Marketing Guide For Beauty Pros:
The Top Tips Every Pro Needs to Know to Market Like a Boss
It’s the word that’s sent the most talented beauty pros running and screaming. The word so many of us hear and immediately sigh in defeat. A word that scares even the boldest of the beauty community.
That’s right—we’re talkin’ about marketing.
It’s no secret that just the word marketing carries it with some serious weight.
Marketing has become this enormous process, this big pressure, and a majorly intimidating caveat that comes with running a business—even a beauty business, you guys.
The fact of the matter is that marketing is intimidating because deep down we know how necessary it is to running a successful business. You can be the best beauty pro in the industry, the most talented person in your field to ever exist—but without proper marketing, it doesn’t matter.
Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best, the most talented, the most skilled, etc. if no one knows you exist.
Marketing exists to make your name known, to get the word out about your skills, and to show your would-be (and regular) clients why you’re the premium choice when it comes to their beauty services.
We get it—it all sounds super intimidating and scary. You’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “Of course it’s terrifying—I didn’t go to school for this! I’m a beauty pro, not a marketing pro!”
And you know what, that’s totally fair. That train of thought is valid.
But here’s the part where this gets good—you don’t have to be a marketing pro to execute a badass marketing strategy.
That’s right. No degrees, enormous budgets, or fancy consultants needed (unless you want them).
Your marketing strategy can be proactive, effective, updated, and productive. It can do everything you need it to—all without making your life miserable or giving you stress headaches.
How?
That’s where we come in.
We’ve got some seriously helpful marketing tips for beauty pros just like you—right here!
All you need to do is sit back, relax, and start reading. You’re on your way to a better understanding of the marketing basics you’re a little wary of.
Trust us, you got this.
The Top Marketing Tips You Need to Know to Rule the Beauty Industry
First things first—let’s attack the terror head-on. Let’s break down the big, scary word marketing.
Marketing isn’t as intimidating as it sounds. Marketing is simple a set of actions, activities, or intentions that help you create processes for creating, communicating, and delivering. It connects you with clients, illustrates what your brand is all about, communicates your ideas and announcements, and draws people to you.
At the root of it, marketing isn’t a complex idea—it’s just a way for you to get clients’ attention, communicate with them, and paint a picture of what matters to your business.
Now, keep that in mind as we dive into a few must-know tips for understanding the basics of marketing and formulating a 101-plan for your first marketing strategy steps.
Before You Can Market, You Need To Know Your Market
If marketing is a way to communicate with an audience, it makes sense that you’d need to create the most optimized way to reach that audience, right?
You want your communication to be as productive and efficient as possible—you want to speak to your audience in a way that makes it easy to connect with them and get your points across.
But if you don’t know who your audience is, it’s nearly impossible to know how to talk to them. Right?
The first step to any marketing strategy is to gain a stronger understanding of who you’re talking to and why you’re talking to them. In other words, you need to understand who your audience is before you can learn how to talk to them.
How do you do this? Data.
Use tools that you already have to get a better read on your market. Use Facebook, Instagram, and other third-party apps in conjunction to understand your demographics better.
Are you reaching mostly middle-aged men with your barbershop services? Are you reaching mostly younger women in a certain part of town for your nail salon?
Identify these things and then ask other important questions, like, is this the target audience I want to reach? If it’s not, you’ve got a great starting point for making a change.
Create a Strategy—Don’t Just Wing It
In other words, set actionable goals.
There are some things in life we can just wing and see where they go—marketing isn’t really one of them.
You need to set marketing goals so you can create a cohesive brand message, see where you’re succeeding, and see where you need work. Goals allow you to answer questions like, “am I staying true to my brand?” or “have I made any substantial progress in this area when applying this strategy?”
Goals help you track your progress, understand your weaknesses, and can be a roadmap for creating a more successful marketing strategy.
Spy On Your Competitors—Seriously
You heard us right—it’s time to spy. No, it’s not sketchy to do this. Every successful company out there has a good idea of who their main competitors are and sneak a peek at their marketing strategy.
Look at what your competition is doing. What are they doing right? What could they do better? What are some gaps in their marketing that you could fill? How are they using marketing to reach their target audience?
Don’t be a copycat, just take notes. Analyze and evaluate. Learn from your competitors. There’s no shame in this game—especially if your competitors are great marketers.
