Becoming A Category Of One

If you’re a salon owner that’s looking to stand out from the crowd then I want to talk today about being a category of one and being totally unique in your offering.

This is something that I did in my business that worked incredibly well and I wanted to share that with you today.

Now, being category one means offering something unique, something that none of your competition is offering so your clients only have one choice when to come to you.

The beauty industry is vast and broad and there are hundreds and thousands of different things that we can now offer. But what tends to happen is salons open, or therapists start a business, and they cover off the essential key and core treatments that are done within the beauty industry.

So massage, facials, manicures, pedicures, waxing, body treatments, maybe spray tans and a couple of other bits thrown in the mix, too.

What this means, however, is that there’s hundreds of different people in each town and village across the country offering pretty much the same menu of treatments.

And when you’re looking at two businesses side by side, and you’ve not been to either before, and you know nothing about either of them, but they’re offering the same treatments with the same brands; sometimes your only differentiation – and the only way clients can choose them – is simply based on price.

And when we get into that whole price situation where it’s a battle of the cheapest, then it becomes a downward spiral.

One that we most certainly don’t want to go down.

What we want to do is you want to become a category of one.

When you’re a category of one it simply means that your potential clients, and your current clients, have no option but to come to you because you’re the only person that offers the experience that you offer.

Now this might be in your treatments, it might be in the location that you’re in.

It might be the added extras you put in place.

But making sure that you don’t have any competition offering what you do is what stands you out from above the crowd and gives you the opportunity to charge whatever you want.

Because if you do something that’s unique to only you, there is no comparison when it comes to price.

It’s not like comparing an apple with an apple, it’s comparing apples and oranges.

So you can put whatever price you want onto the services that you offer, if no one else can offer them.

Something we did in my business was we had huge lounges and we offered private parties, which was quite unique, particularly as we were based in an area absolutely flooded with hen do’s every summer, but also local people as well who wanted little girly get togethers.

We were able to offer a small group or large group setting where clients would have a VIP experience, where they’d have prosecco and an afternoon tea.

No one else could offer anywhere near the size of numbers that we did, because we built a big lounge in order to create this unique selling experience to people.

And it meant that we were incredibly busy all the time.

Because every hen do that wanted to come for a spa day, and have space, really only had the option of coming to us.

It put us in a category of one, which meant that we were able to charge whatever we wanted for that experience.

And because we could only offer two at one time, we were always pretty much booked out with it.

So I want you to think about what makes your business unique, and how you can create unique experiences that only you as a salon offer.

Now this might be space and location.  It might be the parking situation that you have, a lot of places don’t have parking.  It might be the different and unique brands that you use in your business.

Maybe you’ve created your own brand of product that you use on your clients, that means that you’re unique.

Maybe it’s that you have infused different variety of treatments to create one bigger result.

If you’re somebody who focuses on body shaping or anti ageing, and you’re maybe using a combination of different equipment, machinery and products to create a really unique treatment, again, that puts you in a category of one.

When you offer something unique and different to anybody else, it makes you appealing to anybody who’s looking for that, because there’s nowhere else they can find it.

If you’ve got an expensive piece of equipment, but there’s another kind of salon down the road but also offers that expensive piece of equipment, like you do fat freezing, for instance.

Maybe you can offer something else exclusive, that only you can offer.  An additional treatment, an additional product that might help them with their results.  If you do more beauty based treatments rather than the clinical things, think about the unique experiences you can infuse into that.

Think about offering lovely coffees, think about offering heated blankets on the bed, little touches that nobody else offers.

These things that put you in a unique category of one.

And when you’re in a unique category of one, people can only come to you if they want that experience.

Think about when you go on holiday, we all sort of have an idea of what our perfect holiday is.

Now if you want to go and walk down a strip full of bars with hotels that are based on different countries all around the world, Vegas is the only place simply that you can go and experience that.

If you’re a big fan of Mickey Mouse, and you want to go and do all the Disney parks and all the Universal parks. The only place you can go is Orlando.

And if you’re looking to go and see Greek ruins, then the only place you can go and experience those is Greece.

Make yourself that unique proposition to your clients.

Make it so they have no option but to come to you because that’s what makes you very, very successful when you offer something totally unique and totally different to everybody else.

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Photo by Taylor Simpson on Unsplash