Salon Marketing Strategy – How Cathy Davys created her salon’s best January/February ever!

Cathy Davys of Cathy Davys Hair Design & Day Spa, Wellington NZ – a spectacular start to 2011

New templates for Inner Circle Member salons – see below.

The New Zealand economy – never robust since the onset of the GFC – is bracing itself for another hit in the wake of Christchurch’s $12 billion earthquake.

But for salon business owners like Cathy Davys, of Cathy Davys Hair Design & Day Spa in Wellington, such awful disasters are all the more reason to do what true entrepreneurs do best – in times of trouble, market harder, sell with more enthusiasm;

In other words, she abides by the advice of veteran sales trainer Zig Ziglar:

“Go out and sell something. Your country needs the business.”

“We did a special Christmas offer – we took it from the Members Only website – and took $30,000 from that one promotion. Along with a couple of other promotions we ran after Christmas, it gave us our best January/February ever!”

writes Cathy.

“In January we ran a special Diamond membership promotion, with a ticket price of $1,800 for a $2,400 value. We limited numbers to just 12, and sold them all in a week! That alone brought in $21,000. Clients love renewing, as they all run out at different times now its great for cash flow. Just need not to spend it:-)

“Now we’re about to launch a Platinum membership offer, $6,999 worth of hair & beauty services for $4,999. I’ll let you know how that goes, but if all 7 of them sell as expected, that’s another $34,993 in cash up front.”

Christchurch earthquake fundraiser

But it’s not all about cash for the business. Like many entrepreneurs, Cathy is discovering the benefits of ‘community responsibility’ to drive sales for the salon, with a special promotion to raise funds for victims of last week’s fatal earthquake.

“We are doing a fund raiser for Christchurch through our email to non-returning guests for a $30 cut and blow wave with funds going to help Christchurch Hairdressers. This will also help to get 2 new stylists up and running.

“I love Worldwide Salon Marketing!”

Beauty Salon Business Plan Template: NZ Salon Superstar – How Setting A Target Helped Monique Porter Sell 18 Times More Product in Just One Month!

Monique Porter of Monique Beauty Therapy, North Shore, Auckland

Setting yourself goals and targets is so important in both your personal and business life.  Without having an end result in mind, how will you be able to visualise and achieve your desired outcome?

Let’s take ‘losing weight’ as an example in your personal life.  When you set yourself that goal did you have a specific number of kilo’s in mind that you wanted to lose?  Did you write that number down somewhere or have a chart on the wall plotting your weight loss over a number of weeks?  Was there a timeframe you wanted to achieve it by? Did you reward yourself for meeting certain weight loss targets and was there a consequence if you didn’t make your goal?  Come to think of it, did you even weigh yourself to find out what your current weight is – or was the whole idea a wild stab in the dark?

It’s crucial to set goals and targets in your business life too.

In a coaching call just over a month ago with Inner Circle Member Monique Porter of Moniques Beauty Therapy on Auckland’s North Shore, she explained how she was having real problems selling retail to her customers.  In fact, so much so that Monique, who is a sole operator, was selling no retail at all to her clients.

We talked through the retailing strategies in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® ‘Selling Like Crazy Manual’ and put in place some targets.  The target set was to sell just 3 products per week over the 4 weeks (12 in total) by the time we spoke next.  Baby steps to start with, but as you’ll hear Monique surpassed these targets with ease…

“I’ve gone from selling no product at all, to selling 18 products in just a month. I Sold 3 starter packages at $65.50 each, 9 bottles of product for in-grown hairs at $21 each, 4 flax seed oil products at $32 each and and 2 nail polishes for $10 each.  That’s a total of 18 products for the month and $532 in extra revenue!”

Now that Moinque has achieved her first target, she can and has set new targets to keep this momentum going.  If every month she got 18 different clients using her products, that’s 216 clients by the end of 12 months using her product ranges at a current average sale of $29.55 each.  Of course, this doesn’t take into account that many of these client will also start purchasing more than just one product.

It’s also worth looking at what would have happened if Monique had NOT sold product to these clients, apart from missing out on the obvious extra income?

These clients would have left her salon and more than likely walked straight down the road to the supermarket or chemist (a salon’s biggest competitor) and bought their product from there.  Now the products you get from a supermarket or chemist are generally not the best, so when the client found that their skin or hair wasn’t improving, the first thing they will do is blame the salon or therapist, not the products.  So it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see them in the salon again.

So it’s extremely crucial that as experts in your industry, be it hair or beauty, you need to share your knowledge with your clients and give them the products to keep looking after themselves at home, in between their visits to your salon.  That’s what your trained to do after all!

And don’t be afraid to sell people stuff!  Let me ask you a question.  You love to shop, right?  So why are people so afraid to sell other people stuff, be it hair products or whatever.  Whether you like it or not, you and your staff are sales people in your salon.

Well done Monique on your great product sales and looking forward to hearing more success stories from you!

Beauty Salon Template: How to get your salon newsletter done for you – the EASY way.

If you put a gun to my head and told me I could only use ONE method of marketing to my clients, I’d always give the same answer – NEWSLETTERS!

