As an esthetician, chances are you’re great at what you do. Which begs the question: why aren’t all estheticians successful in growing their businesses? So often, the esthetician will believe it has to do with their skill or knowledge of their industry . . . but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Today, I’m going to give you the ACTUAL reasons why every esthetician isn’t running a successful business, in hopes that this will help you realize the gaps in your business, get help, and start to grow that business of your dreams!
Limited Marketing Knowledge
This is by far the biggest problem I see with the esthetician businesses that I work with. They simply don’t understand social media, marketing, and how to effectively market themselves, their business, and their services online.
It’s not a knock against them, it’s actually a compliment. You as an esthetician business shouldn’t spend time trying to learn everything, rather, you should spend your time doing what it is you do best. That’s why you need a plan.
Ideally, the best way to handle this is to hire a professional, whether that’s someone to do your marketing for you or hire a coach (like me) to teach you the systems you need to market yourself effectively.
Could you learn independently by reading blogs, watching YouTube videos, etc.? Sure. However, you’re going to waste hundreds (maybe even thousands) of hours doing so when you could have simply hired a professional.
Think about how much money you could have made in those hours had you been taking appointments.
The esthetician businesses that are the most successful leave the marketing to the marketing professionals and free up their time to do what makes them money, bring in more clients, and scale their business!
Lack Of Understanding How to Price
Here is what I see most esthetician businesses do: they check their competitor's prices, then think, “Well if I price mine a bit lower, everyone will choose me as the best option.” While I understand the logic, the actual result you’ll get is the opposite.
There are two reasons I want to touch on in regards to why pricing yourself lower than the competition is a bad idea . . .
The first is how people view your services. You may think you’ll bring about more business by being cheaper/cheapest, but in actuality, people will be suspect of your services because they are lower. They’ll assume that you provide less quality and worse service than all the rest.
Additionally, when you price yourself that low, you get the needy customer, the customers that are never happy, and the ones that complain the most. Who wants to deal with that? No one.
Whereas when you price yourself as a luxury, people will see you that way. You’ll get much better customers who yes, expect great service, but are much more likely to talk about you and refer you to other people.
The second reason is in regards to your competition. If you simply continue to price yourself lower and lower than the competition, one of two things will happen: you’ll either have to continually cut your prices and make less and less profit, or you’ll eventually go out of business because you don’t make enough money.
Neither of those helps you grow a successful business. Premium pricing is what you want to achieve, which is just below luxury and right above value. This is the sweet spot where you’re showing the value in your pricing and helping you establish authority in the eyes of your customers.
Lack Of Business Skills
Just like with your marking, most estheticians lack the business skills that are necessary to grow and scale a business. Again, that’s not a knock on you, because you started your business because you are skilled in what you do and love it, not because you wanted to learn a bunch of business systems and tax information.
And just like with marketing, this is why I suggest you hire a coach, and not just any coach, one that’s specific to your industry and knows the ins and outs of the business, to help you develop these skills and implement these business systems.
Having these business skills and systems in place will be the difference between you having a business and growing a business. If you don’t have these, your business will plateau and eventually start declining.
You can’t run a successful business without these in place because they keep everything structured and organized so that when you gain an influx of clients, hire new people, or do anything for that matter, your business stays organized and there’s a system for it.
Don’t wait until the “right time” to have these in place. Right now is the best time so that when you get busy and when you start to scale, you’ve already got these well-established in your business!
Takeaway
The best thing you can take away from this blog is that just like you hire employees to help with certain services that they’re good at, you too need to hire people from the outside to help you in areas that you’re not good at.
That is by far the quickest way to business success. Stop looking at the initial investment that it costs and start thinking about the return you’ll make on having a solid marketing plan and key business systems in place.
If you really think about it, I bet the amount is a lot!
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