business. Figure out what platforms will work best for you (again, that’s where your data and knowing your audience comes in handy) and don’t be afraid to really dig in.

#4 Sponsored Ads are Your New Best Friend

Another reason social media is so great for digital marketing? They offer easy-to-use and intuitive ad opportunities. Not only are these campaigns intuitive and simple to set up, but they’re also relatively cheap, making targeted ads and sponsored ads more affordable than ever (and if you’re not working with the biggest marketing budget in the world, this can really come in handy).


#5 Don’t Be Afraid to Get Really Creative

Seriously, this is the part where you should go all-out with your creativity. It’s likely you’re already a creative person, given your career choice, so open up and let the inspiration fly. No matter what you decide on for marketing, know that there’s really no single way to make something work. Millions of brands have found their own unique ways to be successful with their digital marketing, and you can too—never fret thinking you have to follow a formula in order to create an effective marketing strategy.


#6 Check Out Your Competition & Take Notes

This isn’t spying, guys, this is a real strategy and we think everyone should do it. Looking at your competitor’s digital marketing strategy isn’t like digging through secret files or sneaking into their shop after dark—they put their strategy out on onto the internet, so it’s well within your ability to take a look at what they’re doing. We don’t think you should be a copycat, but you should take a look at their strategies and take notes. Ask yourself about what they’re doing that’s working and what’s not working—what can you do to accomplish a similar goal in a more creative, effective way?


#7 Dive into Pay-Per-Click Advertising

We know the whole “pay-per-click” thing sounds intimidating, but just like we said with SEO, once you really dig your heels in, it’s truly not all that complex. Read up on pay-per-click advertising through search engines like Bing or Google (depending on who you want to reach). Don’t feel like you have to invest a huge amount of money into this, either—a little bit of well-placed advertising can go a long, long way.


#8 Engage, Engage, Engage

It’s not enough just to have a social media account with a few posts here and there—you need to really engage and build a community with your followers. Why? Because that’s how you get more followers, it’s how you build credibility, and its how you create a dialogue with the people who reach out to you (something that consumers truly want from the brands they’re going to work with). Be sure you’re consistently checking your social media platforms and engaging with your followers—respond to them, reach out to them, create open conversations with them. The more you engage, the better off your marketing strategy will be.


#9 Start Blogging & Creating Consistent Content

Why? Because you want to add value. You want people to look at your website or your social pages for more than just scheduling an appointment or buying a product. With blogs, videos, posts, etc., you’re giving yourself the opportunity to become the expert in your field—and if you do a good job with that, people are going to turn to you for advice. Make sure that if you’re making the choice to blog, you’re doing so consistently—the last thing you want is to disappoint the followers who do rely on you. When you create this kind of irreplaceable value, you became an authority, and that’s a huge win for any brand!


#10 Partner with Influencers (Micro or Macro, Both are Effective)

Leveraging the power of people on social media who have a larger, broader audience than you is all the rage. These people, often called influencers, typically have a huge following of online consumers—consumers who trust what they say, look to them for guidance, and will undeniably listen to them. Partnering with the right influencer in your niche is the key to success. Make sure whoever you hope to work with (micro or macro influencer) is getting your message out to the right customer base.


We hope our top ten tips for marketing enlightened you—and better yet, we hope they inspired you, too! Don’t be afraid to get out there and create your own marketing strategies, because like we mentioned before, there are (for the most part) no set rules that define what’s going to work and what isn’t. 

At NAOB, we’re proud to provide our readers with the must-have knowledge they need to boost their businesses—that’s why we keep our blog regularly updated with tips and tricks that can help you better your barbering business.

Check out our blog here—don’t forget to subscribe!—and keep up with the barbering world better!