# Salon Ads Studio — plain answers (full text) > The complete Salon Ads Studio docs in one file. A map of the whole site, including blog posts as individual markdown files, is at https://salonadsstudio.com/llms.txt. --- # How Salon Ads Studio works > The whole thing, start to finish: what you do in ten minutes, what we build, what runs every week, and the four numbers you get each month. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/docs/how-it-works/ Published: 2026-08-04 --- ## Your part: about ten minutes, once 1. **Sign in with Google.** One sign-in covers your ads account and your Google Business Profile. Haven't got an ads account? We open one in your name, on your card, and hand you the keys. 2. **Tell us what you do.** Pick your services from a list — cuts, colour, balayage, extensions, barbering, fades, whatever applies. 3. **Paste your booking link.** Or just your phone number — whatever you already tell people to use. That is everything. No tags to install, nothing to write, no settings pages. ## Our part: built the same afternoon - **Your free Google listing, corrected.** Category, services, hours, photos, booking link, and the link between your listing and the ads account (which almost every salon is missing). This moves you up the map for free, whether you advertise or not. - **A page worth sending people to**, if you haven't got a website. Written and hosted by us, yours to keep. - **One search campaign, split by service.** A £25 fade and a £280 balayage are never bid alike. - **The blocked list.** Courses, jobs, apprenticeships, hair models, tutorials, wholesale — four hundred and twelve searches that quietly eat salon budgets, removed before your first click. ## Every week, without you We move money towards whatever is filling chairs and cut whatever is not. You do not review it, approve it, or read about it. Hard rails we never cross: your budget limit is never exceeded, and we never touch your billing without asking. ## Once a month, one email Four numbers in plain English: calls, enquiries, what was spent with Google, and what each enquiry cost. Plus a sentence or two on what we changed and why. Nothing to log into. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do you take commission on bookings? No. Never. You pay one fixed monthly fee by spend band (£15 to £149) and your ad money goes straight to Google. A client who found you through your own ad costs you nothing when she rebooks. ### What happens if I cancel? You cancel in a click, any month, and we don't ask why. You keep your page, your tidied-up Google listing, and your ads account — it's in your name from day one. ### Can you tell me which client came from which search? No, and nobody honestly can for most salons. Fresha and Treatwell don't share booking data. We count what can be counted — calls, enquiries through your page, and taps through to your booking system — and we say so plainly. ### Do I need a website? No. If you don't have one, we write and host a page for you: your services, your area, and a big button to call or book. It's yours to keep even if you leave. --- # The price, plainly > One fixed monthly fee, set by what you spend with Google. £15 to £149 a month, no commission on bookings, no setup fee, and we say no to budgets that are too small to work. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/docs/the-price-plainly/ Published: 2026-08-05 --- One number decides what you pay us: how much you want to put through Google each month. That money goes straight to Google, on your card, with a limit you set. Our fee sits on top, fixed by band: | Your monthly Google budget | Our fee | Who this fits | |---|---|---| | Up to £200 | **£15/month** | One chair, proving it works | | £200 – £500 | **£29/month** | A quiet-Tuesday problem, not an empty diary | | £500 – £1,200 | **£59/month** | A team to keep busy, colour work to sell | | £1,200 – £2,500 | **£99/month** | Two or three shops, each with its own area | | Over £2,500 | **£149/month** | Four doors and up, or a group | ## What the fee covers Everything. The listing tidy-up, the page we write and host if you haven't got a website, the campaign built and split by service, the four-hundred-plus blocked searches, the weekly attention, and the monthly plain-English email. There is nothing extra to buy. ## What we never charge - **Commission on bookings.** Not on the first visit, not on the fiftieth. A client who found you through your own ad is yours, free, forever. (Marketplaces work the other way — [we've compared them honestly](/alternatives/).) - **A percentage of your ad spend.** Agencies often take 10 to 20 per cent of what you spend, which quietly rewards them for spending more of your money. Our fee is flat within your band. - **Setup.** Building it all costs nothing. You only start paying when it's running. ## We say no below about £100 a month Under roughly £100 a month with Google, there isn't enough budget to show up consistently for even one service in one area. It fills nothing, you'd cancel in March, and you'd be right to. We'd rather turn the money away and tell you what to fix first — usually your free listing, which [we tidy anyway and which works without ads](/docs/how-it-works/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is it so much cheaper than an agency? Because the weekly work is done by our system with hard limits it cannot cross, not by a person billing hours. Agencies charge hundreds a month because a human reads your account every week. Ours reads every account every week by design, and humans look after the system rather than billing you for the time. ### Do you take a percentage of my ad spend? No. Your ad budget goes straight to Google on your own billing. Our fee is fixed by band and doesn't grow when your spend does — £500 or £1,100 a month with Google is the same £59 to us. ### Is there a setup fee or a contract? No setup fee — the listing tidy-up, your page and the campaign build all cost nothing. No contract either: it's month to month and you can cancel in a click. ### What happens if my budget sits right on a band edge? You pay the band your monthly Google budget falls in, and if you change your budget the fee moves with it from the next month. No proration games, no surprises mid-month. --- # What we can count, and what nobody honestly can > Calls, enquiries and booking-link taps we can count. Which client walked through the door from which search — nobody can honestly tell you that, and here's why. