Make Magic: Tailoring Your Offerings to Diverse Holiday Shopper Personas

There’s one month left in the year, and this one month is packed with holidays and celebrations to wrap the year on a meaningful note. Your patients are looking for treatments to invest in for themselves, as well as gifts to give to their loved ones. How are you planning your marketing initiatives to provide the ideal offerings for both these needs?

The first step is to get clear on what you’re offering: reliable treatments that not only help your patients look better, but also hopefully feel better! Investing in quality aesthetic treatments is increasingly being recognized as a valuable act of self-care. How are you leveraging these associations to make an impact on your sales?

This holiday season, we can safely anticipate a mix of large parties, intimate gatherings, and time spent alone. While some people may continue to partake in large parties and social gatherings, others may opt to spend time alone or with immediate family to reduce the risk of illness. Either way, splurging (investing) some money on quality aesthetic treatments makes lots of sense.

Marketers are ever busy anticipating the type of personas to cater to, and holiday shoppers create their own niche.¹ How can we use what we know about these personas to our advantage?

The Self-Gifter:
These shoppers are looking to foster more attention on their self-care and luxury during the magical holiday season. US statistics show that fashion and beauty were the top areas of choice for self-gifters in 2021.² This persona is perhaps the most obvious persona to cater to. Use creative messaging and quality graphics to highlight the strong self-care potential, as well as high efficiency of your treatments.

The Big Spender:
Small but mighty, this group looks to invest in quality, both in product and in service. Provide treatment packages that can be customized to the recipient at time of consultation. Take extra care to ensure a high-level experience and highlight quality add-ons with deals exclusive to your big spenders.

Cutback-Covid Customer:
The good news here is that the beauty-sector thrives even during economic downturns. Termed as the lipstick phenomena, research finds that lipstick sales go up during recessions due to their power to make women feel more attractive. ³ This applies to the industry as a whole. What’s even more assuring is that a high price for a quality product isn’t a dealbreaker but perhaps even a dealmaker. Researchers found that when given the choice between a pricey “attractiveness-enhancement” product and a discounted one, women of all economic backgrounds chose the pricier products. Quality continues to be associated with high prices – and serious beauty-spenders want the best.³

The Loyalist:
Loyalists are your returning patients that trust your services, rave about your treatments, and want to share the magic with their closest loved ones. Are you offering any referral programs, gift vouchers, or special discounts to your most loyal subset? The holidays are a key time to not only thank your valued patients for their loyalty and trust in you, but also foster more avenues for word of mouth to speak for your practice.

The Social Butterfly:
Social butterflies are likely busy during the holiday season. When they’re not hosting gatherings, they’re either attending them, or planning for them. When they’re not busy researching top products and services loved by others, they’re busy raving about the ones they love. Aesthetic treatments provide a certain allure to social butterflies, who not only seek to host the ultimate holiday gatherings but aim to look good doing it. Gain their trust through UGC, trusted reviews, and quality branding; keep their trust with quality treatments and exceptional results. They’ll easily become your top brand ambassadors.

The Procrastinator:
Last-minute gift shopping is no anomaly, and you can use this to your advantage. Actively promote your treatment services as a quality gifting option to last-minute shoppers and save them the search! You can do this for your current-patient base through in-person promotion, email marketing, and SMS marketing. You can also use your social media to promote gift cards to both your existing patient base and incoming prospects.

The Discount and Deal Hunter:
This persona looks forward to deals that come with Black Friday, Christmas, and other holidays. Be sure to leverage the potential of these holidays and offer your patients feasible yet fitting deals on your services. You can also partner with another related business and offer complimentary gift-packages, be it creams, other cosmetics, or a complimentary voucher. Appeal to the sense of having struck a real deal, and this persona will leave with twice the glow. 😉

There you have it – some key holiday shopper personas and how to appeal to them with your offers. Despite the rush of the holiday season, now is the ideal time to set the stage for a successful year ahead while ending 2022 strong. Understanding the needs and values of your different patients or prospects is key; not only will this make you a stronger marketer, but also a rising business professional. Cheers!

^{1. https://www.limespot.com/blog/ecommerce-holiday-shopper-personas#thinker} 

^{2. https://www.giftsanddec.com/holiday/how-consumers-self-gifted-for-christmas/} 

^{3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2022/06/01/with-inflation-rising-the-lipstick-effect-kicks-in-and-lipstick-sales-rise/?sh=200a4e371276}