In this 5-minute read:
- What is Instagram Stories?
- How can Instagram Stories help market your hair or nail salon?
- Instagram Story ideas for your or nail or hair salon
- How to show ads in Instagram Stories
With more than 1 billion active monthly users, Instagram is one of the most widely used social media platforms. And more than 500 million people are using the Instagram Stories feature on a daily basis.
Attract new customers and keep them loyal with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
For hair and nail salons, you can get a lot of traction from Instagram Stories with the visual nature of your service. Catch your customers’ attention by sharing your own stories on a daily basis, and capture more new customers or followers with Instagram Stories advertising.
What is Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories is a feature of Instagram where you can highlight specific moments of your day, business highlights, deals, points of interest, etc. within a slideshow that is only available for 24 hours. You can post short video clips and images within this platform.
This is a great way to share content that you don’t necessarily want to be posted permanently, but just want to share some extra tidbits about your day with your customers.
Also, not everyone wants to be bombarded with posts from you in their Instagram feed all day. Instead of sharing a bunch of Instagram posts (the daily recommendation is 1-2 posts), you can share a bunch of content via the “Stories” feature, so that only those who want to see that extra content will see it.
Get started by creating an Instagram account for your business if you don’t already have one.
How can Instagram Stories help you market your hair or nail salon?
Instagram Stories is a powerful way to keep your customers and followers engaging with your brand. From quizzes and polls to the tagging capabilities within this platform, you can really get your customers involved with your account and business.
A few ways that your salon can benefit from using Instagram Stories:
- With location tags, hashtags, and mentioning influencers and other local businesses, you can grow your audience
- Get more customer engagement with polls, quizzes, AMA’s, and sharing visually appealing content
- Drive traffic to your website through deals and teasers for tutorials
- Use Instagram Stories ads to broaden your reach (see below)
Go deeper: Why Instagram Stories are the most underrated small business marketing tool
Using an Instagram Story for marketing your salon
Now that you’ve got a good idea of how Instagram Stories can help your salon, let’s talk about a few specific ways you can use Instagram Stories to market your hair or nail salon.
Share behind the scenes footage
Salons are definitely a more personal business than most, so sharing some behind-the-scenes shots or video of your staff members and facilities can show how welcoming and fun the atmosphere of your salon is.
Share short clips of your staff members in action with a client, cleaning their supplies, or even just having fun together outside of work.
Promote deals
Grab the attention of local Instagram users by offering some sweet deals in your Instagram Stories.
When one of your staff members has a few openings left for the day or week, blast that on your stories and encourage customers to take action by linking it to your online booking on your website or tagging that stylist in your story.
Share referral deals and other discounts within your story to entice customers during your less busy times.
Go deeper: Why your salon needs online scheduling
Post some live tutorials
Post live tutorials on your Instagram Stories. These will have to be brief tutorials or something that you can tease and share the rest on your website.
For nail techs, share a quick how-to for making a flower out of nail polish or the proper way to trim someone’s nails.
For hairstylists, share quick guides for a cute messy bun or how to make the perfect wave with a hair straightener.
If you have full tutorials on your website, share some short teasers and use the “swipe up” feature to include a link and drive more traffic to your website.
Invite your customers to ask questions
Invite your customers to ask you and your staff members questions. Host an “ask me anything” (AMA) session within your Instagram Stories. Share the questions that come in from your customers and record your answers via video.
Add this session to your Instagram Story Highlights so anyone who missed the AMA can view these later, because if one customer had a question about your services, it’s likely that others had that same question.
Share advice
Instagram Stories is the perfect place to share advice about what types of products to use, how often to trim your hair, and all other things hair and nail health.
Share videos of your staff members offering advice or create some compelling visuals that share the message you want to convey.
You can even post blogs on your website about hair and nail health and then share little peeks from those in your stories to drive more traffic to your blogs.
Partner with other brands
Identify other local businesses that you can collaborate with to either host events or offer your customers some great deals.
For example, you could partner with a bridal shop or wedding venue to offer savings on a bridal package when they purchase through you and your partner.
Whoever you partner with, take advantage of both of your follower base by sharing on each of your Instagram Stories and promoting the deals like crazy.
Pro tip: If you don’t want your Instagram Stories to disappear forever after 24 hours, learn how to use Instagram Stories highlights.
How to show ads in Instagram Stories
Your entire target audience is not already following your Instagram account and therefore, won’t necessarily see your Instagram Stories unless you promote them through ads.
Instagram is highly integrated with Facebook (Facebook owns Instagram), so in order to share an ad via Instagram Stories, simply log in to your Facebook Ads Manager and set up a new ad campaign.
Don’t have a Facebook Ads Manager account? Set one up with our quick guide: How to set up Facebook Ads Manager for your small business
Within Facebook Ads Manager, you can select the type of placements that you want, and Instagram Stories is among those options.
View our tutorial for setting up Instagram Stories ads.
Some ideas for types of ads to share on Instagram Stories:
- Local promotions and discounts
- Upcoming events that you are hosting or involved with
- Brand awareness ads
- Seasonal offerings around prom, winter formal, and homecoming
Instagram Stories is only one way to enhance your salon’s online reputation. Increase your brand awareness and online visibility with reputation management software.
Reputation management solutions can help you manage your business profiles to make sure your information is accurate and up to date, and read and reply to all your online reviews in one place. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!