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/docs/what-we-count/ Published: 2026-08-05 --- Advertising people love to sound precise. Here's the honest version of what can and cannot be measured for a salon, so you can judge us — and anyone else — fairly. ## What we can count - **Calls.** When someone taps the number on your ad or your page, that's countable, including how long the call lasted (a two-minute call is a booking conversation; a ten-second one isn't). - **Enquiries through your page.** The form on the page we build for you is ours to measure, so every message through it is a hard, countable enquiry. - **Taps through to your booking system.** We can count how many people we sent to your booking link. - **Listing actions.** Calls and direction requests from your free Google listing. Those become your four monthly numbers: calls, enquiries, what was spent with Google, and what each enquiry cost. ## What nobody can honestly count **Which client walked through the door because of which search.** The booking platforms most salons use don't share booking data with anyone — their business depends on owning it. And real people are messy: she saw your ad on Tuesday, checked your Instagram on Wednesday, and rang you Friday from the number on your listing. So when someone promises you "we'll track every booking to the exact keyword", one of two things is true: they control your bookings and are counting their own homework, or they're rounding clicks up into clients. We do neither. It's also why we'll never claim a booking count we can't stand behind — the number we quote you is cost per **enquiry**, and what you do with an enquiry in your chair is the bit you're already brilliant at. ## How to judge it like an owner Give it a fair window — [we suggest 30 days](/docs/how-it-works/) — then ask three questions. Are the calls and enquiries there? Is the cost per enquiry sensible against what a client is worth (a £12 enquiry that becomes a £180 colour client is outrageous value)? And is Tuesday looking better than it did in the spring? If the answer's no, cancel in a click and [keep everything we built](/docs/cancelling-and-what-you-keep/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Can you tell me which client came from which ad? No, and neither can anyone else for most salons. Booking platforms don't share who actually turned up, and plenty of clients see your ad, then call or walk in days later. We count what's countable and say so, rather than inventing precision. ### So how do I know it's working? Four numbers a month — calls, enquiries, spend, cost per enquiry — plus the one that matters most and lives in your diary: whether the quiet days are less quiet than they were before. ### What counts as an enquiry? A call from the ad or your page, a message through the enquiry form on your page, or a tap through to your booking link. We don't count someone merely seeing or clicking the ad — that's traffic, not interest. ### Why do other companies promise exact booking numbers? Usually because they control the booking (a marketplace can count its own bookings — while charging you for them), or because they're counting clicks and calling them clients. Ask anyone promising perfect attribution one question: how do you know she turned up? --- # Cancelling, and what you keep > Cancel any month in a click, no phone call, no questions. You keep your ads account, the campaigns, the blocked lists, your tidied listing and your page. Here's exactly how leaving works. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/docs/cancelling-and-what-you-keep/ Published: 2026-08-05 --- The honest test of any monthly service is what leaving looks like. Here's ours, in full. ## How cancelling works Click cancel, any month. That's it — no phone call, no "quick chat with the team", no notice period, no exit fee. Your month runs to the end of what you've paid for and nothing more is charged. We don't ask why, though we'll read it if you tell us. ## What you keep (everything) The whole setup was built **in your name from day one**, which means leaving costs you none of it: - **Your Google Ads account.** It was always yours — your name, your billing, your limit. We only ever held access you can revoke in a click. - **The campaigns.** Everything built, split by service, stays in your account. Pause them, run them, or give them to someone else. - **The blocked lists.** All four-hundred-plus time-wasting searches stay blocked in your account. That alone is worth having even if you never advertise again. - **Your tidied listing.** The corrections to your free Google listing are simply... corrections. They keep working, and [they help even without ads](/docs/how-it-works/). - **Your page.** If we wrote and hosted a page for you, it remains yours to use. ## Why we're relaxed about this Because the only retention scheme we run is the work being worth £15 to £149 a month. If a month comes when it isn't, you should leave — and everything above means you can, without losing what you've paid to build. Compare that with a marketplace, where leaving means the clients, the reviews and the relationship stay on **their** platform. ([The full comparison.](/alternatives/)) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is there a notice period or an exit fee? No and no. Cancel in a click, your access runs to the end of the month you've paid for, and nothing more is charged. We don't do retention phone calls. ### Do my ads stop the moment I cancel? The weekly management stops at the end of your paid month. The campaigns are in your own Google account, so they're yours — you can pause them, run them yourself, or hand them to someone else. Nothing is deleted. ### Do you delete my account data? We keep your account data for 3 months after cancellation so you can pick up where you left off if you come back, then it may be permanently deleted. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time. ### What happens to the page you built me? It stays yours to use. It was part of the deal, not a hostage. --- # The 412 blocked searches > Courses, jobs, hair models, tutorials, wholesale — the searches that quietly eat around a third of a self-managed salon ad budget, and how we shut them out before you spend a penny. