Beauty – Highstoke

Are You Guilty of These Five PMU Marketing Mistakes?

From microblading advertising to taking a client’s payment, there are many things to consider for “how to grow a PMU business.” You want to put your time, energy and budget into those things that matter most and have the biggest impact.

Marketing success changes as fast as technology, and it’s important to know the right moves to make. Avoid these common marketing habits for the best success in growing your PMU brand.

Investing Too Little in Marketing

As a beauty entrepreneur, you may have a small budget or feel a bit nervous about investing a lot of money in marketing, especially if you’re just starting out. But, research shows that more is better.

Marketing is one of the best investments you can make for your business. Experienced entrepreneurs can attest to this fact. In a recent survey, those polled said they spent an average of ten percent of their budgets on marketing in the past 20 years, but regretted not spending more. Run your business with no regrets by investing more in marketing.

Obtaining the necessary funding for marketing is easier than you think. You can get financing even though your business may be young. Check with traditional and online lenders, like your local bank or LendingTree. Crowdsourcing is also an excellent alternative for finding the necessary money to invest in PMU marketing.

Too Little Research

It’s necessary to spend time finding and understanding your target audience (those who are likely to become clients). Careful studying and planning can show you the best place and time to reach them. Knowing where and how to communicate with your audience can help you make your marketing more successful.

Part of your marketing budget should go towards research. Try different methods of reaching your intended audience (social media, email, direct mail…). Find those that work the best for you and increase your efforts there.

Reaching Too Widely

When marketing your PMU brand, you are not trying to “cast a wide net” and reach everybody with your message. You want to find people interested in booking PMU treatments and market to them. Investing in marketing and research with a PMU marketing partner will serve you well at this stage. You’ll be able to narrow your marketing to those that are most likely to become a client.

Research is essential. You can learn all kinds of information about your target audience, like their average age and gender or what social media platforms they use and the best time of day to post content.

Today’s social media platforms are a great starting point. These are excellent sources of knowledge about your followers and audience.

Marketing to your audience should be ongoing. As your business grows and changes, your marketing should do the same.

Not Tracking Your Performance

If you experiment with marketing tactics without tracking your progress, you could end up playing a losing game. You’ll want to know what’s working well and what needs improvement.

Today’s technology makes it easier to check your progress and the outcome of your marketing efforts. Create clear goals to work towards. Stay where you are successful; improve what isn’t as successful.

Sticking With Traditional

Marketing calls for flexibility. What works today might not work in a few years. It’s necessary to adapt and experiment with new technologies and techniques.

Your audience will change. Communication preferences might shift, making email a poor marketing choice. Or, you might appeal to an entirely new demographic with a new treatment.

Social media platforms have transformed and will continue to do so. What got your business noticed a year ago won’t necessarily work today.

Putting It All Together

Whether you’re starting your business or are more experienced, it will always be helpful to take a step back and look at your marketing with fresh eyes. You can do this yourself, or a marketing partner can help you. Take time to review the above list and see where you can improve.

Invest in marketing for your business, allocating a good chunk to research. If you don’t have the funds, look into a lender. Excellent marketing will get you better results faster.

Narrow down your market to a core audience for a stronger impact. Reaching more people isn’t necessarily better if those people are unlikely to book your PMU service.

Stay flexible and adapt to change. Avoid the urge to stick with the traditional, including your traditional audience. Once you’ve perfected a strategy with your core audience, branch out to try new things.

Your PMU business is your baby. It’s easy to try and shoulder all the tasks of building it up and forget that you can ask for help. Your PMU beauty marketing agency has the experience to help you grow your business. Allow them to help you started, boost your current progress and take you above and beyond the competition.

Infographic

Marketing success depends on how well your PMU business can adapt to the ever-changing technological advancement. Put your time, effort, and money into things that have a bigger impact. How? First, you need to lose these common marketing habits that are not helping your business. Read this infographic and take notes.

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Marketing Skills to Help Your Beauty Business Break Through Bottlenecks

Your PMU business will experience many changes as it grows. You may be striding along at an excellent speed and suddenly reach a point where you need a larger salon, another artist, or more booked clients to continue growing. These natural slow-downs are bottlenecks. You can’t move forward without solving these problems.

Believe it or not, this is a good situation to have. It means you have reached a benchmark, or a goal. Your next steps are to consider what you’ve done well, what can be improved and what your new goals or benchmarks should be.

More Marketing for More Clients

An additional marketing strategy is often necessary to drive more business to your website and door. Your marketing efforts should include more than one digital channel (social media outlet) to reach more people in today’s technological age.

While you don’t have to become an expert on digital marketing (more on that later), it will help you to know the basics and what it takes to get your name out there. Marketing any business requires knowledge of certain practices, calculations and technologies. These are called hard skills and PMU marketing experts excel at them. It’s also helpful to have those softer “people skills,” like effective communication, leadership and inclusion.

