How Hairstylists Get Clients: Use Your Google Business Profile as a Marketing Engine

if you're a hairstylist trying to build your clientele there's something i really want to say clearly because i have spent a lot of time thinking about this studying this and living this there's a lot of good information out there about how to build a clientele there are people teaching referrals there are people teaching instagram they're teaching networking rebooking systems promotions ads personal branding funnels client experience and all kinds of marketing strategies and a lot of it's good a lot of it works and i'm not here to say that those people are wrong because they're not wrong the problem is not that those methods are bad the problem is that most hairstylists and service providers are being taught tactics before they have fixed their foundation and if your foundation is broken everything you do on top of it becomes so much harder and that is a part i really want you to hear i've been in this industry for 33 years and i have built and rebuilt my clientele more than once i've done the referrals i've done the networking i've done the in-person relationship building i have done instagram and paid attention to the funnels and i have looked at what other educators are teaching and i have paid attention to what agencies do i have watched what works watched what takes forever and what burns people out and what actually creates a steady stream of new clients so when i say this i am not speaking from theory i am speaking from years and years of experience years behind the chair and years of watching what really moves the needle and what just creates more work and here's what i believe if you're an independent beauty professional and you're trying to build your clientele this is where you start you want to start with your foundation you start with your google business profile you start with your presence across the internet you start with making sure that when someone searches for the services that you offer your business has the ability to show up because when this piece is broken everything else becomes so much harder and it becomes so much more work and a lot of stylists are being told to post more market more create more content do more reels be more visible learn funnels run ads create lead magnets follow up more network oh and all these things are good all these things are amazing and you know it really depends on what your goals are for your business or how big your business is right so but there's an order there's an order for how you do things in all businesses there's an order so you don't want to put the cart before the horse and also all of these things that i was i was just talking about they take a lot of time and they take a lot of work so if you're a solo hairstylist an independent stylist a suite owner or a beauty professional trying to build your business you need to ask a more important question before you start stacking all of those things you need to ask yourself this am i showing up where people search for the service i offer because if the answer is no that's where you start not over there not on the 15th marketing strategy not on the mentorship not on the coaching there you start with the one thing that makes you discoverable and that is why i care so much about google visibility when someone actually needs a new hairstylist they don't always go scroll instagram first a lot of them just open up google then they type what they need hair color near me hairstylist near me highlights near me you know whatever they're looking for whatever their search intent is that person is not casually browsing that person is actively looking and if your business doesn't show up you are invisible to them and it that does not mean though that you're not talented it has nothing to do with your work and that doesn't mean that your work isn't it means that your business is not structured online in a way that gives you the best chance of being found that is a very different problem and it is an important distinction because most stylists take invisibility personally they think their bookings are slow because they're not posting enough they're not charismatic enough they don't say the right things they're not trendy enough they're not ex they're not extroverted enough they're not doing enough time that is not the real issue a lot of time the real issue is that the foundation is weak and a lot of times that the foundation is weak the stack that we were just talking about it just won't hold well or it will be amplified with the amount of work you have to do you're going to have to work so much harder than you would if people just find you online if people could just find you online and you add that stuff it's more like a bonus right so that the first it's like every business needs an anchor and an anchor is a steady stream of new clients so that is what you need everything else is going to stack and that's why your google business profile the optimization of it needs to come first now let me be really really clear about something else i'm not saying that this business takes no effort it does take a lot of effort it takes time for you to work on your business it takes consistency it takes maintenance there's a difference in building a strong foundation and living in a state of constant marketing. These are two different things and I don't believe that most independent beauty professionals should have to spend hours and hours and hours every single week trying to market themselves to in 10 different directions and just to stay afloat. I don't believe you should have to feel like a full-time content creator to stay booked and I don't believe that every stylist needs to operate like a big brand or a big salon. If you're a large salon, if you're trying to scale aggressively, if you have to build up a multiple stylist a huge company if you want to dominate multiple channels then yes you may absolutely have to go big you'll want to add all these stackings you'll want to add the paid ads and the funnel strategies and the heavy instagram the advanced branding the email systems the layered referral systems the seo support the automation all of it but that is a different conversation because right now i'm really talking to independent beauty professionals the independent beauty professional who is trying to build a strong steady clientele there should be a foundational system in place that works for you without demanding your life this is the point you should be able to build something that helps people find you and then maintain it with a reasonable amount of weekly attention not no attention because it's not magic it's not overnight either reasonable amount of attention