Puppy Love – How to Sell on Emotion, Not Logic

by Greg Milner | Aug 4, 2022 | Ads that Have Worked, Uncategorised

About 18 months ago, the Milner household acquired a new member; an Australian Cobberdog puppy we called Digby, after my late father.

He rules our life, tells outrageous lies, and steals everything that’s not nailed down. But of course, we adore him. It’s hard not to fall instantly in love with a puppy.

There’s an old saying in marketing; if you wan to sell an expensive, ‘luxury’ product, sell on emotion, not logic. And there’s no wallet-opening buying decision more emotional than looking into the eyes of a cute pup.

Digby came to us from Western Australia’s only breeder of Cobberdogs, Deb Reuben’s Alkira Australian Cobberdogs in Margaret River. Digby’s sister Daisy had given birth to six girls, they’d be ready to go to new homes in a few weeks, and Deb had no buyers lined up. Since we already manage the marketing for another business of Deb’s, she approached us for help. These puppies would be ready for new homes in just three weeks.

My gun digital marketing specialists took over. Within days, Deb had a flood of inquiries, deposits paid, and more coming in.

Here’s how that happened:

First, I told Deb she must record a short video with the pups. I wanted this for a landing page, to take inquiries from a Google ad campaign we were about to set up.

By the following day, we had that video:

Next, I told Deb to get testimonial videos from owners of earlier puppies she’d sold.

Here’s just one of them:

Using those videos, including one from me and Michelle with Digby, my team built a landing page to take inquiries.

Go here to take a look at that page.

Once the landing page was ready to take traffic, our digital advertising specialist Golda created a targetted series of Google ads. They look like this:

Within days, Deb’s inbox was filling with inquiries like this:

From Ursula in Shoalwater:

I am very interested in your breed and would love to talk to you about a puppy. I am in touch with a Labrador breeder and was doing some research and came across the Australian Cobberdog I am 52 live in Shoalwater I haven’t had a dog for a while as I was doing a lot of travel … I am ready for a dog again and would like to train it to be a therapy dog – I have already looked into the training in Melbourne. But even if we don’t go that route I am VERY interested in your puppies and the breed.

From Teena

I am very interested to know if any of the puppies are still available and if so when we could view them.

Want help with your digital marketing?

Book a discovery call with Greg here!

What’s your Salon’s USP?

by Greg Milner | Apr 21, 2021 | Ads that Have Worked, Featured

I’ve written a lot, taught a lot, coached a lot on the subject of USP or Unique Selling Proposition. While most of our Worldwide Salon Marketing Members ‘get’ the reasoning behind all the Emotional Direct Response salon marketing ads, flyers, letters and other material in the Simple Salon Marketing manual, very few owners of salons & spas even attempt to understand the importance of having a truly unique message for their prospects and customers, and it’s effect on your salon’s income.

In 1961, famous American advertising executive Rosser Reeves introduced the idea of USP in his book Reality in Advertising.

According to Reeves, there are three requirements for a USP:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Each must say, “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.” (Your headline must contain a benefit – a promise to the reader.)

2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. Here’s where the “unique” in Unique Selling Proposition comes in. It is not enough merely to offer a benefit. You must also differentiate your product.

3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the masses, i.e., pull over new customers to your product or service. The differentiation cannot be trivial. It must be a difference that is very important to the reader. (What Reeves was talking about here was making a BIG promise. But not necessarily an expensive one.)

By contrast, so much beauty industry marketing, particularly among average ‘corner store’ hair and beauty salons, is so timid that it disappears, becomes invisible. “Come to us and we’ll make you look much better…” Vague, wishy-washy nonsense.) Now, big companies spend millions, billions of dollars building a strong brand.

There are lots of soft drink manufacturers, many of whom sell a ‘cola’ product. But you can only buy Coke from Coca Cola. Unfortunately, YOU don’t have the kind of money Coca Cola has to build a ‘brand’. So we use ‘guerilla marketing’ methods to achieve differentiation in a USP. One of the best methods I know to create a strong USP is when your product or service has a unique feature, one that competitors can’t boast about. Of course, if you have that advantage, it all becomes pretty easy. Okay, I hear you thinking,

“But what if I’m just an average salon doing pretty much the same kind of stuff as the competition?”

