Social Media & Beauty Schools
Chelsea Owens
Social Ads Manager, Oozle Media
Social Media & Career Schools
Chelsea Owens:
Okay, sounds good. Yeah, I’m going to talk to you guys about some social media marketing. Just to introduce myself a little bit more… Oops. I grew up here in Utah. I have been working with Oozle Media for about three and a half years now as their Social Ads Manager. And like Chris said, I love to coach lacrosse and for the amount of time I spend with teenage girls, I hope that you can trust me with talking to you about social media.
Let’s Talk: Organic Social Media Marketing
So let’s move on. We are going to talk about social media marketing. If you have been part of your school’s marketing strategies at all, I’m sure you’ve dabbled a little bit into the social media world here. If not, then hopefully I can teach you a little bit with this presentation today. So we’re going to just touch on organic social media marketing. This is what most people are used to. Sorry. More than 4.6 billion users across all social media platforms in 2022, just last year.
And the average time a user spends on social media every day is about two and a half hours a day, which is absolutely crazy. That’s so much time. But as a business, your school should be taking advantage of this opportunity to reach new students and reach consumers. So thanks to social media, we can provide a face and authentic feeling to our schools through social media instead of sticking our name on a billboard or on flyers or whatever else.
Those help of course. But this helps us to actually connect with those who might be interested in our schools. We can add the value piece that people are looking for and give them a little bit more information or insight to what our schools actually have to offer for them. And we can do this through real life experiences, sharing what our students have experienced in the salon or in the classrooms or their relationships with their instructors and all that good stuff. We get reviews like we’ve heard about already with reputation management, comments. We can share our students posts and so much more. So social media marketing just helps you show that you’re the expert in the industry rather than anyone else.
How Can You Get in On The Action?
So where can we get in on all the action? Throw in the chat what you think the biggest contenders are for the social media marketing world. Let’s see what you guys think. Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Yep, you guys are nailing it.
So yes, the top three contenders for social media marketing are Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. And we are going to touch on one of those later today.
Paid Social Advertising
So moving on from organic social marketing, we’re going to talk about paid social advertising, which is my specialty. It’s what I actually think is the most interesting part when it comes to social… Oops, my bad. What I think is the most interesting part of social media marketing. You can do so much here. So I want to get started and focus on the marketing funnel. If you have touched on marketing at all, you might be familiar with this marketing funnel.
Focus on The Funnel
At the top, we have brand awareness or reach, which is the most crucial step in gathering the biggest audience that we can. And this is where we are introducing ourselves and we’re getting our brand name out there. So we’re saying, hey, it’s nice to meet you guys. Let us tell you what we have to offer. The middle part of the funnel is where we are trying to send these new friends of ours to our website so that they learn more, they dig a little bit deeper, and get their questions answered that they might have. And then lastly, the bottom of the funnel. We’re trying to get these people to convert or this is our buy-in phase. So after our audiences have been captured and they’ve gotten to know us, they’ve gotten some of their answers or their questions answered, we want them to convert. We want to get their information so that we can send that to our admissions teams and get them to actually enroll in our classes.
Social Ads
Awesome. So these social ads are the creative part of social advertising, is that we get to create exactly what we want our users to see, and we get to send it to exactly who we want to see that. It’s sending the right message to the right person at the right time. So there are a few steps, five steps. The first is that we get to advertise from our own business. We get to send it from our own business page on Facebook, our own business page on Instagram and our own school accounts on TikTok or whatever else we might be using. Second is that we get upload the images that we have designed and created for these ads. So they’re very specific to what we think that our students need. We can upload the primary text now, the headlines and the URL that we want to send that information to.
And in that URL… I’m going to skip down to point four really fast. In that URL, you can add UTM parameters. That is a second layer of tracking how you want to make sure that your social ads are getting the credit that they deserve. Going back to step number three, tell the consumer something that they don’t know while you’re creating these ads. You can be advertising for your cosmetology programs or for your aesthetics programs or whatever else it might be, but so are so many other schools. So you got to point out what is unique to your school and nobody else’s. And then number five, step number five, get your consumers hooked on what you have to offer them. That goes right along into step number three. Have an awesome slogan or tagline or just something that is going to make these people remember who you are.
Using Video to Your Advantage
Awesome. Hey, and then that goes into my final point on the ad creative is videos. And you guys are going to get hammered by this today. Videos, videos, videos. We just heard about it. This is what gets people’s attention on social media right now. So let’s watch this example here.
Awesome. Videos are so important in the marketing world right now. And if you haven’t gotten started there, it’s time to get started. And this is going to feed right into the last portion of my presentation, which is going to take up most of my time, TikTok marketing.
TikTok Marketing
So I want to preface this section with, I understand that TikTok is on the fence of being banned from the United States. I get it. But right now, TikTok is alive in our world. People are on it, people are using it, so we should be using it as well. Because if the result comes that TikTok is here to stay, we’re going to miss out if we don’t hop on that train right now.
