A small business owner shares her experience in navigating the world of online.
Elizabeth McMahon
Professional stylist, trainer and presenter
Elizabeth McMahon is the creator and founder of Elisasi – professional styling, training, events and presenting. She has worked with national shopping centre chains such as Westfield as a stylist, and also styles fashion shoots for gloss magazines and other publications. Here she shares her experience as a small business owner in the world of online.
Elisasi is basically styling, training, and I do occasionally some MCing for fashion shows as well. It’s all about fashion and ranges from styling a photo shoot to teaching young teenagers and adults fashion, taking people shopping and working on their wardrobes, and running fashion shows as well.
What’s your favourite part?
Well, I can’t really say my favourite. They’re all very different, but they’re all very enjoyable. The most rewarding for me would be personal styling. As one-on-one, I get to know the ladies or the men on a personal level, and just seeing them gaining confidence after shopping with them is amazing. And I love teaching as well, and obviously photo shoots are very creative after seeing the product at the end. Yeah, so I love all the services I provide!
Who is your target market?
So my target market ranges from obviously teenagers to adults. It just depends what services I’m providing. So for the teenagers, it’s mainly teaching and personal styling – most of my clients are women and it ranges from the age of 30 to 55-60. So that’s my biggest target market when it comes to personal styling and wardrobe. But I do have a lot of men as well. They’re more corporate men who are being styled for leisure and business. Most find me online.
What is it about having an online presence that you like, need and works for you?
Well, now we live in the 21st century, everyone and everything comes back to being online. It’s really big and if you’re not on it, then you’re missing out big time. For me it ranges from Facebook to other social platforms to my website. Working from home, being online is very important. My website is my shopfront, so it’s really important for me to have that looking fantastic so when people look for my shopfront, they want to come inside and have more of a look around. It gives them enough information about what I really do and why I do it for them to then contact me.
As a small business owner, do you have any tips for other small business owners?
Just be on your online platforms regularly. Post often and interact with people.
How do you associate looking good in person and looking good online?
As you know, as soon as you say that she’s a stylist, you expect her to look good. I think from your house to the way you present yourself, and the website. Everything needs to look good. It all works hand in hand. There’s no point in seeing me dress well and you go on my website and it looks tacky. My online presence really needs to match with my personality and what I do.
What is your ultimate website goal or online goal?
Well, my ultimate online goal is obviously to get as much traffic to my website as possible, and with that, my website needs to look fantastic to draw people to it. Look good and have the right content on there as well.
What’s one thing you would like implement in your online content strategy?
I would love to have an online TV show all about fashion. That would be fantastic to have a TV show on my website. I would showcase makeovers, maybe being on photo shoots, styling for magazines, when I’m on magazine sets, one-on-one interviews with models or people who have been styled and we follow up to see how they’ve improved their style. It’d be very educational, but fun as well.
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Before we go, what’s your number one styling tip?
Never leave the house without high-heeled shoes.
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