According to Reeves – and I agree – uniqueness can either come from a strong brand (an option 95% of salons can’t use) or from a claim not otherwise made in that particular form of advertising.
And that’s what you should be doing in your salon.

In other words, saying something about your business or service that others could be saying, but aren’t!

It’s called Making the Invisible Visible.

Here’s an example of that process in action:

For years, Schlitz brewing company dominated the market by ‘telling the story’ of how they made their beer. No different from the way everybody else made their beer, but they ‘made the invisible visible’.

Decades ago (there’s nothing much NEW in this concept) Milwaukee’s famous Schlitz brewing company went from nowhere to market leader when they started ‘telling the story’ of how they made their beer, in painstaking detail. Ironically, they made their beer exactly the same way every other brewer made beer, but crucially, nobody else was telling the story.

There’s another VERY large advantage to taking this approach. I call it ‘claiming the high ground’. Once you’ve done it, your competition is left to look like followers instead of leaders if they copy you. Famously, Reeves crafted a USP for M&Ms – ‘It melts in your mouth, not in your hand’ – that had the opposition chasing them for decades, and is still in use today. What could the competition do, run an ad that said “we also melt in your mouth, not in your hand”? I don’t think so.

If you’re a reasonably intelligent salon owner (in other words, one of the few who understand that the money’s in the marketing, not in the product or service) then you might have picked up on a couple of crucial lessons in this post.

Creating a USP is not necessarily about how good your product or customer service is. Everybody claims they provide ‘great customer service’. Big deal. As you can see from the examples I’ve quoted here (Schlitz and M&Ms) they didn’t talk about how good their product was. Instead, they talked about stuff that was actually peripheral to what was in the bottle (or the box). So, think: what can you say about your business that is unique (or perceived to be unique), that either cannot be said or isn’t being said about a rival salon? And remember, it’s not about you, the business, or the product – a truly ‘sticky’ USP is always about the customer, and the benefit to that customer.

Here’s ONE way for a salon to create a truly Unique Selling Proposition:

First, write a LIST of things that aggravate and annoy (your potential) customers. For example,

Being kept waiting
Getting shoved from one therapist/stylist to another
Dirty, unhygienic floors, rooms etc
Inexperienced staff
No parking nearby

(You can and should be able to make a LONG list of things that pee people off about salons.)

Second, pick at least ONE of these, and provide a GREAT answer to it.

Example: one of our Member salons decided that what annoyed her mostly middle-aged clients was going to a salon and being served by therapists or stylists barely out of their teens. So she came up with a cracker of a USP: “You know what it’s like when you visit a salon and you’re thrown in with an inexperienced junior? Well, at (salon name) the average age of our staff is thirty eight, with an average experience of 15 years! So you can rest assured your skin is being looked after by people who know what they’re doing!”

No meaningless blather about ‘Our customer service is exceptional’ or ‘We’ve won the industry’s top awards’. Just stuff that matters to the customer.

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Not getting good results from your Facebook promotions?

by Greg Milner | Jul 26, 2018 | Ads that Have Worked

This could be why.

I have no idea if the Facebook ad you see here worked, or failed. But it looks pretty typical of thousands of such ads salons & spas use for their promotions all over the world.

One of the mistakes we see often in salon promotions on Facebook is the use of an image which tries to do the ‘heavy lifting‘ of selling the promotion all by itself.

But the only job of an image in a Facebook ad is to ‘stop the scroll.’ That means the image has to nothing more than be an eye-catcher, with the details of the promotion itself contained in the text above the picture.

How do we know? Because we’ve tested dozens of promotions using various different images.

For example, below are two images we used recently in a series of Facebook ads.

The only difference in the two ads was the image. The copy, the button, the link were all exactly the same. Which ad pulled the best? The one with the image of the baby!

(Note that the offer in the ad had nothing to do with either of the images!)

The ad using the image of the baby pulled TWICE as well as the one with the image of the blond.

Working out which image is going to work best for you is a matter of TESTING different images.

But here’s the trick – when you’re trying to compare the effects of one image versus another image, don’t change anything else in the ad other than the images. Otherwise you’re not going to be able to determine which of the changes had the effect.

Sometimes, you can change just a single word in the ad copy, and it changes the outcome.

