Hannah Bronfman, founder of HBFIT sits down with us and provides advice on how to get a career in the beauty industry and push yourself out of your comfort zone

“I think the advice that I would give to my younger self would be don’t feel awkward about cold calling and reaching out blind,” says Hannah Bronfman, founder of HBFIT. “I think there’s something to be said about a go-getter and someone who knows what they want and how to get it, or at least how they think they know how to get it.”

When you cold call someone and you have a heart and soul behind what you’re trying to achieve, that comes through. Maybe the first time, the person doesn’t answer the email but emails them again. Persistence is key.

A specific area of the beauty industry that’s changed via technology is the booking platforms. Hannah says a lot of these companies have created their own SaaS products, which is a statistical analytics system that is like the brain of a lot of these apps. Whether it’s Glam Squad, the Glamm app, Style Seat, all of these programs and technologies have created a new way that people interact with beauty and the way that beauty is booked for the professional and the consumer.

It’s brought the beauty world to a full on-demand system just like everything else that we see. So I think technology has an impact on the product and the way it’s designed.

Every single brand is trying to recreate the lipstick or foundation, lotions, gels that finish matte or true match a color, or lipstick that looks blue, but it’s going to turn bright pink. I think everyone’s trying to do this kind of surprise and delight using technology to help create a different product that hasn’t been to the market yet, says Hannah.

To prepare for an interview, you can do a few things differently. One, do your research, know who you’re being interviewed by, and know the trajectory of their career.

For the company that you’re interviewing for, know their past big product launches and what has gone on in the news.

Consider: Have they raised money? Have they been acquired? Did they go through a recall?

“Those are things that you want to know before an interview. And I think some other things that you can do is, always, if you’re going into a beauty meeting, wear lipstick, wear eye shadow, nothing that’s flashy, but something that says you’re an enthusiast,” Hanna explains. “And always be polite, take your time when you’re speaking. It comes off a lot better when you don’t say the word like or um.”

This article will discuss two aspects of the marketing process: analyzing sales over time and collecting feedback. These details are crucial since you want to know whether your product is a success or not.

Because you’re continuously attempting to improve your customer service, gathering feedback is critical. When it comes to client connection building, the first thing to remember is to make sure you’re offering customers what we call “perceived value” in marketing, which is an essential concept.

Perceived value relates to a customer’s internal assessment of whether a product is worth the price you’re asking. This value is in terms of both money and the time and effort it takes to obtain it. As a result, you’re continually striving to make sure you’re in sync with your customers’ perceptions of value. It would be best if you also kept in mind that customers sometimes misjudge value and cost.

Consider how a rare ingredient for a scent or a special pigment for a cosmetic will significantly increase the price of your product. If your customer doesn’t value the unique ingredient, you’re not going to pay for it because it doesn’t match their perceived value. This area is where you should get input regularly.

You must ensure that your assessment of your proposition’s value correlates to the customer’s sense of value. You’ll do this because you want to build long-term connections with your customers. The main objective of marketing is to increase consumer loyalty. You strive to gain and build long-term relationships with your customers.

Repeat customers are more likely to generate more profits for your business. The 80/20 rule in marketing suggests that 20% of your clients account for 80% of your profits, which is a significant amount of money. You should make a considerable effort to cultivate long-term customers.

To do so, you must first figure out what their needs and wants are. A customer’s need is something they can’t live without. Customers crave or desire something based on their personality, culture, or society. Marketers of beauty products and fragrances tend to focus on wants rather than needs. To establish a devoted customer base, you’ll need to concentrate on this topic.

Attracting customers and keeping customers are two separate matters. Customer relationship management (CRM) is how businesses tackle this critical issue of customer relationships. CRM encapsulates the marketing process. It’s the method of establishing and keeping profitable customer relationships by providing superior value and satisfaction to all of your customers.

We’re in for a really big change. Things are changing before our eyes now; the retail experience is totally different from what it used to be. We’re also going to see a lot of movement.

The people that are going to be successful are the ones that are aware of how people are shopping. Hopefully, people will go back into the store, but a lot is happening online. But how do you sell makeup online? You’ve got to be creative.

One piece of advice to anyone that wants to be an entrepreneur — because who doesn’t want to work for themselves — is to make sure you have something or an idea that is better than anything out there. Bobbi Brown, a makeup artist/author/entrepreneur says “It’s got to be new. It’s got to be better. Make sure you know you’re going to be working 24 hours a day. You never stop thinking about it.”

I also recommend working for a company. Go work for a big company, because then you’ll know what you don’t want to do. You’ll learn how to act, how to arrive on time, and how to write spreadsheets. The more you know, the better you do. There’s no rush.

Brown says there are three traits he loves to see when people want to get into the beauty industry. Number one: energy. You need to have good and positive energy.

You also need to be really curious. I don’t care what you know. I care what you want to know.

