5 Marketing Tips for your Beauty Business

Dawn: So, we thought it’d be best to speak today about marketing tips for your beauty slash aesthetics business. It’s very hard to start your own business or even do freelance work, and we thought it’d be great to give you some more tips on, um, how you can get your business out there.

What Social Media apps are the best to use?

Sarah: So the two main ones, obviously the ones we use day to day, you know, you’ve got your Instagram and your Facebook. Instagram is a visual platform – it’s pretty good for showcasing your work and your portfolio. The more aesthetically pleasing profile is your customer’s first impression of your business. The same goes for your Facebook account. It should be roughly consistent with your Instagram account but with maybe a bit more diverse content.

Dawn: No, I completely agree. And it’s especially because it’s, you know, you’re working on visual, you know, on faces and hair and everything else. So you know, if you can show someone you know, this is something really cool that I did the other day, they’re more probably gonna come to you if they think, oh actually I’d really like a balayage, and I saw that you did a balayage. It looked really pretty on Instagram. So it is just as simple as that, really.

You gotta show yourself off on more kinds of image apps, I think TikTok is quite a good one as well, I reckon, for showing those transformations. Everybody loves a transformation where it’s like the before and after so, you know, look at this, you know, really dull hair and look, we made it all rainbow coloured, and it’s really lovely for audiences to see and you know, they’ll stick in, um, you’ll stick in their brains ’cause I’d be like, you know, they did that really cool cut. So if I, everyone is to try that, I know who to go to ’cause it looks fabulous, and I wanna be in the toss to, and you know, audience participation on the literate sense.

So, how frequently do you reckon people should be posting?

Sarah: So it’s really important to be quite active on social media, um, but not too active. So maybe twice a week, maybe, depending on the engagement, maybe a bit more. But yeah, it’s very key to be present but not overly present. And finding the sweet spot will be important for your business.

Dawn: Definitely. And I think a bit of advice for anybody. I think I’ve tried to do this past just; you don’t have to be posting every day and being super active every day. ’cause at the end of the day, you still gotta run your business and, and do your treatments and whatever you get up to. So don’t feel like you have to be on social media so much. ’cause also I think that would give you a bit of burnout and actually you just don’t wanna do social media and it’s not very healthy, I think for anybody to be on social media like constantly. Unless it was your job. <laugh>.

What’s the key to an online presence?

Dawn: Obviously, we’re saying they should be on social media relatively regularly, but what should they actually be doing?

Sarah: I think it’s quite important to have a strong brand and a brand personality on social media. ’cause your social presence will be your clients or new clients, first impressions of your business. With hair and beauty, it’s about aesthetics and identity. You can put out the kind of person, you know, the kind of person that you want to come to your business, the kind of looks that you can give.

Of course, if you are more like an alternative kind of salon, you can put that persona out there. Whereas, you know, there’s a lot of people who aren’t gonna be looking for that, and there are people who are specifically looking for that, and that’s just a good way to get people through the door.

Dawn: And I think as well, it’s good, um, just to interact with the audience as well. If there are any questions that people post on your Instagram or maybe you get private messages like DM’s it’s good to also just show up because some people may just use it, and then that’s it. They don’t really look at it again until next week. And it’s always just so useful because it can make or break having another client.

Even if someone’s asking a question, they never get an answer. They probably don’t wanna come to you because you didn’t answer them, which is such a small thing. But sometimes, it can make such a difference to your business, and people can see the human side, which is you.

What are some of the free marketing resources you recommend?

Sarah: So one of the important things is when you are managing your social media profiles, it can get a bit messy. So keeping it all in one place is, uh, pretty productive. Um, so one that I use regularly is Hootsuite, which has different plans on there. So some are, I think some are free, but you can go onto paid plans.

Alternatively, you’ve got Agora Pulse, which is quite a popular one. There is a sea of options out there for content scheduling for social media. So it’s really good to start looking around and shopping for features most important to your business, like whether you need multiple accounts.

Dawn: No, that sounds really good. I personally would recommend it as well canva.com is really good if you wanna create infographics, you wanna design a Facebook header or even your own laptop background and stuff; you can do that now as well. I see a lot of people doing that. So, if you’re unsure about designing, it’s really simple and easy to use, and it’s not like Photoshop, where some people might feel really out of their depth and also can’t pay the Adobe subscription. So that’s what I definitely recommend.

What about Email Providers?

Sarah: Oh, the old emails. MailChimp is always a solid choice if you’re putting together news, newsletters, and email campaigns for your existing customer base.

