5 Strategies to sell out your beauty products at beauty pop-up shops!
One of the marketing strategies for beauty brands that suffered immensely because of covid-19 was pop-up shops, markets, tradeshows, and expos.
Now that the world is outside again, the buzz and excitement are back in the beauty space as these types of events are happening again. Particularly in Q4, you can look out for the best deals, the debut of new products, the networking, and most of all the highly motivated shoppers who are ready to swipe their cards and hand over their cash!
While it may be one day or a weekend event, running a booth at a pop-up event is a serious marketing activation that should be well planned out to extract every opportunity to earn and learn. If you plan to participate in the many holiday markets that are about to start happening, here are my five pieces of advice for you to make bank and not be boring.
How much does it cost to set up a pop-up shop?
Before jumping into my advice, there are a few things I want you to know. Setting up a pop-up shop can be an affordable and easy way to test out a new business idea or product. The costs of setting up a pop-up shop can vary depending on the type of shop, location, and other factors. However, due to the recent trend of low commercial rent prices, it has become more affordable for businesses to set up short-term pop-up shops.
Setting up a makeup pop-up shop is a great way to test the waters and see if your business can make it in the brick-and-mortar world. The cost of setting up a pop-up shop is typically much less than opening a traditional store, so it’s a great way to dip your toes in without making too much of a commitment.
With the industry average of up to 40% conversion on foot traffic in retail spaces, a beauty pop-up shop can boost your revenue when compared to online sales only.
What type of foot traffic can I expect?
Foot traffic counters are a valuable tool for understanding customer behavior and preferences when
it comes to your pop-up shop. They can be expensive, but they are worth the investment if you want accurate data about how well your pop-up is doing. To measure the effectiveness of your pop-up, calculate metrics like conversion rate. Use attractive signage and QR codes to allow customers to get more information quickly without having to leave the store.
Pop-up events are a fantastic way to create a memorable branded experience and inspire people. If you’re looking to create an interactive event where customers can learn more about your products, pop-ups are the way to go. They also provide an excellent opportunity to connect with potential customers and create a connection that could lead to future sales.
Do the Pre-Event Promo Work to Maximise Awareness
At my recently concluded Product to Profit Beauty Summit, I had a talk entitled “How to sell out the SKUs at your next pop-up shop”. Truth be told, I had no idea how this talk would go over, but sometime during the event, a summit attendee sent me a DM to say thank you for covering this topic. She was especially thankful for the point I made about doing the pre-event work to promote your booth, as it seems there is an ongoing argument among booth owners about whose responsibility it is to promote the event. Is it the vendor or the event owners?
I want you to think of it like this. If you had a store in a mall, is it the responsibility of the mall owners to advertise your specific store? We both know the answer to that is “no” and a pop-up event is no different. While the event owners do have a responsibility to promote the event, their focus won’t be a specific booth. With every booth and product line wanting to attract a unique type of customer, it would be unreasonable to expect the event producers to promote your booth.
You know your customers best; you are responsible for your business, and only you will enjoy the profits from your booth. Therefore, you absolutely must take responsibility for promoting your booth. Start building the hype about your presence at the market at least 2-3weeks before it happens.
Pre-Select SKUs that Can Meet Your Goals
Have you ever been to a buffet and felt confused by the number of food choices? I know, me too. It’s overwhelming, to say the least, and when people feel overwhelmed they tend not to make a choice. If you want to create a “feel good” experience for shoppers, you should present them with the exact items you’d like them to purchase by curating the product options and packages you want to sell. You don’t have to go to a pop-up event with every product you own, instead, take your best sellers and create product sets or even beauty product systems like a skincare system or a haircare system of products.
The strategy here is giving yourself a focused set of products around which you can create a high-level experience as well as the opportunity to create scarcity, increase demand and sell everything you have on site.
Plan the In-Booth Experience for Your Pop-up Beauty Shop
If there is one thing, I have learnt throughout my years working in marketing and branding, is that you must plan
and manage every single aspect of an experience if you want it to engage and delight customers. This includes the language you speak, the offers you create, the physical setup of your space, the engagement activities while people shop, the way you close the sale as well as the packaging and handover of the product.
These are all opportunities to cement your brand’s reputation by creating unforgettable customer experiences. Particularly during the holidays, you have countless opportunities to surprise and delight customers.
Capture the Data to Improve Your Beauty Brand in The Future
One of my favourite parts about managing a booth is the real-time conversations you can have with shoppers. They often tell you their pain points, what they love and what they don’t love about your brand. They also give you feedback on why they may prefer a competitor which is also valuable market insight.
Equally or even more important than real feedback is setting up systems to capture quantitative data, and by that I mean the numbers. This includes the number of people shopping, email addresses, phone numbers, and sales numbers. Without the numbers, you wouldn’t just lose important data that helps you make future marketing and business decisions, you would also lose the chance to increase your database of potential shoppers and keep selling to new customers. You absolutely must set up systems to capture data.
Keep Communicating to Increase Foot Traffic for your next Pop-up Beauty Shop
Now that the beauty pop-up event is over, the next stage of engagement begins. You’ve got to think about what line of communication you’re going to tease out to your new audience in the days and weeks following the event. Do you have another event coming up? Do you have a complementary product you can sell? Are you going to send them a “time to replenish” text? You’ve got to work this out in your planning stage so you can prepare all those messages to be sent out via email or text.
The last thing you want to worry about in the heat of the booth sales or even after the event when you’re analysing results and planning for the next event is who got a text and who didn’t. Planning the details, even as granular as a text message, will have a massive payoff in the end. You will be light years ahead of your competitors and enjoy your profits.
What are the key goals for doing a makeup pop-up shop?
There are a number of key goals that you should have in mind when planning and executing a beauty pop-up shop. First, a pop-up can help you redefine your brand story and test new products and ideas. It can also be used to explore new geographies and to test concepts or investigate potential partnerships or sponsorships. By keeping these goals in mind, you can create an effective and successful pop-up shop.
When planning and executing a makeup pop up shop, it is important to keep several goals in mind. Make sure to generate major buzz and control the message; throw open the doors to traditional and social media; give your customers something to talk about; remember the power of exclusivity; and treat your customers well for a loyal following.
There are so many opportunities to meet and surpass your sales goals this holiday season and beyond, but the best results come from well-planned marketing activations backed by the right strategies to win your shoppers’ heads and hearts to happily hand over their dollars to buy your products. If you want to go in-depth into the planning and marketing for your booth then check out my 23-page e-book called “ How to sell out your beauty products at your next market”. In it, I give detailed advice and share strategies and resources to help you make bank with your beauty products at your next pop-up event.
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