Pamela Hill Institute

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and offering special spa menu items for lovers only is a great way to perk up business and please your clients at the same time. Valentine’s Day, named for St. Valentine, is the traditional day of showing your affection for your special someone. Traditionally men would buy their wives or girlfriends candy and flowers and make the day a special occasion with an evening out, dinner, a show or some other special event. These days women also tend to get something special for the man in their lives. Making a special Valentine’s Day gift of a trip to the spa for favorite treatments is a way of showing just how much you care.

Consider this guys, your favorite lady works hard all day. If she is a homemaker she has chores around the house, errands to run, kids to take care of and meals to fix. If she works outside of the home then she puts in the same type of effort you do in the eight to five grind, working all day to make a living. Whatever she does, she deserves a break. A facial, a massage, perhaps a chance to have an alphahydroxy skin peel if that’s something she’s been considering. Or better yet, many spas offer Total Day of Hedonism packages, a package that includes a long list of spa services to be taken advantage of, using up an entire day and making the client feel special indeed. If your spa doesn’t offer a package like this consider creating one. Make arrangements with a local limousine company to offer pick up at the client’s home to bring her to the spa and a trip back home at the end of the day. Perhaps you could also team up with a florist and a nice restaurant to make it a truly total Valentine’s Day package. Offering a package like this would be unique and make your spa stand out from all of the rest and would intrigue many men who are looking for something truly unusual and guaranteed to show their affection.

If you create a Total Hedonist’s Day Out At The Spa package, but sure to let your clients know. Have a hand out, which many of them will leave  out for their husband or boyfriend to find. Also do an appropriate amount of advertising to make sure that the reset of your city knows this package is available. You’ll be surprised at the number of people who take advantage of this offer, and may want to make it a regular part of your inventory.

Make your beauty business clients feel at home and relaxed by choosing  the right paint colors for treatment room walls. This might sound like a no brainer, but this is an area that is at times forgotten. Relaxation is important to the client and many things affect the ability to relax, among them the colors on the wall.

Are you old enough to remember the sixties? If not you’ve probably seen examples in movies like Austin Powers of the psychedelic era in decorating. While to many people it was a fun time, it was not very relaxing. Who can relax with psychedelic paint on the wall. For that matter who could relax with a bright, energetic paint like red, orange or fireman’s yellow? The treatment room needs to be done in soft colors. Pastels, off white, oyster shell, very light blue, perhaps with a soft gray tint, ivory, or anything else that is soft on the eyes, pleasing to see and not stimulating.

The paint in the room of course isn’t the only thing to use to contribute to a relaxed state of mind for your clients. Soft music, sounds of nature, subdued lighting, high quality and high thread count sheets, pillow cases and other linens, all of these things contribute in a very positive manner, and your client – if properly relaxed may even doze off, which is not a bad thing at all. A relaxing experience is one of the benefits of a visit to the spa or aestheticians office.

To choose the proper paint some business people consult with professional designers to see what they are able to accomplish. This can be quite pricey, but you may be able to barter services. If so it can be worth checking out. Many others simply try to use their own bet judgment in consultation with the manager of the paint store, telling the manager what needs to be accomplished and looking at samples they have available, often taking paint samples back to the spa or home to show to relatives, friends and neighbors to get opinions on what shades are the most relaxing. Keep in mind however that studies have been done by psychologists on the tones that relax and you can find this information online doing a search on the Internet. Put time, effort and care into your choices and your clients will benefit.

These days any serious business will have a website. The reasons are too numerous to mention, but suffice it to easy that having a website in the 21st century is as important as having a business card and a telephone number were in the 20th century. Websites mean business and if you have a website one of the benefits is the ability to set appointments online.

Allowing your clients to book with you on your website is convenient for them. It also leaves a very positive impression on them and on others, makes it easier for them and therefore makes it more likely that they will be setting more and more appointments as time goes on.

You’ll need a system that works for you. If you, a friend or a family member are techies, technically oriented and able to make alterations to a website, then setting up your system should be quite easy. If you are not technically oriented then the cost of having this service performed is quite reasonable. It is also possible that you’ll be able to trade out services with a local computer store or web designer offering this type of service. They may well be wondering what to get their significant other for Valentine’s Day and this might just be the thing.

