Should I Do an Offer When My Beauty Business Is Quiet?
Short answer: no.
Longer answer, and I'm going to be honest rather than preachy, because I've done it and I know exactly what it feels like the moment before you do.
What it feels like
It's about nine o'clock. You've looked at next week and there's four appointments in it. You've been telling yourself all fortnight that it's fine, it's August, everyone's quiet. And tonight the telling yourself stopped working.
So you open Canva. And you make a graphic that says £10 OFF THIS WEEK ONLY, and you post it, and something happens in your chest that feels like relief.
That feeling is the whole problem. Not the discount. The relief.
Because you didn't make that graphic to get bookings. You made it to stop feeling helpless for ten minutes. And it worked, which is why you'll do it again in three weeks.
What it actually costs
Here's what happens. You get four bookings.
Three of them were coming anyway. They're your regulars, they were due, and you've just paid thirty quid for the privilege of seeing people who were already walking through your door. The fourth has never been before and won't come back at full price, because she didn't book you. She booked the offer.
So the maths is bad on the day. But that's not the expensive bit.
The expensive bit is you've just taught every client on your list a lesson, and the lesson is: if I wait, she goes cheaper.
They won't do it on purpose. Nobody's sat there plotting. But next time your client's deciding whether to book now or leave it a fortnight, something in the back of her head says leave it. And you'll never know that's why, because a delayed booking looks exactly like a quiet week.
That's the thing about discounting. It doesn't fail loudly. It fails in a way that looks like bad luck.
"But I need money this week"
I know. That's real, and I'm not going to pretend a principle pays your gas bill.
So let me be practical instead of pious. If you need cash this week, a discount's a rubbish way to get it, because the four bookings it produces are mostly bookings you'd already earned. There's a faster way and it costs you nothing.
What to do instead, tonight
Open your booking app and write down every client who hasn't been in since June.
Not new people. Not strangers. The women who used to come and have stopped.
It's always longer than you think. Most of us have never once written this list down, which is mad when you think about it, because it's the most valuable thing you've got.
Every name on it is someone who already knows you, already likes your work, already paid full price at least once and hasn't gone anywhere. She's fallen out of routine, nothing's pulled her back in, and she isn't going to pull herself.
Then send one message to one name. Not an offer. Not a broadcast. One message, to one person, that sounds like it came from a human being who noticed she was missing.
That converts better than any graphic you've ever made, it costs you nothing, and it doesn't teach anybody to wait. 🤌
The uncomfortable bit
You already knew all this. You didn't need me to tell you discounting's a trap. Every beautician knows.
And you're still going to be sat there at nine o'clock on a Sunday with Canva open, because knowing something and doing something are completely different animals, and the gap between them isn't a knowledge gap. It's that you're frightened and on your own and there's nobody to ask.
That's the actual problem. Not the discount.
WE CAN HELP - JOIN OUR NEXT FREE TRAINING
Fill Your September Diary From a Quiet August
Free live training. Thursday 20 August, 8pm. Sixty minutes.
Live content audits. The Facebook group script that's booked one of my members 5+ clients this month. And a pricing audit we do together on the night. Bring your grid. 💕
Hannah did lashes and brows for seven years and got fully booked in the Liverpool student district using organic social media only. She's taught over 3,000 beauticians and is a Booksy ambassador.
Comments