in General

Don’t sell hair extensions, sell confidence

At a recent conference, someone asked a host about their business where they sold hair extensions via e-commerce and wanted to know how to improve sales, business and get more customers.

At first, I thought about 4-5 questions, which related to place, promotion, reach, channels…

But then I realised there’s a better question than all of these.

Which is:

What do you sell?

No. Its not hair extensions. Okay, I admit; technically this is true – you are selling hair extensions.

So let’s rephrase the question:

What do you think your customers are buying?

Is it hair extensions?

Okay, lets try another way:

Kodak used to sell cameras, and other hardware; but what should they been selling? Memories.

What does Coca Cola sell? Experience.

What does McDonalds sell? Burgers? Maybe … I’d say convenience.

So – what does a business that hair extensions sell? I’ll give you a clue; its not hair extensions.

Its confidence.

When you reframe / flip the idea of what you are selling means you can now use this to position strategic ideas that might support this idea.

So, let’s carry this forward. How do we sell confidence via Hair extensions?

  1. Blogs/commentary comparing different hair extensions and what people enjoy one type over another.
  2. A video series where hair extensions are compared, and how confident people feel with them
  3. Value-added, complementary services like lipstick, make-up, etc could help support a business that is hair extensions.
  4. The customer experience could tie into this, from purchase to delivery; what does the experience look/feel like when they open the box. What do they do, how do they feel with the hair extensions? Could they post a short video with the hair extensions?

So, instead of selling hair extensions; sell confidence.

What do you sell?