We’ll discuss some hard and soft skills needed to up your marketing game. Hopefully, you take away two things from it: 1) a better understanding of your marketing strategy and 2) confidence in your beauty digital marketing agency to provide you with what you need to grow in today’s fast-paced digital world.

Search Engine Rankings

SEO might be a word you often hear as you increase your marketing efforts. It stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and refers to your business’s placement on a search engine page, like Google. Posting content consistently and using the right keywords matter to your SEO ranking.

People perform 3.5 million searches a day on Google. In fact, 93% of online activities begin with a search. If your business appears on the first page of results, it’s seen by thousands of people.

And, if your business appears within the top three listed companies, you’re even more likely to drive traffic to your website and convert lookers into booked clients. SEO is very valuable to your success because you improve how many people see you and book your services.

Boosting your SEO takes time–time to explore and research, time to experiment and time to execute. Not to mention, search engine and social media rules frequently change, making SEO keywords even more critical for your audience to find you. Most businesses hire a specialized SEO partner to help do the technical research and analyze the results.

Data Analytics

It may sound complicated, but in simple terms, data analytics is collecting and sorting information about potential clients to decide the best way to market your artistry.

You will need to collect data on your target audience (the potential clients you are hoping to book), as well as the progress and results of your current marketing. The information you gather will help you find, understand and relate to your audience in a meaningful way.

You’ll gather a lot of data from your interactions with your audience. Some examples include:

What they are searching for
The kind of content they’re watching and engaging with
Their purchasing preferences

Knowing what data is important, what to ignore and how to tell the difference is a big part of marketing and data analytics.

Content

Content refers to anything you create and share online, such as your social media posts, blogs or videos. While content doesn’t directly advertise your brand, it is meant to get people interested in your PMU services.

Making content that appeals to your audience and posting consistently are essential. In addition, create content that stands the test of time so that someone coming across your post, blog or video days or years from now will still find it relevant and meaningful.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Marketing is more than research and advertising. People skills like communication, inclusion, leadership, connection and relationship building are just as necessary. Your marketing strategy should help your business better relate to your potential clients.

These skills are referred to as “soft” because they aren’t typically learned from a book or in a classroom. A great marketer must stay aware of and understand the changing needs of their audience. It takes time and practice to learn, but you can become a master at connecting with your clients.

Communication

Effective communication is necessary for establishing trust and building relationships with potential clients. With millions of products and services competing for their attention, you have to stand out as someone they can trust and relate to.

Marketing experts have discovered that today’s audiences prefer short and entertaining communications. As a result, visual content, like videos, is quickly becoming the most preferred way audiences want businesses to communicate.

Visual communication can improve your SEO, engagement and booking rates. Video editing software can help you create more interesting visual content for your website or social media platforms.

You Don’t Have to Know it All to be it All

You can better understand and play a role in your business’s marketing strategy when you know some key digital marketing terms. But the best part is…to be successful, you don’t need a marketing degree or an additional 40 hours a week you don’t have.

Your beauty digital marketing agency at Highstoke is your one-stop PMU marketing partner. We have the skills and results you need to stay focused on your art and stop worrying about how to promote your business and get more clients. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Join our team to start thriving!

Measuring the Success of Your Social Media Campaign

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are excellent places to build a community, develop business leads and attract new clients. As a business owner, you want to set clear goals for yourself on your social media channels so that you make the most of your time and efforts there. You’ll also need to know how to measure your progress towards meeting those goals so that you can focus on what is working best for your business.

Setting and measuring goals keeps you organized, is the most budget-friendly way to work and gives you valuable feedback about your clients. If you haven’t been setting measurable goals and tracking the results of your social media efforts, now is the perfect time to start.

Success Is More Than Appointments and Money

A goal with a very clear beginning and end is often called a “campaign.” Social media marketing campaigns are carefully planned to help a business owner achieve their business goals through social media platforms. Different campaigns focus on different goals, which are as unique as your PMU business.

Not all campaigns are designed to drive immediate sales, though. Perhaps, you’re just starting out and your first steps need to be getting your name out there or building your reputation. If you’re not so new, your goal might be growing your following instead, knowing that a greater following will lead to more appointments.

Whatever your goal may be, it’s important to choose an accurate way to measure your progress towards the finish line. The number of bookings or your take-home pay may not tell the whole story.

Here’s how to get started.

Define Your Mission

No doubt you want to become a leading artist. But, achieving your dream can be a lot to take on at once. Instead, break it down into smaller, achievable goals that you can work on one step at a time.

When it comes to what you can achieve through social media, think of one goal you want to reach through your platforms, and use that to guide you in choosing what to focus on and how to measure it. For example, you might decide to focus on driving website traffic. Or, maybe you want to increase your engagement with your followers (who could turn into clients one day).

Because those two goals are different, you will need to measure your progress differently as well. You and your PMU marketing agency should clearly define goals that will help you grow your business.

