What Should Your Goals Be When Starting A Cosmetics Business?

Business goals: every company needs them and cosmetic companies are no different. While there are some similarities between your cosmetic business’s goals and other companies, the way you approach these goals is going to be different. After all, cosmetics is a competitive market. How can you make sure your goals are aligned to generate long-term success? Read on to see the kinds of goals you should be setting. 

Understand Why You Want To Sell What You Plan To Sell

Your first goal when starting a cosmetic brand is to understand your brand. As any self-help book will tell you, understanding yourself is fundamental to personal growth. Your business is no different. 

First, ask yourself, Why do I want to sell cosmetics. Your answer will vary from everyone else’s, but your answer is important simply because it is your answer. 

However, your answer shouldn’t be because of money. There are hundreds of easier ways to make money quickly. You have the stock market, selling clothes online, affiliate marketing, etc. 

Starting a cosmetics business is NOT easy. There is a lot of planning when it comes to developing a supply line, working with distributors, and formulating a marketing and branding strategy. 

Before you begin any of this, you must understand your business and your reasons for entering into this market. Not only will this help you develop your brand’s image, but will also keep you motivated when things get stressful and you start questioning why you ever started a career in cosmetics. 

Some answers you may come up with are: 

• To create a product for specific types of people

• To have a more-effective all-natural cosmetic option on the market

• Because you have a secret formula that has been proven to work

Once you answer this, you should then come up with more specific questions. Such as, if you plan to sell body lotion you should ask yourself Why do I want to sell body lotion. 

The more specific your questions are, the more you will define your business goals by defining your brand. The more your brand is defined, the more effective your future marketing strategies will be. 

Why?

Because you know exactly who you are and who you are selling to. If you are confident in yourself, people will naturally want to follow you. This is instrumental in building a loyal fanbase who will stick by your side in an ever-increasing market. 

What Are You Innovating?

If you have a product that is going to completely change the market, that is fantastic! But if you don’t, the good news is you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be successful. 

Sometimes a great product doesn’t need an entirely new formula built from the ground up. A great product can be as simple as offering a similar product at a cheaper cost than a competitor. 

However, if you aren’t creating something new, a proper marketing strategy will need to be utilized to get the word out about your product.

For those who have an innovative new product, the important question to ask is if people actually want this product. 

Infomercials are a great example of this. Every night there are hundreds of “innovative” new products that never reach success. People are not interested in an innovative product unless it actually fixes something they have a problem with. 

For your product to work, you need to understand your current market’s frustrations. This can be done with research. It’s up to you how thorough you want to be, but understand this, the more thorough the research, the better you’ll understand the market. 

You may find your audience’s frustrations are about something completely different than what your product tries to solve. If it is, don’t view this as a loss for your product, but as a chance to innovate where it truly counts. 

Market research can be done in person. But, you now have multiple ways to do research from your own home thanks to the internet. Using sites like Quora or Reddit will give you insight into the problems that affect your potential audience base. 

While it may take time to understand how to search for these problems, once you do, you’ll have a wealth of information waiting to be used. 

Once your research is complete, you can start on a formula that is not only innovative, but something people actually want to use. When that happens, you may see that you don’t even need to spend much on marketing. 

A good product is capable of selling itself and that will be your reward for thorough research. 

How Do You Plan To Develop Growth?

This may seem obvious, but for a business to work, it needs to grow. Now, the question for your cosmetic brand’s business goal is: How exactly do you plan to grow?

The answer depends on where you plan to sell. Are you aiming to physically be on shelves? Do you plan to start off with an online store?

Of course, you may segue from physical to digital or vice-versa down the line, but where you sell initially will define the type of marketing you need to create. 

Physical Stores

If you plan to start off selling at a physical market, it may be more cost-effective to partner with an existing store before creating your own store. 

By partnering with an existing store you can see how your product compares to other brands on the shelf. When it comes to selling physically, the packaging is going to be 90% of how you make your sales. 

