Makeup Artists How should you set your prices?
Some beauty pros say to have your prices published; some say not to have price lists available to your clients.
There’s kind of a lot to delve in here, and we are just going to go right into this topic. I believe a lot of beauty pros just don’t like to be open to and talk about; however, myself. I’m an open book. I want to just put things out there with full transparency. In turn, this will help you decide on your own what you feel is right for your business.
No Rules On What You Should Charge
I’m not setting up rules for you or telling you how your prices should or should be set or how you should or should not be running your business. I am merely explaining what has worked for me and what I’ve experienced through my journey here in the beauty industry. I hope that you can take any little information that I’m giving you and successfully apply it to your business and grow. Just grow, grow, grow all right.
Pricing Your Makeup Services
Let’s just get down into this hot topic of pricing first.
When you first start,
- How would you know what to charge your clients as a makeup artist?
- How do you find that happy medium to charge as a makeup artist?
It can be daunting because we learn from experience and how do you know if you don’t have it.
Know Your Market
An essential place to start is figuring what type of market you’re in. You have to understand your market, the demographic your looking to serve. Whether you’re in a rural area, whether you’re in a city, each market is so different.
I’m here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Florida is so vast. We are such a huge state, so the market in the beauty industry in Fort Lauderdale and Miami is entirely different than what it is even just three hours north of us when you hit the Orlando area.
Make sure that you guys are tapping into your local beauty market. Try to be as local as possible. What I find best is to analyze the market within, like, a 60 to 90-mile radius is an extensive range to start gauging your market and what the prices are. It will help you understand your competition and where you should begin to pricing your services. Simply ask around, it’s easy enough just to Google the local makeup artists, hairstylists. You can Google anyone in the beauty biz and just see links to their websites, grab their phone number for a quick call and creatively ask Hey, what do you charge? I’d love more info on your bridal rates, just to get your answers. Knowing your local markets and what the ranges are within those local markets is how I would suggest starting your research on the pricing.
Define Yourself and Prices.
The next step is defining how you’re going to price yourself. Where are you going to fall within those local market ranges? Price ranges and the way to do that is to define your skill level on how much to charge as a Makeup artist.
You’re either green first coming on the scene, not a lot of experience out there. Maybe you haven’t worked on your first bridal client yet. You’re just starting up your business from the very beginning.
You might be an intermediate level makeup artist. Where you’ve been on the scene for a little bit, and you’re getting going? A little bit more added to your makeup portfolio, then getting more clients adding to your reviews. Now you can increase your prices a little bit and charge more as a makeup artist.
I feel that this is very important to determine where you are in your makeup career and price accordingly. Set your prices to your skill level your personal skill level, because the worst thing you want to do is set yourself up for failure. You don’t want to overprice your services and have nobody book your services as a makeup artist. It’s a lot easier if you set your pricing goals based on your skill level and skill set and experience. Then you can grow to ride that wave, build your business; it will come. It’ll happen.
Get Some Experience Then Raise Prices
Once you get some experience under your belt, it’s just super easy to start increasing those rates, and your customers will be okay with that. Because now they see you have a following behind you. They’re going to be able to look at your portfolios, see the work you’ve been doing, Read some reviews, and understand if there are no customers who were saying consistent things about your company.
Advertise Your Pricelist or Not.
I get questions a lot about whether or not to publish your prices. For me, this is about my experience. I have done it both ways, so when I say from my experience, I wouldn’t say I’m biased and just talking from one end of the spectrum. I’ve done this business for a long time without having prices posted. I see the benefit, and if you feel you need to charge more, there will not be a discrepancy, and this can work in your favor in particular situations.
I did transition eventually into publishing my prices on my website and test how that affects my booking ratio. So when I speak to you, I am coming from a place of trying to be as responsible as possible, knowing I put in the work and tried all angles that you guys can learn from my experience here.
In my professional experience, I love having prices posted on my website and knowing how much does a makeup artist charges. I’m a big believer in this. There’s a couple of ways you could do it. I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong way. I just know what’s worked for me; sometimes in business, you need to test what works and what does not. Before I posted my prices, it was challenging. I found I was sifting through more clients. I was spending a lot of talking to potential leads that were never going to book. I asked myself, how am I trying to qualify them to be the right type of clientele for my price bracket? And I went through just sifting through a lot of clients that just were on the very low end of budgets, and I was ending up having to turn down a lot more clients than I wanted to, and that just doesn’t feel good, because again, for me, I feel like our beauty business always comes back to our client’s experience with us. Hopefully, drawing that client in for future makeup business down the road. Wheater it is for selling products or other event makeup and hair services. If I’m having to tell no to a client and telling them I’m sorry, your budget is just not where my pricing is. You don’t qualify for my service is because your budget can’t reach my pricing. It’s only a negative, and I’m just big on putting fires out before they start.