Develop Ways for Measuring Your Goals

Goal-setting for social media advertising is the first step in a carefully planned social media campaign. The next step is to regularly measure the success of your efforts so that you know whether to keep doing what you’re doing or try something else.

To measure your campaign’s success, you and your PMU marketing agency will look at different metrics. Metrics refer to the “how” of measuring your goals. For example, how will you know when you’ve reached your goal to double the number of followers you have on social media? You’ll look at your followers today and compare it to the number of followers last week or last month. As with this example, you’ll have a metric, or measurement, for every goal.

Assess Your Success

Once you know the metrics you need for your goal, the next step is to find the right tools to help you measure (like choosing a ruler to help you measure length).

Some social media channels and third-party services like Google Analytics and Hootsuite provide that service or allow you to customize your own.

You have many options, so research carefully. If you need help understanding or deciding what would work best for you, consult a social media expert (like your beauty digital marketing agency).

Planning ahead and setting up your measuring tools before your campaign starts is ideal. Take the time to become familiar with how it works and what types of information it can provide you. Starting early also gives you more data to compare to from before your campaign.

Check Your Progress

Regularly check on your progress, even in the very beginning. Early data will help you see how far you’ve come and what to change in the future. Make this step a routine, whether you do it daily or weekly.

Make Improvements

Reconsider your goals and metrics every once in a while. Think about ways to improve your goal, speed up your progress or measure your growth.

Continue Learning

It’s important to keep in mind that regardless of the results of your campaign, it is still a win for you because it gives you and your beauty marketing agency insight and data about the habits and values of your audience.

As the famous inventor, Thomas Edison once wrote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” With your goals set, you’re always working on laying the groundwork for bigger accomplishments in the future. Set those goals. Measure the successes of your efforts. Make changes. Repeat.

What to Publish on Your Beauty Brand Social Media Account

For entrepreneurs, social media is more than a way to pass the time and be entertained. It’s an opportunity for you to reach your business goals.

Social media marketing for permanent makeup artists is about developing relationships, engaging with your audience in interesting conversations and showcasing your craft to build brand awareness and grow your business.

These days, businesses want to make their mark on social media platforms. How can your brand stand apart from the competition if everyone is doing it? Any beauty brand agency can agree that creating the right content for your followers is the key to standing out from the crowd.

Posting Content Regularly is Your Strategy

Content is the base of any business strategy these days. It’s the number-one way to promote your microblading business or showcase your PMU artistry. Consistently posting content that your target audience finds meaningful is how you connect, communicate and make yourself memorable to them.

The Five Most Useful Types of Content

With so many social networks, platforms and ways to engage with your audience, where does a PMU artist begin? To answer that question, let’s look at what professional marketers suggest to their clients most often.

Video

Followers are more likely to engage with and share videos. This type of media helps your audience better understand who and what you and your brand are about. It drives traffic to your website and turns lookers into paying clients.

The popularity of Instagram Reels and TikTok videos proves that you don’t need fancy equipment or a big budget to produce catchy content. In addition, another cool benefit of posting videos is that you can save, repurpose and reuse them at a later time.

Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are the top three most popular social media sites for clients. Of these, Instagram provides many different and helpful tools for making and broadcasting videos.

While TikTok may not yet have the brand attention-grabbing factor that other platforms do, entrepreneurs can better understand their target audience by knowing about the viral trends on this social media site.

Images

Images are the second most helpful and used type of content across social media networks.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” so the saying goes. And indeed, it is true that most people would prefer to get their information from a picture rather than read about it. This method opens the door for User Generated Content (UGC), in which your followers connect with each other and with you through images.

Instagram is at the top of the list of virtual places to share pictures. Pinterest is another great outlet for sharing photos with clients looking for inspiration. Both networks allow you to turn images into shoppable content. That means you can link an image to your booking site.

Written Posts

Even though videos and images take the top two spots for ways to offer content, the written word is still a powerful form of marketing, especially when you post regularly.

Consistent posting familiarizes your audience with your brand, voice and tone. With regular posting, your brand will stand out from the crowd.

Your clients want to learn more about you, your services and any fresh news about your business. Not only will your followers discover more about you, but posting allows you to connect with and learn about them, too. In time, you’ll be the expert at what type of content engages your audience the most.

Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit are great platforms for keeping your audience interested. Your written posts can include questions, polls and quizzes that are fun for your audience while giving you valuable feedback. You can keep discussions going by adding to conversation threads.

Stories

Consider using Stories to rev up your community engagement and give your audience new experiences. Stories are given priority across most social media networks, making them more likely to be seen.

The timeliness and interactive nature of Stories make them very engaging to audiences. Plus, interactive features, stickers, sounds and filters make for more creative and expressive content.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are some of the best for sharing Stories. Of those, Instagram is the only one that leaves your Stories up beyond 24 hours, allowing you to turn them into Highlights on your profile.

