#makeupro

When helping fellow creatives with their marketing & career goals via Beauty Beaute Beauti, I ask clients what are their work goals.  More often than not the response is “  I just want to work.”  to which I follow up with “Doing What?” to which the response is laundry list f every single thing known to man in the industry... bridal, fashion, runway.. even if there in a town of 500 people!  No these artist have plans of moving but think this is what is necessary to be successful in their career.  I was once that artist, my business card had just about everything under the sun on it along with skills.  My business card used to read like:  Margina Dennis - Makeup, Hair, Grooming, Airbrush for Print, Runway, Commercials,Fashion, Editorial,TV,  & Beauty.  A mouthful right?  I thought I was being thorough.  I had experience in those all those areas so I needed to market myself to cast a wide so that I left no stone unturned. I took this same mindset into a few agency relationships and to dismay they did not work. Why, do you ask?  Because there was absolutely no focus on what my career path looked like.  I thought because I was versatile, that my agent would have no problems keeping me busy.  It actually worked against me, since I didn’t know what I truly wanted, they focused on the artists that knew what their path was.  And if there was work that no one else was interested in, I would get the call, because remember “I just wanted to work”.  I realized that if I wanted to level up and expand my career and be a working artist, I needed to map out what that looked like.  

(An absolutely useless “edgy” test from back in the Boston days.)

Here are some of the questions I had to ask myself:

1.  What are the type of makeup jobs predominately in my market?  

2. What type of makeup jobs do I enjoy?

3. Does my portfolio/website  fit the kind of jobs that I am seeking?

4. How do I sustain myself full time?  What do I need to make?

(the kind of image that I needed to work and book jobs)

At the time I was in Boston, which is a commercial/lifestyle/corporate market.  It is not a fashion marketing, it is not a beauty market. It is also a film and bridal market.  Once focused in on the time types of jobs I wanted, I started getting the type of jobs I was seeking.  And then I spent almost five years travelling between Boston & New Year, strengthening my portfolio, so that I could get better images and models, which lead to better jobs and better rates.  I still didn’t have the agency clarity that I have now during that time but it came once I began to understand how I wanted to define myself as an artist.

(Advertising Booked because I had images that had the same feel as this )

(Front of a Model com card from Boston, this is about as “fashion”  as you would see and that strong brow I did was very ‘edgy’.this is how I was able to book commercials that they considered bringing someone in from New York for).

Even though I am still very capable of doing many areas of makeup, I think make sure to show a clear path of the word and booking as I am seeking.  Just because I did a job, it doesn’t mean I will promote it on my instagram or put it on my website.  If it doesn’t match the focus, it doesn’t get promoted :-).

I hope this gives you some insight into being focused in your marketing.... if you need more insight, you can find it here.

Love & Lipstick,