The TikTok Phenomenon
So let’s talk about TikTok marketing. So the TikTok phenomenon. It is the fastest growing social media platform in the United States. And according to Influencer Marketing Hub, about 167 million videos are watched on TikTok every single minute. If you’ve been on TikTok, I think that you get this. Finding yourself in those rabbit holes and two hours later you are still scrolling on the app. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I was doing that when I was putting this presentation together, just getting stuck in that rabbit hole. So TikTok has the highest engagement rate of the social media family. And on TikTok, I think that you guys all understand that you can find videos for anything that you’re interested in. And so for you beauty school that things like skincare or hair tutorials, makeup tips, just anything you can think of.
I love seeing when the transformation videos of before and afters of people doing like hair dyes or cool updos or whatever else it is. And I’ve tried some myself. They do not turn out very well. But TikTok is awesome. They also have great built-in features that make it super easy for you to record and edit your videos. They have… This is where you add music to the videos, the trending music that you hear, the sound bytes video filters, like the dog ears that people use and so much more. And that makes TikTok’s platform super inviting for people to want to actually use it.
And lastly, the algorithm for TikTok is very different from other platforms algorithms. If you not sure what I’m talking about. The algorithm is how you see all of those cute dog videos on your explore feeds on Instagram and all the other platforms or other things that you are really interested in. You’re not sure why your phone is telling you, hey, look at these videos, you’re interested in these. So that’s what the algorithm is. And TikTok’s algorithm is just that much different from others that it’s sending tons and tons of organic videos viral and getting tons of users, millions or thousands of followers, which is kind of insane.
So let’s talk about TikTok’s reach really fast after talking about their algorithm. Influencer Marketing Hub provides these two statistics. TikTok users spend more than 850 minutes per month on the app. And as of January of this year, TikTok now has 1 billion monthly active users and 1.5 billion total users on their app. So we know that that’s only just going to go up from here.
Top Of The Funnel
So moving on, I want to go back to the funnel that we talked about earlier. Where does TikTok fit into that funnel? Well, TikTok, their app is built for entertainment. People don’t really want to leave the app because they are having so much fun looking at these videos that they’ve interested in. TikTok is doing a good job at showing them what they want to see. And so people don’t want to leave the app and go shopping, or they don’t want to leave the app just to give someone their information. So we’ve placed TikTok at the top of the funnel, which is our brand awareness.
Number one in this brand awareness phase for TikTok. This is where we can show those educational videos that we want people to kind of get to know us. Our whole mindset here is just that we want people to know our brand name or our school name and want to know what we have to offer, what kind of programs we want them to be interested in. So that’s where we start. The second part of this is an awesome feature that kind of starts talking us into paid advertising on TikTok. It’s called Spark Ads. And if you’re familiar with Facebook or Instagram’s Boost or promote a feature, this is very similar. You’re taking organic content and just putting a little bit of money behind it to get it to the people that you actually want to see that content.
The thing that’s different about TikTok’s version of this is that you can do this same thing with other creators content, but with your name. So I could ask a student that I found and they are saying good things about my school, and I can say, hey, we would love to use your video in our ad strategy. Can you give us your authorized code and we can put it up in our ad strategy for a few months? And they might say no, but a lot of the times students are really excited to be involved in that and to get their own name out a little bit more as well. So they’ll give you the code, and that’s part of your new strategy. And it benefits both parties. It gets more impressions, more followers for both the student and for the school.
What About TikTok Advertising
So what about TikTok advertising? Well, your business has the ability to increase brand awareness and showcase your products and services to users who have never heard of you before. And with the right messaging increase engagement too. And this is from Wordstream. So let’s go to the next one. There we go.
So why actually advertise on TikTok? So I’ve got four points here. The first is you have a higher chance for more people to see your posts. And after talking about the algorithm, you’re probably like, well, my ads are going to go viral, or my posts are going to go viral, so I don’t need to do that. Well, going into my second point, if you advertise on TikTok, you now have the opportunity to control your specified target area and demographic for your ads. So instead of having your video go viral and your school on the east coast and people on the west coast are seeing your post, and that’s great and everything, but I don’t think those west coast people are going to travel across the country just to come to your school. We want to… I mean, it would be awesome if they did, let’s be real.
But I would rather be able to target exactly who is most likely to come to my school. And this is where you can do that with paid advertising. So point number three, your business might also lack the amount of time to be consistently posting on your organic feed. So if you are putting videos up on ads, you’re guaranteed to have something in that TikTok hemisphere for weeks at a time, rather than posting one time three weeks ago and hoping that it stays in the hemisphere. And then my fourth point is a point that a lot of people don’t really think about. You can take 100% control of the mobile screen space. So a lot of you might be thinking, okay, what about Instagram stories and reels or Facebook stories, those kinds of placements?
