Action Plan Before Hiring a Design Agency or a Freelancer for Your Skincare Brand

 Meera is a solopreneur just like you who took a stance and launched the natural skincare brand of her dreams, and now she wants to put that brand online like everyone does to market and increase sales. But she decided to give it a cool look and feel by giving a clear user experience of Glowing Skin Deliciousness hell yeah…

She was having a really hard time thinking from where she should start. Hire a freelancer or hire an agency to tackle this job — but she was unable to decide because there are lots and lots of agencies out there, some charge too much, some provide cheap services.

Ahh She was so damn confused…

Then she decided to research online a bit to find out where she should actually start, which will make her next move really easy. And guess what she found?

She found a pre action plan before hiring anyone for this job, because she knew she can't do it herself.

She was feeling a bit tired and decided to make some chai, and while sipping she kept on searching and reading the boring stuff. After a couple hours of research she ended up with this action plan, which she named a Pre Action Plan before taking the next move, and wrote it down in her daily journal.

After she ended up with reading and taking notes, she decided to spend a few hours to work these things out the next morning.

And on the next early morning, just before an hour of sun coming out, she sat at her table with her notebook. She was energized and ready to plan her next move.

While having her chai she decided to start from the beginning. She quickly got a question in her mind — What was the business idea?

In just a few seconds she recalled all the idea and got her answer and wrote it down — "Passion for making natural, clean skincare products so every girl can feel confident in her own skin." And that made the first point of the action plan. Define Your Idea. Behind the scene.

She wrote that in bold letters. Kept on thinking.

What was my Goal?

Ahh She was amazed as a wave of energy passed through her body and she smiled and answered… "Get every girl in the city to switch to my clean beauty routine and swear by it." She said she recalls this every day and works for it every day, and every single order that goes out of her shop makes her more close to her goal.

Who was my target audience?

Her target audience was young women in their late teens and twenties, and she knew almost all of them were living on Instagram, with a growing number now discovering brands through TikTok as well. She knew her audience and their ins and outs very well — what they scroll past, and what makes them stop.

What is your timeline?

Meera knew that wedding season was coming up, and everyone wants glowing skin before the functions start. She wanted things ready well before the rush hit, so she'd have a few solid weeks to market and build momentum before demand peaked.

Conduct a Competitive analysis before moving on?

She knew that Hina, Ayesha and Zara were also running skincare brands in her city, so she went online to do a competitive analysis of what they are doing — what prices they are charging, what packaging they are using, what deals they run, and what kind of content strategy they use — so she could offer something better or do something genuinely different.

What Story are you going to tell?

Hina, Ayesha and Zara were all selling skincare with the same "glow up" promises. She thought about what she had that was actually different, and being very intelligent, she got her answer —

"100% natural ingredients, made fresh in small batches, cruelty-free, delivered anywhere in the country in 48 hours." That was what made her different.

-- Following these 6 steps she was now ready to make the next steps of her action plan for her skincare shop's website.

Why Should you actually have a website?

When she was searching the night before, she researched this question for around 20 minutes before she got her answer.

She needed to build an audience for her skincare brand that interacts with her shop on a regular basis, and she knew she could grow that on Instagram, but that wasn't as solid as having it on her own website. Because Instagram keeps changing its algorithm, and now it often asks brands to pay just to reach the same followers who already follow them — and that doesn't work out for a small brand like Meera's.

Meera was intelligent and knew she could invest that money into her website instead, because she knew the right structure she was going to use to build her audience.

Website -> Audience + Market on Social Media + New Audience

She knew that only Hina was doing this — not Ayesha, not Zara.

"Don't rely on social media, use it for marketing instead. Build your own audience and grow it with social media."

Know the devices?

She was well aware that her target audience browses websites 90% from mobile devices, mostly straight out of Instagram Stories, with a few browsing on laptops when they're actually ready to check out. Remember, Meera was intelligent, she knew she should have a website that looked and felt the same across phones, tablets, and desktops — so she needed a responsive site.

The website content?

Meera was intelligent because she was going to make her site for the audience, not for herself. That's why she said —

"Address and talk about only the audience."

She decided to keep clean, high-quality product photography front and center on the site, because in skincare, people buy with their eyes first.

Blog Strategy?

She knew the reason Hina's skincare shop stood out was because she had a blog where she was educating her audience on skincare routines and ingredient breakdowns, and she was getting traffic and popularity for it — while Ayesha had a blog but hadn't touched it in a year, and Zara didn't even have one.

She decided to build a more useful, content-rich blog to beat Hina's and pull all that attention into her own jar.

To meet this goal she made a clear blog plan —

She will help young girls with the skin problems they're actually dealing with. She will share simple, natural skincare routines. She will offer unique discounts to her audience through the blog.

As soon as she completed the strategy part, she moved on to the next technical points she needed to know and implement.

Choose the right Domain Name?

She started searching for a domain name using her brand name, but the plain version wasn't available. She remembered her research from the night before — a domain name should be short and unique, not a creepy name like skincare999.com. She used a domain search tool to find something available and settled on meeraskin.com.

Choose the right hosting company?

The right hosting company offers a faster and quicker server response time, and is easy to manage for web and email. She decided to go with a hosting provider built for e-commerce, since her site needed to handle product listings and checkout, not just a blog.

Which CMS should she use?

She knew she was going to interact with her audience on a daily basis, adding new products and running promotions, so she needed a platform where she could easily log in, post, and manage everything herself. With options like WordPress with WooCommerce and Shopify on the table, she decided to go with the one built for selling products online, since that's what her brand actually needed.

SEO stuff?

She knew SEO would be an important factor to help people find her site through search engines, since that's one of the most valuable, free sources of traffic. She decided to —

Write optimized titles for every page of the site. Write descriptions with the right keywords. Submit the site to the popular search engines. Have a sitemap so every page can be crawled. Use a proper heading structure and avoid basic SEO errors.

Site Speed?

Meera knew the page speed factor as well, and tested Hina's, Ayesha's, and Zara's sites for speed — not a single one of them was optimized, and all of them took forever to load. She knew what Google recommends, and decided she wanted a site that loads in under 3 seconds, since skincare shoppers don't wait around.

Social Media to integrate?

She had already figured this out while defining her audience — her buyers live on Instagram, with a growing number on TikTok — so she decided to integrate both on her site and make every product and blog post easily shareable.

Analytics Integration?

She knew she needed to track what's happening on the site — how many visitors, where they're coming from, and what they're doing once they land — and she knew Google Analytics was the standard for this, so she decided to integrate it into the site.

Meera was intelligent………….

Email Signup forms?

Remember she was having a goal to build her own audience on the site? Yeah, right — so to start with that, she knew she needed to build her list first. To build the list she needed an email signup form on the site, so she decided on a popup form on the homepage, a sidebar signup widget for the blog, and a WhatsApp opt-in for quick order updates too.

Meera knew she should not build the site herself, and instead should hire an expert to take this plan and move quickly with it.

It just took around 2 hours, and Meera came out with a workable action plan. She really was intelligent — now she could hire any digital marketing agency and hand them a plan built for maximum ROI.