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Does discounting services ACTUALLY bring in more sales as an Esthetician?! · Honest Esthetician Education

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Hi, I'm Vitoria, a licensed esthetician and your host of your Best Edition podcast.
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This is Chris, my business partner and husband.
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Today's topic on your Best Edition podcast, we're going to talk about why not to discount your services.
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Never.
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Never discount your services.
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This is something that I feel everybody does because people think that it's the right thing to do, but in the long run, it hurts you.
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In my opinion.
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Don't get me on a rant when you just said that.
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It made me want to rant on like just because everybody else does something, anything in this space doesn't mean you should do it.
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Unless you're talking about people who are making millions of dollars a year and they have the same business model and strategy you do.
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then don't do it just because everybody else does it.
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And going back off my rant now, when you're talking about discounting services, if we compare, you know, us small businesses, compare ourselves to big, say, med spas or spas in general,
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they can discount their services because they are going for a lot of times quantity over quality.
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So they discount their services because they know we'll discount it, but we can run ads.
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We can run $5,000 a month ads and get 10,000 people in the door and they can make that money back off the quantity where for small businesses, why are you laughing?
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Cause I was so passionate.
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My throat made a really
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Oh, I don't know if you could really hear that.
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But anyways, I thought you were making fun of me again.
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No.
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Last time you made fun of me.
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But yeah.
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How many businesses have gone on Groupon and they regret it?
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Oh, if you have put your business on your pond, please comment below.
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I've heard this so much.
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Yeah.
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We're not mad at you.
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You get the worst people on Groupon.
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Yeah.
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We're not mad at you.
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We're just disappointed.
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Yeah.
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We're really not though.
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I think the problem is- No, it's trial and error.
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Yeah.
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It really isn't.
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And we've discounted services before.
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We never went on Groupon.
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Yeah.
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But I have worked for a spa that did do Groupon so I can relate.
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Yeah, and we've discounted services before too, and we hit the same problem every time where we hit a clientele that we don't want.
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And I think that we've gotten desperate, and it's always out of desperation that we go, well, what if we just do, and even when we started the business, one of my selling points to you was I said, if no one comes in on our $130 facial, we'll just drop it down to $75, and then everybody will come in.
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And then even with that, we didn't have
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have everybody come in either.
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But then even, you know, on top of that, the people that did come in, they never came back because they knew that next month they didn't have that same discount.
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When we first opened our business, I compared myself to what other people were doing and everyone always discounts their services.
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I came to Chris and I said, we need to offer cheaper facials.
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This is how we get people in the door.
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And, you know, I'm not going to
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Quickly, I learned that that is not the way.
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So the type of people that you get when you discount your services is they want something cheap.
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You don't get quality, you get quantity.
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And when you do get people looking for a discount at the end of the day, you may get a gem in that.
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It's possible.
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It's possible, but your chances are way lower.
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when you are looking to discount your services, you're actually hurting yourself because you're building a clientele that you don't want.
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You don't want, you don't want to stress that.
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Oh my gosh, this, I feel obligated to give this person a discount, you know, on, on my service and you are a, you are licensed.
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You are a professional and I think that's something that people don't,
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necessarily give themselves value as a service provider.
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You are, you are worth so much more than a $60 facial in my opinion.
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Yeah.
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And don't get me wrong.
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We've been in the desperation before, and I'm not sure if everyone out there as small businesses, I'm talking about smaller, because if you're bigger and you already have an influence and you already have a giant database and email list and followers, then maybe those discount actually do bring a huge influx.
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But generally for us, it never did.
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It never was like we ran a special and we got 150 new clients.
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It just brought in, it did bring in new clients.
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It brought a handful in, but just not good clients every single time.
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So also don't think just because everybody else does it means that it's just working so well.
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It's just other people desperate.
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It's crazy too because the people that came in for my super cheap facial, they have not been back.
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So that says a lot.
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Those are not the type of clients that I... All of them are shopping around.
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So as soon as somebody else offers another special...
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They don't care about that long-term relationship.
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They just want a cheap facial and they want a good facial.
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So I think that when people come to you and they, that's what they're looking for.
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I don't, it just, you know, it just doesn't work out.
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It never does.
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And so I think that I'm, I'm just trying to get the point across that if you are an esthetician, charge yourself.
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good for your services.
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And this is where I want to talk about adding value to your services.
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Wait, before we go there, because I want to jump in.
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No, you're okay.
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Like, because I, we're ready to like wing off this into what we think you should do.
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But my advice, because I just want to say how difficult it is to not have clients in the door and feel like your, your expenses, your, your, your, our two, your, your services are too expensive to,
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It's a really hard thing to say and it's easy for me to say hindsight, but I would say be patient.
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Just be patient.
