Effective marketing: advertising your beauty business with leaflets

£70,000 is the approximate amount women in the UK spend on their appearances — that’s £1,352 every year, according to a study by Groupon. It seems that there is serious money to be made in the beauty industry — so how do you get ahead and attract customers over your competitors?

Cost-effective and effective, the simple print leaflet could hold the answer to your marketing deliberations. Here, we’re going to look at why leaflet marketing might be the perfect option to boost profits and brand awareness in 2018…

Want more for your money?

Compared to other options such as catalogues, a single-sheet leaflet is a great way to get the benefits of print marketing at a low cost. Despite common misconceptions that claim digital to be a free-of-charge platform for effective marketing techniques, your print material may actually be more effective than anything you could create digitally. A study that looked at the efficiency of print media compared to digital platforms including online banners conducted by research firm, GfK, showed that print ads provided the highest ROI: 120%. Perhaps digital is not as useful as anticipated.

Targeting your key demographic

Knowing your target audience is essential — without this knowledge, your campaign will be weakened and less successful. If you own a beauty company, women between the ages of 18 and 34 are your largest audience, as they make up the greatest part of the cosmetics market. But, how do you contact these women specifically? Make your leaflet marketing strategy a direct mail campaign! Direct mail is a form of marketing that helps companies send promotional material to a targeted group of current or potential customers. Therefore, you can reduce waste, save on over-ordering at the printer, and increase the chance that your leaflet will reach the right person.

Direct mail allows you to send your leaflets directly to potential customers within a particular age bracket in key locations around your business. To do this, start by either conducting your own target audience research — for example, by using social media or surveys — or purchasing key data, like ages and addresses, from third-party sites.

Direct mail print marketing

Beauty is always evolving and attracting fresh brands and aspirational business people — this makes it highly competitive. In fact, the amount of cash that’s in the sector makes it a popular one for start-up entrepreneurs. According to recent data, the global skincare, beauty and cosmetics industry is anticipated to reach a worth of $675 million by 2020. With a value of around £17 billion in the UK and employing more than one million people, these figures show that beauty is a lucrative and attractive line of business. So, how do you stand out?

Don’t think digital is your only option. If other brands are keeping their advertising online, go against the grain and invest in print! You probably already have a Facebook page and Instagram account to keep in touch with your clients, as well as an email database to send out deals as you wish. Therefore, opting for a print marketing campaign will allow you to widen your net and reach an offline audience, as well as do something your competitors possibly aren’t.

Research even indicates that print materials, such as leaflets, might prove superior as an effective marketing tool. Printed direct mail items require approximately 20% less brain effort to process than digital media, according to research by a neuromarketing firm, which suggests that it is simpler to understand and store in our memories. In a recall test, 75% of those taking part were able to recall the business name after viewing it on a direct mail ad, compared to only 44% who were able to after seeing it on a digital ad. Could it be that beauty brands that put all their ads and offers online are missing a trick?

Imprint your brand on potential customers’ minds

Essentially, your leaflet must work for all clients — those who visit you often, those who drop by irregularly, and those who haven’t heard about you yet. Even customers who visit often may start looking elsewhere, so work to attract and retain!

Making sure your brand, offers and services stay in the mind of your print marketing audience is key to maximising your ROI. Did you know that 45% of people keep leaflets on a board or in a drawer, according to the Direct Marketing Association? While digital ads disappear, you can create an attractive, lightweight leaflet that your potential customer will be inclined to pin on a wall or on their fridge where they’ll have a constant reminder of your services and products.

Promo offers and print leaflets

Who doesn’t love a discount? Beauty customers are also bargain hunters, and it could be that your leaflet might be the perfect platform for a too-good-to-miss deal! 57% of shoppers are encouraged to buy for the first time when they are given the chance to redeem a coupon, according to VoucherCloud, and 80% of consumers claim to use coupons regularly. If you’re looking to advertise new cosmetics or attract new customers for a flagging treatment, a leaflet that acts as a voucher can clearly help.

The research we looked at earlier already showed that we’re apparently more able to retain information form print products than from digital. So, could your audience gain extra time to act on the attractive discount you’re offering if you place it on a leaflet, rather than a pop-up ad or generic email? Possibly. To help, give a time limit on your offer and highlight this with a bold, coloured font on your leaflet to give your audience an effective reminder to act fast, too!

Making your leaflet attractive and appealing

We’re all guilty of allowing first impressions to guide what we think — and apparently, you have just 50 microseconds to make a good first impression! Consequently, it makes sense to use promotional material — whether it’s a simple leaflet or a chunky saddle-stitch brochure — that creates an instant impact, immediately signals your USPs, and is positively and attractively presented. A leaflet, unlike a brochure or pamphlet that can feature several pages, allows you to condense the very best of your services and products into one, easy-to-read page for maximum effect.

Your customers are coming to you for beauty treatments, so obviously, they care about their physical appearances and enjoy feeling good about themselves. A Consumer Insights 2017 report by Cosmetics Europe found that 71% of consumers believe that cosmetic and personal care are ‘important or very important in their daily lives’ — this makes offering your customers a beautifully designed leaflet all the more necessary and effective.

During the design stage, make sure your leaflet is first and foremost, attractive. Use complementary colours to create a pleasant aesthetic and high-quality images — nothing pixelated — featuring real people enjoying one of your treatments. According to 3M, a science-based tech company, humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. Therefore, incorporating two descriptive photos in your leaflet is likely to improve how much about your beauty business the reader takes in — which should mean they’re more likely to consider you.

There’s little doubt that a one-single leaflet could hold great power when it comes to boosting profits and clients at your beauty business. Research ideas and print companies online today to find the ideal leaflet design to enhance and promote your brand in 2018!