The third thing, which everyone says, is passion. You have to love what you do. You have to love the industry you’re in.

FIT professor Meeta Roy breaks down the role market segmentation plays in beauty marketing for large and niche brands.

Fragrances were born as soon as man began walking upright and discovered fire. Logs of cedarwood and oak were thrown into the fire and fragrant smoke drifted upwards. Prehistoric man had released the beautiful scents of trees and plants. He would burn these materials and create scents that would honor his gods and protect him from evil spirits and illness.
Each geographic area has its own flora and fauna, and they produce different scents. Even in today’s world, different cultures and localities prefer different scents. And we are always challenged to produce globally-pleasing fragrances.
Fragrances are still used for spiritual and medicinal purposes, but in the beauty industry, we want to make things smell good. Fragrances mask the maladies of our world and please our sense of smell. We use fragrance to adorn our bodies and improve our surroundings. For most, their fragrance is their final accessory used to complete the way they look and feel.
The natural materials used for the creation of fragrances have remained the same for centuries. We still use all types of plants and all different parts of the plant, including flowers, roots, leaves, stems, grass, bark, wood, and seeds. We obtain their oils through a variety of methods.
Distillation: We distill the plant materials using steam and water to obtain the oils.
Extraction: We extract their precious essences using carbon dioxide or other volatile solvents.
Expression: We express the oils using abrasion and pressure. This method is especially used for citrus oils so that no heating is involved.
At one time, we used by-products from animals, such as ambergris from whales, but we no longer do that. Animal cruelty regulations and the continued decrease in animal populations stopped these practices. We have created animal-type odors using aromatic chemicals.
Organic chemistry has allowed us to create aromatic chemicals which smell similar to natural ingredients and which can be mixed and matched to take the place of natural ingredients. These chemicals are created from petroleum and turpentine. They allow us to produce much larger quantities and provide less expensive materials to work with. Perfumer has a much larger palette of individual odors to turn into beautiful fragrances.
For the perfumers, raw materials are their notes, their inspiration, their language, and the components of their olfactive memories. One thing remains the same. We identify the materials we work with to create fragrances by the way they smell. We classify them in the same way that visual artists classify colors and musicians classify sounds.

Writing about beauty online is similar to writing about beauty in print. You never want to sound like you are regurgitating the facts laid out in a press release. It is still essential to be a strong writer, able to craft a story.

While there are many fundamental similarities, there are vital points to consider when writing for a digital publication. Much like writing in print media, sounding authentic and relatable is crucial. And as you would in writing in any medium, be sure your content is reliable and accurate.

The first key to writing for an online publication is for your words to feel natural to the reader. One way to do this is to write as though you were having a casual conversation with a friend. It can help to read each sentence aloud. You can even pretend your friend is in the room with you.

If the sentence sounds the least bit forced, cheesy, or as though you are just listing facts directly from a press release, then it’s probably time to stop and rework that sentence.

People gravitate to digital content similar to the type of beauty advice they would find on social platforms like Reddit. People today want to feel like they are getting beauty advice from real people in the same real-world situations they might find themselves in.

Thinking in these terms while writing will keep your article sounding genuine and lend to your relatability, which is the second key point to remember when writing for an online publication.

You don’t want to sound too dictatorial. Gone are the days of the royal “we” in beauty writing. Try to avoid using “beauty speak” that you would find on a press release. In digital beauty writing, you want to let your personality shine through so people can relate to you and to the story you are telling.

Still, beauty writing online is often like walking a fine line. It’s important not to sound as though you are superior to your reader. While you want to speak to your reader like a friend, be wary of using “internet speak.” It’s easy to say the latest trending phrases, to sound cool and in the moment. It’s good again to stop here and decide if what you are writing is something you would say in a real-life situation.

If you write anything that would be an actual hashtag or a trending phrase, it’s best to make the change. No one goes around saying “LOL” instead of actually laughing, right? If you suddenly realize you just wrote “all the feels” or “brows on fleek,” it’s no longer conversational; it’s just cheesy and sounds unnatural.

Writing about beauty online isn’t very different than writing for a print publication. The transition is easy if you keep these key points in mind and remember to be yourself.

When compared to the exciting and timely stories generated from the front lines of global conflicts, beauty stories can seem tedious and not newsworthy. How can a writer take a story about makeup and make it compelling, engaging, and captivating?
10,000 Words vs. 500 words
One beauty writer found incredible struggle trying to write a simple story on mascara. Her husband, also a journalist, reports from the front lines of conflicts around the globe. While he is off doing exciting things, she is struggling to make mascara interesting. “I was working on a mascara story,” the writer says, “And I had to find a way into this story that was interesting. I had to find a way to make mascara compelling and captivating, and I had to raise the stakes. And I sat there with these tubes of mascara at my desk trying to think, like, how can I make this interesting?”
When her husband returned from the war, they had an ongoing debate about which was harder to write. Is it harder to write 10,000 words about a conflict in the Middle East or 500 words about a tube of mascara, which nobody really wants to read about? They just want to wear it, and they want to feel good. And this debate has gone on for ten years. Even her husband eventually agreed that beauty writing is hard. A man who goes to the front lines of war and writes 10,000 words describing it, could not get five words out about why mascara was interesting or exciting.
Bottom Line: Beauty Writing is No Small Feat
Writers who are looking to pursue or upskill their career in the Beauty industry, take note. Beauty writing is one of the most challenging fields.

