Start an awesome beauty business. While the economy might be challenged, and that’s putting it mildly, there’s no better time than now, to start your awesome beauty business. After all, you’re going to start at some point in time. Why not here and now?
They’re following their passion … looking for a way to help others … running feverishly to get away from managers that have gotten a little clout and abuse it.
A lot of you were toying with the idea of starting a business before you were ordered to shelter in place and work from home.
You’ve chosen the field of beauty.
Have you already started dabbling … making products, selling products that others make? How do you want to enter into this space known as the world of beauty?
Sit down with pen and paper.
Yes… step away from your electronic devices. Sit in the sun and begin to write down what you see for your business.
There was a time when lipstick was the go to product in a recession, depression, down economy … however you want to phrase it. We’re working our way through a global pandemic which has stopped the world in its tracks. The global economy has come to a halt. It has forced the wearing of mask every time we exit our doors.
What does this mean for lipstick?
You guessed it. No one will be wearing lipstick for a while with the Coronavirus and Covid-19 still very present in the world. Mask are part of the new normal. So … starting a company that sells lipstick, will not be the best product to offer at this time.
Pivot your focus. What about lip balms and moisturizers? Lips still need attention under all those mask people are wearing.
Not only has the beauty industry changed, the clients you serve have changed. Take a look at what’s being written in the beauty space. The language is about clean beauty, organic and natural ingredients, a basic skin care regimen.
This is suggesting that caring for the skin is more important at this point that wearing a lot of makeup. If make up is worn it will have to fit into the categories mentioned above.
Pivot, turn your attention to offering a product that will better the condition of your potential client’s needs. Lots of research will need to take place before you take your leap, especially starting out now.
Don’t let it scare you though. Keep moving towards starting your business. Know that it will need to be digital. This presents another learning curve for you.
Taking your business online will allow you to sell outside of your immediate environment. It presents you with an opportunity to gain feedback from visitors and purchasers alike.
They will tell you what they want. Your job is to listen.
There are many steps to going digital with your business. In the beginning you will wear many hats. A down economy requires that you be very frugal with your resources. Any economy does actually.
Starting out, you will need to test the waters so to speak, even if you know your product was selling before the global economic shutdown.
What typically stops most people from starting a business is fear. It makes you start second guessing yourself. Nothing will be perfect, even after you’ve been in business for years. You’ll still have doubts and frustrations, but it’s okay.
That’s it for this week. As always, we’re …
Dedicated To Your Success,
Juliette & Robert
Beauty Business Blueprint
Keywords are the foundation for building your beauty business. If you’re working towards launching a blog, website or an e-commerce site in the beauty space you’re going to hear certain terms over and over again. One of those terms is “keywords”. No content, no copy, advertising or product descriptions are written without the inclusion of keywords.
If you look at a basic definition of the term “keywords”, it’s often defined as a search term for search engines and words that identify the content of a given website. Sounds like tech talk, right?
While you may not fully understand what keywords are, you have in one way or another, influenced the choice of keywords of random websites on the internet.
Everyone who uses the internet has. When people go to Google or any other search engine and enter a query, let’s say, “best beauty product ideas”, that query is technically a keyword.
Another way of defining the term “Keywords” is that they are words or phrases that are used on blogs, websites and e-commerce sites aimed at you, the internet user. As a website owner, you’ll assume the possible words internet users might type in when searching for their products/services and use them.
If they choose the right words (keywords), then they stand a good chance of being found by a lot of people who are searching for your products/services.
Keywords Can Boost Your Website’s Rank on SERPs. SERPs (search engine results pages) are the pages delivered to you once you type in a “keyword” or “keyword phrase” in the search box.
Google is the number one search engine on the internet, therefore, make sure your website meets Google’s standards. The only way internet users will find your site, is if Google can find it. While there are more than 200 factors Google considers when ranking a website, what will make Google find your website is the keywords you use. Google is all about giving its users relevant answers to their searches which is why it depends (not exclusively) on keywords to find websites or web pages that are relevant to the queries users enter.
Therefore, using the right keywords can make Google bring up your website or web page anytime people search for words that are related to your keywords. In other words, using the right keywords is part of optimizing your pages and can make your website appear on the first page of search engine result pages (SERPs). Google rewards websites that use keywords that are relevant to users’ queries by boosting their rank on search results pages.
