February - Stylist and Salon Newspapers

Marketing Options for Esthetics
Esthetic Endeavors
Judith Culp
In the past, marketing of esthetics was
done with flyers, brochures and carefully
selecting the media you would use.
But then your choice of media was newspapers,
billboards, television, radio, telephone
directories and press releases.
Now everything is more complex. Some of
the old standbys don’t work as well and some
of them never worked.
Yellow pages – these used to work great
and were the staple of our industry. Now we
have multiple phone books distributed in each
town which makes the decision of who to go
with more difficult or the cost of advertising
exorbitant. Ask your clients where they learned
about you.
There are some who say they never use
phone books as the internet has significantly
changed how people seek information. More
and more people are turning online to find
business information. They can choose a
yellow page search, merchant connection,
city search, web search or many others. Each
of these has costs related so plan carefully as
to which will give you the best return. It is
a quagmire we will all wade through and is
going to take continued monitoring to find
what works for each type of business. We can
no longer find one and stick with it, constant
monitoring is the new norm.
Television – a good alternative depending
on how many stations are in your area. The
cost per viewing and client demographics will
help make this decision. Do they all watch
different stations? Can we afford to advertise
on all of the different stations? Television can
work but it must be planned and budgeted
carefully.
Radio – there are even more radio stations
than television stations. In several polls that I
have done I could not find a commonality in
the channel preferred. If they are all listening
to different stations or have opted for other
audio sources, then reaching the “potential”
client this way could be much trickier. If we
are dealing with a very specific target group
– say college-age girls for hair removal, now
we may have a narrower range of radio stations
that focus on this demographic.
Golf or bus stop bench advertising
– Don’t laugh. They sell these routinely. It
will depend on your budget if you want to give
this a try, but it wasn’t a success story for me.
Likewise some people do advertising on busses,
cabs or other vehicles that have high visibility
due to their driving patterns. Consider
the cost per day as well as the cost per exposure
to determine if this is in your budget.
YouTube – has become an interesting
marketing approach. You can find people
demonstrating all sorts of different services as
well as manufacturer’s using this method to
distribute information. How protected is your
submission? Can it be confiscated or used by
unauthorized persons? Does it drive clients
back to you as opposed to others in the area?
How many local people will find it, and how? I
think it has great promise, but I think we need
to do our research to effectively use it.
The most important part of marketing is a
thorough knowledge of our client base. Who
are they and what are their demographics?
How do they get information and how do
they prefer to be reached? While this always
was important, it is even more critical today.
If you don’t know your customer base you
will waste time, money and lots of effort to no
avail. The teen and college age client uses text
messaging as their preferred mode of communication.
This makes them a perfect market for
Tweeting or text-mails.
Those on a tight schedule may not have
access to their text phones on a full time basis.
The best way to approach this group may be
emails rather than tweeting. The message will
be there when they have access to it. They may
also love e-newsletters, e-cards and e-specials.
As we get into a more maturing group of
clients, they tend to be less comfortable with
tweeting or email contact. They may use their
blackberry but they are not as comfortable
with incoming information. The older the
client’s age bracket, the more they may prefer
a reminder phone call or to receive a printed
newsletter, in lieu of a text or an email. The
problem with this is the cost factors. It was
startling to realize that this year 70 percent of
our business holiday cards from suppliers and
manufacturers were transmitted via email.
So the more clearly the esthetician has
their target market defined the easier it will
be to allocate time and efforts into reaching
potential clients. It is important to ask clients
about their preferred contact method and what
methods they read or just delete/ toss. This
will help those very valuable marketing dollars
be the most effective.
There is no one marketing method that
will make everyone happy. With internet contacts,
it is important to have the client update
us when they change carriers just as in the past
it was important to know when they moved.
It’s all about staying updated and continually
innovating in a changing market place.
Judith Culp, a CIDESCO Diplomat has been in the esthetics industry since 1980.
A CPCP permanent makeup technician for over 18 years she served a 4-year
term as a Director for the Society of Permanent Cosmetic Professionals, two
years as their president. She is president of Culp Enterprises Inc. and CEO of NW
Institute of Esthetics. Judy Culp is available for consulting. For more information
visit www.estheticsnw.com.
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CALIFORNIA STYLIST & SALON | FEBRUARY 2010 |