Your clients will easily see your skin care, hair care, nail care, spa, and other beauty care treatment services performed openly in any salon or day spa, while they really cannot readily see your more private hair removal artistry. Usually only your client will know how well you professionally facilitate these services for them. To become recognized as the area expert and more successful at hair removal artistry, you must market it with your other hair, skin, spa, nail, and beauty care services.
Annual Strategic Objectives and Goals
Hair removal has become an art and a necessity for many women and men. It is no longer considered a seasonal service. It may still be a bit more popular in warm weather months and climates, yet it must be promoted throughout the calendar year. Whether you offer laser hair removal, sugar, threading services, or traditional wax hair removal services, it is extremely important to start marketing your hair removal rituals throughout the year. With the ongoing ‘Beauty Revolution’ and the ‘Sexual Revolution,’ women, men, and teens want to look great with and without their clothes on! To take advantage of this awareness and necessity for everyone’s needed hair removal rituals, plan to create fresh new marketing strategies that will be consistent, unique, and perhaps just a bit different!
Become Known as a Hair Removal Specialist
To best market your hair removal expertise, start to become a specialist and do not remain a generalist – with hair removal just thought of as one of your extra un-important add-on services. In some cities, clients will line up months in advance by pre-booking ongoing appointments with their eyebrow, bikini, and hair removal specialists. Perhaps you may be able to become the best or only laser, threading, or sugar hair removal expert in town that is versatile in offering a variety of service options. Select an area that you can become known for, whether it is traditional threading, artistic bikini designs, or creative eyebrow arch designs. Plan to promote this specialty and/or variety of options in your advertising, marketing, promotions, and media relations as well as throughout your in-salon service menus, posters, e-mail blasts, and counter card merchandising materials.
While becoming a specialist with at least one treatment area, simply start to declare yourselves as “Hair Removal Specialists”. Even if you plan to specialize in just one service area, try to offer at least two or three different forms of professional hair removal services. Study and practice with a variety of advanced courses using an equal variety of models. Become as educated and up-to-date in your craft as possible. Carefully read the professional trade magazines, send away for literature, and attend hair removal workshops at national beauty trade conventions before you actively market your hair removal service specialties.
If you offer any creative hair removal services – especially in eyebrow arching or with bikini hair design for women, that should be noted. Many women desire a more exotic flair with special shapes, designs, and even bright hair color shades for their bikini area. You may want to have a little fun with some creative hair removal service names. Some salons and spas offer mini moustaches, zig zag stripes, red heart shapes, Brazilian Bikini, racing stripes, mouse ears, and other bikini area hair designs. Many women also like to change their bikini area hair designs and hair color every few months. Even though you can’t always offer a photography gallery or portfolio for this private bikini service area, be prepared to offer some creative sketches in a private hair removal portfolio just as you should do with your eyebrow arch designs.
Hair Removal Service and Product Options
Most salons, day spas, and aesthetic centers still just use the basic wax products for their hair removal services. This is fine. However, it really is time to explore all of the exciting new improved waxes, sugar, laser, threading, depilatory, and electrolysis treatments. Start to market your services under the banner of “Hair Removal” rather than “Wax” – especially since most men do not readily relate to ‘waxing.’ Use a more diverse and simple descriptive, “Hair Removal Services” heading in your marketing materials, so you will effectively reach out to everyone.
Hair Removal Service Menus
Your salon, spa, and skin care salon service menus should have a complete section devoted to professional hair removal services. If you really want to be known as a hair removal expert or specialist, plan to create an extra special hair removal service menu. Use this to explain what your clients should do before and after each hair removal service, while you share the benefits of your expertise, services, prices and guidelines. You may want to share many of your hair removal services in a generic manner for everyone. You may also want to note your specialty services with separate sections for women, men, and teens. Tell a little about what makes your hair removal services so beneficial, special, professional, private, state-of-the-art, safe, and effective. Make sure that you list every possible body part and combination service. Consider including the following in your menus:
Men’s Services: Men want to look good whether dressed, partially dressed, or undressed. They too are readily taking advantage of professional hair removal services for their eyebrows, ears, face, necks, arms, chests, backs, and legs today. You can charge the same prices as you do for women. You should independently promote hair removal services to the men throughout the year. Don’t forget to celebrate Father’s Day and National Men’s Grooming Week (in August) each year. You will increase your male service business by separating these offerings in your service menu.
Strategic Service Pricing: Be prepared to be competitive, while sharing prices that make you respected as an expert. Don’t be afraid of charging higher prices than most of your competition. If you do offer various professional hair removal services beyond the basic wax treatments, charge more for some of those special services that offer more permanency, experience, expertise, skill, time, or techniques. Your waxing and sugaring prices should be priced differently. Your wax service price can be competitive, while your sugar prices could be slightly higher, especially if no one else in town offers this service. Your threading and laser hair removal services must also be priced accordingly.
