Instagram ads
for salons.

A salon has something most advertisers would kill for: a product people can see in two seconds. The ads that tend to stop the scroll are the ones that look like the feed they sit in. A ten-second clip of a colour turning in window light. A fade from three angles. A nail set held next to the coffee cup it was done beside. Polished studio graphics with 'BOOK NOW' in capitals usually read as an ad, and get scrolled past as one.

Put three facts on every ad: the service, who did it, and where. 'Copper balayage by Tash, The Entrance' tells a stranger more than 'Your dream hair awaits'. It also helps the person who sees it on a friend's phone find you later.

Then think about who's watching. People trust work on hair, skin or nails like their own, which is social proof at its most literal. Rotate the ads across hair types, ages and skin tones, so the person in Penrith with thick dark curls sees work that looks like it was meant for her.

Meta's personal attributes policy trips up a lot of beauty ads, and it's simple once you see it. You can say 'you' and 'your'. What you can't do is assert or imply that the reader has a particular attribute, and Meta's list of attributes includes physical or mental health, including medical conditions.

So 'Are you embarrassed by your acne?' implies the reader has acne. 'Struggling with thinning hair?' implies hair loss. 'Got sun spots?' asks the reader about their skin. All three are the kind of line that gets an ad rejected.

The fix is to talk about the service, not the person: 'Acne scar treatments with our dermal therapist in Newcastle', 'Thinning hair consultations, Wednesday evenings'. It's often a better ad anyway. Nobody likes being told what's wrong with their face by a stranger on their phone.

Meta's personal health and appearance policy bars ad content that tries to imply or generate negative self-perception in order to promote diet, weight loss or other health-related products. Its examples of non-compliant images include zoomed-in body parts and close-ups of wrinkles.

The same page says ads for cosmetics, hair extensions and similar non-permanent beauty products sit outside that policy. In practice that splits salons in two. A balayage before and after, or a set of nails, is usually fine. A peel ad that opens on a magnified breakout, or a skin clinic ad built on a close-up of crow's feet, is the kind Meta's own examples mark as non-compliant.

For skin treatments, show the result in normal light at normal distance, show the room and the person doing it, and let the consultation do the explaining.

Paste the first line or the whole caption, pick what it promotes, and check the age setting you'll use.

Anything done by a nurse, doctor or dentist, such as injectables, has the strictest rules on social media, and most of them come from Ahpra rather than Meta. Ahpra's guidelines for advertising higher risk non-surgical procedures, which apply to businesses as well as practitioners, rule out lifestyle shots such as beach or bedroom scenes, gratuitous nudity, and emojis reacting to images, and say practitioners are responsible for content delivered by influencers and ambassadors.

A law firm summary of the guidelines adds that social media ads for these procedures should carry an 'adult content' label, on top of Meta's 18+ targeting. And the TGA rule still applies inside every caption and hashtag: no product names or nicknames for prescription-only injectables.

The cosmetic clinic page has a rule finder for how your clinic is set up.

Paying a local creator in a free set of lashes to post about you is advertising, and the audience has to be able to tell. Under the AANA Code of Ethics, advertising shall be clearly distinguishable as such. The industry practice note treats labels like #ad, Advertising and Paid Partnership as clear, flags 'gifted', '#sp' and 'collab' as less clear, and counts free products or services as payment.

For hair, nails and lashes, a labelled creator post is fine. For cosmetic procedures done by a registered practitioner, creators can't give testimonials about results at all. They can show the clinic and the experience, not vouch for the outcome.

An ad that sends people to your Instagram profile makes them do two more taps before they can book. Send them straight to the booking page for that service, filtered to the right stylist if your system allows it.

Which link you use changes the cost. Fresha, for example, lists bookings that come through your own link, Facebook and Instagram as free, while brand new clients found through its marketplace carry a 20% one-time fee. Paying Meta for a click and then paying a marketplace fee on the same client is a double toll.

Then tag the link so you can see what each ad brought in, and judge it on clients who rebooked. The new clients and rebookings page shows how.