A Case Study of GoBeGorgeous Studio: How One Woman Went from Burnt-out to Balanced
When Caitlin first started her shop, email marketing and content strategy were nowhere near her thinking. She didn’t even have a Facebook account at the time, but everyone raved about how social media was the way to bring in new clients.
Grow your following, and you’ll grow your business.
But that wasn’t her experience.
Sure, she got some leads from it. But she quickly learned that all the energy she put into creating content for her social media accounts sapped up all her time out of the salon. Instead of spending time with her three girls, she was editing photos, perfecting her branding, or replying to comments on her posts.
One morning her daughter sat next to her with a book. She didn’t ask to read it. She didn’t engage at all. She just started tapping and swiping as if it were a phone.
That cut her to the heart. She didn’t want to be that mom who was always working. She didn’t want to grow her following at the cost of missing her daughters grow up.
So she shelved the constant Facebook and Instagram posts. It wasn’t worth the two or three leads who usually balked at her prices or worse, never showed up for the appointment they scheduled.
Caitlin is a small, one-woman show in the studio she rents out once a month.
You see, doing hair is a passion project for her. A hobby where she gets to remind women how beautiful they really are.
In January 2022, she decided this passion project needed to start paying off. She’s got three little girls that all want to do gymnastics after all.
But she didn’t want to go back through the social grind.
She had, by this time, heard of the returns that email marketing could bring and loved the idea of having a content strategy to impart beauty wisdom to her existing clients and attract the right new clients.
That’s when she came to Elon Jones Copywriting.
The Goal: Gain and Retain New Clients to Increase Her Income
Her goals were simple. We had one year to show that GoBeGorgeous Studio could…
Increase sales through new clients – without taking more time away from her family.
Get her customers to book online – not through text or Facebook.
Increase repeat clients.
Her parameters were simple, but strict.
She works one weekend a month. That’s it.
If the work – including uploading blogs and sending emails – cannot be done on that weekend, then email marketing and the content strategy would not be a good fit for her.
Here’s how we helped her achieve – and surpass – her goal.
The Solution: Use Simple Email Marketing and a Targeted Content Strategy to Increase Traffic and Bring in Clients
Working with her minimal budget, Elon Jones Copywriting formed a strategy to nurture her existing clients and target new, ideal clients with her specialty products and signature services.
Her Ideal Client:
Millennial Christian Mothers
Likes having a consistent schedule
Adventurous spirits who like trying new styles
Prizes healthy hair over beauty standards
Needs time for self-care
Appreciates deep conversation
Happy to spend money for professional services and products
The Content Strategy
Hair Care blogs: Provide practical advice for at home hair care
Expert Advice blogs: Blogs set her up as the expert by providing advice, but also tackling the deeper reasons why and why not.
Feel Good stories (you know, the Oprah kind): to connect with her clients’ values.
The Email Marketing Strategy
Communicate when the salon is open.
Grow desire and stay top of mind by delivering helpful content.
Encourage online booking with a convenient BOOK NOW button as CTA.
Here’s what it looked like every month for 12 months.
1 SEO Blog (1200-1500 words)
These helpful blogs nurtured her existing clients with hair advice, while targeting keywords that her ideal clients would type into Google. A blog handles the dual purpose of nurturing old clients and intriguing new clients with her expert advice.
3 Emails (which we scaled back to one in March)
We started out sending three emails.
One email the weekend after she worked would let her clients know when the shop would be open again.
The second email exclusively delivered the blog of the month.
The third email, she would send the weekend before she worked reminding clients to book online.
Keeping up with the three emails was too much for her, so we went to just the one email that delivered everything the weekend before she worked.
1 Facebook post
This post simply linked to the email and included language that suggested they sign up for her emails to stay up to date on when the studio was open.
The Results
Each month, we worked with her to write one blog, one email and one Facebook post.
From the very first email she sent, she started seeing results. That first email had a 78% open rate, a 14.8% click through rate, and it sold $230 worth of services. After the second email, she was 94% booked for February.
Email Stats for GBGS in 2022
Average Open Rate: 65.2%
Average Click Through Rate: 11.8%
Unsubscribe Rate: 0%
GBGS Traffic Increased 61% when compared with 2021
Traffic from Google increased 38%
Traffic from Facebook increased 22%
Traffic from Email marketing totaled 23%
In 2022, GoBeGorgeous Studio increased sales by 43%, increased bookings by 52%, and increased repeat business by 113%.
Now if you’re like me numbers become opaque after the first few stats, so here’s what they really mean…
GoBeGorgeous Studio nearly doubled its profit in one year. And she never had to work more than one weekend a month to do it.
She kept her family time, while growing her passion.
Now she can afford for her daughter to excel in gymnastics. She has repeat clients that provide a predictable stream of income. And she never has to touch social media marketing again if she doesn't want to.
The Benefits
Email marketing and a targeted SEO content strategy allow your business to keep growing even when you’re not physically working. If you set it up right, you could go on vacation for three months and still be growing your business.
On the sales floor, you typically talk to one or two people at a time. Maybe a small crowd if you’re at an event. But every time you send an email, you’re having that personal one on one conversation with everyone on your email list.
The blogs you post – if done correctly – continue to bring in new leads over time. Sometimes even years later. Long form SEO content, in particular, sets you up as an authoritative expert in your niche.
A huge benefit for us in working with GoBeGorgeous Studio is that we got to see the clear cause and effect relationship between email marketing and increased bookings and also between posting content and increased traffic.
I should note that this is not the typical SEO first strategy that I suggest for my clients. To truly harness the power of SEO, I recommend posting at least four blogs a month.
This strategy is specifically for GoBeGorgeous Studio. It worked, in part, because she’s a local hairstylist with a devoted clientele who just needed better communication and direction.
But it does beg the question…
What Can Email Marketing and a Targeted SEO Content Strategy Do for You?
If a small, one-woman passion project can double profits with 1 blog, 1 email and 1 Facebook post a month, then how much more could you do?
We formed a plan in January and stuck to it. She showed up every month, implemented the copy and content that Elon Jones Copywriting provided, and met – even exceeded – her goals for 2022.
In the end that’s what it takes. I can write great copy and content, but if you decide to deviate from the strategy we set out with, then your results will suffer.
So before you press that button to schedule your 15-minute strategy call, ask yourself these questions:
Am I ready to invest in SEO content that builds over time?
Can I commit to at least a four-month strategy?
Can I save time if I stop micromanaging the sales process and let a professional freelance copywriter take over?
If you answered yes, then you’re ready to press that button, and start growing while you sleep.