Empowered Stylist Podcast - 0028 - Shifting From Discount-Driven Marketing to Value-Driven Marketing - 11:13:25, 12.39 PM
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[00:00:00] In this week's episode, we're diving into a topic that most stylists struggle with, especially if you've ever lowered your prices out of fear, guilt. Or to sweeten the deal. Today we're talking about the shift from discount driven marketing to value driven marketing, because the truth is discounts might get you a quick booking, but they don't build long-term loyalty, profitability, or demand.
Welcome to the Empowered Stylist Podcast. Here you'll find ideas, tips, and inspiration to help grow your business behind the chair. I'm your host, Angie Mamone, and I am on a mission to help educate, elevate, and empower the beauty industry. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey there and welcome back to the Empowered Stylist Podcast.
If you have ever felt like you have to run a deal to get people in the door, or you look around and see other stylists doing discounts, and you wonder if you should too, you are in the right place. By the end of this episode, you're gonna walk away with five powerful strategies [00:01:00] that help you build trust, stand in your expertise, and create demand without lowering your prices.
So let's dive in. Before we jump into the five strategies, I wanna talk about why discount driven marketing feels so tempting. It gives you a quick dopamine hit, it fills a spot on your schedule, and it attracts people who are motivated by saving money. But it also creates three long-term problems. One, you train clients to wait for deals.
Think about Black Friday clients who only book once a year because of a sale. That's exactly what happens when discounts become part of your brand too. You position yourself as a commodity instead of an expert. Discounts focus on price. While value driven marketing focuses on transformation. Three, you lower your perceived value every time you lower your price and once you go down, it's incredibly hard to come back up.
Discounts themselves aren't evil, but when they become a habit, they're often a symptom of [00:02:00] fear. Fear that your value isn't enough, and I promise you it is. So let's talk about how to market in a way that reinforces your expertise and not your availability Strategy one. I want you to lead with the transformation and not the transaction.
This is where value-driven marketing begins. When clients understand that the transformation you provide, the confidence, the fullness, the natural looking extensions, the seamless color price becomes a supporting detail, but not the focus. Right now, most stylist market like this, they'll say like, new guest special, $50 off extensions, fall, blonding sale, whatever it is, and none of these tell the story of the transformations.
Your clients aren't buying webs. They're buying the feeling of looking at the photos and loving what they see, the confidence to go to an event without worrying about their hair. The solution for thinning spots are postpartum hair loss, the experience of finally having hair that behaves like they want it to.
When you talk about the transformation instead of the [00:03:00] transaction, your marketing. Instantly feels elevated. And here's how you do it. You share the process. You tell success stories, you narrate your before and afters, like tell the story on how they got there, like share the process and the stories, and then share the emotional shift that your clients feel.
This is hard when you're first starting out, and that's why a lot of coaches will tell you, you should wear hair extensions because you can experience the emotional shift. Share from an authentic place. You want people to start thinking like, I need that experience. Not, I want that discount. I want that sale.
I want that instant gratification. Although extensions can be instant gratification, but you get my point here. Okay. Strategy two, become the stylist Who educates, not the stylist who sells. Discount driven marketing pushes people to book. Value driven marketing pulls people in through trust. Clients do not wanna be sold to, nobody wants to be sold to, but they love to be educated.
When you [00:04:00] teach, you become someone that they trust with their hair, their investment, and their results. You can educate through things like. Reels, stories, consultations, carousel posts, client conversations, email, newsletters, blogs. There's so many ways to do this, and you can explain things like why certain extension methods protect the natural hair, show before and afters of somebody's progress with extensions like their natural hair, how much it's grown in X amount of time.
You can explain why maintenance is structured the way that it is, how color placement impacts brightness and longevity, why the investment is worth it over a. Six month period, a 12 month period, whatever that is, education will build confidence and confidence. Build demand. Pause. Okay. Clients book Full Price with the stylist who makes them feel safe and informed.
