How to build a unique brand as a hairstylist, esthetician, or salon owner
Alright, be honest: when was the last time you were scrolling through Insta and caught yourself poring over the content of a beauty professional who just really put themselves out there and has become this super-cool, unforgettable brand?
You know the ones - they get awesome engagement, they sell out of their products literally every time they promote them on socials, and they just seem to be so comfortable in their own skin.
Ever get a twinge of jealousy and think, “Why can’t that be me? What’s their secret?”
Today we’re diving into all the ingredients that go into an unforgettable beauty brand.
And hey, spoiler alert: you can do it too, and it can be you!
If you’ve been thinking lately that you’d like to shift your beauty biz in a different direction, like developing your own line of skin care products or becoming an educator for hairstylists - or if you just want your salon to really stand out from the competition - today’s blog is for you.
I sat down with Sasha Fedunchak, creator of Daring Creative: a boutique full scope branding agency that builds brands for beauty professionals that you just can’t peel your eyes away from.
I knew I had to talk to Sasha because when I came across her spray tan studio a few years ago, her brand was so dynamic and rockstar-esque that I became a little obsessed with everything she was putting out.
Sasha herself has undergone a huge brand shift, having originally been the owner of a successful spray tan studio.
During the pandemic, she started to dream of moving beyond the studio, as she struggled with having to close her doors multiple times.
Sasha actually comes from a communications background, having got her Master’s in Rhetoric and Communications.
She worked in marketing for 10 years before she decided she’d had enough of being told what to do - she had a ton of big, creative dreams that she wanted to pursue.
“I just got really sick of working for old white men telling me what to do. And I had such big ideas around branding and marketing at the corporate level. As I was kind of thinking about getting out of marketing, [one of my friends] said, ‘Why don't you open a spray tan salon or do mobile spray tanning?’”
“I thought she was absolutely crazy…because I had literally never even gotten a spray tan myself.”
But Sasha went for it in 2018, and with her background in marketing, she created the coolest brand for her spray tan mobile studio.
Sasha’s spray tan studio, Vacay Beauty, always stood out to me because of her unique branding and photoshoots that were true-to-life
The game-changer for Sasha’s business was that she developed a really strong brand first, and then built her business model around that.
“I went into it with that exact notion [of] ‘How do I create something that means so much more than just a spray tan?’ Because again, I never even had a spray tan, so I wasn't even that excited about spray tanning women. I was really excited about what I could build from the branding perspective.”
How to build a standout beauty brand from scratch
I asked Sasha if we could go through her Instagram account for her former spray tan mobile studio, Vay Kay Studio, so that I could understand her process behind building such a super-unique beauty brand.
“I actually don’t like my old logo at all - if I were to redo it, I’d do something completely different,” she laughed.
“But what I did do off the bat with [these images] here is I really took full ownership of the brand. The photos that you see are of some of my really good friends. I did all my own photo shoots. I was featured by Philly Mag, which is obviously a huge magazine in Philadelphia. They came and did a feature and [there] was my little studio.”
“The whole vibe was this retro kind of idea of always being on vacation, taking care of yourself. And you know, really empowering women - back before all of this was trendy,” she remarks with a giggle.
Here are some of the secrets of viral branding that Sasha used in her spray tanning business and still uses at her marketing agency today.
Branding secret #1: Make your audience feel something with your brand
Sasha’s new business, Daring Creative, has an incredible brand. It’s unique, stands out, and speaks to everything that represents Sasha and her team.
Something that Sasha absolutely nails in all of her marketing is that her brand always invokes a strong emotional response in her target audience.
She applied this during the first quarantine period of the 2020 Covid pandemic when she realized that people were stuck at home wishing they could escape and longing for that beautiful glowy feeling of a fresh tan on a beach.