and that's the part that makes it so important because once your online presence is cleaned up and it's strengthened and it's maintains, you're no longer depending entirely on hustle-based marketing. You are creating discoverability, you are creating visibility, and you are giving your business the chance to show up when people are already looking. And that changes the game. So part of the reason stylists are not being taught this clearly is because this has traditionally been the territory of marketing agencies. This is their lane. This is what they do. And because it's their lane, it often gets wrapped in mystery. It gets dressed up in jargon. It gets made to sound technical and intimidating and complicated. And if you're trying to market nationally, it most certainly is all of those things. But we're talking here about local search, ranking number one or at least number two on a local search in Google. Depending where you live, it doesn't even necessarily need to be miles and miles out for you to get the results that you want. But listen, like I said, some of this can get more advanced. Of course it can. Like I said, these principles, you can apply them more aggressively to have a wider range, more miles. It just depends on where you're at. But a lot of hairdressers, they don't even understand what this is. Let alone, they don't really even know where to begin. And this is the problem. If they can't evaluate it, they either ignore it or they assume it's too hard. And then they stay stuck. Or they assume the only option is to hire an agency. and hiring an SEO agency may be the right decision for some people I'm not against it not at all I did it I did it and it worked and then I realized what they were doing and I'm paying them all this money and there's no reason for it but like I said for some business owners this is absolutely the right move for you and I hope that you hear me on that because a lot of people don't even know what kind of marketing they should do so some people just need someone to make it makes sense and to show them where to begin and this is one of the reasons where i care so much about teaching this because i don't believe hairstylists and service providers should be locked out of understanding how this works just because the seo marketing agency has made it sound so mysterious i also think that this is one of the reasons that my course is different cracking the client code is built around the idea that there is a code to building a clientele and it can be understood it does not have to stay mysterious it does not have to stay hidden behind agency language it doesn't have to feel like this big impossible thing that only marketing people can understand you can learn it you can fix it you can improve it and once you do it gives you a much stronger point for everything else that is another important thing i want to say my course is evolving i'm going to be teaching more i'm going a lot of it matters and a lot of it absolutely has a place for building a beautiful business but what i'm teaching google business page optimization no one is teaching this for stylists the only people who teach this are seo marketers and a lot of that just gets bypassed by the independent beauty professional that are not even tapped into that market but i want to get back to what i was talking about i want to be very honest with you there is a difference between what works and what comes first this is a key a referral system can be wonderful instagram can be so powerful and funnels can be a gold mine branding matters content matters networking matters ads matter coaching and mentorship all that matters but if you're not sure where to start if you are trying to decide what to invest in and you are overwhelmed by all the advice online i want to make this simple for you start here right here start with your foundation start with being found online start with getting your google business profile and your broader online presence working for you in your favor so in cracking the client code in the first part of it we teach google business page optimization we teach how to keep your google business page optimized on a regular basis how to give it a real punch talk to you about how you can use your google business page to go after your dream client we go into how to make sure that you don't realize that you're making all kinds of mistakes we try to we go in there and make we clean that up that's called nap consistency we want to make sure that across the internet that you're not confusing the search engines and then we're going to get in and expanding that search online into apple and bing and of course ai discovery and then after that what's expanding is all the different ways that you can reach clients online and offline so uh right now with cracking the client code you are just learning you're going to get started with your basics and then if you purchase the course then you will be grandfathered in as i continue with the course uh going into all these other things that i have prepared for you but like i said we got to start with the start with the thing that helps people discover you when they're already searching then once all of this is working once that is maintained once your foundation is stronger that's when you stack it that's when you add the layers that is where instagram can work better and easier that is what a referral strategy works on top of something solid that is where you can get more aggressive if you choose to that is where you can build the business of your dreams in a more layered and a more intentional way but if you skip the foundation and you go straight into stacking trust me when i tell you that you are working harder than you need to you are building up hill and because a lot of stylists are exhausted because this is exactly what they're doing and you know let's not play around with the fact that what we do is hard work but a lot of times stylists and service providers are just trying to build on top of something that's very unstable so it just makes more work so if you're listening to educators marketers coaches course creators ask yourself this one question who are they talking to are they talking to a salon owner trying to scale a team are they talking to someone trying to be a high level content brand are they talking to a larger business with more resources more time more capacity more money or are they talking to the independent beauty professional who needs a clear practical place to begin because they are not all the same person this is relevant to salon owners but this is relevant to salon owners too because the foundation matters for them as well i'm definitely not excluding them for this not at all but i am