by Greg Milner | Apr 28, 2009 | Blog
Inner Circle member Bruce Fisher (left, with wife Beth) of Fisher Experience in Braintree, Massachusetts writes that since he joined the program and got his Toolkit a few months ago, sales at his salon (www.fisherexperience.com) have leapt by over $10,000 a month.
But as Bruce explains, it took a lot of effort – and startling results – to get his staff believing that ‘our’ kind of direct response marketing for salons is a far better option than the typical beauty industry ‘branding’ style advertising they were accustomed to wasting money on…
“Greg, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to give back to the hairdressing community and many thanks to (Worldwide Salon Marketing) for what I see as breaking new ground.
I, like many others, have been a bit slow getting all of the ideas off the ground but the ideas that I have received from the Toolkit as well as from my Worldwide Salon Marketing coach coach Annette have worked for me quite nicely. I would advise new Members to adhere very closely to the principles of direct marketing and if you find you need additional help taking action you might find it helpful to recruit a local marketing student on an as needed basis.Our $99 dollar facial and massage special (normally 162 dollars) worked brilliantly as well as our ‘Raise the Dead’ campaign having resulted in 125 returned clients. When my team saw the results they started to come on board whereas in the past they were very doubtful. That has changed for the better and now I am getting much more enthusiasm and cooperation.
We are ready to launch our Mother’s Day campaign – e-mail, newspaper, mail drops, and banners and signs inside and outside of our building. I will be happy to report on these results next month but for now I am very excited about the response we will be getting.
Thank you to World Wide Salon Marketing
Bruce and Beth Fisher, Fisher Experience, Braintree, Massachusetts.
by Greg Milner | Apr 20, 2009 | Getting Salon Clients Quickly
Tanning Salon Marketing: A Salon Owner’s Story – One Decision CAN Make All the Difference
Lisa Gray of Beauty Naturally in Sandgate, Qld, shares the strategies that saved her business from extinction – and put money in her purse for the first time in years.
(Play the interview recording below and listen in as Lisa describes how her business has taken off.)
By the beginning of 2008, Lisa Gray was at the end of her tether. Years of running herself ragged had left her with little energy, even less money, and the ‘ideas cupboard’ was bare.
Lisa says you ‘could have fired a cannon’ through her little beauty salon on the northern fringes of Brisbane. But as is so often the case, the teacher appears when the student is ready, and Lisa was ready.
In the next 12 months, her sales rose from $170,000 to $230,000, including a 25% increase in product sales. Her return bookings rate rose from a meagre 40% to 68%. She took on between 9 and 15 new clients every month. But the biggest change is her new attitude to her business.
“I get excited about actually having a business,” says Lisa. “I’m not so stressed, and when you’re not so stressed you’re more creative, you’re more at ease with yourself, you enjoy what you do. I actually look forward to staff trainings and staff meetings!”
“It’s exciting, it’s not a drain, and I don’t feel negative, I feel very very positive.”
Here’s just a partial list of the ACTION Lisa took to turn her business around:
1)Distributes a flyer offering a Toolkit-inspired $99 special offer to 500 local homes every month. “This has been brilliant, we get a regular flow of new clients from this.”
2)Sends out the series of New Client Letters in the Toolkit to each new client every week. “They work very well…largely responsible for our higher re-booking rate.”
3)Has implemented the Queen of Referrals program in the kit. “Our clients are loving this…”
4)Sends out a monthly newsletter. Not every quarter or every couple of months, every month, using the Newsletter Templates in the kit. “I get a fantastic response from these newsletters…”
5)Started running a regular, small, lead-generating ad in the local newspaper. “A great response…”
6) Hired a full-time receptionist. “Amazing what a difference that’s made to sales…”
And that’s just the start. As Lisa says, “All this and I haven’t even scratched the surface of the whole Inner Circle program and the Toolkit!”
by Greg Milner | Apr 8, 2009 | Salon Advertising Tips
Beauty Salon Marketing 101: Back to Basics
Asking Too Much Of Your Advertising.
Most business owners try to get their ad to do too much, to appeal to all possible prospects. And by doing so, it achieves nothing. Asking a single ad to do everything is asking too much of it.
A single ad should have one purpose, one job, one expected outcome, and nothing more. If you want to sell a particular kind of body treatment or hair service, only sell that service…sell it hard, with a great offer, a terrific headline, a strong guarantee… don’t simply fill your ad with a bullet-pointed list of everything you do. That’s not an ad, it’s an expensive 
business card. And nobody ever sold anything off a business card.
Here’s a typical beauty industry salon ad…. typically thoughtless, wasteful advertising, trying to do everything and in the end achieving nothing.So instead of saying in your advertising something like “call us for all beauty needs such as body treatments, pedicures, manicures, massages, nails, facials, blah blah blah…’ make your ad specific, make the offer very clear…
A word of warning: Most of the people who sell you advertising space are ignorant of this kind of advertising, and if they’re not ignorant of it, they fear it, because it is so accountable.
Many, many times we have had Members tell us that advertising reps have mocked the copy-intensive style of advertising in the Toolkit, sneering at it because it looks unprofessional, doesn’t look glossy, doesn’t have lots of pretty pictures in it, has too much text, etc etc.
Often, magazines have even refused to run this kind of ad, because their main interest is producing a glossy publication that looks pretty to their readers, rather than accepting advertising that actually works for their advertisers…the people who actually pay the magazine’s bills.
The general advertising industry is not at all tied to results. What the smart business owner has to do is educate himself enough so that he’s an informed, well-researched consumer when he does deal with service providers like agencies and printers and publishers.
As a small business owner, you should be investing only in marketing that is results measurable, so that you can track what you get for your dollar. You have to learn to say no to certain advertising reps or advertising opportunities, unless and until those opportunities pass the accountability test, for example if you’re approached to advertise in a magazine, you ONLY go ahead with that offer if you can run YOUR kind of ad, not their kind of ad – and only then if you’ve satisfied yourself that that particular publication is attracting the kind of readers you want as clients.
Most businesses in the beauty industry are out there with no message at all. Typically, salon owners will buy or lease their space, hang a sign out the front, spend a huge amount of time and energy on the interior, fret over the logo etc etc…. and open the door and wait for customers.
Very few spend any time at all on the only thing that really matters, which is getting customers through the door. Very few spend any time or research on what they’re going to communicate to the market about who they are, and why prospects should do business with them. Very few spend any time doing what we call ‘sales thinking’: which is analyzing what you sell, what your USP is, what your customers really want – and crafting a perfectly-pitched message that sells you and your business.
You see, advertising is nothing more than salesmanship in print.