Because of the importance of packaging, creating a great display or box should be a high business goal priority when it comes to selling cosmetics physically. Using an ODM service can help you create packaging that does well with your market while also fitting your brand’s image.

You can also use this as an opportunity to do in-person market research. Ask people what would it take for them to try out a new brand. What do they look for when shopping for cosmetic items? 

Don’t be afraid to get out there if selling your products in person. You are going to be getting a lot of valuable information in person that shouldn’t be passed up. 

Since some people can be apprehensive about being interviewed, try to give them some type of benefit for answering your questions. 

If you offer a free sample of your product for answering your questions, then you not only get valuable market research but also give them a chance to try your product which could convert them to your brand of cosmetics. 

Digital Stores

Digital stores can be tricky as there are so many digital stores out there. The best way to think about running a digital store is to think of a flea market. 

When walking through the flea market, you’ll have plenty of people telling you to shop at their stand. Does this usually work? 

No. 

They could offer you the best deal there is, but if you take a glance at their small store and see nothing of interest you’ll continue walking. 

The key to digital marketing is in digital advertising. It may come as no surprise but people like pretty things. What is surprising is how many digital stores forget this. 

Your photos and videos can’t just be good, they have to be fantastic. Quality photography cannot be underestimated when it comes to your digital marketplace. 

While physical stores rely on packaging to stand out, your product is going to need photos and videos that really grab your audience's attention. On the internet, attention spans are fleeting, so you’ll have just a few seconds to grab their attention. 

The better your media is, the more people are likely to trust your brand. This may sound shallow at first, but think about it:

Who would you trust? Someone who didn’t care enough to take a proper photo or the person who gives time for a great photo shoot. The person who is willing to put more time into ensuring their product looks good more than likely made sure that their product is also of quality. 

When it comes to digital marketing, be picky! 

Don’t settle for any shot. Your business goal is to make sure that the shot you use of your cosmetic product says exactly what you want to your audience. 

Give your audience no room to interpret what it means. Let them know this is a quality product in those few seconds you have their attention. A good photo is the difference between them clicking on your product’s page or scrolling to the next thing that captures their interest. 

Should International Sales Be A Business Goal?

This really depends on the amount of money you are willing to spend in the initial stages. 

Selling international costs a lot of money, and the price varies depending on the country you want to sell in. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the headache of dealing with export forms and getting your product delivered and distributed in your country of interest. 

In short: this should not be a priority. 

So, what kind of scale should you sell at?

If you’re selling physically, it’s always a good idea to start local first. See how the product compares and what you need to fix. Then expand to the surrounding areas and build a name for yourself. 

As your product begins to get more popular and expand, it’ll get harder and harder to keep track of. While you are in the beginning stages, you’ll be able to see how the rate at which your product is growing. As it sells more and more you can then work on hiring an effective marketing team. 

For digital sales, try to work within your country initially. Your goal should be to focus on getting your cosmetics into as many hands as possible. 

As your cosmetic product becomes popular in your country, you can then move to similar countries. For instance, if you are a USA seller, you can move on to the Canadian market, and later the UK market, which will give you access to the European market. 

The key to both digital and physical expansion is patience. Plenty of successful companies have been brought down because they expanded way too quickly. 

Avoid being too eager. 

We all want to make money. But if you leap before you look, you’ll end up messing up a shot at success when you were on the right path the whole time. 

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Now you know the business goals you need to aim for. There is just one problem: you need a professional cosmetics network to move forward. Every business needs a well-connected network to make things easier and you have access to one right here. CJW Cosmetic is an ODM/OEM company that has access to a network of 200 manufacturers, a marketing team at your disposal, a design team ready to create beautiful packaging, a photographer who has worked with world-famous brands, and more. If you are ready to begin planning your cosmetic company, don’t do it alone. Contact us and we’ll have a conversation with you about what it takes to grow and price out a strategy based entirely on your business needs.