saying that the bigger the business you want to build the more layers you will have to eventually choose to add but this is a starting point this is still the base no matter what your business is any business that's trying to build a clientele a plumber any business needs to do this and this is where you begin and if you don't know where to start or you don't know what is broken or you don't know why your business is not being found i have created that chat gpt online client attraction audit because you can because before you fix anything you need to see what is going on you need to know what search platforms may be seeing when they look at your business you need to know what may be preventing you from showing up you need to understand the foundation before you start stacking all the other pieces on it so if you're overwhelmed by all the noise out there if you're tired of hearing 10 different strategies and half of them are so slow and working if you're trying to figure out who to listen to and what to do first i want to make it i want to make this as clear as i can there are a lot of good methods out there there are a lot of smart educators out there there are a lot of useful strategies out there but if your online foundation is weak they are not going to work as well as they could so start here build your foundation get found on google get ranked on the first page of google strengthen your online presence then stack everything else on top of that that is where i would start and that is what i teach and that's why this is called cracking the client code i am teaching seo marketing and i am teaching you seo marketing in a way that's digestible and can easily easily be understood in local search i can't stress that enough in local search and no one is teaching this to you guys i've looked i really have and you'll find educators out there all the time that say maximize your google business page okay well that or create your google business page but what i'm talking about is google business page optimization online optimization of your website online optimization on apple online optimization on bing all these things need to work together for ai optimization which is really important but you will never have ai pick you up if you don't first have these other things optimized it will absolutely 100 never happen so ai optimization picks up language differently though than a normal search it isn't the same but what i teach in google business page optimization i've tailored it to ai optimization meaning when you make your posts and when you add your description you're going to write them in a way that not only google understands but ai does too so ai likes things to be told as a story ai likes to know who where what when why that's what they need to know and that's what i'm going to teach you and it's not reserved for people with huge teams or giant budgets there is a code to becoming easier to find there actually is a code to becoming easier to find easier to trust and easier to book and once you understand the order the whole thing starts making a lot more sense grab your chat gpt online client attraction audit the link is below go check it out run it through chat gpt and within minutes you're going to find out what could be possibly holding your business back online and so that you can fix it i also have the links provided for my course cracking the client code i have some other options i just want to tell you a little bit about my course pricings it's 185 and if you purchase it now you will be grandfathered in because the um it's expanding i've already written it but i haven't i haven't it's not completely ready and i'm fine with that because i want my students the people who are learning for me to start here and then like we've talked about stack up but once the course is complete it's going to be a lot more money and if you buy it now you'll be grandfathered in but then i have two other options the other option i have is not the complete google business page optimization it's called google fix-it kit but it does help you go and fix some of the things that are most important it doesn't go into the same details that i go into in the course but it's kind of like a little cleanup and then with it i have the apple maps and the bing expansion so that's called dual engines and then if there's one more option after that for 27 you can get the google fix-it kit which is part of the dual engines and here's the thing that any money that you spend on the fix-it kit or the dual engines you'll get a coupon you can use that coupon for cracking the client code as well and even easier to digest you can split the payment of cracking the client code into two payments of a hundred so go ahead and get started with this there's this is the time this is the time to do it i don't that hard it's just that it takes time you have to do the work everything in cracking the client code is step one step two step three step four so you just want to start with one thing and then you're going to move on to the next thing and then once you've completed all this and you're going to maintain it which is not going to take you a lot of time like a few minutes every week to maintain it and then you will start so you not slowly but you will start going up in the rankings you'll get higher and higher and higher up in the google rankings and the beauty of this as you get higher in the rankings more people see you the more people see you the more people click on you they look at your website they look at your instagram they book an appointment they call you once google sees all of this you keep going up higher in the ranking because what google wants to see is activity on your google business page so that's why you have to be active on your google business page but once you get your google business page to a point where people are seeing it then their activity is on the google business page and then the second thing that's the the most important thing more important than anything is reviews and if you want to go on a review campaign let me tell you google has changed things they don't want just tons of reviews they want consistent reviews so let's say you don't have you haven't been going after reviews and so you could think off the top of your head 25 people that could give you a review don't ask them all at once i would write their names down and every week i would reach out to one of them if it starts happening too fast maybe i would even back it up a little bit to like maybe once a month because you want i went on a review campaign and i find out that google wants a steady stream and i'm like oh this is gonna be a little harder for me to get reviews because it it will affect your