Having my price list posted allowed me to start vetting my clients beforehand so that I’m pre-qualifying them upfront from the very start, which is fantastic because I feel like pricing can be one of those topics. That is just uncomfortable by nature to talk about, and it shouldn’t be. It’s one of the most crucial points. We should just be open and transparent about pricing. And I feel like the more comfortable you are with talking about pricing upfront and being secure with where you set your pricing at.
You’re in business for a reason; they know that, be confident in letting your clients know.
The more natural and more comfortable the flow is, booking that clientele will become easier. Okay, so for me, I’m pro posting prices. Feel free, if you’d like to view my price list and kind of check out and see how I sort of have that setup, click the link here, and that will let you check out my pricing structures so that you can get a good vibe on how I communicate that through my price list. Okay.
If you don’t have a price list
Now, if you do not have a price list, after this blog post, you need to put pen to paper and start jotting down your prices. You need to go through everything, every genre in the beauty industry. I want you to map it all out so that you are prepared when clients call you for pricing. The worst thing that can happen is for a client to call you and don’t know the price, the proper price to quote them. What if a client calls multiple times and if you don’t get this stuff down and you’re not sure, and you’re kind of just fluctuating your pricing and just sort of guessing in randomly quoting prices to clients. You will lose the trust of your client.
For example, a client calls you back for a follow-up, and you ask them, What price did I tell me? Or That the pricing you gave was not what you quote her the first time. That’s a disaster. You can’t have that happen.
So it is crucial that you do.
If you’re not going to post pricing on your website, have a structure set to where you’re emailing, pricing to your clients. Another idea is to have it written down in some form for yourself so that you always know and have access to the right the accurate price quotes that you want to give out.
When makeup clients call you
Okay, so it’s essential you’re going to have clients calling you, and you’re going to need to know, Hey, if they’re calling you for a party of three and you have a sliding scale price based on group rates.
What’s a sliding scale? The easiest answer is- the bigger the party size, the lower the price per person.
Ask what is your party size? Know what your party of three groups prices is in comparison to your party of five or six group rate. What is your pricing inclusive of our eight? Can you do that many?
A lot of stylists include lash applications in their pricing, including a hair extension application. A lot of stylists tack on additional fees for these things.
Know what the going rates are for these additional fees
- eyelash applications
- hair extensions
- travel fees.
- early morning fees
Have it set, so you know how far you are willing to travel? You need to know this stuff. Okay, clients will call you and say, Hey, I live in an area that’s three hours from you. Are you willing to do this? You need a have these answers ready and available for these clients. Know what your fee is going to be to charge them to drive out this way? Early morning session fees, another question I get asked about all the time. How do you price your early morning session? Bride’s photoshoots, event clients, whatever it is, but know what the price is. If they have an early morning session, she needs to be anything starting before 9 a.m. requires an additional fee of a B and C. Then, that’s what it needs to be and stick by it. Make sure you have this written down.
Consistency is key. It is crucial with pricing, mainly because I’ll tell you what if you price misquote a client. Sorry, that will come back to bite you. Big time customers share experiences. They share knowledge. Our industry is so small. So it’s so important. You don’t ever want clients to know that you’re misquoting. That just is not a good look for your business. When you quote photoshoots if you’re going to be out there doing editorial, fashion shoots, photoshoots for private photographers, corporate shoots, whatever it is you must have your price set.
- What is your half-day rate?
- What is your full day rate?
- How are you going to gauge that?
If you are charging a 1\/2 day rate, if you are charging a full day rate, is that inclusive of a certain amount of heads within that time? Or you just free for all?
Think about what happens your client tacks on as many heads for this corporate shoot for headshots as they want? Do you charge more or is it the same price as long as you’re there during that duration of time. These are all things that need to be thought about and put down on paper to help you be more successful. You need to know what you’re talking about; You need to be confident in what you’re pricing structure is. Do not waver from it. Be ready before the situation is in front of you, so you are ready.
Okay, so I hope this was helpful again. I know, like this is a hot topic. For some reason, nobody likes to discuss this. Nobody likes it until I give out their pricing information. I don’t know why. Again, I’m an open book. I just feel like transparency is everything.
Until, next time.
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