Lives

Live videos, or “lives,” allow you to engage with your audience in real-time. Question and answer or how-to sessions are a great way to ease any nervousness your potential clients might feel before booking and prepare them for what to expect.

Do What’s Right for You

We’ve highlighted several different social media platforms in this article. Not to convince you that you need every one of them, but to highlight the unique capabilities of each one and get you thinking of how you can use what you already have.

The most effective platform will be the one that you and your potential clients will use consistently. Check with your beauty digital marketing agency if you need help getting started. They can help you identify your target audience, the platforms they use most and the content they engage with more often.

Infographic

Do you want to reach your PMU business goals? Social media offers a unique and effective opportunity to engage with your audience and showcase your craft. Aside from posting consistently, knowing what to post and where is the key to nailing your social media marketing. Find the most effective platform for you and your potential clients. Read on.

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Giveaways That’ll Have You Looking Like a PMU Marketing Genius

The top two goals of every beauty entrepreneur is to get more clients and ensure those clients have a great experience in your care.

Giveaways can help fill both needs in one fun freebie. Who doesn’t love free?!

You can use giveaways to promote your brand, attract new clientele and foster loyalty. Create connections with your online audience over a fun contest by giving away something physical they can use again and again.

Giveaways showcase your style and personality while keeping your name at the forefront of every potential client’s mind. You’ll increase your chances for repeat business and referrals while advertising to potential clients looking for a great PMU artist (or who didn’t know they needed one until now).

Let’s look at the Where, What and How of giveaways. This guide will give you the essential information and a few ideas to get you well on your way to promotional items to market your beauty brand while making your clients feel special and like they got a great value.

Where to Give Promotional Items

As with any good idea, you’ll need to do some planning first. Research community events or trade shows. Read online rules regarding contests and giveaways on your social media platforms to make sure you stay within user guidelines and the law.

Know who you are trying to reach. Who is most likely to benefit from your services? What types of promotional items would interest them? How can you reach them in person or online? Your beauty marketing agency can help you learn more about your target audience to boost your PMU advertising efforts through giveaways.

What to Give Away

The more useful your promotional materials are, the better. You can give away branded items, like skin care products that relate to PMU or gifts that don’t relate but are useful anyway. Here are some ideas for what to give away. Some are related to PMU while others aren’t but have general mass appeal:

Branded Products

Skin care products like lotions and lip balms
Post-PMU service essentials kit (lip balm, skin salve)
Flash drive
Luggage tag
Water bottles
Pens
Limited-time, one-of-a-kind specialty product (shirt, lotion)

Coupons and Gift Cards

To your business for savings on another service or care product
To another business: coffee shop, Amazon, tattoo parlor, local hair salon

Experiences

Massages
Wine tasting
Tickets to haunted houses or other seasonal events

Money for Bills

Determine a set amount you’re willing to pay on a client’s bill. You can reimburse clients after they’ve paid (up to your limit and after seeing proof of the amount).

Electric bill
Car payment
Grocery store trip

How to Implement Giveaways

There are so many ways to give out freebies. This part can be as simple or creative as you want.

Commonly, PMU artists give away care bags full of skincare goodies after their client’s service. You can hand out a gift bag after a new client’s first service, around a holiday or any time you choose.

The same is true for any gift, not just skincare products related to your PMU service. You can hand out coupons, discounts or information about receiving a percent or dollar amount off on their next PMU service with a referral.

Contests are a fun way to engage your online audience and give them a really memorable experience at the same time. Depending on the contest, you can even fulfill some business needs while marketing. Take caption or logo contests as an example.

With a “Caption My Photo” contest, you can increase your online community engagement by posting a picture and asking your followers to submit clever or funny captions. You don’t even have to choose the winner. Encourage more participation by asking your followers to vote for their favorite.

A picture contest works a bit like a caption contest, except instead of your followers captioning a photo you upload, you ask them to submit their own photos showing off their permanent makeup.

If you’re looking to create or redo your logo, you can accomplish the task while creating a fun activity for your audience by asking them to submit ideas. You could choose the winner or ask for votes to decide.

Your client might love having their name entered into a raffle drawing for the chance to win a prize after booking an appointment with you. Knowing this before they book could be what converts a potential client into a booked one.

Surveys can be tied into giveaways or raffles. For completing a survey, your client could be sure to receive a gift, gift card or their name entered into a raffle drawing. They win a gift, and you win valuable feedback.

Just like Shoe Carnival has a wheel that customers can spin to win discounts, you can implement a similar game where the prizes or discounts for your clients are a fun game of chance.

Giveaways: Fun for All and Functional for You

Your giveaways and contests will have your clients and online followers feeling like superstars getting swag bags backstage at the Oscars. Not only that, but those gifts can do double-duty to market your PMU business and triple-duty if you use them to fulfill business needs like creating a new logo or bringing in more online followers. Use your imagination and the expertise of your beauty marketing agency to test out different giveaways and contests for your clients and potential clients.