Dawn: Yeah, that’s really good. I think there’s also a whole range of different emailing stuff as well. So if MailChimp doesn’t kind of crack up to what you’d like it to, there are other services out there, bearing in mind that we are just recommending what we’ve used in the past. So please don’t take our word for gospel, like make sure to look around and see what you find is best as well. ’cause you never know, you might find something, and we’re not even aware of that might be, you know, brand new and fabulous.

Sarah: Definitely, with a lot of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, a lot of them do have in-app editing as well. So don’t worry too much about video editing and picture editing. ’cause actually, you can just use those, and they’re free, and they’re part of the social media platform that you are using to advertise yourself anyway.

So it doesn’t take a lot, and you don’t feel like you need to do a crazy amount of editing unless, of course, you might be doing a video production business, but that’s not what we’re on about today. However, Fiverr is a really good resource for getting content together, graphics, things that might be a bit more ambitious.

Dawn: Yeah. And so basically, just like find someone who might be able to do this for you at a reasonable price if you are feeling a bit outta your depth as well. There’s literally anyone and everyone on Fiverr; you can find anyone that you need for the kind of service you need. I’ve looked on there a few times and gone wowzer.

Sarah: We’ve had, I’ve used voice artists on there and designers, and yeah, it’s really surprising how fast you can just get something done. It’s a really good tool for small businesses, and they don’t have to hire a big graphic designer to be able to compete on the grounds of visuals.

Dawn: Definitely. And sometimes even doing the most basic, uh, tips and tricks with photographs or anything else can still put your head at a game with everybody else. It, you don’t have to spend loads of money to feel like you look polished and business ready and everything else. And you know, at the end of the day, you can learn a lot of these skills on YouTube as well. So, and that’s for free majority of the time and that’s, you know, they have a paywall <laugh>. So definitely utilize the resources that you can find on the internet to help you in your business.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Sarah: Just mostly utilize social media. It’s one of your greatest assets in your marketing arsenal. You can put so much up on there, from just pictures of your work, which is just key for a visual business like hair and beauty. You can get people engaged with your staff and showcase people’s styles and what they’re bringing to the business. Rewards and competition, just anything to get people engaged and excited about your business. I think is so key to just showcase everything <laugh> and just so just some people can know you.

Dawn: Yeah. Like the experience of your salon. Like for example, yeah. Just showing what it’s like to be in your salon. I think it’s such an experience-based industry that when you go to a new salon, you might think about what is, you know, what the chairs are like, is it gonna be nice? ’cause it’s about treating yourself as well and pampering.

Sarah: Exactly. If you show off your product and things that you’ll use and describe what they smell like a bit, maybe create a vision of what it’s going to be like for your customers.

Dawn: Yeah. And then I think that’s the whole point as well: you know, there’s like an end game or like an end product you, you want them to have. And I think part of that is the experience. They want to dedicate time and money to sit in your chair. And it would be nice to see kind of, well, you know, you get treated well; you get offered a cup of tea, maybe there’s like a free hand massage that’s part of it that you offer. You should definitely show that, um, and advertise it. Offer champagne. Yeah. Or champagne.

“Stay Organised…”

Sarah: I think my last piece of advice as well for this episode is, um, try to make sure to stay organized. You know, don’t feel like you’ve gotta be, you know, uh, posting loads. You, you know, you feel all over the place. You know, having Hootsuite or something else to help kind of organize that and just make sure to set aside a certain amount of time per week for marketing social media. Whether it be, you know, more of the generic stuff like leaflets, that kind of thing.

But also, social media’s so important nowadays, to make sure that you’re not burning yourself out at the end of the day. You know, you are one person you are just after to yourself and doesn’t feel like you’ve got to do a crazy amount to keep up with some competitors who might even have their own social media person just doing that whilst everyone else is doing the treatment. So, uh, yeah, set aside like an hour or so each week being like, you know what, I’m gonna post this, this and this and I might make, see if some clients wanna do some tos.

Dawn: Well thank you very much for coming on for this discussion. Sarah, it’s been lovely to chat shop with you.

Sarah: It was lovely. Thank you for having me <laugh>. It’s all right. And I hope some of the tips and tricks have helped our audience as well. In the worst-case scenario, just do some research and see what’s out there. There are plenty of resources to help you get started if you’re stuck. And if in doubt, just ask grind, interview your peers and be like, what do you like to see on social media? Can’t go wrong ’cause that’s the people you’re gonna be targeting at the end of the day.