When your website ranks on SERPs, it gets seen by more people and many of them will click on your website. These people will be added to your website’s traffic. This means that keywords can also increase the number of visitors your website gets.
Think about what your brand stands for, who your ideal customer is, what they need, and how they will search for your products or services.
Then create a list of possible words and phrases your ideal customer can use when searching for your products/services.
If you already have a website and some customers, you will learn a lot about the language your customers use by simply asking them. You can carry out surveys or A/B testing to learn more about your customers. Secondly, if your website has a search button where customers enter their queries, you can use a data-collecting tool to record the terms they use. You can also use a data-collecting tool to record the term “visitors” who were redirected from SERPs used.
What keywords are mostly used in your niche industry? What keywords are your competitors using? Do your research to find out.
Keywords that are popular in your industry are automatically right for you. And if your competitors are ranking on SERPs for particular words, that should tell you that the same words or phrases can also be right for you.
Some popular keywords used in the beauty industry are: acne, dark spots, hyperpigmentation, SPF, skin care, skincare, natural, organic, eco friendly, clean beauty … you get the picture.
Type any one of these words or phrases into your Google search box and you’ll see the SERPs (search engine results pages) that have been chosen by Google.
If you don’t want to go through the stress of keyword research, then you can use keyword research tools to find good keywords. There are many of them both free and premium, do your research to find out which tool is best for you.
Examples of keyword research tools would be, Google keyword planner, Ubersuggest, or keyword finder.
The first thing you should know about using keywords is that it doesn’t guarantee that your website will do well on SERPs. There are other factors such as quality of content, page load speed, bounce rate, etc, that determine how a website is ranked on SERPs. Therefore, they should be used along with other practices that can grow your website.
One of the reasons why using keywords became so hard is because marketers abused it. They manipulated their use to deceive Google’s algorithms and eventually got punished for it. Now, Google will flag your website if you abuse keywords. What does it mean to abuse keyword use?! Using the same word five or six times in one three-line paragraph is a good example. This is known as a form of keyword stuffing.
So, make sure that your keywords blend well with the rest of your web content. Use those that are relevant to your web content and Website-at-large to avoid misleading visitors. Avoid keyword stuffing.
Always input relevant keywords in your elements. One of your website elements is your URL. Use your primary keyword here. It represents the entirety of what your website is about. If your niche product is colorful lipsticks, your URL could be colorfullipsticks.com. This tells your visitors that your website is all about colorful lipsticks.
Title tags: use relevant keywords in your article titles. Using them in your titles will influence your click-through rate.
Images and videos: As you upload images and videos on your website, change the automatically generated nonsensical name. Using the name of the article is always good. Input a relevant keyword here. You should always transcribe your videos and include relevant keywords in the transcripts.
Other elements that you can input keywords in are; schema markups, alt tags, alt attributes, ARIA tags, meta tags, internal links, link anchor texts, subheadings, and lots more.
You’ll learn more about these terms as we delve deeper into getting your website ready to sell your beauty products.
The aim of using keywords is to rank on SERPs and grow your web traffic. It wouldn’t make sense if you don’t monitor them to see how they perform.
This is also why you need to have keyword tools. You want to find out which of your keywords are bringing in traffic, which ones are increasing your click-through rate, and which ones are doing poorly.
It’s like an experiment, you keep doing what’s giving you your desired results. You fix the ones that aren’t. Or stop using them.
Start your keyword research now if you are yet to launch your website.
I know … it’s a lot to take in. You’ll get there in due time. You can’t rush the process. However, you can be consistent in your approach.
That’s it for this week. As always…
Dedicated To Your Success
Juliette Samuel,
Using email marketing to build a powerful audience? Did you know that 4.33 billion people in the world have access to the internet and 3.93 billion of them use email? This is enough to shut down the argument that comes up regularly about how email marketing is dying.
It’s not and it’s not going to die anytime soon because email still remains the best platform to interact with your clients. Over 90% of U.S. adults use email. Of which about 61% of them check and send emails frequently.
This shows that there’s a mouthwatering opportunity for e-commerce business owners in email marketing.
The first step to launching your email marketing campaign is to find subscribers you can put in your email list. There are several ways to do this. You can start with the existing client emails you already have. Ask them what they’d like to see more of.