The biggest mistake new writers make in the world of beauty is sounding like they’re writing an ad.

Say you’re given one shampoo and you have to write about this shampoo. How are you going to make that different from the advertisement for that shampoo?

You’re not paid by this company. You are paid by your readership.

Your job is to be an editor. It’s the single biggest edit you’ll make in your career as a beauty writer.

If it’s a product that you absolutely hate but you have to write about it for the story, you have to acknowledge that maybe you hate it, but maybe there’s somebody who doesn’t. Maybe you have fine hair and somebody has long, thick, coarse hair. There’s always a way to let the reader know that an editor had her hands on this—that it didn’t come out of a factory; that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.

“You have to speak truth to power,” says Danielle Pergament, “and the power, in this case, would be Procter and Gamble or Estée Lauder. You have to say, ‘This is the most amazing eye cream I’ve used all week, but at the same time, this one thing happened.’ Or, ‘I didn’t love the smell.’”

You have to be honest. It’s the most important thing you can be as a beauty writer.

“Inspiration can stem from so many different places” explains Juliet Falchi, Director of Global Product Innovation for Mac Cosmetic. As an art history major, Juliet was encouraged to stay in touch with what’s trending in the world of art, design, and technology. Given that she works in the beauty industry currently, staying in touch with the competitive landscape and beauty trends is absolutely crucial.

While working at La Mer, Juliet did exploratory research for a lifting and firming serum by attending a 3D printing fair. “[We] spoke to people there and came up with this whole new angle of how to talk about shapeshifting,” she exclaims. “Some of the best ideas come from things that are completely unrelated to exactly what you’re working on.”

Out of the box thinking can play a key role in branding and growth. Strategizing new ways to tackle the same market can become mundane if you are brainstorming in the same environment. Getting out of your office and finding inspiration on the streets, at the movies, in museums, events, moreover through other brands–within and outside your market–can really pay off.

It also pays off to have a mentor. Mentorship can contribute to the creation process in ways you never thought possible, as it offers the opportunity to connect with someone who has a diverse perspective and can give constructive feedback. Juliet suggests that a mentor “doesn’t necessarily have to be your direct boss or someone you currently work with.” Working with people from different departments can offer a mutually beneficial relationship where collaboration becomes more unique due to your different backgrounds. Unparalleled ideas will flourish organically.

Juliet’s mentor, Jennifer Balbier, is Senior Vice President in Product Development and Artistry Brands. According to Juliet, Jennifer is “well-known in our company as being someone who really loves to take on young talent and foster them.” It’s important to shop around to make sure whoever ends up being your mentor is in it for the long haul; they should want to help you succeed.

Furthermore, it’s never too late to find a mentor. If you are looking to expand your horizons and take your career up a notch, start reaching out to former employers or other people in your network at different companies. Find people that are willing to keep the door open for you (and help you open doors). It can make all the difference in your career.

How does a color consultant find the best colors for a client? First, you look for relationships, colors that relate favorably to your client’s skin tone, hair, and eye color.

You’ll go through a series of comparisons using drapes, makeup, or other diagnostic tools. To get the best results, your client usually is wearing no makeup and is under daylight balanced conditions.

You’re looking at the value and the brightness level of the coloring, the undertone of warm or cool, and the contrast level between hair and skin. The goal is to select colors that favorably enhance your client.

Colors in skin tones can be described as warm or cool. Warm colors are those with yellow in them and cool colors have blue in them. A person’s skin has a yellow undertone or a blue undertone, a cool or warm temperature – they’re interchangeable.

You’ll look at how light or dark your client’s skin tone and hair value are. People with lighter coloring look better in lighter colors, and those with deeper tones favor deeper shades. Also, consider if they have brighter or more muted coloring.

The result – your client knows which color palette is best for them and can use that palette to guide them. Everything will mix and match easily because it has natural harmony. This palette also applies to makeup and hair color.

In summary, you observe the value level – the degree of light or darkness in the skin/hair; the undertone – how warm or cool the skin/hair is; the chroma level – how bright or soft the person is; and the contrast level – the degree of contrast between hair and skin.

Like enhances like. People with warm skin tone and hair wear best warm colors, and those with cooler undertones will look better in colors that have more blues, lilacs, or rose in them. Most color consultants are entrepreneurs. If you want your own business, many people could benefit from a color analysis.