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/docs/the-blocked-searches/ Published: 2026-08-05 --- If you learn one thing about salon advertising, make it this: **most wasted salon ad money doesn't go to other salons. It goes to people who were never going to book anything.** ## Who your budget attracts, uninvited - **Learners** — "hairdressing courses", "NVQ level 2 hairdressing", "barbering apprenticeship" - **Job hunters** — "salon jobs", "hairdresser salary" - **Freebie hunters** — "free haircut", "hair models wanted", "cheap haircut" - **DIYers** — "cut your own hair", "balayage tutorial" - **The trade** — "clipper set wholesale", "mannequin head" Those are twelve examples. The full list we block is currently four hundred and twelve entries long, and each one is a phrase that has actually cost real salons real money. ## What it costs to leave them unblocked Set up loosely — which is what happens with Google's own quick setup and with most first attempts — roughly **a third of the budget** goes to these searches. On £300 a month, that's about £100 paid to meet students, job hunters and people who want to do it themselves at home. It's the quiet kind of waste: each click looks tiny, nobody rings you to say they wasted your money, and the month just performs worse than it should have. ## How the blocking works Every phrase on the list is added to your account as a blocked search **before your first click ever runs** — day one, at every price band. Then it compounds: every week we read the actual phrases people typed before clicking your ad, and anything wasteful joins the list. Your account gets a little cheaper per real client every month it runs, which is the opposite of how loose setups age. If you're running ads yourself and just want the free version of this advice: [the students-not-clients article](/blog/why-your-salon-ads-bring-in-students-not-clients/) includes a starter blocklist you can copy in ten minutes. And [the assessment](/#assessment) shows the blocked searches for your own postcode, next to how many real clients are searching near you. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why can't Google's own quick setup block these? Google's five-minute setup (Smart Campaigns) runs on broad matching and gives you no proper negative keyword control. It decides what counts as relevant, and 'hairdressing courses' contains the word 'hairdressing'. You pay either way — Google earns the click whether the person wanted a haircut or a career. ### Where does the number 412 come from? It's the current size of the master blocklist we apply to every account on day one. It started from years of real salon search-term data and grows most weeks as new time-wasting phrases show up in real accounts. ### Is the list the same for a barbershop as for a colour salon? The core is shared — jobs, courses, free, wholesale waste everyone's money. On top of that, weekly pruning tunes it to what your account actually attracts: barbers collect clipper-and-wholesale searches, colour salons collect tutorial-and-correction-at-home ones. ### Can I see what's being blocked for me? Yes — it's all in your own Google Ads account, which is yours from day one. And the monthly email mentions anything notable we've newly blocked. --- # Do I need a website? > No. If you haven't got one, we write and host a page for you — your services, your area, a big button to call or book. Here's why an Instagram profile isn't enough, and what happens if you already have a site. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/docs/do-i-need-a-website/ Published: 2026-08-05 --- No. And you don't need to buy one, either — this is included. ## Why "just my Instagram" doesn't work for ads Instagram is your portfolio, and it does that job brilliantly — she **will** check your grid before she books. But as the place a paid click lands, it fails three ways: there's no button that says *book Tuesday at two*, half your visitors get nagged to log in before they see anything, and nothing on it can be measured — you can't tell whether £100 of clicks produced twelve enquiries or none. Paying £1 to £3 per visitor to send someone somewhere with no clear next step is how good budgets die. ## What we build instead A single fast page with exactly what a ready-to-book person needs: - The services you actually offer (the ones you picked at setup), with your area - A **big button to call** and your **booking link** right beside it - An enquiry form for the people who'd rather message than ring — which is also [how we count enquiries honestly](/docs/what-we-count/) - Nothing else. No blog, no slideshow, no mission statement Written for you, hosted by us, live before your first ad runs, and [yours to keep if you ever leave](/docs/cancelling-and-what-you-keep/). ## If you already have a website Even easier. If it's fast and it makes booking obvious, we point everything at it and build nothing. If it's ten years old and takes eight seconds to load on a phone, we'll tell you plainly and suggest ads land on our page instead — your site stays exactly as it is. Either way, this decision takes about a minute of the [ten-minute setup](/docs/how-it-works/). ## Frequently asked questions ### I only have Instagram and a booking link. Is that a problem? Not at all — that describes most chair renters we work with. We build the missing piece: a simple page with your services, your area and a big button to call or book. You don't write a word of it. ### I already have a website. Do you replace it? No. If your site is good, we send people straight to it and skip building a page. If it's old or slow, we'll say so plainly and suggest sending ad clicks to our faster page instead — your site stays untouched either way. ### Whose name is the page in? What if I leave? It's built for your business and it stays yours to use if you cancel. It was part of the deal, not a way of keeping you. ### Will the page show up on Google by itself? Its main job is being the place your ads and your listing send people. It can pick up some free traffic over time, but the thing that gets you found for free is your Google listing — which we tidy up first, at every price.