How to Grow a PMU Business: Scale up Your Customer Service

Growing your business is about filling your calendar and establishing your brand without sacrificing other areas, like earnings or customer experience. Essentially, you want to increase your client bookings while still providing the quality services and individual attention your loyal clients love about you and your salon.

You could use another you because trying to do everything yourself can be overwhelming. It is hard to be at your best when you are exhausted. Your client’s reviews are one of your best advertising tools, so you want to keep providing every client with the best experience every time.

Plan For Success

Whether your appointment calendar is filling up, you are working on more certifications, or focusing on building your social media presence, it all points to a busier you. There are only so many hours in a day. If you are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with your busy salon, you’re probably at a place in your career where you need to make some adjustments. Scaling or improving your business practices for some tasks will enable you to do more without your customer service suffering.

It’s important to have a plan to scale up your customer service as your schedule begins to fill with bookings. Scaling customer service in the PMU industry means delivering more and better quality customer service experiences with your existing resources.

1. Keep What Matters Most, Drop What Doesn’t

First, figure out what matters most to your clients. Where can you relax some standards while building others? For example, maybe your clients are okay if you respond to messages within a few hours rather than the typical 30 minutes. Knowing that will free you from constantly checking your phone or website so you can focus on another aspect they care more about, like appointment reminders and receiving a pre-appointment checklist of “Dos and Don’ts.”

2. Make Your Clients Feel Important

It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to be well-known for excellent service. However, maintaining your top-tier reputation can be challenging as your business grows. Your artistic skills are still spot on, but other factors of the client experience from bookings and payments to communications can start to slip. You may have less time to make each client feel special or give them the red-carpet treatment you wish you could. Continue to make an effort to make each client feel important in meaningful ways.

3. Quit Trying to Do Everything on Your Own

The one-woman show that started this journey to become a successful permanent makeup artist, may not be enough to run a busy salon alone. Luckily, you don’t have to manage everything all on your own! While the artistry will always be all you, you can ask for help to guide and manage other parts of your business. A permanent makeup marketing agency can be an invaluable resource to help grow your business without sacrificing the quality of your client’s experience.

Put Yourself in Your Client’s Place

Imagine yourself in your client’s shoes. What would be most important to you? Define your perfect client experience. You might be able to use your personal experience in the chair of another PMU artist as a starting point. Think about what you liked, didn’t like or were neutral about.

Set your customer service goals based on how you define the perfect experience for your clients, keeping in mind that you may need to make changes as you implement your plan and test it out. Consult with your beauty marketing agency to learn more about strategies that have worked for others in your industry.

Invest in People and Technology

When it comes down to it, you’ll likely need to bring in more help to manage day-to-day tasks so that you can concentrate on your clients. An agency can take on some of your workload. Or technology can do the job in many cases.

An agency can provide extra people and experience to manage different aspects of your business without having the additional expense of hiring more employees.

Automated technology can help you manage recurring tasks at a lower cost. For example, you can use software that allows clients to book through your webpage. Then, the same technology can send them an appointment confirmation, a reminder and a checklist of what to do or not do before they come in.

Additionally, a nicely built webpage and a forum for your clients to interact with each other can help answer many common questions, saving you time and boosting your community.

The Upfront Investment is Worth it

As your business grows, you may need both technology and people to help you take the load off your shoulders and continue booking new clients for your permanent makeup business without sacrificing your outstanding customer service.

Whether hiring an agency that can put more employees at your assistance or using technical services and software, you will face some upfront costs when growing your business. However, the investment is worth it for your clients’ satisfaction and your reputation, peace of mind and longevity.

Infographic

Every artist wants a successful PMU brand. Once there is growth, you need to handle all the responsibilities that come with it. One of them is juggling calendar appointments, more certifications, and building social media presence. You don’t have to struggle alone. You can employ people and technology to scale up your customer service. Here’s how.

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How to get PMU Client Reviews and Testimonials

Does a review matter? In short, yes, client reviews do matter. With most consumers checking reviews before booking with a new salon, testimonials can be one of your biggest PMU marketing tools. Let others who love your work tell the story of what you were able to do for them!

What Is a Client Testimonial?

A client testimonial is when a former client writes about their experience with you, like the quality of service they received from you, for instance. They are testifying to the quality of your work and how satisfied they were with their treatment and service. You may have testimonials already in thank you cards from past clients. You can also ask clients if they are willing to submit a testimonial to you after their treatment – either written or in short video form.

Even more valuable, ask that they post the testimonial on Google, Facebook, Style Seat or any of the places where your clients find you. If you’re reposting photos and testimonials, ask for permission and get the client to sign a release form before posting these on your website or social media.

Why You Should Care About Reviews

Put yourself in the shoes of a first-time client for a moment. She is curious about the possibility of permanent makeup, but wants to know what potential results will look like and what options are available for her. More than half of consumers read at least four reviews before they make a purchase decision. This means that quality and quantity of reviews are both equally important.