Not once every six months, not once every quarter, but every single month. Nothing puts an ‘iron fence’ around your clients like a regular hard-copy newsletter, in an envelope, with a stamp on it. (Email? Sure – it’s efficient, but it’s nowhere near as effective.)

Now, there are THREE ways to do a monthly newsletter.

1) The HARD way. Sit down at your computer and write the whole thing yourself, lay it out so it looks attractive, and get it printed.

2) The EASY way. Download the many templates for newsletters in the Members area, sit down at your computer, and write all the content for it.

3) The REALLY EASY way!

Long-time IC member Susan Vincent has set up a brilliant ‘done-for-you’ newsletter service for salon owners who know the value of a monthly newsletter, but just don’t have time to do it themselves.

For just $97 a month, Susan will do everything for you, and email you the complete newsletter, in Word format, every month. All you need to do is insert your own details, and send it off to the printer.

Here’s a sample newsletter you can download (Right click and ‘save as…’)

Here’s where you can sign up for a month and trial it for yourself

Frankly, it just doesn’t get any easier than that. For $97 a month, there’s no way I’d be sitting down at a computer for hours on end!

Here’s what Inner Circle member EvaTzschaschel says about her experience with Susan’s newsletter service:

‘Hi Susan,

I just wanted to let you know how excited my clients are about the newsletter. I know I would have never gotten my act together if you didn’t offer your fabulous service. Here are some comments of my clients: “I enjoyed reading your newsletter”, “It’s a really good read”, “Very professional”; and a few people asked me for the next issue. I think it’s a good way to stay in front of clients without being pushy. Thank you so much for your help.

Kind regards,

Eva Tzschaschel
Face Body Wellness
4/3 Julius Ave
North Ryde
NSW 2113′

And here’s what Claire Mason of Integrity Paramedical Skin Practitioners in Seven Hills, Queenslandsays:

“During November for marketing I released 4 newspaper ads, Glossy DL clinic package promotions inserted into envelopes and home delivered, Email’s sent out to the data base (I had purchased a beauty salon prior) and hand delivered DL cards. Nothing sold more clinic packages than the newsletter.B ecause of the style of your text, even clients of 11 years can’t tell it’s not me talking. Thank you Susan for your passion. Integrity is growing with you on board.”

Salon Marketing Tools: Salon owner Nicole Bertrand – from $30,000 in Dec. 09 to $144,000 in December 2010. Here’s how….

Listen in to this audio interview…

There IS a phenomenon among certain types of entrepreneurial salon owners. A phenomenon that, once triggered, creates more activity, more business, more profits, than they ever previously imagined possible.

Such a phenomenon has just happened to one of our long-term Inner Circle member salons, Blush Professional Beauty Touch, owned by Nicole Bertrand, in Sale, Victoria.

In just one year, Nicole’s business has grown from takings of just $30,000 in December, 2009, to a staggering $144,000 in December 2010.

Even better; her entire quarterly sales in 2009 averaged just $45,000. That’s considerably less than a single month’s takings now, just a year later.

Now, for those readers who immediately scoff and think ‘oh, that’s probably because her salon is in the middle of a wealthy, free-spending city area…. think again.

Her salon is in a little country town over 200 kilometres east of Melbourne.

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Press the ‘play’ button and eavesdrop as Nicole explains exactly how she grew so big, so fast…

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Salon Business Plan Template: Young kids? Heavily pregnant and struggling to run your salon business? Listen in as these young mothers show how…

Just before Christmas, I took a call from a young salon owner who was clearly in some distress. It soon became clear why.

“I’m due to have my first baby in 6 weeks,” she said. I congratulated her and said she must be excited, wow, wonderful and other such supportive small talk.

“More terrifying than exciting,” she said. “I’m still working 5 days a week behind the chair, I’m the main money-earner in my salon, and I don’t know how I’m going to survive when the baby comes. I just don’t know what to do….”

Crikey. Six weeks to go, and no back-up plan? Without wishing to state the bleeding obvious, childbirth isn’t something that kind of sneaks up on you without warning. Like, about 9 months warning.

But this young lady’s story of woe is hardly unique. Thousands of salon owners – who are, by nature, mostly women – face this (very) common problem. Yet so few seem prepared for it.

So this week I interviewed three prominent Members of ourInner Circle Marketing & Mentoring program who are, or have recently, faced and solved that precise problem.

Rachael D’Aguiar is not only a very successful salon owner, she and husband Chris Sanders own the WSM business in New Zealand. As of the time of writing, Rachael is 10 weeks away from the birth of their first child (a girl) and is passionate about ‘being organized…’

Amy Mitchell already has two-year-old Macy. As she picked up the phone to join in on this interview, she was literally a few days – even hours – away from the birth of her second child. As she reveals here, a year ago Amy’s business was on the brink of failure. But suddenly, there was a light at the end of the tunnel – and it wasn’t an oncoming train.

Tegan Messineo gave birth to twin boys two years ago. She still under the age of 25, yet now owns two successful salons, and like Amy, decided to open the second business after the birth of her boys. Here she describes how the arrival of babies can actually be a spur to working smarter, and more productively…

Below is the first 7 minutes of an exclusive CD of the Month all members of the Inner Circle Premium program receive in the mail – just one of the many benefits of Inner Circle membership….

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