The number one complaint that I hear from recent microblading graduates is that they have a hard time getting new clients. I hear them say things like, my website doesn’t show up in Google, or nobody even sees my Facebook or Instagram posts. While digital marketing may seem like a daunting task, read on. I’ve simplified the marketing process to get you clients easily and quickly.
You need a portfolio and you need one now!
If you want to get people interested in Eyebrows Microblading, then you need to educate your potential clients with a kick-ass portfolio. You have to do this in order to attract new clients. Just telling people what Microblading is, is not enough. Most people don’t even understand what Microblading is so visual aids are very important during this stage of your career.
You will need to create before and after photos, videos, and client testimonials to help communicate exactly what Microblading is. The bad news is, that you need to get clients in order to get reviews. Read onto our “gasp” craigslist section, and I will show you how to get clients right away.
Using Craigslist to build your portfolio.
Building a microblading portfolio can be tough, and you have to start somewhere. And that’s usually at the bottom. Unless you are a Cosmetologist or Esthetician with a good clientele, you’ll need to start with Craigslist in order to build your portfolio. You’ll have to offer serious discounts or even offer your service for free to a select few people. Here’s how to proceed.
- Offer a discount on Microblading. Let people know your regular price and offer a discount for your services. You can usually get clients this way.
- Offer the service for free. Only do this to get a few entries into your portfolio. After that everyone must pay.
- Once you’ve built a small but respectable portfolio get the hell out of craigslist. Craigslist users are fussy, troublesome, and cheap. So remember, you’re only here to build your portfolio.
And most importantly, do not ever, ever, ever offer free Microblading on your website, Facebook, or IG account. It will come back to haunt you. Trust me.
Get Reviews
Getting 5 star reviews is a tricky process and if done incorrectly, it can haunt you for months and even years. In today’s digital landscape, many people rely on reviews to see how good your work is. So, be good at what you do. When you’re not marketing your Microblading business, you should be practicing on skins, headbands, or dummies. Be a master at what you do, create an amazing/unique experience and the reviews will come naturally. Post review badges on your windows or somewhere highly visible to your clients.
Don’t be pushy when it comes to getting reviews.
Yelp is a great place to get reviews, more importantly, Yelp is a great place for your reviews to die. If you try and fool Yelp with solicited reviews, you’re gonna get slapped with filtered reviews. That means that Yelp is going to hide all of those nice 5 star reviews that you asked for. Here’s why.
When you ask someone to write a Yelp review and they have to create a Yelp account, it looks suspicious to Yelp’s algorithm. When you ask 50 people to write a review and many of them don’t have Yelp accounts, the algorithm knows that you are asking for reviews.
Below is an illustration of filtered reviews from a known business that has solicited Yelp Reviews.
Notice that each user only wrote only one review. And they most likely had to create an account in order to get that review. Yelp’s algorithm is designed to detect this kind of behavior and your reviews will get filtered out once your account has been flagged. If you continue to abuse Yelp, all of your new reviews could end up getting flagged. Even if your reviews are organic and written by experienced Yelpers, they could also get flagged. So it’s very important to not solicit Yelp reviews and steer clear of their algorithm filters.
Google is also filtering reviews with their own review algorithms. So it’s best not to abuse the Google review system. Use this article to help you formulate a winning review strategy for your Microblading Business. https://nextlevelweb.com/how-to-beat-yelp-review-filters/
You Need A Kick-Butt Website!
Any bloody fool can create a website, but not everyone can create an awesome website experience. You don’t need coding or years of programming experience to create a great website. What you need is a plan, creativity, and time to build your website.
Getting Started
Website building platforms like Wix and Squarespace are perfect places to build your Microblading Business website. The fees are small and the customer support is excellent. These website builders also include SEO capabilities to help get your website ranked in Search Engines.
Steps to Website Success
- Design a logo. You can find thousands of logo templates and logo builders online for free or very low cost. Start there.
- Take lots of photos and videos. You don’t need a professional camera to do this. In most cases, a modern smartphone can take excellent photos of your studio, workspace, or practice area. Get video testimonials whenever you can.
- Let your potential clients know what to expect. Show a video outlining the microblading process. I highly recommend using a model to help re-create the microblading process.
- Make it easy for people to contact you. Include a contact form, live chat, or phone number so that it’s easy for new clients to contact you and make an appointment.
- Include an appointment scheduling app on your website. Both Wix and Squarespace offer appointment scheduling software. Trust me. Making appointment scheduling easy for your clients will help improve your sales rates.
- Show your before and after photos on your website. People want to see results, so give people what they want.
