Celebration Marketing | Mother's Day

In my first class, Evolve | Visual Marketing for Beauty Business, we spoke about Celebration Marketing. Celebration Marketing is one of my favorite way to begin a marketing plan, because those dates are already set in stone so all you need to do is plan around those dates.

You can find ways to market around any holiday or set event, but some ideas for stylists could be:

- New Years
- Valentines
- Mother's Day
- Father's Day
- Halloween
- Christmas
- Fashion Week
- Summer Resort Getaway
- Spring Break
- Beauty Gift Week
- Birthdays (yours or your clients)

As a women's glamour portrait photographer, Mother's Day is one of my biggest holidays I target in my celebration marketing. There are dozens of reasons to celebrate mothers, and one of the best gifts a person could give their mother is a portrait session experience with her and her loved ones.

Here is a peek into my own Mother's Day Campaign plan

Going through my campaign, I am donating two gift certificates with a gift with purchase to a local charity function. These are three streams of marketing (gift certificates, gifts with purchase, and charity events) all tied around one celebration marketing event. A stylist could replicate this easily by donating a gift certificate and a styling product to a local charity event.

I am also holding a destination mini-session event in Sedona, AZ where clients can purchase a mini package of time with me and receive three digital images. I can fill my event with multiple shoots and offer a pared down service for a promotional fee for one day. In order to promote this event,  I can use business to business marketing and pair up with salons in Sedona that can share with clients. I also have a referral system in place for the mini sessions, which encourages clients to share with their friends in order to earn additional images from the shoot. A stylist could replicate this by offering pared-down services for children, men or specialty services such as blow-outs one day a month for a promotional rate.

I created two promotional packages for my Mother's Day shoots that are different from the standard sessions offered on a daily basis in my studio. The Luxe sessions can include a large number of people and a gift with purchase, and the Lite sessions include small groups of people and a mini gift with purchase. There is also a list of new promotional products only available during the Mother's Day Sessions. A stylist could replicate this by offering special products only during your Mother's Day campaign or bundling of services for special rates. Make sure you state that these special items are available for a limited time only to cause action in your clients.

My final item is a Mother's Day magazine that I will be putting together with images from all my clients shoots from now until Mother's Day. I am reaching out to women I know and past clients to be "models" for my magazine, and in turn I give them a gift certificate for three digital images from the shoot plus $100 off their order. Even if those clients order nothing from me, I have received marketing images for my magazine, plus gave them an amazing experience that they will share with everyone in life and social media. I will have learned their stories and told them in the magazine, which could earn me new clients in the future; and makes them more likely to book me for future shoots. A stylist could join in on this effort by doing hair and/or makeup for the magazine shoots, and referring their own clients to be models in the magazine. If you are a stylist who is interested in this business to business project, email me at info@evolve-beauty.com