You’ll need to appoint someone to check the website on a regular basis every day, but this process can be made simpler by having your web designer create an auto responder that confirms the appointment with the client and in turn forwards a message to your email. Then you will have an easy to print electronic record of all appointments set on your web site.

Offline promotion of the fact that you are now online capable is a good marketing tool. Put in your ads that you now accept appointments online and list your website address. Print it on your business cards, brochures and flyers and make sure your employees mention it to all clients and you’ll be amazed at the large numbers that flock to your website, raising hits and in turn telling their friends. You’ll find that this small step will have a large positive impact on your business. With that in mind, go ahead and enter the21st century. Set up a business website and make appointments online. It’s the wave of the future.

The library of any serous aesthetician should include good books and DVDs to use for reference material and as training aids for new hires in the aesthetician business or spa. Among those books and DVDs there should be a large space reserved for the books and DVDs by industry expert Pamela Hill, all written and prepared form a professional perspective. Among these books you will find:  Common Diseases, a Handbook for the Aesthetician. The points made clear in this wonderful volume are that a  skin care specialist, regardless of her area of emphasis should be able identify common skin problems. This book starts at the beginning; understanding skin disorders and diseases and knowing what the role of the aesthetician is within the scope of your license. It is a reference guide, not an in-depth study of the diseases and disorders that are presented. It provides a professional overview including the popular and reader friendly “Top Ten Tips to Take to the Clinic”, to help you to become all that you can be!

Your shelf should also contain Common Drugs, a Handbook for the Aesthetician. Almost daily a clinician will find herself looking at an intake sheet and wondering about the drugs a patient is taking. What are they for? Do they affect the skin? Will they cause a reaction? Skin sensitivity is a concern, but not all aestheticians have access to a PDR and this book will be a quick help for referencing the drugs that a patient is using. Drugs properly used improve quality of life, but reactions need to be avoided. While an aesthetician’s job does not include medication management or disease management it is very important that the aesthetician understand a little bit about diseases and the drugs that improve the quality of life of the client. The more the clinician knows about her client the easier it is to manage their skin care.  

These are just a few of the books available by Pamela Hill, known internationally as an expert in skin care and the aesthetician business, and a pioneer in medical spas. Additionally she has many DVDs available to assist an aesthetician in improving professional skills in order to better serve clients and overall become a more skilled aesthetician. Checking out the books and DVDs available and gaining the knowledge they contain will make you a better practitioner of your craft.

When it comes time to promote your aesthetics business one tool you need in your marketing arsenal is an attractive and effective brochure. Do you have one yet? If not, it is time to get one prepared.

A brochure is usually one sheet of paper printed on both sides and folded, most of the time into a trifold shape, allowing the reader to open it up and see information about your business easily, in small chucks of information rather than long pieces of gray and hard to read text.

Pick up copies of brochures prepared by other businesses that cater to the same market you do, or for that matter any brochure used by a quality company and take a look at the way it is laid out. When preparing your own brochure remember that you are putting a positive spin on the company and need to present your business in the best light possible. That means among other things that the brochure should be error free.

Decide what information you want to get across to a reader to sell your service to a prospect. Make a rough outline, putting the4 information you want to accomplish in bullet points, including phrases and slogans that you commonly use. If you have good, clear photos or graphics to utilize, then do so. A picture tells a thousand words according to the old proverb and with a brochure it is certainly true.

Ask your coworkers for advice on information they would like to see included and keep them in the loop. They work with clients every day and can provide valuable insight. When you are finished it is time to decide whether you will use color or black and white, and if color spot color or four color process. You also need to decide on the printing method and find a professional to assist you.

Spot color means adding one, two or three colors to the black ink used as a highlight. You could use blue and red for instance, or green and red and draw attention. Four color process means full color, like a color television or a color photo. Four color costs more but it attracts more attention. If you have it in your budget opt for four color.

Have a professional writer or graphic artist go over your ideas and show you how they can fit on a brochure. Before picking a pro look at samples of other brochures they’ve prepared and show them what you like. Let them put it together, proofread carefully and then go through the same process with printers, picking someone who is reasonable priced but whose quality is exceptional.