Glowing testimonials that attest to your skill, style, and comforting manner go a long way towards convincing potential clients that they are in good hands with you.

Testimonials Win Clients

If we put ourselves in our clients’ shoes, it’s easy to see that it’s often not easy to make a decision on where to book their permanent makeup service.

With so many options at their fingertips, your clients need more information to make the best decision. Your potential clients want to see what ordinary people, like themselves, have to say about you. It’s word of mouth that feels authentic and relatable and can ultimately make or break whether a client books or not. Testimonials help potential clients choose you.

How To Increase Client Testimonials

1. Create Your Website and Social Media Page: Have a website where people can read and leave their ratings and comments about their service with you. For example, Google or Facebook business pages are where most clients check first, so you might want to have at least one, if not both, of these.

2. Show off Your Work: PMU and microblading are art forms. Show off your artistry with lots of watermarked before and after photos or videos. Seeing examples of how incredible you have made others look will boost their confidence in you.

3. Ask for a Review: Yes, it can be uncomfortable. But if you want to consistently receive good reviews, you need to ask (and maybe even remind) your clients to leave one. Don’t be embarrassed or shy about it. It’s part of growing your business. Give a brief explanation of why you want their testimonial.

In an unapologetic, confident, but not-pushy way, say something like, “Your results look wonderful, and I’m so glad you’re happy with them, too. It would help me out a lot if you left a review on Google.” Clients who love the work you do will be more than happy to help. Make it easy on them and provide them with a link where they can leave the review.

Follow up a couple of weeks later with a reminder and the link to leave their testimonial. Be careful not to be too pushy or persistent. That might have the opposite effect, such as a dishonest or poor review (or no review at all).

4. Make Testimonials Easy: You want it to be easy on you and your users to see and leave reviews. Having a QR code in your salon, sending a message after the appointment, or reminding them via email a few weeks after they’ve healed – All are ways that you can make it easy for a client to leave a review. You can copy and paste reviews from your Google business page onto your website, or use interactive plug-ins right on your site.

Third-party services make the process easy on you, but the drawback is that you have less control over the reviews. You might want to stick with a form that gives you more control in weeding out fake reviews.

***Bonus-A “Never-Do:” Never attempt to influence what someone writes about you or offer a gift for leaving you a review. It’s against the rules on many sites, can work against you if it seems suspicious and won’t give you honest feedback.***

Client Testimonials are Your Key for Growth

So, if you have been stuck wondering how to get more PMU clients, look no further than the new-age “word-of-mouth” advertising known as the online client testimonial.

Client ratings and testimonials showcase the quality of your work and provide a glimpse into the entire PMU or microblading experience. Even if you have a gallery of your work, reviews will help your audience understand other elements of the customer experience, such as your personality and the vibe of your salon. Additionally, seeing that someone else had the same need, booked with you, and had a great experience allows potential clients to see that you are real and reliable.

Infographic

Does your PMU business have a testimonial section on your page or website? If not yet, then you should consider getting reviews and testimonials from your former client. This is a great marketing tool that can win over clients for your PMU business. Learn about this and more in this infographic.

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How to Strengthen Your Social Media Presence

For professionals in the beauty industry, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are vital tools. Not only do they allow you to keep in touch with your clients, but they can help you advertise your services, showcase your work, and engage with other artists. No PMU marketing strategy is complete without the social media piece.

Here are six tips to improve social media marketing for makeup artists. You’ll find some key things you can do to strengthen your social media presence and use your social media accounts to support your marketing strategy.

Get Familiar With Organic and Paid Content

You can take an organic or paid path to build your social media presence. Organic content refers to free content you create like posts, stories, photos, videos and memes. Individuals and businesses can share this content with each other on their feeds. Growing your social media following with organic content requires time and effort, but it’s a necessary building block for your marketing plan because it develops connections.

Paid content is the new era of advertising and can deliver faster results. While paid marketing and advertising cost more, carefully crafted ads can pay for themselves as they raise awareness of your brand, attract new followers and convert followers into paying clients.

Regularly posting organic content to your social media is always a great strategy. In some cases, you may need a mixture of paid-for advertising and organic to boost your brand awareness and conversion rates. A seasoned beauty marketing agency can help you decide what will work best for you.

The Best Social Platform is the One Your Audience Uses

Since posting on social media is fairly straightforward and inexpensive, marketing through social media is a good use of your time and dollars.

You do not need a profile on every platform to have an impact. Identify the type of people you are trying to reach and figure out what platforms they’re regularly using. Also, do your detective work (or have your beauty marketing agency do it for you) to figure out what time the majority of your audience is on. Start posting on that platform at that time to catch your followers online.

How you craft each post can make a big difference too. Here’s how to make the most of your social media posts.

