Dreams don’t work unless you do. Weekly, The Homegrown Hustle Podcast is always out there, delivering fresh insights on hustling in businesses, primarily focused on industries such as real estate, sales, and marketing. But for this episode of Homegrown Hustle, we’ve tackled a much different topic: Beauty & Aesthetics. For this episode, we sat down with Breanna McDade, owner of Divine Esthetics, based in Minnesota. Breanna mentioned how being an aesthetician was her lifelong dream, and she went the extra mile to pursue it. Now, she owns a business and plans to grow it.
She mentioned how putting up a business in aesthetics can require a certain amount of preparation in establishing your brand and creating an exceptional customer experience. For her, it’s always about how her customers can escape for a little while and dive into taking care of themselves. She wanted a calm and intimate environment for clients whenever they were in her clinic. That’s just one of the things Breanna shared with us regarding how she positioned her business in the saturated market. After that discussion with her, we broke down some key strategies in beauty marketing that can help you out if you plan to set up a business in the beauty industry.
What is Beauty Marketing?
Before discussing strategies for growing a business in the beauty and aesthetics industry, let’s first understand how this industry differs from the most common ones.
According to Alpha Academy, Beauty Marketing is what a marketer does to promote a beauty product or brand. In other words, it’s a combination of marketing efforts aimed at customers/prospects to present a beauty product/brand. For example, a beauty marketer might campaign to bring a product to the market.
Alongside this work comes a lot of interactive and communicative work. For instance, managing customer relationships is a vital part of this job. Moreover, making your brand and product stand out from the crowd takes work. Not to mention, it certainly demands creative intelligence. And that is a challenge that beauty marketing tackles. You are trying to figure out how to get into beauty marketing, right? Then start with keeping these marketing goals in mind.
5 Beauty Marketing Strategies For Success
Setting your business apart from your competition is one recipe for driving success. In beauty marketing, specific executions require more attention to capture the interest of your target market. Breanna will share her strategies for making beauty marketing work.
Creating an Exceptional Customer Experience
“I want to ensure my clients are relaxed, at peace, and enjoying zero distractions,” Breanna said.
Beauty clinics are mostly made to be relaxing because customers mostly come to these places to unwind and have some rest. It’s where people get exhausted and concerned about their appearance and come out refreshed and rejuvenated. That’s why customer experience is essential when marketing your beauty clinic. Some factors can include the physical space wherein you build something appealing to the human senses, such as lighting, scent, sound, and feeling. Whenever you strike the balance in the senses, you hit a spot where the customers can feel more at ease. Customer experience is something that you cannot just claim. Your customers have to experience it, and they will get to share it with other people. That’s where word of mouth or social media user-generated content comes into play.
Besides the senses, the service process should also be a priority. Owners should ensure they can be easily reached in all their communication channels. Next, they should understand what their customers need at a specific moment. And lastly, the owners should be able to welcome a customer with warmth and close off a transaction knowing that the customer will come back for more soon.
Breanna defines how she can create a holistic customer experience. She said, “Holistic is looking at the client as a whole, treating them as a whole, not just a treatment for their skin, you know, them coming in and saying, I need to do this with my skin. It’s looking at them as a whole and being there for them, not just the treatment, but incorporating that massage, the natural products and just being there for my client, showing them empathy.”
Embracing Your Authentic Self
Authenticity is lacking in several areas of business nowadays. Mostly, businesses create products or market their products based on current trends, going away from their brand value. For Breanna, it’s essential to show who she is and show it to her customers. Being authentic creates more room for building better relationships. If you are brave enough to show your vulnerability to your customers, building trust and establishing a connection you and your customers can only have will be much easier. Customers who are loyal won’t look any further to other brands. You will outsell your competition naturally and create a customer base that will sell the business for you.
Building a Social Media Strategy
Social media will always be at the forefront when building a marketing strategy for your business. How can a beauty and aesthetics business stand out in this oversaturated content space? There’s a huge opportunity here, as there are a million possibilities of content you can create about beauty. A specific market caters to this, especially women in their mid-20s.
“Create a content schedule for the month. Get a calendar for a schedule and think about it before the next month; you sit down and think of different topics you can discuss daily. Write them down each day of the week. If you want to do five to seven days a week, write it down and then batch content.” Breanna said.
Being ahead of your content gives you more time to optimize it, check what your customers expect from your business, and engage with them. The other upside of scheduling your content is that you get to go outside the digital space and focus more on the operational side of things in your business.
Moreover, Breanna was also able to share how she leverages video content to create a more interactive experience for her customers. Through videos, she can show her processes.
Having a Community For Support
No man is an island. As someone who started a business with a vision in mind, Breanna shared with us the importance of having a community supporting each other in creating more possibilities for improving a business. Challenges will always come into play, but when you have a support system, you can always find ways to overcome hardships and enjoy the time you have to tackle them.
“I’m still learning. I’m learning. As I have an amazing community of people working with me, I’m grateful for it,” Breanna said.
Having a community around you gives you endless opportunities to scale a business, especially in the beauty industry. There are lots of people who are experts on specific procedures and have been doing them for many years. When you have access to these kinds of people, you get to fine-tune your process and have your way around how you can customize it based on your goals.
Establishing a Network
Earlier, we mentioned how community building gives you room for business expansion and more knowledge of the industry based on the group of people you have for support. In addition to community building, establishing a network can give you ways to enhance your beauty business. By doing this, you should be able to build strong relationships with industry professionals, potential clients, and influencers. You can meet like-minded individuals by attending industry events, trade shows, and local business gatherings and establish connections that lead to collaborations, referrals, and partnerships.
Social media can also be a powerful tool for kickstarting a networking initiative. This tool can be used to engage with your industry audience and expand your brand visibility. Moreover, joining professional organizations and online forums lets you stay updated on the latest trends and innovations, providing you with the knowledge and inspiration needed to improve your services continuously. Effective networking fosters a supportive community around your business, driving growth and success through shared opportunities and insights.
Wrapping It Up
If you think of it, the Beauty industry might be hyper-specific, but there are many ways to create marketing strategies that talk about inclusivity and empowerment. This is how Breanna made her vision come to life and made her lifelong dream of owning an esthetics clinic possible. Breanna’s always held onto authenticity to build a brand that customers trust. There are many fun ways to market a business without thinking too much about how you can sell it. The best way to do it is to focus on what matters the most to your customers and give them the experience they’re looking for. If you can provide an exceptional customer experience, the marketing side of your business unfolds flawlessly without you having to put out much of your time and resources.
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