Strategy three. Build a signature client experience. You cannot charge premium prices with a basic experience. This is where many stylists get stuck. Their raising their prices, but their [00:05:00] entire client experience still feels random or inconsistent. Value driven marketing thrives. When you highlight your signature experience, think of your experience as your method, even if you never call it that publicly.
So here are some examples of client experience pillars. So a powerful pre-consultation form a. Or even if you walk through that, if you don't wanna form, although I suggest it, having a very structured consultation, whether it's, you know, form in person, whatever it is, even having visuals to help explain the process will change everything for your clients.
You also wanna have a predictable. Installation process. So making sure that clients understand what the steps are, what goes into it, and that helps quote unquote, justify the price and makes them understand why it's so expensive, why it takes so long if it does take a while to. A maintenance roadmap with dates and recommendations.
Home care coaching. Make sure you have [00:06:00] things throughout your experience that feel luxury, even if you don't feel like a luxury stylist. So providing the little extra touches, maybe through the shampoo experience, through the styling, giving them education and the styling process. If you don't have aftercare.
That automatically goes out to your clients with instructions on how they should take care of your, their hair extensions. You're completely missing out, and this is so important because your clients need to feel very, very, very confident in their investment. After they invested, I promise you they're not gonna remember everything that you explain to them during, whether it's the consultation or when they're in the salon.
You have to have something for them to go home with. And when you have an entire signature experience, it becomes one of the strongest parts of your marketing because now you aren't just offering hair extensions. You are offering a proven system that delivers predictability and elevated results.
Clients don't pay for hair, they pay for confidence. Consistency and clarity. Now, [00:07:00] strategy four. Showcase your expertise, not your availability. Nothing lowers perceived value faster than desperation. Posts last minute cancellations. I have an opening today, a book now. Now, I do think you can sometimes do these on stories.
We'll do this at the salon sometime, but you don't want it to constantly sound like you have openings. Value driven marketing is. All about positioning and you want people to see your expertise before they see your availability. So show the reasons you are worth the investment, your thought process, your color mapping, your troubleshooting, your education journey, um, your mastery of extension, fundamentals, or color fundamentals, your consistency across transformations.
Let your marketing say, I'm booked because I'm the. Expert, not because I'm running all of these deals. When you consistently show the why behind your work, clients will stop comparing you to other stylists. They're comparing you to every experience they've ever had. Dig five. Use social proof and storytelling to build [00:08:00] desire.
Humans buy based on emotion and justify with logic. This is where storytelling becomes your competitive advantage. Some of the strongest pieces of marking you will ever share are client stories, testimonials, screen recorded, dms, or screenshots of dms. Um, transformation journeys before and after is paired with emotional context.
I will swear by this until the day I die before. And afters are one of the most important pieces of content that you can have as an extension artist because if you have a beautiful feed of all pretty hair, when somebody lands on your page, they're like, oh, I can't be her client. I don't have hair like that.
You wanna show that I can take you from this to this? That's really what makes it powerful. So tell the story behind the hair. So. My client cried in my chair because she finally saw herself again. She finally felt like herself again. So-and-so avoided social events because of how thin her hair was after [00:09:00] she had a baby.
So-and-so never wore her hair down until she had extensions. You know, showcase things that are real and that tell a story because every time you tell a story, it reinforces your value and it shows off the emotional payoff, not just the technical result. And when someone can see themselves. In that story, they will book without needing you to lower your price.
So to recap, here are the five ways to shift from discount driven marketing to value driven marketing, lead with the transformation and not the transaction. Educate instead of sell. Build a signature client experience, showcase your expertise and share stories that build desire and trust. When you implement these consistently, your marketing instantly feels elevated and intentional.
You stop chasing clients and you stop negotiating prices. You start working with aligned clients who trust your process and value your expertise. If this [00:10:00] episode hit home and you want support implementing value driven marketing in your business, send me a DM on Instagram with the word value, and I'll send you my favorite resources to help you get started.
If you love today's episode, make sure you save it, share it, leave a review, or send it to a stylist friend who might need it. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.