Digital Tools are Dire—Your Website Has to Be Solid
Digital marketing is the way of the world, now, so it’s important to be in-the-know about the digital tools that matter.
For starters, your website needs to be the cornerstone of your business.
An intuitive, informative, and compelling website that’s fast and easy to use is an absolute necessity for a successful marketing campaign these days—it’s just not an option anymore to not have a website if you’re trying to run a successful, well-established business.
Further, you need to make sure that website—and your other online platforms—are fully functional for mobile devices. According to Forbes, about 50 percent of website traffic is coming from mobile devices. If you alienate your mobile users with a non-mobile-compatible site, you’re effectively alienating half of your potential customer base.
Other digital tools working in conjunction with your social media platforms—like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Canva, HubSpot, and more—can provide you with insights, automation, and strategy tools to make digital marketing even more manageable.
Social Media is a Big Piece of the Puzzle
If you’re not investing time, effort, and strategy into your social media platforms, you’re missing out on an enormous part of a successful marketing strategy.
Beefing up your social media offers big benefits for beauty businesses. Why? Because about 95 percent of adults between the ages of 18-34 (most likely a key part of your target demographic) are following a brand’s social networking to keep up with them. This means that people are looking to these platforms to hear from you, understand you, and get information from you.
Further, social media is reported to be the most relevant advertising channel for 50 percent of Gen Z and 42 percent of millennials.
When you take that into account with the fact that social networks are the biggest source of inspiration for consumer purchases of goods and services, you can easily see how beefing up your social media can dramatically affect your marketing strategy.
Dive Into SEO (Without Fear)
SEO—or search engine optimization—is a big part of a company’s online traffic. And, we’ll be blunt, it can be confusing and scary. But choosing to dive headfirst into SEO and deciding not to underestimate its power can make an enormous difference in your marketing strategy.
We’re not going to take you down that rabbit hole right now, but we highly encourage you to take online classes, find some courses, track down a mentor, and learn all you can about SEO. It’s a top-notch digital marketing strategy and can drive more traffic to your site (and clients into your salon, shop, or spa) than you can imagine.
Don’t Be Afraid to Automate
Automating some of your marketing tools and strategies can be a huge help when it comes to executing a plan—especially if you’re the only one on your marketing team.
There are plenty of tools out there that can help you automate your email marketing, your social media tools, and even your reporting tools.
Initially, it can feel a little intimidating to dive into this part of marketing—especially if you’ve been running the show solo. Letting go and letting automated tools tackle parts of your routine might feel strange. But these little efforts can help you free up a ton of time to focus on your main job—being a badass beauty pro.
Analyze Your Progress & Learn From It
Just like setting goals helps you learn and grow, so does regularly evaluating and analyzing your progress regularly. This shouldn’t be an annual thing, either. You need to check-in with your records and evaluations consistently so you can make adjustments as needed.
With digital tools like Google Analytics, you can glean insights from your current strategies, which can help you understand what works and what doesn’t.
These types of tools can help you figure out how long people are spending on your site, the demographics of your visitors, where those visitors are coming from, and the keywords people are using to find your site. They can also compare non-organic to organic traffic, figure out how many people are coming to your site every day, week, month, etc., and so much more!
Further, these tools can help you understand where your visitors are coming from, who they are, and why they’re on your site—which can help you better understand how to market and where to direct your marketing efforts.
Feeling a little more marketing ready? We sure hope so.
Before you get started, we want you to understand something important about marketing—it’s an ever-evolving process that’s going to shift no matter what. There’s no such thing as being totally caught up at all times, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself to be in-the-know at all times.
The best thing you can do is continue to learn, step up your game, and confidently go forward—your marketing strategies won’t always be flawless, and you’ll probably make some mistakes along the way (hey, we all do)—but not trying at all is the biggest mistake you can make!
Start today, ask for help, take some courses, hire a marketing consultant—do what you need to do to make sure your marketing is top-notch. You can bet your beauty biz is going to reap the benefits of it!
Don’t forget to check back with Beauty Insurance Plus on the reg to see frequently updated blogs, articles, and helpful guides that are dedicated to helping you take the next steps toward furthering your career.
We’re here for you—and we’re putting out the content that’s going to help you thrive and live your best beauty life.
So, make sure to keep up with us, beauty queens and kings!