- Make sure your website looks better on mobile devices than your computer. 90% of your bookings will come from a smartphone.
- Be sure to include keywords in your page content and Title and Meta Description to help improve clicks and rankings on Search Engines.
You Need A Business Facebook Page
Having a personal Facebook profile isn’t going to cut it for many reasons. The primary reason is reaching the right people. Your dad’s 50-year-old college buddy that you friended last week isn’t going to fly out from Wisconsin to get his eyebrows microbladed so… Now I’m not saying that promoting your business on your personal profile is a bad idea. In fact, I encourage it. But if you really want to reach women who will pay good money for Microblading, then you need a Facebook business page. Here’s why.
- You can target women who live in your local area
- You’ll be able to educate people that haven’t discovered Microblading yet
- You can build a solid following of people who are very interested in Microblading
Educate people that microblading is the art of creating realistic, semi-permanent, 3D Eyebrows. A great way to do that is with video reveals, before and after photos, and video testimonials. Here are a few examples of great Facebook Pages that educate their audience about Microblading.
https://www.facebook.com/3deyebrowmicrobladingbykim/
https://www.facebook.com/microbladingbyangelac/
https://www.facebook.com/susybeeeyebrowmicroblading/
Spend Money On Advertising
The only way you’ll get to reach potential clients is with paid advertising. While you may not be comfortable with this, it’s a necessary evil if you want to make money from your Facebook business page. I recommend spending at least $200 to get started.
How To Target Microblading Clients on Facebook
Attracting the right people is easy. When you boost a Facebook post you have the choice of choosing where, when, and who gets to see your ads.
Choose by zip code, city, or radius.
If you live in a densely populated area type in the neighborhoods or zip codes that you want to target. If you live in a small town or rural area you may want to target the entire town or a radius within your location. In the example below, we chose Spring and The Woodlands Texas as our target areas. We’re targeting women between the ages of 25 and 50 for this example. You may want to experiment with the age group targeting depending on where you live. Remember the wider the age gap the more people will be in your selected audience. That means you will need a larger budget to reach everyone.
The ad below shows that with a $200 budget this ad will reach between 1700 and 5000 people a day if you run the ad for about 3 weeks. If you run the ad for a shorter amount of time it will reach more people faster. Either way, you should be able to reach most people within your target audience with this ad budget and duration.
Include a call to action on your Facebook post!
The cool thing about having a Facebook business page is that you can include a call to action on your post such as a Call Now, Send Message, Learn More or Get Directions button which will in fact, drive customers to book an appointment with you. You can find these buttons when you first create a Facebook Post. See the example below.
Be sure to click on the share now button and then boost your post once its published. If your post doesn’t get any engagement after a day or two turn it off and boost another post. The image, content, or information may not be appealing to your target audience. If you are advertising to your peers be sure to show photos of women your age, if you are advertising to an older crowd, be sure to include photos of clients within your desired age group. Most of all don’t be shy to use your creativity when creating videos and posts. It’s all up to you. The clients are out there waiting to give you their money. So go out and find them!
Instagram and Microblading are made for each other!
Instagram is an excellent platform to connect with Microblading clients. Post your best photos, videos, and portfolio items to instagram and watch your sales go up. Stay away from schemes designed to get you lots of followers within a short amount of time. You’ll end up with a following that lives outside your service and you won’t make any money from it. Instead, build a solid following of people who live near your place of business.
Use Relevant Hashtags
Using hashtags will increase your exposure to people outside of your Instagram following. In fact, many IG users follow specific hashtags, so this is a great way to earn new followers easily.
Spend money on Ads
Advertising on Instagram is also a great way to reach a lot of potential clients without having to put in all the hard work of building a large following. You don’t need a huge budget to reach a lot of people so feel free to experiment with Instagram ads.
Follow to Unfollow?
A widely used Instagram practice is to follow people to earn a follow back, then unfollow that person right away. People who practice this are wannabe internet famous users who want to artificially appear important or famous online. While you are free to engage in this practice it will make you look like a jerk and people won’t appreciate that. In my opinion, the follow to unfollow technique is a major waste of time. Spending a little bit of money on advertising on Instagram will yield much higher results with a lot less wasted time. So do that instead.
In Conclusion
Getting new Microblading clients takes a lot of work but it’s easily do-able if you setup your advertising program the right way. Avoid manual labor such as follow to unfollow, using your personal profile as a business page, or paying for followers on social media. Be sure to build a great website that educates and makes believer out of site visitors.
For more information about our Microblading and Permanent Makeup Program in Los Angeles, please visit our website at https://foxmicrobladingacademy.com