Marketing Tips for Building Clientele and Followers
Marketing is important because this is how you, as a business, advertise and sell your services/products. The purpose of a business is to make money and a business has to generate income to survive. Marketing is an essential tool to help you and your business reach that end goal. Business wouldn’t survive without marketing since it is what drives sales.
I truly believe that you get out what you put in. Therefore, you’re going to have to put in the work and effort. In order to be good at marketing you have to understand how it works. The best place to start to understand marketing is with yourself. You are a consumer. Take a moment to reflect what you, as a consumer, look for and expect from a product or service. What do you look for before deciding to purchase a product? Those same standards and expectations you have in other businesses are the same standards that your clients will expect from you.
- If you look for reasonable prices, then make sure your pricing truly reflects the quality of your work. Don’t overprice your product if you wouldn’t personally pay that price tag for the same quality product. Don’t underprice your product as well. The price should accurately reflect the quality of the product being sold. This will require researching how much others are selling the same quality product as you, in your area.
- If you look for what others are saying about that business and personal customer reviews about them, ensure that your clients are giving you quality feedback on popular social media platforms such as Yelp, Facebook, and Google.
- If you look for responsive customer service in companies, be sure to be on top of your emails, messages, calls, etc. Keep an open and responsive communication with your clients.
The following are some basic marketing guidelines that will help you build clientele and a social media following:
No one will buy a product that they don’t understand
This is especially important for PMU artists because not many clients are familiar with permanent makeup. Not all clients are familiar with many beauty services in general. As a PMU artist and business owner, it is your job to educate and inform potential customers of the product you are selling. Offering a great product is important, however, if your customer doesn’t know what your product is, all of the other information that explains why your product is so great is useless.
Build Trust
Informing and educating your potential customers are a great way to build trust. If your client learned about the service from your business, your client is already building trust with you because you are the source of that information. Other ways to build trust is to have outside sources vouch for you. This is where customer reviews on Yelp, Facebook, and Google is very useful. If you’re just starting and you don’t have many clients to share their experience with you, I recommend taking models and offering your service for free in exchange for testimonials. This is a great way to practice your craft, get free marketing (yes, your client walking around with your work on her face is marketing), and ask for reviews to build trust with other potential customers.
Appearances Matter
It is important for a business, businesspeople or an employee to be presentable. Making sure that your business is presentable shows that your business is serious. Appearances matter and since we live in a world where everything in online and our business is by appointments-only, our appearances are displayed through our online presence. Invest time into making your online and social media presence look good. Invest in a logo, solidify your branding (no, choosing a pink as your theme is not branding), take and post good content (photos and videos), etc. In a saturated industry, it’s important to stand out and be unique.
When you are putting together your online presence, it is important that the amount of effort you put into your appearances is shown. Take high-quality photos of your work to build your portfolio. Put in the time to edit your photos and clean up your images before posting (More on this in the next module). Put thought into writing a creative, insightful and engaging caption. Be consistent in the type of looks of your content.
Be Abundantly CLEAR
As a business, you have to make information abundantly clear. Unfortunately, many people (potential clients specifically) won’t do the work to find information. When stranger land on your website or Instagram page for the first time, they will only give you a few seconds of their attention before they get bored and move on. Because of this, you have to be clear and get to the point.
When potential customers land on your Instagram page, your bio is the first thing they see when they land on your page. Your bio needs to be CLEAR, CLEAR, CLEAR. Your bio be straightforward and informational. It cannot be cute and poetic. If your Instagram isn’t convincing and persuasive your potential clients won’t follow you. If your goal is to monetize your Instagram account, your bio has to be tailored to your target clients. It can’t be about you.
Make sure that you have important information that will convince your clients to follow and book:
- Your location
- The services you offer
- Your pricing and how to book (or atleast where to find this information)
- Contact information
Be Social
Today, the only way to be good at marketing is to be good at social media. The only way to be good at social media, is to be social. It’s not enough to have a good product and have a good business appearance. You can’t just sit there and wait for clients to come; you have to go out there and find them! Think about who you want your target clientele to be. Reach out to target clients who would actually be a potential customer on platforms such as Instagram.
For example, if your target clientele are young girls who love beauty and want something that will make their life and daily routine easier you might want to consider reaching out to college girls at a local university or college. There’s a high chance that college students will be interested in your beauty service and the convenience that your service offers. College students tend to have a busy schedule, but they also want to keep up with their appearance so getting your eyebrows tattooed could be a good investment to make their morning routine a lot easier. You could promote your services to your target clientele or offer your services at a discount or free to build your target audience. You can offer your service for free to a college girl, and she might go to social events and advertise your work to her friends at these events. Providing the service for free will allow you to build your portfolio and, in turn, attract more potential clients in the same niche. This is a good way to promote your business for free while also targeting your clientele.
Additional ways to reach out to potential clientele is to look up your city (and the surrounding cities in your area) on Instagram and follow girls that put those cities in their location tag for their photos. Following these girls will allow for your business to be seen and get potential followers and hopefully clients.
Another way to promote your business is to reach out to influencers and exchange your services for free in exchange for promotions. I look for influencers who possess my target audience such as beauty influencers in my area. Make sure that you are only exchanging your services for free with those who are constantly active on social media, posts a lot, engages with others online, and those who possess your target audience. If this influencer only posts provocative photos and, in the comments, the followers that are engaging with her are predominantly men, this won’t be the best use of your resources or the best marketing tactic. Check to see if your chosen influencer has a lot of female following. You don’t have to work with influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers. Reach out to small influencers. A couple of thousands or tens of thousands is more than enough. Even a couple of thousands of followers will give you a lot of exposure. As your business grows, you can reach out to influencers with an even larger audience. Also, check their engagement. See if their followers are interacting with their posts. If she has a lot of followers and not enough likes or comments, they may not be the best investment.
I make it a goal to offer my service for free to an influencer at least once a month to help grow my business.
Collaborate with Local Beauty Business
An easy way to reach out to a larger audience is to work with local and nearby beauty business. Reach out and network to those who are offering different services in the same category as you, such as eyelash extensions, hair stylists, nails, etc. You can come to an agreement to promote each other’s business by handing out each other’s business cards, offering promos to their clients and vice versa, or offering a combined promotional sale for those who book both your guys’ services at once.
You can host giveaways with that business as well. You and the other business an offer free service prizes in exchange for followers reposting your page, tagging their friends in your giveaway post, etc. This is a great way to boost your engagement on Instagram and build your social media presence.
Giveback to your Supporters
There are a few ways to give back to your existing supporters.
Hosting an independent giveaway is also a great way to build clientele and followers. You can host giveaways to mark your milestones (reaching a certain number of followers, the anniversary of your business, during holiday seasons or simply just because). This is an easy way to give back to your existing followers for supporting you as well as reach out to their friends when your followers repost your giveaway to tag their friends in the comments. This will help build your social media presence.
You can offer promotional discounts for your clients referring their friends and family or for those who book with their friends. Offering this kind of discount is an easy way to advertise since, regardless if their friends and family book or not, your clients are promoting your business and word of mouth is more powerful than any online advertisement.