ranking if you don't have consistent reviews it will affect your ranking so i want you to keep in mind that in cracking the client code i give you so many ways to get reviews and i want you to take advantage of all those ways that you can get reviews but um just keep in mind that google wants consistent reviews and the other thing about reviews that i want to touch on is that you know well if you don't have a lot of reviews you may want to pump a certain amount out there because google does look at how many you have but when you have people that show up on your when you have people who show up on your google business page they need to see social proof and then you want to put those reviews on your instagram because people need to see social proof so that's important it doesn't really help you that much if people can find you on your google business page and you only have two reviews or god forbid you got a bad review and so it's bring your rating way down if you got a bad review you want to get even more five-star reviews so you can counter your five-star rating make sure that it's at least a four right so you can do this i know you can i've helped many people do this um i'm really excited about this direction about teaching because i love to see people succeed and you know i have something to give back to my business you know this business has been very good to me i've enjoyed being a hairdresser for the last 33 years one day i will retire from it and i really wanted to get back to my industry before i did so that's what started this for me i think of all you out there who are struggling struggling or feeling insecure or feeling like you don't know if this business is right for you because it's because i'm not having a steady flow of clientele or getting on instagram and seeing that it looks like everybody is better than you when they're not it's just like anything people put their best stuff out there they don't show their mistakes but you can do this this will help you with your confidence this will help you with your income and make sure that you are putting investment into your education so if you are struggling in some areas in your business maybe you need some help with color formulations or highlighting or hair cutting make sure that you are taking the time to invest into your education because if you do all this work to get people to come into you and your work is not up to par then you'll get new clients but you're not going to keep them before i leave i do i do want to talk about client retention just so you have a clear expectation of what client client retention is and i don't have the statistics right in front of me right now but i want to say it's 30 it's not high it's not high because there's a good percentage of people who are just impulsive shoppers but trying to get somebody who is loyal and sticks with you so as these clients start rolling in you know don't be so hard on yourself that you think oh i'm doing something wrong if every single one of them don't come back to you um you know it's important for you to analyze your work and make sure that you know it's not something that you're doing of course it is but just know what the statistics are and you should also keep track of that keep keep track of that because you want to find out what the industry standard is and make sure that you're not below it so like i said i can't remember but let's say it's 40 and i don't think tickets that high and you're at 15%, then you know you need to really take a good look at what you're doing. You want to have a lot of pictures on your Google business page. You really want to have that social proof out there when they find you. So I know you're going to do great. I know you're going to get those clients that you want. You're going to be booked and busy. You're going to be able to scale your business. Eventually, you know, you can start raising your prices and working, making more money. And then eventually down the road, you can start working less hours. it all just builds oh i know what i wanted to say during all of this process of building your clientele online you want to be very cognizant referrals because referrals are the best the best clients they are the best i don't know what else to say so you know referral referred people are your golden ticket clients so keep in mind as you're trying to build your client remember that you want to you want to have a referral system and you want to be working on that okay all right so I know you're going to do great get the course get working get started you know if it's a little bit too much money for you at least get started with the dual engines and then that money can come off cracking the client code and if you do it I don't know when the rest of the course is going to be coming out but if the rest of the course hasn't come out yet and the course is still 185 then you'll get that 67 dollars taken off the 185 which approximately makes it 120 something like that 130 no 120 it comes off the 185 then you'll also be grandfathered in because when the whole course is done i believe i'm gonna be selling it for around 400 so if you end up buying the 67 and getting it for the 125 and then you're gonna get that full course i want you to have all the tools in your toolbox after 33 years of doing hair my toolbox is it's impressive I've had to start over way too many times moving out of state having a baby had some health problems I had to the salon I worked at unexpectedly closed I mean just and then after everything is back to normal and I'm doing great I end up in the hospital for a month completely just I disappeared off the radar and and then when I came back to work I could only work a little tiny bit and that lasted for several months too oh it's just a you know but that's life you know that's life and I know a lot of people that are in this business when life knocks them down they tend to go into a different direction it's very common that the longevity rate of hairdressers is actually quite low I think it's like 10 years but it doesn't have to be and for me it wasn't an option it's going to be an option in the future because you know it takes a toll on your body no doubt but for me it wasn't an option because I love doing hair and I don't love doing other things I don't know if it's my ADD or my creative just the way I am I love doing hair and when I looked at like the things that I could do that I really wouldn't want to do the amount of hours I would have to work to make the same amount of money but usually less it just was never worth it so every time I thought about it I was like no I just have to work on my business and that's the bottom line so you just need to work on your business and