Well, those are only one placement within those apps. So when you open Instagram, what you see is little dots at the top for the different stories that you could click on and then multiple posts going down the screen. It’s not your entire screen. You have to go into that placement to see that. When you open up TikTok, there’s a video taking up your entire screen. There’s no other option than to scroll unless you find the search bar or you are looking on someone’s actual profile account. So that’s a really cool feature that a lot of people don’t think about.
Videos You Should Be Creating
Okay, I want to answer some questions that maybe you guys have asked yourself before. These are questions that I’ve gotten from others. And so the first question is, what kinds of videos should my business be advertising? Well, you can shoot all sorts of video. Stephanie in the last presentation said this herself. Any content… Or what did she say? She said, everything is content. Everything. You can take videos in your salons, in your classrooms, at your front desk, outside of your school. You should be shooting everything you can think of as long as it makes your school look good.
So my second question that I get is, who creates this content? Anyone can create this content for you. I actually have recently had the idea that schools should keep an iPad, a school iPad laying around their school. And it should be open to your students to be able to make TikTok’s every few days on the school’s account. And that will help to increase your video library on your TikTok accounts. And you don’t have to do it yourself. Your instructors can make that content, your admissions team, anyone else, anyone that is willing to help you out.
And obviously user generated content. So finding students who are making videos and talking, saying good things about your school on TikTok already.
And then the last question I get is, how do I get these ads done? Well, a lot of people will tell you to take a few hours out of each of your day in the week to get content or B-roll from your school. That’s a lot of time. And I know you guys don’t have that kind of time. So I would suggest taking one to two hours out of your entire week, maybe it’s on a Monday, and just filming everything. Filming your front desk like we talked about, and putting that into a digital folder and sharing it to those people who are willing to actually piece together those videos for you. And this is a great idea if you’re using an agency like Oozle Media or anyone else, because I don’t know, we work with clients all over the country, so it’s hard for us to get out and try and do that for you guys. So it helps us to be able to easily piece together those videos if you just upload them right there. And then we have an endless library of videos to create that content for you.
Now that I’ve answered these questions, we’re going to look at some examples. I’ve only got two today, but this first one is student work, which is one of the most important types of videos that you could advertise for your school. And it’s a great way to showcase what the students are learning at your schools. Awesome. And her hair just turned out so beautiful, right? Okay. Second example that I’m going to show you are the designed ads. And a lot of people are not going to talk about this for TikTok, and I’ve been talking about how to have an authentic phase for TikTok, and we want to show people that we are open arms and everything. So why would I show you a design ad on TikTok? Well, if you’re looking to actually use TikTok advertising, this is a great placeholder if you don’t have those authentic videos yet. And you’d be surprised at how well these do work for some of your schools. So let’s watch this video here year.
Awesome. I seriously love these design videos, and they’re always beautiful, and this is one of those things that you can repurpose from your Instagram ads or your Facebook ads. So just to keep that on your mind. It’s a great idea.
And lastly, if you’ve been with me before, you’ve probably seen this slide as well. Just a reminder that TikTok ads are still fairly new and the market is always changing. TikTok is trying to keep up with all of these older platforms like Facebook and Snapchat and whoever else is out there. And honestly, they’re doing a pretty good job of it, but they do still have some glitches. So if you are interested in starting TikTok advertising, just keep that in the back of your head and be patient with them. They’re doing the best that they can. And that is all that I have for you today. If you have any questions for me, please feel free to reach out. Here’s my email. I’d love to talk TikTok ads with you and any other platform that you’re interested in.
Need Help With Social Ads? Get in Touch with Chelsea!
Chris Linford:
Okay. Chelsea, awesome job. Stick around. We have had quite a few questions in the chat. Parker’s been awesome to answer most of them. Let’s see. What do you recommend to make the design ads? Is there a certain app that are better than others?
Chelsea Owens:
Awesome. Well, if you don’t have necessarily a background in design, I personally do love Canva. We use it for our lacrosse team, game day posts and everything. It’s super easy. You can find templates on there and just make it with your colors and your branding from there. Otherwise, Photoshop is another one that I personally love using.
Chris Linford:
Yeah. Oh, Canva, spell that. Canva.
Chelsea Owens:
Yes.
Chris Linford:
So yeah, the best thing to make your TikTok is student generated content. It’s inspiring them to create content for you. That’s the difference between good marketing is talking about yourself. Great marketing is getting other people to talk about you. User generated content’s the most believable type of content out there. And so that’s why I personally just think TikTok is awesome, because if you’re students, if you are inspiring them and you have programs, you do contests to have them create content, and then you run that on your ads…
Chelsea Owens:
Totally.
Chris Linford:
It’s a game changer. So those Spark Ads are great.