9 Business Growth Strategies for Online Beauty Platforms in 2022

Online beauty platforms are the marketplaces for consumers to discover, book, and pay for hairstylists, colourists, nail artists, estheticians, or barbers. There are important growth tactics below:

1. Improve your domain

This is the online destination for lots of clients & professionals looking to discover, book and pay for beauty & grooming services. We have built out a great platform with many additional features that we are continually rolling out. Further, what excites investors about the space is our plan to build a network of communities around one of the most important purchase decisions in people’s lives - how they shape their look, feel and self-image.

2. Add a marketplace function

As of now, all hairstylists and nail technicians are on an equal playing field, which means if someone with a 6+ star rating is willing to offer services cheaper than you, then you will be left out in the rain. By implementing a tradable/tradable platform, there is an opportunity for those that to trade their services or time for a discounted rate from other professionals of lesser star ratings. This gives an incentive for customers to see all stylists/nail artists on our app because they can save money by trading with someone who may not have as many reviews on the app. This leads customers back to come back to use your platform and also helps to get more independent professionals

3. Booking engine for salons

Continue growing your service in the salon space by offering an online booking tool. That makes their lives even easier. Think of all the new customers you can land when we market to their existing customer bases.

4. Offer rewards

Do it by encouraging them (and their friends) to download and use the app. For example, when a customer books a hair appointment and pays $30 for it via your app, the customer is rewarded with $10 of credits to be used on future bookings. The extra $10 is in essence free money to use towards booking additional appointments, which will help you mitigate churn while encouraging repeat booking - thereby creating a loop of referrals/usage.

5. Give a free haircut

The customers who pay for the haircut and get their hair done are happy with the service (so they become active users of your platform). And, they can invite friends to also get their haircut using the same offer.

6. Before / after

Have users post before and after shots on the website. Each user would be required to tag a friend on the photo that they thought should try out the service. This way, it benefits both the platform and the individual using it because we are able to promote our services as well as spread them virally.

7. Enable users to see others bookings

Let users see other bookings, when friends and family have bookings at their favourite local spots. Share these with the user network, and then invite them to join your platform. The key here is the ability to share these bookings. Currently, I am working on a v1 feature of this and it actually works really well. My quick hack is literally changing the “Post” button in the mobile app to “Share” and adding a “Post to Your Platform” action in the native Facebook and Instagram apps for iOS.

8. Target a specific demographic

For example, if 45% of your platform customers live in New York City and they live with roommates, one viral loop that could be used is to feature my next 3 appointments from a single person’s account at any one time (i.e. matching up roommates).

9. Create a pop-up/mini-website

Stylists can upload pictures of their unique haircuts/styles here. Once this shared content is highlighted, Stylists can become the "blogger" for his/her service. This viral loop will motivate the user base to create more and more Content (pictures, videos) through visual storytelling, thereby allowing a natural viral effect for the platform.