The salon sales letter that brought in $52,000 – in one week!

by Greg Milner | Nov 29, 2017 | Ads that Have Worked, Advertising Tips

There’s a myth in the hair & beauty industry that “people won’t read your marketing if there’s too much text.” It’s a myth because it’s nonsense. In this video, see a 5-page client letter that brought one salon owner $52,000 in sales in a single week.

SEE MORE VIDEOS LIKE THIS, HERE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

How to Create A Client-Attracting, Money-Making Ad That Actually Works for your Salon

by Greg Milner | Feb 3, 2017 | Ads that Have Worked, Advertising Tips, Beating the Competition, Getting Salon Clients Quickly, Increasing Retail Sales, Salon Advertising Tips

No salon advertising, no matter how well written, is worth spending money on unless it has a great offer.

Take a look through the newspaper. It is astounding how many business owners have spent good money to buy expensive ad space, and filled it with nothing more than a big business card.

Unless you’re letting the reader know exactly what the offer is, most of them will just skip over the ad and the whole point of the advertisement is lost.

An offer is NOT discounting. In fact, discounting is a last resort, and does more damage than good in most cases. Discounting not only takes money out of your pocket, it trains your clients to expect it. If you’ve ever had a phone call from somebody asking when your next special discount is on, you’ll know what I mean.

In direct response marketing, an OFFER is best described as a deal where if they pick up the phone now and make an appointment they’ll get some added thing, or combination of things that they cannot get another time, or they can only get if they’re among the first 12 or 17 or 29 to call.

To give you an idea of the difference between a weak offer and a strong offer, we’ll take an analogy.

Let’s say two men are each selling a horse. One says to the horse buyer, “Here’s my horse, give me the money now and you can take the horse.”

The other one says “Don’t give me any money now. Take Bessie for a week, ride her as you wish, and after a week if you like Bessie, only then give me the money.”

Now, who do you think is going to make the sale?

The second seller hasn’t lost anything by taking the money a week later. Yet, he’ll probably be able to sell more horses at a higher price than the first seller simply because he’s making it seem like his offer is a good deal better than the other.

Typically, a good beauty industry offer would be built on an existing service you want to sell, combined with free add-ons that cost you little or nothing to provide, but which give massive perceived value to the customer.

Perceived value is when the value add-on is of little or no actual cost to you, but increases the value of the services offered to the person reading the ad. Saying “Hurry, $249 worth of beauty treatments for just $99 for the first 14 people to call” may be a little bit of a sleight of hand, but without offers like this, your marketing is dead in the water.

Packaging The Offer

Once you’ve crafted a great offer, you can then start getting a bit more sophisticated. Let’s say that until now all you’ve had is a price list. In my view a price list is a poor way to market your services, since it encourages people to price shop, like walking along the server in a cafeteria. Granted that everyone likes a good deal, but the meaning of the word deal itself means good VALUE. It does not necessarily mean lower prices.

Want to know why? If the only distinguishing factor about your salon is the price, then you become a commodity. Once people start perceiving you as a commodity you become replaceable and/or interchangeable.

Are your customers calling you and asking what the prices of certain services are? Are they complaining about the prices that you charge? If you see a long time regular after a few months and ask her why she hasn’t visited you and get “Oh I couldn’t get an appointment with you, so I went to the place around the corner and kind of just kept going there.”!

If this is happening to you then for sure, you’ve become a commodity to them, meaning that they can get what you give anywhere. It isn’t necessary for them to come to you.

The situation is not irretrievable though and there are a number of things you can do like revising your prices upward, or starting new services, or even prune your customer list.

During these difficult times when the economy is not doing too well, it is easy to fall into the trap of reducing prices. I am, however, fundamentally opposed to mere discounting as a way to increase sales.

The important thing therefore is to ensure that it is not price alone that is your distinguishing factor. In fact some of the best ads ever written didn’t even mention any product, far less its features or price. It appealed to the emotion of the reader.

This is a very important concept in marketing, that people do not make buying decisions based on reason.

According to US marketing guru Dan Kennedy, ‘under normal conditions, only 10% of customers always buy by price, their decisions governed by price, because they have no choice. This group is largely made up of “working poor”, low-wage working people with more mouths to feed than they can afford food for. Nothing wrong with them as people. A lot to admire – except the choices they make that keep them poor.

