A guest post by Debbie Miller…

Dear Not-Booked-Solid Esthetician, there’s something I want to talk to about and it’s something important so please take a few minutes to read this through.

Along with being Lori’s official “Coordinator of Chaos,” I’m also an online marketing professional and a problem solver extraordinaire who loves nothing more than helping people get out of their own way so they can get on with the things they really want to be doing. Today, I want to speak directly to you to address one problem that I see so often that it might be my #1 pet peeve.

Now, this naturally won’t apply to all of you – in fact I know it does not but it does apply to a great many of you so I’ll get right to it by asking you this:

When a potential client begins the search for the perfect esthetician, will they consider you?

Will they even know you exist?

Now, if you’re reading this, it’s pretty safe to assume that you are a passionate esthetician and you are actively looking for ways to grow your business so you can share your services with those who deeply desire them. Your quest isn’t a unique one – it’s shared by all business owners.

If you’re in business, you need customers.

Now, there are many different strategies out there for you to use to find and connect with your potential clients. Some are easy and cheap, some require more investment, some are downright scary – and not in the Halloween fun kind of way – but, there’s something that ALWAYS has to happen…

Your potential client HAS TO BE ABLE TO FIND YOU, otherwise you do not exist to them.

So, how do you make sure that your potential clients can find you? The answer is that you must have a professional public presence ON THE INTERNET.

No matter how you personally feel about this, we are living in a digital age and the internet is where people are looking for you. Even if they’ve already met you or heard about you from someone else, they are looking online to learn more about you and what you have to offer them before they take the next step to connect. Even if they’ve seen an ad you’ve run in a publication, they’ll still be looking for a web page to visit to learn more. It’s just the way our society works at the moment.

In the distant past, establishing a web presence was something that was out of reach for many solo practitioners and small business owners but I’m here to tell you that those days are long gone and there’s simply no reason for you not to have at least a one page website that tells your potential clients:

• Who you are

• What you do

• Why you do it

• Where you do it

• How to reach you (and please, for the love of all that is sacred, make this OBVIOUS!)

Think of this one page website as your online business card. Whether you work for someone else or for yourself, as a professional esthetician, you still need to have this presence if you want to ensure that you’ll be an option when someone starts searching for the services you provide.

So, what to do?

To be clear, I’m NOT telling you to go out and hire someone to build you an expensive website. In fact, I’d strongly caution you against that because it is completely unnecessary. There are easy and very cost effective (cheap) ways to establish a simple, professional online presence. To start with, I recommend that you own the domain (or url) of the name you use professionally (so, yourname.com). All you need to do for this is go to GoDaddy.com (or a similar service) and buy it. If your professional name happens to already be taken, GoDaddy will show you similar options to consider (maybe yourname.net, yourname.me or your-name.com, etc). Once you have this domain name, you can forward it to any other url or web address that you’d like.

Now, ideally, you’ll have your professional presence site hosted in an account you control (which you can do for less than $100 per year) but if that’s out of reach at this moment, you can still start by using a professional Facebook page (not your personal profile), a wordpress.com site or even a page on a service like about.me. Once you’ve created your page, you’d then forward your domain name to that page. This way, you can give out your web address as yourname.com and when people go there, they’ll be taken to wherever you have your professional presence page set up. If you change it later, you just change where the domain is forwarding and you don’t even have to reprint business cards or flyers.

Having this professional presence immediately gives the impression that you are a real business and it makes contacting you very easy for your potential clients. If you’ve shared your passion for your business on the site, it also lets your potential clients start connecting with who you are before they even pick up the phone.

Naturally, there’s a lot more you can do with your site but for now, this quick lesson can help you get started. Now, I’m a bit of a techie geek so this seems super simple to me; however, if you’re feeling completely overwhelmed by it, please contact us here and let us know that you’d like more help with this.