If you don’t have clients yet or if you want to increase your list of email subscribers, you can add free giveaways. Value added materials such as ebooks, step-by-step guides or check sheets will be appreciated. Then ask for their emails to send it to them.
Our first giveaway was an ebook. It had no image or perceived value attached to its cover. Duh! After a phone conference with an online consultant, we added those two elements. We’ve also updated the ebook over the years to reflect the changes in the beauty industry.
If your business sells acne products, your free give-a-way might be on “How to Clear Facial Acne in Three Weeks.” It will definitely impress the customer base of a skincare brand with an acne product. They won’t mind signing up to your newsletter or submitting their emails to you. You can also run a paid ad and create a landing page where you will ask visitors to sign up. We’ll talk more about paid advertising and landing pages in future articles. Keep in mind that most people won’t sign up if they’re not getting anything in return.
Once you have an email list, you should start studying your subscribers to understand their personalities. You will use the information you gather to categorize them into groups based on whatever deciding factors or parameters you see fit. The factors can include age range, geographic location, preferences, body type, etc. One of the methods you can use to determine your subscribers’ personalities is by conducting A/B testing.
A segmented email list will make it easier to send out personalized marketing messages your subscribers can relate to. To make it more personal, address each one of your subscribers by their first name. This is done with simple coding on the back end.
The next step is to create a good design template for your email. You can use tools like Canva for your newsletter template, design one from scratch yourself or hire a graphics designer to do it. Now, your email template must reflect your brand — the color, font, logo, etc Everything about your emails must be congruent with your brand identity. This is crucial. It tells your clients and potential clients they’re in the right place.
Don’t make the design of your email template too complex. Your targeted audience will get distracted by the design. Next, create a friendly message with a punchy or exciting subject to go with it. There’s a good chance that people won’t open your email if the subject doesn’t immediately catch their attention. We get too many emails every day, most of which never get opened. Therefore, it’s a good idea for you to always create headlines lines that will stand out.
The body of your email should be written with warm language so that the email doesn’t read like a threat. Also, try to keep it simple. Don’t write a long text of words expecting your subscribers to read it. Be precise with your message, and always include a call to action (CTA). We’ll talk more in detail about call to actions (CTA’s) in another article.
You can always include pictures in your email. Not too many, they can be distracting. Make sure they are high-quality images that can be accessed via mobile devices and desktop.
Email marketing is not about the number of times you send out emails. It’s more about the quality of the message as well as the impact and results of your email campaigns. Your A/B testing should also tell you the best time to send out your emails.
A/B testing is a method used to compare two versions of a webpage, or email against each other and determine which one performs best based on your desired actions.
In fact, to get your desired results, it will be better if you send out the emails following the time preferences of the different categories of your subscribers. If they get your emails at a time that is convenient for them, they will be more willing to click and carry out the desired action you want them to.
You definitely won’t have time to create email after email every day. Even if you’re a genius it won’t make sense. It will be a waste of time considering that you have a business to focus on.
You can automate your emails with email automation tools, there are many of them in the market. Mailchimp, Customer.io, Constant Contact and Drip are automation tools used by many.
Email automation tools will also help with building a relationship with new clients right off the bat — you can automate your welcome and “thank you for the purchase” emails as well as other email messages you’d like to automate.
You’ll be able to monitor your email campaign performance. Using marketing tools such as Hubspot or Active Campaign will make it easier. Don’t rush this process. You will learn as you build your email list for your beauty business online. There are automation tools to help you build your list.
● It is Easier to Keep in Touch With Your Customer Base
Customer acquisition and follow-up are well supported by email marketing. With emails, you can curate interesting content that’s not always about sales. You can deliver them to your customers’ inbox, just to maintain the relationship you have with them.
● You Can Reach Mobile Customers
It also makes it easier to reach mobile customers. Social media may look like it’s the best way to reach mobile customers. However, this is not always correct. You can’t segment your customer base into categories and that means that you are technically not targeting anyone. Email marketing comes with a natural personalized feature, that you don’t even have to go the extra mile to achieve it.
Usually, people who own smartphones, which is a whole lot of people, always have it on them. Smartphone users can see emails immediately, therefore, they can decide whether to open it. Social media doesn’t have that feature. Business owners would have to hope for some customers to turn on their notifications.
