Question: You want to start selling Hair Extensions, but you do not have the capital (funds) to purchase the inventory. You know in addition to inventory, you will need marketing supplies and branding services to compete with the numerous other companies offering the same products and/or services as you.
You are not alone.
I understand, because I see so many people in the same situation as you.
With that, I have created a challenge.
We will take $500 and fund our supply, marketing and branding to jumpstart our business and start making sales in this lucrative atmosphere.
Here is the breakdown on where the $500 is going:
1. Find Your Hair Vendor
The first step in starting your Hair Extension business is finding a reliable vendor to purchase inventory. For this step, instead of purchasing physical inventory, we are going the Dropshipping route. Private Label Extensions offer an excellent Dropshipping Plan that handle all the shipping and handling of inventory for only a $99 Membership Sign Up Fee. For less than $100, you have access to quality hair to provide to your customers at reasonable rates.
Total Spent: $99
2. Create A Logo
In order for your customers to take you serious, you are going to need a great and professional logo. Luckily, Intense Color Studio can help you with that. Your logo is a visual representation of your company, and you want to make sure that your customers understand that you bring nothing but the best to the saturated hair world. The standard logo design is $100. I know that there are a number of inexpensive options to choose from when designing a logo, but you want to make sure you stand out from competitors.
Total Spent: $199
3. Create A Website
The website process is one that many people dread. However, with the number of user-friendly web hosts available today, creating your website can become a breeze. For this challenge, we are going to use Wix for the website creation. What is cool about Wix is the Drag and Drop capabilities that allow individuals who are not tech savvy the ability to use and create a beautiful website from scratch. There are also a number of free pre-made templates that you can choose from. Wix also allow monthly payments, so you do not have to pay so much money up front. For the E-Commerce Option, monthly payments are around $20, which is a steal for website hosting.
You will also need a Domain Name. I recommend purchasing your own domain name to create creditability. Many people pay attention to whether or not your web address has an extension at the end. An example of an extension is yourname.wix.com. The wix.com at the end of the domain name screams FREE WEBSITE! One place I like to purchase domain names is NameCheap. For close to $11, you can purchase your own .Com or .Net name. This will increase your creditability in your business, which will ultimately increase sales.
Total Spent: $230
4. Create Marketing Material
Next, you will need marketing material to promote your new business. For this challenge to work, you will need to spend a large amount of your $500 on marketing. Since you are primarily online, you will need to set your online presence. We will discuss this further in the next step. For step 4, we are focusing on offline marketing. We are going to purchase flyers to advertise your online business. Now, I know you are wondering, if we are online, why do we need flyers? That's a good question. Flyers will inform your offline audience about your online business. We can spend all the time in the world creating the business, but if no one knows about the business, all the hard work is pointless. You want people to not only see you online, but offline as well. Also, from experience, you capture more sales when people see that you are not just an online business. Intense Color Studio offers 500 flyers for $89. That is a good amount to start. The catch is to get those flyers into as many hands as possible. The more people that know about the business offline, the better.
Total Spent: $319
5. Pay for Influencer Marketing/Social Media Advertisement
The final step to this challenge focuses on your online marketing. There are two areas of online marketing we are going to target. The first, Influential Marketing, will target individuals who are prominent in the Hair Industry that will promote your new business. The second, online advertising, will work with Instagram and Facebook to advertise about your new business.
The first, Influential Marketing, will target 1-2 individuals with large social media presences to advertise on their page. Instagram is the primary outlet for the marketing. Instead of providing the influencer with actual product, we will purchase ad space on their page. Remember that flyer you purchased in Step 4? Well, you are going to use that photo as well as stock photos of the hair to start your Instagram, Twitter and Facebook pages. You will also offer that same flyer to your influencer to post on their page and promote your product. There are a number of pages on Instagram that offer advertising on their page for around $50. Find two individuals, preferably with 10,000+ followers and send them a message regarding current advertising rates. You want at least two pages to start. If you can manage to find three for under $100, that's great. If not, that's fine as well, as long as you have two to start.
The second, online advertising, will put emphasis on Instagram and Facebook ads. For around $10, you can purchase up to eight ads, four on each platform, using the flyer and stock images to gain customers. You are going to want to space the ads apart so that all the advertisement does not appear at once. You are going to also want to monitor which photo(s) customers respond to the most and focus future campaigns around those photos. In order for this step to work, you are going to need catchy captions and great photos to engage and capture your audience.
Total Spent: $499
This challenge not only set you up with a great hair vendor, but also branding and marketing steps to see your Hair Business start off
with a bang. Now, everything is not set in stone, but this is a good blueprint to ease the anxiety and give you the confidence needed to start running your own hair company. Comment below if you plan on joining the challenge and how successful you were with the challenge.