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So you're thinking of starting your own skin care brand, but don't know the first steps most likely to ensure your success? Begin by thinking about your brand before you take any action.
Step One
Identify Your Motives for Starting a Brand - Before you can move forward and identify your map for success you need to know where you want to go and why. Do you want to offer a few products to fill in the holes left open by your current skin care lines? Or are you interested in offering your own microbrand to your current clients? Do you just want to market a limited line of products or do you need something for everybody? Do you want to be the next Aveda, Estee Lauder, Proactiv® or Bliss™? Or are you simply looking for some good skin care to lay down a great canvas for the mineral makeup you have at your makeup counter?
Clearly identifying your reasons to start a brand, and being honest about your expectations of the brand, will help you know how much commitment you need to make to ensure it's a success. Big dreams demand big effort and lots of resources. Small dreams can be just as satisfying, especially when your resources are limited.
For some good advice on identifying and achieving your personal goals, visit: http://www.topachievement.com/goalsetting.html.
Step Two
Create Your Mission Statement - A good mission statement is the foundation on which your business is built. What's the mission of your brand? What is your brand's purpose and reason to exist? What need or needs does it meet? Does a group or groups you can identify value these needs?
Whether a business of one or a thousand, every successful organization begins by knowing why it exists. This is best done by identifying the over-arching goals and underlying purpose of why you started the brand. As your business develops, your Mission Statement acts as a resource document that can be referred to by you and your staff for guidance when making decisions, identifying your target market, hiring employees and developing successful products and services. To quote a popular commercial, "Don't leave home without it."
For more information about mission statements, read How to Write a Mission Statement by Janel M. Radtke: http://www.tgci.com/magazine/98fall/mission.asp.
Step Three
Identify your USP - Whether you explain it as your Unique Selling Position or Unique Selling Proposition, it amounts to the same thing: what makes your brand unique from your competition? Just as importantly, does this unique position offer you a small niche in the world of cosmetics or open up a large market? Is it of value to others, or is it of value mainly to yourself and the people immediately around you? Can your unique value to your market be summed up in one short statement?
Back in the late Seventies, Merle Norman repositioned their entire company when they adopted the tag line 'Your place for the custom face'. Rumor has it sales for the decades-old company climbed by triple digits. What's a good tag line - no, what's a remarkable tag line - for your new brand?
To learn more about developing your brand's USP and writing an effective tag line, read Unique Selling Proposition at http://www.businesstown.com/advertising/basic-usp.asp.
Step Four
Do as much market research as you can afford - For your brand to be successful, your focus must be on your client. Who will buy your brand? What do they want from your brand that they can't get anywhere else? What's important to them? What are their skin care needs and concerns, their lifestyles, the amount of time and money they're willing to invest in their skin? What brands do they currently buy? Why? What are the price points
of these brands?
Rather than take on the whole world, it's best to develop a three-tiered strategy by identifying your first, second and third tiers of clients and competitors (also called your 'primary, secondary and tertiary markets'). Describe each tier in detail, getting to know them as well as you know your best friend. Sometimes it helps to think of each tier as one individual, giving them a name, background and personality profile - and even finding a photo that represents what they look like.
Link each tier of clients to the brands, products and services they buy. This will identify competitors you can use as 'inspiration' as well as those who pose the biggest threats to your business. Once you know your three tiers, you can select products and develop services and marketing materials to appeal to clients in these three groups. Seek to provide more or better benefits and quality compared to what your prospective clients currently use. Or offer an additional benefit to what's in their current skin care repertoire. For instance, if you find a large part of your target market loves Vitamin C products, look for a product that improves on the Vitamin C story.
Being aware of your three tiers also allows you to split your resources accordingly. For instance, if you determine 60% of your clients are female executives between the ages of 25 and 40, then 60% of your product selection, services and marketing efforts will be aimed at this market. On the other hand, if your research shows clients come to you because you know more about brow shaping than anyone else in town, and brow shaping is big business where you are, you might want to put 90% of your product, service and marketing mix towards appealing to and satisfying this distinct niche.
For a short tutorial on how to conduct your own market research, read How to Find and Sell to Your Target Market by Marilyn Guille on Small Business: Canada's site at about.com: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/marketing/a/targetmarket.htm
Step Five
If you're already in business, analyze your current product and service mix - Determine if there's any "holes" in the brands you carry now, or if your clients are going elsewhere for a certain type of product you're currently not offering. Identify your most popular products and services, but also look at your least popular. Can you pair a new product with one that just never seems to catch on, increasing the value of both to your clients? Is there something you can add to make a service more appealing?
If you'd like more help along these lines, the best thing you can do is ask YG's staff of estheticians and marketing professionals: info@yglabs.com.
Here's a couple of books you might find useful as you begin to think about your brand:
MicroBranding: Build a Powerful Personal Brand & Beat Your Competition, T. Scott Gross, ISBN 0-9710078-2-9.
Preparing the Marketing Plan, by David Parmerlee, ISBN 0-658-00134-5.
Also visit:
Marketing Your Product or Service, Small Business: Canada at about.com:
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/marketing/a/?once=true&
Unique Selling Proposition, wikipedia.com:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition
Unique Selling Proposition: What makes you different from your competitors?
http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/marketing_advertising_usp.html
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