The Six “Be’s” to Gain Attention on Social Media

★ Be Visual. Be sure to use pictures, videos, slideshows, memes, gifs, animated words, etc., more than plain text in your posts. Marketing research shows that you have five seconds to grab your audience’s attention, and visual content does this faster, better and with more engagement than words alone.

★ Be Consistent. The best way to get noticed is to post often and predictably. You don’t have to post several times a day to meet this requirement. Posting once a day is fine, especially when you post to an active audience. You can create a content calendar of what to post and when. Planning in advance helps you stick to it. If you happen to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of person, then in-the-moment posting works, too, as long as you remember to do so regularly. You’ll set an expectation with your followers in no time, and they’ll know when to expect you to post new content.

★ Be Engaging With Your Audience. The most important, vital, not-to-be-skipped part of social media; the entire purpose of creating a profile and content is…to build relationships. You can’t do that very well by staying silent on your end. Let your personality shine as you respond to those who tag, tweet, or reply to your posts. Your purpose is not to get the most followers but to create a loyal following of fans who feel like they know you.

★ Be Yourself. Connect with your followers on a personal level. Your clients may be disappointed with generic or auto-generated responses and lose interest in following you. They want to get to know the real you and see that the real you is making time for them.

★ Be Sociable. Reach out to your followers. Follow them right back. Follow competitors. Follow businesses in your neighborhood. Re-post and re-tweet things that are interesting to your audience. Let your fans see some behind-the-scenes footage and pics of you, your salon, and your work.

★ Be a Do-gooder. Concentrate on helping instead of selling, and everything else will fall into place. Your followers don’t want to feel like you’re trying to sell them something; they want to know more about you and what you do. Help them find answers to their questions about permanent makeup, microblading and other procedures. Your honesty will become your reputation and draw in more followers, clients and partners who love how trustworthy you are.

Support Your Marketing Team

Your marketing team at Highstoke Media has the knowledge and experience to get you the results you need to grow your PMU business. Our plug-and-play templates and word-for-word scripts make your life easier. With our knowledge and your support using these six tips to grab your audience’s attention on social media, you’ll find your calendar starts filling up quickly.

Better Your Beauty Business By Breaking These Four Bad Habits

As a beauty business owner, you have a lot riding on your shoulders as you work to make your lasting mark in a competitive industry. Along the way it’s easy to fall into some bad habits that could slow you down on the path to success.

Fixing or avoiding these bad habits can boost the amount you can get done in a day and make a lasting impression on your clients (good or bad). Work smarter, not harder, to accomplish more than you dreamed you could. But be aware if you’re doing these 4 bad habits while you’re working…

1. Don’t Depend on Yourself to Do It All

Do you feel like a one-woman show? It’s easy to think, “My business is my baby, and I can’t trust anyone to care for it the way I do.”

Fight the urge to do everything yourself. It is okay…appropriate…reasonable, even, to pass on some of your responsibilities to other employees and partners.

Give yourself permission to accept help. Surprisingly, your partners or employees might do a really great job. They may have more time to devote to a job than you do. Trusting others with some of your tasks will boost productivity and employee satisfaction while decreasing your stress and the demands on your time. And they may just be waiting to get the go-ahead from you, to take on more responsibility and help you grow.

Think you can’t afford to hire partners or employees? You can’t afford not to! Hiring a PMU marketing agency is one example of a partnership that will free up your time to focus on your artistry. Let them focus on growing your brand and client base. Their expertise will pay for itself as they help you grow your business.

2. Staying Too Busy

Busy-ness might be the new status symbol for this generation. Staying busy means you are important and leads to happiness and wealth, right? Actually, working too much over a long period of time is not good for the health of your business, employees or yourself. There’s a fine line between having a full schedule in a busy salon, and filling your time with small tasks. As Stephan Covey wrote in his bestselling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “It is possible to be busy-very busy-without being very effective.”

Why does being busy not always equal maximum productivity?

❖ Burnout – Burnout occurs when you are overly stressed, out of energy and unhappy because of working long hours without the proper rest and relaxation. If you’re stressing yourself out, you may be underutilizing your employees. If you are burned out or unhappy, it can start to affect everything else, from your work and personal relationships to your client connections and brand. Your clients are your top priority, so save the most energy for them, and delegate tasks that others can do for you.
❖ Decreased Productivity – Does it ever seem like your work takes all your time? You are not alone. If you allow yourself sixteen hours a day to devote to your business, there is a good chance you will be able to fill all that time. However, if you set limits for yourself and work only eight hours in a day, you may be surprised how much you can accomplish in half the time. Reducing your time at work and allowing yourself time for friends, family, and relaxation can significantly improve your productivity during working hours.

Try assigning less time for tasks, and leave time for you (and your employees) to relax and recharge.

3. Not Automating Parts of Your Business

If you’re relying on paper notes, scheduling books, individual texts or Messenger trails to keep up with your appointments, your client management system could use some upgrading.