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We're going to put out our podcast before this about consistency intentionality with social media, but just in general with any of your marketing efforts, be consistent, be intentional with any of your marketing efforts.
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If it's on social media, if it's on ads, if it's on referrals...
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if it's in Facebook groups, whatever you're doing, but just be patient and I promise, and I can only say this because of our personal experience, if you're patient, your dream clientele will come.
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You work on perfecting, Gary V talks about this a lot, as he talks about,
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Gary Vee does too, but Alex Ramosi talks about creating the perfect offer, creating the perfect for us, the perfect service.
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So instead of focusing on how to run the best special, focus on how you can, and this will lead into what you're going to say, creating the perfect facial so that when the client comes in for your regular price, it blows them away instead of...
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devaluing your service, then you in your own heart as a provider know it's only $75.
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I'm only giving them $75 worth.
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So even if it is your dream clientele, they might go, it was okay.
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Like it was $75 worth of official.
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And they might not come back just off that fact, which is a sad thing to think about.
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That is so good.
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That is such valuable information.
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There are people that want to pay more.
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And I think that that's something that I had to come to a realization on was I told Chris, everybody's running specials.
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And I think as a woman, we look at other women and that's a great thing to have people that we admire, but not like they're, you know, not just because everybody else is doing doesn't everybody else is doing it.
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Everybody else is going to jump off of it.
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Yes.
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And that was so hard for me was I was like, no, everybody else is doing it.
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This is how we gain clientele.
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And he's so right when you're patient and you realize that there are people that want to pay higher for services that will value you.
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Most likely, the people who are going to value you as a person and you as a provider, they want somebody that they can trust.
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They want somebody that they can come to long term.
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And think about that.
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If you can go to a cheap facial, that's not somebody that you, not necessarily somebody that you don't want to go to long run, but the type of people that are looking at that, that's what they want.
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their mind goes to.
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And when I also offered specials, I got a lot of cancellations and people flaking.
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Oh yeah, had a lot of no-shows.
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Yes.
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And it's just, honestly, it is a completely different type of clientele.
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And like I said, not dissing anybody that has ever ran a special, but I think that it's so normalized now that that's why I want to talk about this is that hopefully I can get the point across to a service provider that you are worth so much more.
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And we
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We did it.
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We made the mistake.
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So we're not even, we're not on our high horse, like do what we did.
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Like don't, cause if you go back the past year or first year of business, you're going to see tons of specials there.
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And the reason why we're telling this is because every time we almost regret it like a hundred percent of the time now and I make more, which is crazy.
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Yep.
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With no, yeah.
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And that's us raising the prices because most people, because then even if clients they go, well, I can't afford this every month.
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You don't feel guilty.
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That's the worst feeling as
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is feeling guilty about like there's nothing worse than feeling guilty for charging expensive for your services you almost feel like you're i don't know at least i feel bad because that's the type of people that are like oh i just want a special what what can you offer me yeah so then your prices feel like you're doing something then you feel like you're doing something wrong when they're in it's like do i should i be charging 250 for a hydrafacial because this person said you want you want them to be like heck yeah i want to pay for you you're worth this
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And I do, there is a different business model here for bigger businesses that can scale and can have employees or can go, let's do $125 hydro facials.
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Let's do 14 of them a day.
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There is a business model there for that, but for most solo estheticians.
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That's not your business.
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It just can't work for you.
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And the reason why they can't work for you is because there's med spas in your area that can't afford to do that because their hydrofacial machine is paid off because they pay their employees $12 an hour because they have giant marketing budgets because they maybe markup product sales or maybe they get people to come in for Botox and things like that.
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So that's why it's important not to compare to them, which we did as well.
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Are you, is this, so in regards to what we're saying, we're talking about solo estheticians, not big corporate.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I would also go, I mean, to them, I would also say the same thing.
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Unless you're building your business model, like unless you're building a business model like Amazon.
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where you're trying to like, let's be the cheapest in the area and then just go straight quantity.
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But most business models don't work that way.
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And especially people like regular people like us, that's not how you build your business.
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You build your business on good clientele who are going to come back consistently.
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Amazon's just fine if you like price shopping around and you going to Walmart, to Target, to Amazon and picking who's cheapest.
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Because then every time you go to the market for a new product, you might land on Amazon as a cheap one.
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And they just get lucky when you grab them.
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And for us, as anybody who's starting their own business, it's just you can't build a business like that.
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But after maybe 10 years in business and a few employees, then maybe you can go back and do that.
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But the reason why I'm saying all of that is that that's who we compare ourselves to.
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We compare ourselves to the biggest med spas in the area and see like, well, we gotta do what they're doing.
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Their books are filled.
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They also have a huge budget, I'm sure, for ads.
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Yep, yeah.
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That they can just.
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Yeah, we run our special off you promoting on your own Instagram with, I mean, like for us at the time, like 5,000 followers.