“At that time, I was at, in my studio [for] almost eight months. Everything was going great. I had just had the highest month in revenue that I've ever had. I was hiring team members [and] doing interviews. And then I had a near-death miscarriage, went to the hospital, and the next day after I got out, a quarantine shut down my [business].”
“At that point, I was like, ‘Uh, okay, what do I do?’”
“I thought, you can't come into the studio, but let me still entertain you on Instagram. And people still wanted to look good, especially [with] the emotions around the quarantine.”
“As soon as we got locked down [we started] pushing retail and I think I did like almost $20,000 in retail in just a few months.”
So remember this - if you’re sitting at home scrolling Insta and thinking, “What’s the move to get people to pay attention to my nail art/skin treatments/haircare products?”...
…the secret is to find out what your audience wants to feel and lean into that with your marketing. Tell them how they’ll feel with a fresh coat of paint on their nails. Show them how glowy and refreshed they’ll be after one of your facials.
#2: Brand yourself as an expert in ONE SPECIFIC THING
The branding for Southern Glow spray tan studio was done by Sasha and her team. The “Southern” theme is strong and they’ve built up an expertise!
When Sasha decided to close down her mobile spray tan studio and open her marketing agency, she had a lot of offers to buy the business from her because it was such a strong and sellable brand.
“I did consider selling. I met with a couple of people to sell the brand, but I honestly just felt too attached to it and I thought, I'm gonna shut it down.”
“At that point, I had made so many connections in the beauty industry and people were asking me all the time, ‘How did you do this? How did you build a brand like this?’ And that's really what triggered the thought - I'll just start my own branding and marketing. I’ll do exactly what I did for Va Kay Beauty for other people, for other women in the beauty industry.”
Branding was always Sasha’s expertise, so she decided to just focus on that - and her agency’s success has once again confirmed that when you do one thing really, really well, people pay attention.
What’s your specialty? What do you get the most compliments or, or people asking you about? What service is your most popular? These are some of the things to start asking yourself when you’re considering a niche.
Branding secret #3: Think of your brand as a membership for your clients
Some the logos that Daring Creative have designed for clients in the beauty industry
A few times throughout our interview, Sasha mentioned that a brand ‘is so much more than a pretty logo’ - meaning, a really good brand should be providing clear perks to your ideal client.
“What are you giving people? What reason are you giving them to belong to your brand?”
“We all make choices every day. Do we go to Target? Do we go to Walmart? Do we buy Adidas sneakers? Do we buy Nike sneakers? We buy things and make decisions based on how we feel and what we want those brands to mean about us.”
“So that's why I say brands are not just some pretty logo. Of course that helps, that's part of a brand identity and that can help inspire people to take action with you or not.”
“[The reason why] Vay Kay Beauty was so successful was because I was building this whole membership, this thing that people wanted to belong to. They wanted to belong to something bigger than themselves. That's what a brand is.”
#4: Develop a polarizing philosophy for your brand that clearly defines what you stand for
If you’re trying to please everyone, you’re not gonna please anyone - least of all yourself.
Sasha says that a standout beauty brand makes it really clear what their values and philosophy are, so that like-minded people will know they’ve found their match, and people who don’t agree can stay away.
“What I would encourage you to do is think about what is your philosophy? This is my preference, but I like to build polarizing brands because at the end of the day, that's what's gonna get someone to buy into you or that's going to repel someone. And that's exactly what you want to do. You don't want everyone to like you because that's like overwhelming and then you're really diluting yourself.”
“If you want to show up as your most authentic self in your brand, or you want build an authentic brand, you have to get really honest with what do you actually believe about the work that you're doing. And when you share that, that's what's going to attract people.”
“For anyone who is a solopreneur or just starting out, don't think about just the service that you offer, [whether that’s] teaching someone paid ads or spray tanning or doing hair. Think about what is your philosophy and what is your unique stance? What is your purpose?
“If you don't have that nailed, it's gonna be really hard for you to show up consistently and to attract people that you actually want to attract to your business.”