This article only scratches the surface of what email marketing can do for your beauty business. In future articles and trainings, we’ll delve deeper into how email marketing can help you build your audience and business.
Feel free to let us know what you’d like to see more of as we help you build your business online.
As always …
We’re Dedicated To Your Success
Juliette & Robert
Using SEO to build your beauty business? The quickest way to make it if you are just starting an eCommerce business is either to be rich or be famous; you know, like Rihanna, Kylie Jenner, Beyoncé and other celebs who are now running giant e-commerce businesses. But where’s the fun in that?
Actually, there could be a lot of fun. However, most of us have to work for it. The key is in working smart, more so than working hard.
How else would You gain some foundational knowledge and skills most e-commerce business owners gained from starting small?
If you’re Not rich or famous and you’re looking to build your e-commerce business, SEO is available to help you build the needed foundation. This article will introduce you to SEO and how you can use SEO to grow your e-commerce site.
Search Engine Optimization involves a set of practices that you, as the website owner, can use to enhance your website. These practices are necessary in order to improve how your website performs on search engines and on the internet in general. The ultimate goal of SEO is to drive traffic to your e-commerce site and increase sales.
One of the reasons you, as new e-commerce site owners often put aside SEO at the early stage of your website, is the assumption that only professionals understand SEO. On the other hand, some of you underrate the influence SEO can have on your e-commerce site and instead focus on social media marketing and paid Ads.
What you don’t know is that SEO generates the highest return on investment (ROI) for e-commerce marketing. While SEO can be done by just about anyone, with consistent study, it doesn’t require special training. You only have to be consistent with your efforts and you will see your eCommerce site grow.
I was sharing this information with a new client and out of her mouth comes: “I have to create content?” Yes, quality content.
When starting, most of you as new e-commerce store owners, assume that you don’t need to have a blog section. However, this assumption does more damage than good, especially for new e-commerce sites that don’t have a reputation yet.
Having a blog section can be a chance for you to create a community of potential buyers. Create quality articles that offer your site’s visitors great value for their time, be it pleasure, information or education that is related to the subject of your site.
Gradually, your site will gain more awareness among internet users and will become an authority in your industry. You can also rank on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) if you create quality articles and include good keywords.
So, start creating quality articles regularly to teach potential buyers how to use your products/services, be creative with it. Keep in mind that most consumers prefer to learn about a brand from a blog post instead of through official announcements like press releases.
Link building is a way to inform Google’s algorithm that your website has a good industry reputation. Your website will be scored based on the number of authoritative websites that link back to your site. If many high-quality websites link back to your website, that means your site is in some way reputable as well. Also, those back links can drive traffic to your site.
Imagine a website such as Forbes.com linked back to your website, your site has a chance of getting traffic influx. You most likely won’t be able to get highly reputable sites to link back to your site, especially in the beginning. It doesn’t matter, start small. Reach out to sites in your niche industry for link building so that you will get potential buyers who are interested in your products/services. You can manually search for similar sites or use tools to search for websites that might be willing to exchange links. You can also guest blog on authoritative websites. They will publish your blog post if you write quality content that is relevant to their audience.
This is a set of SEO practices that involves strategies that can make your site more locally prominent. Start by creating a good profile on Google My Business for your e-commerce site. Use local search keywords, for example, ”Best aesthetician in Atlanta” or whatever your city is, on your content. You can launch ”Near Me” marketing campaigns. Another useful move is to get buyers to review your business on Google map.
Although you’ll have your main business set up online, some of you might choose to wholesale to small boutiques. Using local SEO tactics will help perspective clients find your products in stores. There they can experience them by seeing what they look like, what the smell like, how they feel and how well they moisturize your skin.
It appears that the world now has a reduced attention span. We are no longer patient. In the e-commerce industry, this means that your website has two or three seconds at most to load, or potential buyers will leave your site for sites that load faster. Additionally, one of the deciding factors for ranking on SERPs is loading speed. Another thing with speed is that it can affect your bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to how quickly visitors leave your site. If they leave too soon, your bounce rate will increase and it’s a bad thing because it is also considered when ranking a website for SERPs.