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And we tried to run an ad paying a couple hundred bucks a month and got no people.
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And they'll always beat you out because they have money.
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Yeah.
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And if you don't know how ads work, it's whoever pays the most gets the highest quality customers.
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If they have the best pick of those high quality customers.
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So if you pay more for ads, you're on the top of the list for the people who actually pay the most.
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So now you're competing if it's with an ad to somebody who spends two, three, four, $5,000 a month on ads and you put $50 into an ad for the week.
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It's kind of silly.
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But anyways, let's.
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Yeah.
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So before me and Victoria continue to rant on all night long about that, I want to talk about you going into adding value into the services.
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What ways they can add value into the service and then what things that we did specifically to add value to not discount instead.
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Yeah, so I think that adding value is so important, obviously.
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So somebody coming in and feeling like they got spoiled.
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Um, value means adding things like a targeted sheet mask, LED light therapy, dermaplaning.
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So things that add value to the service, but not necessarily discounting it so that they are getting value.
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So your price can still be high, but you're still giving value to the service.
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Yep, so if you were running a special on that, so say your facial is normally $130, if you ran a special on that facial, you would add LED therapy, if your facial doesn't normally come with it, I'm just doing add-ons, dermaplaning, and a sheet mask, which in your ad you would say, which is normally $220, and for you specifically, you're getting it for $130.
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And for these things, as you guys know, as as Titians, Derm Plane Blades, I think we've done the math before.
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It's like $3 a blade.
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Sheet masks, depending on where you're getting them from, can be fairly cheap.
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And LED therapy is free as long as you have an LED device already.
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So those small things add a lot of value.
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And they also, for customers, go, it's normally $200.
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And you're like, this is the same facial.
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And your base price is still expensive.
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I hope the customers aren't listening to this part.
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I'm sure they aren't, but I think it's really, I mean, I, I think it's, that's so true and so valuable because we ran a hydrofacial special.
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It was $50 off your, your first hydrofacial and your first add on is free.
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So that can also work too, as long as you're
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service price is profitable.
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So if you have an expensive service, that is still going to work.
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I think we're mostly talking about offering a really cheap facial or a really cheap service.
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discounting your services is just so different.
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Yeah, so that's a good point too.
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So we did just run that special, or it wasn't really a special, we called it more of an offer.
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It was kind of the landing page video.
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We didn't go crazy on it, but then even that.
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So we offered $50 off in your first, and like Victoria said, it's already a $260 treatment.
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So it's still very profitable.
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We're still getting the type of clients that we're not getting cheapos because it's over $200 still to come into the door.
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But then even that Victoria was still noticing, I don't want to call it a pit in your stomach, but still going, this is cheaper than it should be.
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And another thing I noticed is some of these people probably would have came in for less.
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So why give them way more when they already understand the value and they're going to book the next month regardless.
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So they're going to pay the full price next month.
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And I think that's what's important with the regular facials is that we knew if we offered them $75, they're not going to pay $130 next month.
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They're already less than $100.
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But when you get somebody in for $210, when it's $265 next month, it's $50.
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If they can pay $210, they're fine paying $265.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
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So back to adding value to services.
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Another thing that Victoria does is we give a free gift.
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Yeah.
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So something that I love giving that is super, what is the word?
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It's not super expensive to buy.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, it's not expensive to buy.
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Yeah.
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The wholesale for us isn't breaking the bank.
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So what I love to do personally is give a box of clean skin club towels to my client.
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I, my clients love it so much.
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They're so grateful.
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It's such a unique and cool product that people really appreciate it.
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And people love and fall in love with incorporating this little lifestyle into their routine.
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So I give that away.
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It adds value to the treatment.
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So they leave.
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You'll be surprised if somebody leaves with a gift, they feel like they got something for free.
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I mean, they did.
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But I mean, they...
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That came out really wrong.
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They feel like they got something for free.
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They did get something for free, but they feel like, oh my gosh, this was a steal.
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They're like, wow, this person really cares about me.
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They have something physically in their hand they're walking away with, which is really important.
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Which I know they got an amazing service, got to relax.
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But walking out with a bag in hand, and most of your clients do by product as well.
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But especially for new people who are maybe still filling it out or maybe on a budget or maybe...
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Um, figure out the whole skincare thing at home.
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Yeah.
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Leaving with a bag in hand.
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That means when they walk in the front door, maybe if they're married or they have a roommate or whatever, it's like, how was your facial?
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And it's like, you could see how my facial was.
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I got a free gift.
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Right.
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Exactly.
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Hey, the husband, you go home to your, their husband and they're like, Oh, well it was free girl math.
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Yeah, look what I got.
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Yes.
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And I think there's also, I mean, one of the reasons we implemented in the first place also was for tipping.
