If you want premium beauty clients, work on three things in this order: your positioning, your client experience, and the places high-end clients look for you. Price comes last, and discounts work against all three.

Most owners start with marketing and wonder why the enquiries are all price-checkers. The marketing was fine. It was pointing people at a business that looked like every other salon on the high street, so they compared on price.

The numbers this is about are on Kat Martyn's own results page. Leanne at Sculpt and Define Studio went from inconsistent months to consistent £9K months, working three days a week. A three-day week only pays like that when each appointment is worth more.

What "premium" means for a UK beauty business

A premium client pays more because she believes she is getting more. She is buying three things: a result she trusts you to get, an experience she enjoys, and a person she wants to see again.

A budget client is buying a treatment at a price. Both are fine. They want different things from you, and the same salon rarely suits both.

If most of your enquiries sit in the left-hand column, the fix starts with how you position the business.

Positioning: who you are for and what you are known for

Positioning is the sentence a client would use to describe you to a friend. "She's brilliant with problem skin" is positioning. "She does facials, lashes, brows and nails" gives a friend nothing to pass on.

In Kat's Clinic Launch Lab, the first month is "Foundations & Clinic Positioning: Who you are, who you serve, how you're different". Those three questions are the place to start:

• Who you are for. Pick the client you most enjoy treating and get the best results for. Write down her age, her skin concern, what she has tried, and what she is willing to pay to fix it.
• What you are known for. One signature treatment or concern you lead with. A short menu built around it looks more expert than a long one.
• How you are different. Your training, your results and your approach, said in plain words a client would repeat.

Your treatment menu and prices follow from this. How to set the price itself is in how to price facials in the UK, and that page covers the cost floor and menu tiers properly.

The client experience is your marketing

High-end clients notice everything between booking and the follow-up message. Each step either backs up your price or undercuts it.

• Booking. Online, easy, with a deposit taken. A deposit tells the client her slot is valued.
• Consultation. Ask about her skin, what she has tried and what she wants to change. Write a plan she can see.
• The room. Clean, calm and set up before she arrives. Small details carry a lot of weight in luxury services.
• Aftercare. Written homecare advice and a clear next step.
• Follow-up. A message a few days later asking how her skin feels.

None of this costs much. All of it is what an affluent client means when she says a salon "feels expensive".

Marketing for premium beauty clients on Instagram

Kat describes the content she teaches as "Not dancing. Not vanity metrics." For premium clients, Instagram has one job: proof that you get results for someone like her.

• Show results. Before and afters, with the client's consent, with the concern and the treatment plan named.
• Show the person. Your training, your standards and your face. High-paying clients book a practitioner as much as a treatment.
• Show the experience. The consultation, the room, the aftercare card.
• Make booking obvious. One clear way to book or enquire on every post and in your bio.

How often to post matters less than what the posts prove. A grid of results and reviews posted twice a week does more for client acquisition at the top end than a daily post with nothing to show.

Google Business Profile and reviews

When an affluent client searches Google for a treatment and your town, your Google Business Profile and its reviews are often the first thing she sees. She reads them before she ever looks at your prices.

Keep your services, photos and hours up to date, and ask every happy client for a review that names the treatment. How to set this up is in how to get consistent bookings.

Referrals from your best clients

Your best clients already know other people like them. A client referred by a friend arrives already trusting you, so she is far less likely to shop around on price.

Ask at the moment she is happiest, usually at the follow-up when her skin looks good. Make it specific: "If you've got a friend who'd like the same result, I keep two consultation slots a month for referrals." Thank the referrer with something that adds value, such as a treatment add-on, and leave your prices alone.

Pricing that premium clients trust

High-end clients are suspicious of a cheap price. A price that sits well below the salon's look and reviews makes them wonder what is missing.

• Do not discount the treatment. Add something instead: an add-on, a skin review or a homecare product.
• Show prices clearly. Premium does not mean hidden. Clients who can see your prices and still book are the ones you want.
• Raise prices deliberately. One planned change, announced properly, keeps your best clients. The steps are in how to raise your prices.

Client retention: keeping high-paying clients

Winning a premium client once is the expensive part. Keeping her is where the money is, and it comes from the same things that attracted her: results, experience and a next appointment booked before she leaves.

Rebooking is covered in how to get consistent bookings. Raising what each visit is worth, through homecare, add-ons and memberships, is in how to make more money from the clients you already have.

Where to start this week

Kat built her own skin clinic, The Face Tonic, to fully booked and found it "wasn't as profitable or sustainable as it looked". The change came when she focused on "pricing, systems, client retention and proper strategy".

Write your positioning sentence first. Then walk through your client experience as if you were booking for the first time, and fix the one step that feels cheapest. Those two jobs cost nothing and change who enquires.

This is the work inside Scale Up Society, where the promise is that "Clients are booking you". Kat's client results show what members have done with it.

"Being fully booked isn't the goal. Being profitable is."

Kat Martyn, mentor.katmartyn.co.uk