To improve your site’s loading speed, use simple designs and
themes, and don’t complicate your site’s navigation or paging style. Make sure
you host your site on a good web hosting plan that offers at least 99% uptime.
Google is now mobile-first, and this is because more than 50% of internet activity takes place on mobile devices. Simply put, there are more people using their smartphones and tablets to access the internet than the people using their desktop. Hence, you have to cater to mobile users as much as, if not better than, you cater to desktop users.
Page loading speed is one of the factors that can affect how your site will operate on mobile devices. Mobile users are more impatient than desktop users. Use themes that are compatible with both desktop and mobile devices.
You won’t be able to monitor all your SEO practices and performances. You have other important aspects of your business to focus on. Therefore, you should make use of quality SEO tools. There are several SEO tools that you can integrate with your e-commerce site to collect data that you can use to improve your SEO strategies.
We’ll talk in detail about SEO tools at another time.
There are many more strategies we didn’t highlight here. However, what you should take from this is that SEO should not be pushed to later. Start immediately producing content before you even launch your e-commerce beauty site.
That’s it for this week. As always ….
Dedicated to Your Success,
Juliette Samuel
Did you celebrate your first earned dollar? I remember the first earned dollar we made with our beauty business. I’d made a batch of bath salts and found some pretty jars online to package them. My labels were made of card stock paper and tied around the neck of the bottle with different color ribbons to represent the different scents.
I was selling lingerie at the time and it was around Valentine’s Day. A friend who often called me the “scent queen”, asked me to put together something special for his wife.
I knew her personally, knew her size and what she liked in scents. However, I’d never asked either of them to buy my products. I filled his request and when he picked it up he was with another male friend who saw it and liked it. He asked me if I’d prepare a gift similar to the one our friend had picked up for his wife.
Of course I did!
My first earned dollar turned out to be $250 and that’s because lingerie was added to the mix. It was a creative move on my part because I knew that their wives liked my lingerie and the bath salts along with a body wash. Hand made labels and non-traditional containers were the key.
Each of them had to pay me $125 for the contents and my creativity. These were special containers because time and energy went into the creation of the gift.
Did I celebrate?
You bet I did!
I knew then that I could sell beauty products. We’ve long since discontinued the lingerie because I learned that I had a passion for beauty products, not to mention it was easier for inventory control.
Skin care has become my focus and love. Because of this, I enrolled in an Aesthetics Program and became a licensed Esthetician. This gave me a much deeper understanding of skin, my clients and prospects and exactly how to help them solve their problems and challenges.
One of my mentors once said that if you can earn $1 you can certainly scale it up to earn hundreds, even thousands of dollars or more.
How do you do that?
By becoming an Expert in your field and becoming a student of marketing. As I’ve stated before, you’re in the business of marketing products. The more you learn about marketing, the more money you will make.
So when you make your first dollar, jump for joy. This will be the beginning of learning how to scale your business to the point of making thousands, even millions. Estee Lauder, Annie Malone, Elizabeth Arden and Madam C. J. Walker, to name a few all did it. So can you.
That’s it for this week. As always, we’re ….
Dedicated To Your Success,
Juliette & Robert Samuel,
Marketing beauty products online? This is direct sales. You talk directly to your market selling them what they want and need. First, You will need to educate yourself on what direct sales is all about. You will be on a learning curve because without the knowledge of how to market and sell to your clients, you will have no business.
One of the tools used to market your beauty business is the Internet. You will need to learn how to write a headline, how to use bullets, how to write an Ad for print and the Internet and you will have to resolve yourself to being an ongoing student for the rest of your life. Still with me?
This is no joke. Without knowledge of what business you’re in, how to market it and how to use the many avenues available to sell your product to your clients, you will certainly perish.
However you commute to and from work, exercise class or the grocery store, your automobile should become a University on Wheels for you. Use your commute time for listening to podcast. They will teach you something new about running your beauty business more effectively.
Once you learn a body of knowledge, take action and implement it. I know first hand what it means not to implement what you learn in a timely manner. I knew that there were certain things that should have been done, like shooting videos, writing copy for an article or placing an order for ingredients ahead of time. However, I didn’t always do what was necessary. Cost us time and money.
When you take action, this puts you ahead in the game of business. To learn a body of knowledge is great. However, taking action on what you’ve learned is even better.
