Thinking of starting your own beauty business, our Beauty Marketing Experts share five key strategies for starting your beauty business.
Invest In A Quality, Well-Built Website
What makes a successful beauty brand? Whether you plan to sell through your website or use it to promote your beauty products or services, your website is your shop window to the world. Poorly constructed websites, poor quality, low-resolution imagery and terrible copywriting and spelling can all impact first impressions of your business.
Before you embark on launching your business, get a website built. Creating a website takes time and investment. Take your time deciding on the look and feel. Pay professional website developers to create a website that is easy to navigate and fast loading. It might feel like a huge outlay initially, but it’s an investment in your business. Our copywriting services are very popular with clients, keen to capitalise on improving their SEO efforts.
We see so many new start-up businesses make the mistake of creating a cheap website to save money, which in the longer term ends up costing them more in lost revenue and ongoing issues that cost time and customers.
Make Sure Your E-commerce is Working
If you plan to sell from your website, another critical area that should be on your radar is how consumers purchase from you. Again, your website build should help, not hinder, the customer journey from the landing page to cart checkout. You’ll need to consider secure payments and shipping options to ensure that your customers have a pleasant, seamless experience shopping with you. Popular ecommerce stores such as Shopify are ideal for small businesses and can be easily integrated into even the most basic websites.
Ensure Reliable Production & Shipping Are In Place
So often, new start-up beauty businesses launch and then become unstuck on the need for available stock to sell or their choice of shipping. In an attempt to save money, stock levels are typically kept to a minimum. This strategy can work for higher-value luxury beauty products at the beginning of your business journey when it can take longer to build consumer trust in your purchasing your products.
However, for low to mid-bracket brands, running out of a product and then discovering that your chosen factory has a wait time of a few months can be crippling for a new business. Yes, you don’t want lots of stock lying around, but you do need the stock to sell, so keep an eye on your stock levels and be aware of stock lead times and seasonal trends.
Create A Customer Profile
Knowing who you are selling to will be crucial in your marketing. Creating a customer profile doesn’t mean that your services or products are only targeted at this individual (you can create a few). The simplicity of this idea is that it helps you drill down exactly who your target customers are, both in age and demographic. You can explore what they love or hate and what problem your products or services solve for them.
You can be as in-depth as you like; even down to the type of magazines they might read, TV shows they watch and music they love. This is incredibly useful information for anyone else coming into the business. Especially valuable when you come to appoint a marketing professional.
Get Expert Help!
Most new business owners find themselves wearing various hats in the beginning; customer service manager, accountant, bookkeeper, social media marketing expert, PR etc. – the list is endless! However, as your business starts to settle into more of a rhythm and steadier cash flow, you should look at appointing experts. Choose professionals who specialise in the areas that take up your precious time and your brain power!
It is a false economy to believe that you are saving money by doing all these roles yourself. No one can multi-micro manage every area of their growing venture, 24-7 and do it efficiently – something has to give. Look to outsource the areas you feel will benefit your business and your mental health most valuably and work with those.
For example, we offer small business coaching services as a lifeline to fledgling businesses that cannot afford a full-time PR & marketing retainer but need actionable advice and tips that will give them the edge against their competitors. Look at part-time help from experts to free up your time to focus on building your new business successfully.