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There's a lot of research shown that when somebody receives something, they're more willing to give back.
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Because they feel, because with services it can be difficult.
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That's why restaurants give out mints.
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Yeah, there's Alex Hermozzi, if you guys want to go, if anybody's a nerd like I am, he talks, there's a huge case study about this with servers giving one mint compared to like three mints to somebody, or no mints to somebody, and watching the tip go up.
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So when somebody receives something, they feel more inclined to give.
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So that's the reason why we started it.
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But then the reason why we continued it is because it gives somebody tangible, something to walk out with.
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And I think that is really important as a service provider.
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You should be giving, in my opinion.
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That's something that I strive for.
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So me giving and whether it's...
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something as small as that.
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I don't like taking constantly.
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So the least I can do is give somebody something, you know, in their treatment that they can leave home with.
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And that's also another point that I wanted to touch base on was, you know,
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When I say that, it's something as simple as offering a bottle of water to them or during their service.
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I add something special just for them, something that their skin needs that I do just for them.
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And I don't advertise it.
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You know, it's something that's relational and that I do in the treatment room.
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And so that's why people come back is because it's not transactional.
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It's relational.
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And that goes back to adding the value.
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So even if you're not bringing a special on it, know that every person you get in the door, you go, you know what?
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Today, I'm going to give you dermaplaning.
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I feel like your skin could use that exfoliation.
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I know you were a little bit nervous about it or you didn't know about it or you didn't want to pay for it today because you never heard of it.
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Today, it's on me.
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It's also a way to get your clients to fall in love with something.
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We've done it before with Hydrafacial.
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We don't offer a cheaper Hydrafacial on our website.
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We only offer a $250 and a $325.
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But Victoria before, for people who've been on the fence about it, has offered a $175 for people to go,
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I had a hydrofacial before.
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It sucked.
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I don't know about that.
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And you've said, you know what, just for you, it's not on my website.
20:33
I'll do this.
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And the thing is, is it wasn't just to get somebody hooked into coming or get them to come in again.
20:39
It was more to get them hooked on the hydrofacial.
20:41
Yeah.
20:42
And I think that's a really good point because when, when, when,
20:45
That just made me think of when I see other service providers offering the same service, but cheaper, sometimes I get in my head about it.
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I think, oh, should I lower my prices?
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And I constantly get in my head about it.
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As a woman, you're super emotional.
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So I'll go to my husband and he'll be like, let them go to them.
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They're not the client for you.
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And I completely agree with that is that...
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whoever wants to see you is going to see the value in you.
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So don't, you need to cut that off and don't compare yourself to other service providers.
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Don't compare yourself to other offices that charge cheaper.
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You are so valuable and you are, people will come to you and pay more because they understand the value of you and your service.
21:34
And I think with that, we talked about brand again because,
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People want to come to you for your brand.
21:41
So maybe some people see Victoria as like this premium and she's like pretty and how she looks and they're assuming and they're like, that's what you think?
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I said, thank you.
21:51
I get really awkward.
21:52
She's so beautiful.
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gorgeous.
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Sorry, it's getting weird now.
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But people see that and some people are drawn to that and go, that's what I was looking for an esthetician.
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And some people might be looking for somebody younger than you, like a college aged girl who looks more relaxed and fun.
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And some people might be looking for a 40 year esthetician who's been around forever, who's older and you've
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I've gotten comments like that before of like, how long have you been doing this?
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And all those people, they're looking for someone specifically.
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So be who, what your client is looking for.
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Hold true to what you offer and create such a demand that people are waiting to book an appointment with you.
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And that's going to go with brand.
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And then your price as well needs to go with that brand.
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So if your brand is the person who does hide your facials on the weekend, just for fun to the college girls who are in town, then charge accordingly.
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And that's just fine.
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And stop getting in your head.
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I think something that I struggled with was, well, people are going to have an idea of me and it's, it's not true.
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I mean, people are going to think what they're going to think.
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Or they are going to.
22:57
Yeah.
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They're going to think of what they think of you regardless.
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And I know at the end of the day that, that,
23:03
It's my relationship with my clients and I know what I offer in my treatment room and it sets me apart from other people.
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And, you know, same thing for other service providers.
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There's other things that they may do that I don't do.
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So, you know, there's a place for everybody and I think it's really important not to compare and feel down on yourself.
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You're doing great.
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I think that you need to understand the value because that's something that I didn't understand about myself as a service provider because I compared myself to so many other people and what other people were doing.
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So, yeah, I think that's really all that we wanted to touch base on today.
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We said it's been 25 minutes.
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It's been 25 minutes, but clearly there's some heavy feelings and topics on this one.
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But thank you so much for tuning in today.
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We appreciate all the viewers.
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If you haven't already, make sure you like, comment, subscribe, and we'll see you next time.