Run the ChatGPT Online Client Attraction Audit here:
https://mini.crackingtheclientcodecourse.com/Freebie-diliver

If clients searched for a hair stylist near me in your city right now, would your business actually show up?

Most stylists are told they need to post more on Instagram, learn the newest marketing tricks, or spend money on ads to build their clientele. But none of that matters if your foundation is not set up correctly.

Your Google Business Profile is the foundation of your online visibility.

When someone searches for a stylist, Google decides which businesses appear first in the local results. If your profile has missing information, weak signals, or inconsistencies across the internet, your business can quietly get pushed down in search results without you even realizing it.

That means potential clients are actively looking for what you do, but they end up booking with someone else simply because their business is easier for Google to understand.

Before you spend time or money on marketing, you need to see what search platforms actually see when they look at your business online.

That is why I created the ChatGPT Online Client Attraction Audit.

This audit helps you quickly identify:

• What Google currently sees when it scans your business
• The hidden issues that prevent your business from ranking in local search
• Why some stylists appear on the map and others stay invisible
• The foundational signals that help search platforms trust and show your business

Once your Google foundation is corrected, everything else becomes easier. Your referrals, your social media, and your reputation finally work together to help clients find you.

You do not need complicated SEO agencies or expensive marketing strategies. Most stylists simply need to fix the structural problems that are preventing their business from being found online.

Run the audit above and see what might be holding your business back.

Subscribe for more training on how independent stylists and beauty professionals can attract clients through search visibility instead of chasing marketing trends.

#hairstylistmarketing #googlebusinessprofile #salonmarketing