Why Facebook Ads Manager changed everything for this barber's chain

“It just proved to be a very smart way to target our spending," says Kings Barbers Club founder Adam Choudhry

Facebook’s Ads Manager tool has helped Choudhry expand Kings Barbers Club

Adam Choudhry launched Kings Barbers Club in 2009, opening his first barber shop in Birmingham just weeks before he was due to start at university. Impressively, nine years later, the business has expanded into the UK’s largest chain of independently-owned barber shops, with 14 other outlets spread across the Midlands.

“I launched the business and started university just as social media was really beginning to take off,” he says. “Suddenly, everyone was getting a smartphone

for the first time and I noticed that everything social at college was being organised on people’s Facebook pages.”

Choudhry had set up his first shop in a building owned by his father, but the location was away from the high street with little passing trade. “Initially, we used a Facebook page for the business just to get the message out there,” he explains. “It was a way to build a presence and a reputation for ourselves.”

Like other small business founders, Choudhry tried everything he could think of to attract customers to his new venture, including hitting the streets to hand out thousands of leaflets when he should have been studying for his economics degree. “It wasn’t until Facebook launched its Ads Manager tool that the business really took off,” he says. “It just proved to be a very smart way to target our spending: suddenly, we had a means with which to target particular services and types of haircut at very specific demographics. That meant we could get the business in front of the right people in the right way — plus, I could do that from my university library.”

Business increased almost overnight and within six months of opening the doors to his first shop, Choudhry was on the hunt for premises for a second outlet. And by the time he left university two-and-a-half years later, degree in hand, he’d built a chain of five outlets.

Facebook continues to be at the centre of the business’s marketing activity, but Choudhry has become even more ambitious. For example, Kings Barbers Club has developed its own software to integrate an online booking service with its presence on the social media site.

Looking back, Choudhry says the way in which Facebook has enabled him to target customers precisely has taught him an important lesson.

And his advice for other entrepreneurs? “Don’t focus on the money,” he says. “Instead, think very clearly about the problem you are trying to solve for your customers — if you get that right, the money will follow.”

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