I originally wrote this article in 2014!

Marketing my Skin Care Center was much easier in the 90’s! First of all, there weren’t as many of us and now we’re on every corner. There definitely wasn’t any competition with internet discount campaigns that seem to be running rampant nowadays. Back then fabulous customer service and a newsletter every now and then did the trick. I grew a very successful business in the 90’s but things are different now. We really need to be creative, don’t we? Below are a few things that I’ve done for my Center that have worked well.

Years ago someone taught me about putting ads on Craiglist on a regular basis. I can hear you thinking about not finishing this article after reading that! Hold on, there’s a good reason and it doesn’t have anything to do with getting clients from Craiglist. Hear me out! I started placing an ad every week (they’re free!) and pretty soon I started showing up higher and higher on the search engines. The more your name is out there, the more the internet thinks you are important and will move you up on the search engines. That’s the reason I place the ads. It’s not to get new clients, it’s to move up! Once you’ve written one ad, each week all you have to do is hit “repost”. It takes two seconds and it’s well worth it.

August is typically a slow month so I sent out an email to my contacts with a special that they couldn’t say no to. I wanted to get the appointment book filled. You want it to be something that they just can’t pass up. I called it the “Sizzling Summer Super Lift” treatment. It was for a 30 minute treatment using my Face Enhancer toy (now the NanoSkin Pro). The price was only $40. It’s not about making a ton of money on this appointment, it’s about getting them back in the swing of coming in regularly. I added that if they brought a friend with them that had never been to our Center the price would be $60 for the both of them. Again, it’s not about getting rich from this appointment. Now I’ve got them thinking about who they can get to come with them and that person will be a new client for me. I even had one gal say “Oh, I’ve got two friends I want to bring”. This turned out to be a very successful campaign. January is a good month to give this a try.

Many years ago, when I was about to turn 40 I sent out a newsletter letting all my clients know about my Birthday. I stated that if you send me a Birthday card, you’ll receive a discount on your next facial. I received 56 Birthday cards that year. Many were from clients that I had not seen in quite some time. This year I did the same for 54^th Birthday (remember this article was written in 2014). This time it was to Estheticians. I stated that if you send me Birthday wishes, I’ll send you the link to my equipment workshop for FREE. To my excitement, I received over 300 emails on my Birthday! I was a very busy gal returning all those emails! My point is to make it something fun for your clients to engage in. You don’t have to wait for your Birthday to come around. How about one at Christmas time or New Years?

If you read this whole article, I want thank you much. Send me an email letting me know what you think and I’ll send you one of my Audio Snippets for FREE! Much love…Shelley