Automated services and technology can handle everything from your bookings to your routine daily, weekly, and monthly accounting tasks. Automated technology can give you back the time you spend scrolling through different types of media to locate a client’s appointment and decrease confusion and misunderstandings. Need to streamline your booking? We can help with this!

4. Spending Too Much Time On Your Phone

Have you ever been with a professional service provider when they took a phone call or checked their most recent text, Facebook message or Instagram comments? How did that make you feel? More importantly, what was the provider not doing when they were on their phone?

Picking up your phone to answer messages or take phone calls takes your focus away from everything else. It can leave your clients with the wrong impression if you pause their service to check something that could be dealt with later.

Exceptions are understandable–you may be expecting news about loved ones or trying to put out a fire. For the most part, however, limit your phone usage to certain times of the day and stash it away while working with a client. If you don’t want to miss a booking opportunity, consider hiring a partner to handle your bookings and social media marketing for you so that you can limit the amount of time you spend on the phone or social media. Want details? We can help with that!

Pass Along Responsibilities and Take Back Your Time

With so much to do to keep your business up and running, it’s normal for a business owner like you to have a long to-do list that keeps growing. Your full schedule can be a sign that you are doing a great job. But, to take a quote from an Ed Sheeran hit song, don’t let your “bad habits lead to late nights.”

Make the most of each day going forward by figuring out now where you can change the amount of work you are doing. If you can, pass along some responsibilities to employees or partnering agencies who can take specialized business aspects off of your hands. Let software and technology take on some of the workload for you, as well. Spreading out the responsibilities can free up your time and let you immerse sharing your gift with your clients.

What Should I Charge for My Permanent Make Up Services? How to Charge What You’re Worth

“What price should I charge for my PMU services?”

That is a common question from PMU and beauty industry entrepreneurs. If you price your services too low, you risk making too little profit or gaining a reputation that you’re offering low value services. On the other hand, if you price your services too high, you may shock potential clients and send them running to the competition.

Trying to appropriately set your prices feels like you’re walking a tightrope. Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! Read on to learn more about what to charge for your brow, lip and liner services, and build the confidence to charge what you are truly worth.

Four Pricing Essentials to Consider

1) Cover Your Expenses – First, consider how much it costs you to provide each service to clients. At the very least, you need to charge enough to pay for those expenses.

Know what your time and materials are worth. How much time does it take you to complete a brow session or microblading? What are the costs of the materials and electricity you use during an appointment? If you decide to offer follow-up and touch-up services, what are those worth? All these expenses are your direct costs. They can vary depending on the number of clients you see.

Next, factor in your indirect, or fixed, costs. Examples of indirect costs include your taxes, building rent, advertising expenses and employee payroll.

You’ll want to make sure that the prices you charge for your services cover your direct and indirect costs. Money that you make beyond that is profit that you can use to buy new equipment, hire additional staff, and pay yourself.

2) Set Your Pricing Goals – In addition to covering your expenses, you’ll want your pricing to reflect the goals and the vision you have for your business.

Some questions to ask yourself are:

How do you want clients to see your business? Do you want to be known as an affordable option? Would you rather be known as a luxury service? Perhaps you would like your prices to fall somewhere between “affordable” and “luxury?”
Will starting at a low price help you build a client base? Will a higher price attract customers hoping for a luxurious experience?
How about starting to build your client portfolio by offering an “introductory rate” for either the first visit or a short time period and then adjusting your pricing to an “original” rate afterward?

Review your goals with your PMU marketing partner and then decide on pricing that helps you achieve those objectives.

3) Do Your Market Research – Learn more about how much other artists in your area are charging for permanent makeup services. Understanding what clients will be willing to pay for PMU in your area will help you set prices with confidence.

Learn about your potential clients. Find out what they are looking for in a PMU artist. Look at your services and pricing from your clients’ points of view. What do you believe the true value of your services is in your market? If you are unsure, ask your clients directly for a customer review or send out a feedback survey after the service.

4) Change Your Prices – Keep in mind that your prices aren’t etched in stone. What you charge can be changed.

Prices change all the time–for everything.

Think about your costs of living – rent, food, gas, electricity and water bills, etc. They never stay the same for long. As your expenses go up, direct and indirect costs increase, too. At some point, you will need to make adjustments to your prices to reflect your increased expenses.

New certifications and increased experience could make you more in-demand, booking you for months or more out. Your popularity could make your time more valuable and allow you to increase your prices.

It is okay to change your prices to reflect the changes around you. You can experiment with price changes to find the perfect balance for you and your clients.

You Have Some Homework, but Your Beauty Marketing Agency Can Help

When it comes to pricing your PMU and beauty services, you have some homework to do in order to answer the essential questions in this article. Take it one step at a time, and reach out to your marketing team any time you need help. We’re here for you. Together, we can help you achieve your goals now and in the future.