It’s been said that in sports, the best athletes arrive early and leave long after the other team mates are gone. It shows in their skills on the court and is reflected in the amount of money they are paid. Would you like to become the best paid entrepreneur in your field?
In business, one of the keys to success is to put progress ahead of perfection. If you seek perfection it tends to cause procrastination and this can hold your business hostage.
Education and Implementation are the keys that set you a part from the rest of the players. Education equals learning what plays you need to know. Implementation is practicing and executing the plays and strategies long after everyone else has given up.
We often hear that knowledge is power. It’s Applied knowledge that really gives you Power.
That’s it for this week. As always, we’re …
Dedicated to Your Success
Juliette & Robert Samuel,
Working from home as a beauty entrepreneur? What are the benefits? Whether you’re a woman working from home or a mom who does the same, the rewards can be great!!
What’s the difference in being a woman working from home and a work at home mom, you ask? It’s simple, not all women working from home are mothers.
These are just a few of your concerns I’m sure but how do you work your way through them?
Typically, most women will gravitate towards the beauty industry looking for a type of business that they can start on a small scale and grow it from home.
There have always been companies that women could gravitate to and sell beauty products from their homes. The beauty industry has given us great examples, Avon and Mary Kay just to name two of them.
Look at some of the mentors we’ve had to look up to: Estee Lauder, Annie Malone (She taught Madame C.J. Walker), Madame C.J. Walker, Mary Kay Ash and Naomi Sims. These were all great women helping other women to become very successful.
These women all started in the beauty industry … skin, hair, perfumes, and body products … just to name a few. I’ll be willing to bet that you’ve sold or know someone that’s sold one of their products. And now you’re looking for a product to sell or create that will take you to your financial freedom.
Here are a few things to consider before you rush off looking to become the next “Blend Queen” of beauty products or begin to sell any product for that matter:
• How much will it cost you to start your beauty business from home?
• Can you run your beauty business using the Internet?
• Do you work ? Can you transition your way out of your current job? Will you have enough energy, time and money to make it happen?
• What do you know about running a business?
This list will grow and decrease in size as you grow in the knowledge of how to run your business and become very successful at it.
But until then, you’ll have to become one very organized individual. Still want to work from home selling beauty products? You won’t know until you try.
That’s it for this week. As always, we’re …
Dedicated To Your Success,
Juliette & Robert Samuel,
Start a beauty business?! You’ve been making products for years, you’ve even sold a few at your local craft fairs or corporate gift days at work. You’ve sold enough to have extra income. You like making those body butters and oils that have your skin looking and feeling soft as a baby’s bottom. More importantly, you want to have other’s experience your products, so that they can get the same results.
How do you let others to know that you exist and get your products in their hands? The best way is to have a web presence. I know … you’d like to see your line on the shelves of stores and be able to tell your family and friends where they can find your goods.
Before you go off trying to find a store to sell your beauty products, it’s best to establish your own platform for selling. Whether it’s one or more products, having your own website will allow you to get and stay in touch with your market. You’ll be able to find out what their interest are, what they like best about your products and more importantly, communicate directly with them through your blog or site.
Building your clientele list is crucial to the success of your business. Staying in constant communication with them is just as important. Writing a weekly email and turning it into a newsletter will keep you and your products top of mind. When you talk to your list about the solution, your products provide the answer to their skin care challenges.
Dry winter skin? You’ve got just the body butter to take care of it. Acne breakouts and pimples? Your serum will handle these challenges. Thinning edges? Your hair serum or butter will help with that as well as stimulate hair growth.
Readers will love that you’re speaking to them and their challenges, without trying to shove your products down their throats. Your writings will come across like a trusted adviser, not as someone who seems as though you’re saying “buy my stuff” every other paragraph.
Once you’ve got a following, you can consider approaching other stores about putting your products on their shelves. Then again, you might decide that you like how things are going and continue to sell direct to your buyers.
Do we have your attention? Is starting an online beauty business something you’d like to seriously consider? Join us here weekly as we talk with you about what’s it’s like to get your beauty business up and running.
We’ll help you work through the maze of details and questions that are bound to come up as you become a serious beauty business owner.
That’s it for this week. As always, we’re …
Dedicated To Your Success,
Juliette & Robert Samuel,