How having a strong brand identity can help you evolve your beauty business
A lot of my students and peers have big plans for changing their trajectory in business in a few years - whether pivoting from hairstyling to educating, esthetician to franchise owner, or leaving the salon life behind and opening their own agency like Sasha did.
So my question for Sasha was, what happens if you develop a strong beauty brand and then want to make the shift? Can you keep that same brand? Is it helpful or harmful to hold on to it?
Sasha again said that this is where having a strong brand philosophy (or mission statement, or branding ‘position’) comes in handy - no matter which direction you decide to take, your brand can still be your North Star to guide you and your loyal followers to the next leg of your journey.
“So for example,” explains Sasha, “I'm just signed a hair extension brand in Key West. I'm so excited to work with this woman. She right now has a small salon, two people working for her, [and] she’s also is selling extensions. She also is putting a course out there. So [what] we are going to be now [is] doing the work to say, okay, what is like your philosophy on hair extensions?”
“If you're just selling hair extensions or you're just offering a course, who cares? Honestly. So we have to figure out what makes either your approach or your philosophy unique and then how do we leverage that?”
“We have to create marketing, whether you want to call it a positioning statement or a brand story around that. So no matter what you do, people always know what does this brand represent? And I can either buy in or I could buy out. I could walk away.
So for those people that you're working with, I would encourage them to think about what is it that I'm all about? What is my actual mission personally?”
“For many of these women it's about taking that time back for ourselves because we've been working our whole lives just to get permission from someone to take a break. Beauty has that opportunity for connection and deeper stories and those stories are not superfluous. When you're really able to go deeper, get vulnerable, that's where all of a sudden, no matter what you do in your business, it can all come back to that invisible foundation and you have something really strong to stand on.”
Should I work with a marketing agency to create a beauty brand?
I work with a lot of solopreneurs who are trying to grow their salon or home beauty business beyond themselves, but they’re not sure where to start.
Their budget for marketing is small, and they often ask me, is it worth it to hire a marketing agency to grow my business?
I asked Sasha her advice on how to tell when it’s time to get help ‘on the outside’ and hire a marketer.
Her advice? Take an honest look at how much time you have to put into marketing, and where most of your money is coming from currently (*hint hint* your niche, or as Sasha calls it, the Zone of Genius.)
“It all goes back to your business goals. So my thing, every time I have a discovery call with someone, that's exactly where we start. I say, ‘Tell me about your business. What's been going on for you and what are your goals and why do you feel like you can't get there by yourself?’”
“We are all more than capable of pulling up YouTube University and learning Canva and doing what we can to get us to a certain level. But at some point, we all kind of have our own zone of genius. If your zone of genius is hair or skin, it's going be hard to wear 30,000 different hats.”
“In the beginning you have to because we all start out and we have no money. I’ve been there too.”
“But at some point you have to say, ‘What's more valuable - money or time?’ Those are really the two things that we have. And if I want to save money, growing my brand might take me more time. If I want to shorten the time of how long it's going to take me to hit some revenue goals or to expand to a second location or to bring on five more team members, I might have to spend a little more money.”
“If you're just starting out, I think a great way to work with us is [our] Brand Strategy Power Hour, [which costs] a couple hundred dollars. What we do is a 60 minute intensive phone call where I'm asking you tons of questions, taking tons of notes, and then a week later you get a mini Brand Bible I call it. And that has the spin of everything that you say in our conversation, but now positioned as a mission statement, purpose statement, your vision, your core values, brand personality, your brand voice. These are all things that you can literally copy, paste, throw up on a website or start talking about on Instagram or TikTok.”
“[Then you can say,] hey, I know who my brand is. It's not just Sasha over here, spray tanning. This is what we're actually about. And that really does get people excited.”
You can connect with Sasha at Daring Creative to learn more about building your own dynamite beauty brand that will be unforgettably special, a big seller, and most importantly, 100% you.