Professional Photography
Hold at least one professional photography session each year to capture photographs that will help you promote all of your skin care, spa care, and hair removal services. Don’t be afraid to pose some tasteful semi-nude and nude models that will discreetly show beautiful legs, eyebrow arches, underarms, faces, and bodies. Find extremely attractive and appropriate models. Look in professional magazines to find ideas for beautiful illustrations, before you ask your models to pose for your photographer. These photographs will be critical to your future success, when combining them with great headlines and body copy in your service menus, posters, counter cards, advertisements, website postings, and e-mail blasts. Remember, each photograph should be worth a thousand words.
Point-Of-Purchase (P.O.P.) Materials and Merchandising
Create visually exciting counter cards, posters, and shelf talkers that can be posted in your front window, at your front desk, in the restrooms, and throughout your salon or spa. Lead with a beautiful headline and photographs. Create and promote your complete list of special hair removal services with their full prices. You may be surprised how it will get your clients to ask for these services, without any discounts. Create seasonal specials, where you tie in various hair, skin, nails, and spa services packaged together with your hair removal services.
E-Mail and Direct Mail Strategies
Collect e-mail and postal addresses from your clients for e-mail blasts, e-Newsletters, and direct mail marketing programs. Use your new skin care and hair removal photographs with some e-mail blasts and full color postcards that can be sent to your entire client list once every month or two. Create a series of smaller databases to target special groups like men, sororities, and female career executives.
For prospective new clients where you do not have e-mail addresses, create postcards, brochures, and other solo direct mail devices to target both your regulars and everyone within three to five miles of your salon and day spa even if you promote your hair removal rituals at full price with direct mail marketing. Explore working with cooperative direct mail resources like Clipper Magazine, Savvy Shopper, or Mint Magazines where you can target 50,000 homes near your day spa or salon for about 3 to 4 cents per home. With an ongoing e-mail and direct mail program, you may see a dramatic 25 to 35 percent increase in business.
Marketing Calendars and Special Promotions
Create a series of six bi-monthly hair removal promotions, while mixing it up each season. Introduce your regular clients to your hair removal services with a gift for new ‘First-Time – Hair Removal Services.’ For example, you could offer a FREE upper lip service with any ‘first-time’ full leg hair removal service package. Give every female client over a two-month period of April and May a ‘$10 Off Men’s Hair Removal Gift Certificate’ – so they can share it with their mate. Use a `Gift with Service’ promotion, where you offer a complimentary professional skin care product with any ‘First-Time Hair Removal Service. Create a ‘Year of Eyebrow Arches’ or a ‘Year of Hair Removal’ package, where your clients will pay in advance for 10 to 12 visits at a special price – or full price with a bonus product gift. You can offer a ‘Buy six – Get One Free’ Hair Removal Ritual Package.
Hair Removal and Skin care Parties Are Fun
Create a ‘Men’s Night’ or a ‘Lady’s Night’ where you offer a lecture/demonstration, discounted hair removal services, free door prizes, refreshments, and bounce-back offers. Tie your hair removal services into your other skin care and spa care services, so you can introduce it during any ‘Day Of Beauty’ or other spa retreat promotion. Promoting special hair removal packages for proms, vacations, summer, holiday parties and other special events is always terrific. If your salon or spa participates in charity ‘Spa-A-Thons,’ ‘Massage-A-Thons,’ or ‘Cut-A-Thons’ add hair removal services to the menu that day. For a full price fee or a slightly discounted service fee, you will introduce many new first-time clients to your hair removal expertise while helping some local charitable organization.
PR and Media Relations
To be known as ‘THE BEST’ hair removal experts in town, you must work to get media attention that will credit you as the respected local experts! Hair removal is rarely marketed through effective PR and media relations. Take advantage of this opportunity to educate your local community. Create a series of press releases and cover pitch letters to the local media, to explore the opportunities of local exposure on the Internet, in the newspaper, in magazines, on TV news shows, and even on radio talk shows. During a radio or TV talk show, you can perform hair removal services live on the male and female models, show hosts, and DJs while callers ask questions for gift certificate prizes.
Bare Necessities!
Create strategic objectives, goals, and action plans to help share your hair removal expertise with the local community while strategically building your service treatments into an important new and profitable business. The challenge is that professional hair removal services are often an overlooked service for most salons and day spas, while they focus on the ever popular hair color services, hair straightening, facial treatments, and massage therapies. Now is the time to expand your hair removal services, expertise, products, and equipment.
Larry H. Oskin is president of Marketing Solutions, a full-service marketing, advertising, graphic design, media relations and consulting services agency specializing in the professional beauty business. Clients include salons, day spas, medical clinics, manufacturers, and associations from across North America. 703-359-6000, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.mktgsols.com