In her latest column for Folk Features, skin health expert Louise Thomas-Minns discusses client loyalty and the difference it has made to her business from the start
I wonder what the term loyalty means to you? For me, as a small business owner for the past 17 years, it has quite literally meant the difference between thriving or surviving since starting out, initially, in just the service side of skin health, way before the skin care range came along. If I didn’t have the loyalty of that returning client, I wouldn’t have been able to, firstly, just survive day to day and, secondly, for my business to be able to thrive.
When I decided to go it alone and set up my own business back in the early noughties, I was literally starting from zero. I had been out of the practice of treating clients for some years as I had ventured into the corporate world, working for international skin care brands as a business development manager and trainer. I had run other people’s beauty-based businesses, whilst also teaching part time at a vocational college and gaining my teaching qualification, so had no clients ‘to call my own’.
So, I set about bringing my 3-Dimensional formula for nurturing skin back to health to life (one of the positive outcomes of having had acne) and learnt on the job how to market myself, create ‘my brand’, target ‘my audience’ and take my signature facial approach to people’s homes with my kit bouncing around in the back of my Ford Escort (not quite the image I wanted to create but needs must – and the budget was zero).
From those early weeks, months, and years I harnessed that loyal (there’s that word again) client base, found those people who believed in me, what I was trying to achieve and seemed to love the results they were seeing in their skin health. Some of these clients are still with me today all these years later and have been integral to allowing me to grow the business from mobile to flagship premises, move again and then ultimately have the captive audience to finally realise my dream of having my own skin care range.
It’s always a joy to have new clients joining our skin health community at Louise Thomas Skin Care but I know that those loyal, returning, supportive clients are so vital and hugely appreciated. I recently redeveloped and reinstated a loyalty scheme for that very reason as I wanted to extend that gratitude to them by giving them rewards and treats – and making them feel as important as they truly are.
So, thank you to them and to the term loyalty for helping me to continue to work in a field I love – and to be able to educate and empower people in skin health.
Visit Louise Thomas Skin Care. The Skin Lounge is located on Unthank Road, Norwich.
Featured images supplied by Louise Thomas-Minns
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