HER GLAM WIG CO.
How one entrepreneur ditched the trend and followed her passion all the way to success
334%
Targeted followers growth on IG
28x
Revenue increase over time period
6.5x
Average return on investment
tHE ART OF THE PIVOT: tURNING PASSION INTO PROFIT
The launch of Her Glam Wigs is a truly a story of banking on your passion, doing the work and connecting with your audience. The black hair care industry--specifically wigs, is one of the most competitive industries, and it’s dominated by companies whose owners do not represent the end customers.
The major players in this market, most of them face-less Chinese companies, rely on big budgets to sell their products. Our strategy and vision for Her Glam Wigs was to leverage one of the main things that the big competitors can’t do---authentically connect with the customer.
The Story
When the owner of Her Glam Wigs connected with our agency in 2021, she, like many other female entrepreneurs at that time, was running her own fashion retailer e-commerce store. But the margins in fast fashion can be very slim and the industry competition was tough because to say that the market was saturated would be a vast understatement. Not to mention the competition from other companies who were both distributers AND competitors. During several conversations, she mentioned that her true passion was expressing her creativity through making wigs, so the obvious question was, “why aren’t you selling wigs then??”
The Strategy
Since the brand was relatively unknown (besides friends and family), we were able to start our marketing efforts with telling the story that we wanted to tell, one that was authentic, inspiring and most importantly, addressed a major pain point in the market----distrust of foreign hair retailers and a desire for hair companies that are “for us by us” so to speak.
THE ADS
For websites that are new to digital advertising for whatever the reason(s), our initial strategy is always to drive as much traffic as the client’s budget can support to the website. With this technique, the goals are three-fold:
CREATE WARM AUDIENCES
These are new eyeballs that come to the site, become familiar with the brand and products, thereby becoming “warm audiences”. People rarely buy large ticket items from brands they don’t know the first time they see an ad, so this step is crucial to the overall strategy for any brand.
TEST PRODUCTS
Her Glam Wigs had a history of very limited sales when we started with them so there was insufficient data as to which product(s) could drive the most sales. Therefore, we needed to use the ads to also test out the launch wig products (of which there were about 8) to see which ones had the broadest appeal and drive the most sales.
CREATE RETARGETING AUDIENCES
Spending the bulk of the budget in the way that we do is typically going to grow the PIXEL and the INSTAGRAM audiences the fastest. How long is “fast” really just boils down to the size of the monthly ad spend budget; the larger the budget, the faster we can drive traffic, test, and create retargeting audiences. Since ios14 came into play, we tend to rely more so on the IG audiences than any other retargeting audience, and Her Glam Wig Co. was no exception. With these warm audiences, we were able to bring people back to the site and move them along the sales funnel process.
THE CREATIVES
Typically, creatives for wig retailers follow a certain standard—pretty women wearing pretty wigs--but we wanted to challenge ourselves a bit to think outside the box. In addition to using the product images that were provided by Her Glam Wig Co., we wanted to also visually show people that the company was not your run-of-the-mill wig retailer.
We brainstormed and worked with our designers to transform some of the creatives provided to us by Her Glam Wigs and design creatives that were spunky, fresh, refined and artsy.
Few, if any, wig retailers use creatives that can be described like this, so we knew that this design strategy would be a great way by which we could set the company apart from its competitors.
THE AD COPIES
The black hair care industry is worth billions of dollars annually, yet somehow most of the people who sell these products seldomly look like the end consumers. Also, there’s growing concern about the safety of some of the foreign-made hair pieces and the ethics of their business practices. We saw these facts as major competitive advantages for Her Glam Wigs. Now more than ever, people are demanding representation in business; they want to spend money with companies that understand them, respect them, and speak to them in an authentic way.
Well-written copy connects with people in a powerful way and can turn strangers into customers who follow and love your brand. With the ad copy we used a strategy called “ad copy targeting” and directly addressed the target audience of black women in the United States. The copy spoke to them in a way that was culturally-representative and relevant to current social media trends.
CONSULTING
Our work with Her Glam Wig Co. included delving deep into the business to understand their numbers, plans for product development and growth trajectory. Most new businesses come to the market with products that the owners/founders like, but it’s imperative to analyze data and market trends and leverage them to make educated decisions about business development. For example, Her Glam Wig Co. was launched with mostly long-haired wigs that had attractive high price tags, but the market data showed that the most purchased wigs are those that are short/mid-length units because they’re more practical for everyday wear.
Upon further analysis, we understood that these shorter wigs had better margins and required fewer labor hours to produce. This significant shift in product offerings helped to vastly ameliorate the efficacy of the ads, and consequently the sales as well.
THE BOB COLLECTION
Revenue Growth
Over a 12 month period
The Results
“HAIR TO STAY”
It’s amazing the difference that only one year can make, and the story of Her Glam Wig Co. is a testament to what can happen when passion meets hard work, patience and opportunity. The company is on trend to see consistent gains in followers, market presence, and of course sales--and they’ve only began to scratch the surface.