‘But no good reason to have them – or worse, seek them out as customers. Yet, strangely, most business owners focus 90% of their energy on price even while only 10% of customers decide based on price.

However, there are 20% who make most buying decisions with little weight given to price or cheapest price, and 5% who never consider price….’

So, which customers do you want? It is my contention that you get the customers you deserve.

Most buying decisions are based only on emotion.

If therefore you are appealing to the rational part of the human, you will never get as much response as if you appeal to the emotional part.

Just take a look at some of the ads that are listed here. The very first ad is the one placed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic adventurer. It’s a very simple ad, does not have any pictures, does not promise anything other than negatives, and basically is one of the worst kind of ads that you can place according to advertising professionals.

Here’s what the ad said

Men wanted

For hazardous journey, small wages,

bitter cold, long months of complete darkness,

constant danger, safe return doubtful,

honour and recognition in case of success.

This ad came out on December 29, 1913 in the London Times and it brought in more than 5,000 applicants including three women.

On the face of it, this ad does not have the power to bring this kind of response, but if you understand what the ad is about, you’ll realize that it is a deliberate, well planned and brilliantly executed dare to every red-blooded male in the whole United Kingdom.

A good contemporary example would be the advertisement for Singapore Airlines. In a time of recession when airlines all over the world are cutting down on price in order to become more competitive, they are one of the few airlines that have not gotten into this race.

Cutting down on price or discounting as we have already discussed is not the right way to market your goods or services. Whatever you do, however much you try to cut your price, there will be someone somewhere who will undercut you.

The only sensible thing to do then, is to appeal to the emotion of the buyer. This is what Singapore Airlines have done brilliantly.

They use the ‘Singapore girl to show you visually, how you will be cosseted and cared for in their airliners. Rationally speaking, would you expect any less in any other airline? But none of the others have caught on to this and are paying for it with loss of business.

Yet by appealing to the emotion of the user, Singapore Airlines is able to maintain its pricing and show growth in profits at a time when many other airlines are looking for bailout plans.

What about the legendary ad for the Rolls Royce. It came out in 1958 and is sometimes referred to as the “Most famous headline in advertising history.” All it says is

“At 60 miles an hour, the loudest sound you can hear in the new Rolls Royce is the ticking of the clock.”

More than half a century has gone by and no other luxury car maker has managed to bring out an ad that even comes close to this.

All these advertisements have one thing in common; they give some sort of emotional benefit rather than a physical one and emotional trumps physical every time.

One way to stop people cafeteria shopping is to package your products and services, and re-brand them so that they cannot be compared apples to apples with your competitors.

For example, you might currently offer a cut and colour at a certain price. But if you value-add by listing all the nominally free services you provide as part of this cut and colour, you come up with a package that has enormous added value. And remember, there is no point doing this unless you are going to list the added extras, with their nominal value, in your marketing message.

You can then simply name this new package, re-brand it if you like, so that it’s called the ‘Scarlett Johanssen Glamour Make-Over’, or whatever. You can actually take the exact same package, give it a couple of tweaks, and call it something different, for example the ‘Meryl Streep Screen Goddess’ package, to appeal to a different demographic.

“How Do I Write Ads That Work?”

Writing ads that work – writing ads that find you actual clients, that’s the skill. And that’s all readily available, all so very easy to learn, tweak, and use whenever you want to turn on your “money” tap. I’ve compiled the Starter Pack, a 2-part manual that shows you exactly how to write an ad that brings in clients like a flood – and, ready-to-use marketing templates with it.

See, this will give you the exact tools, the exact SYSTEM used by thousands of salons and spas across the globe, making them money every single day.

And the best part? It’s all guaranteed.

SO. If you’re ready to start finding more clients, get ahead of your marketing and write ads that really work.

[FREE DOWNLOAD] How to Write An Ad That Will Work for All of Your Salon Marketing

by Greg Milner | Aug 12, 2016 | Ads that Have Worked, Advertising Tips, Ask the Experts, Blog, Salon Advertising Tips

Last week, I talked about what you need to know before you write any form of marketing material for your salon.

Now, I did promise I’d show you exactly how you can write an ad that turns your silent phone into a never-ending ringing-machine. This includes the 7 CRUCIAL elements to any successful salon marketing campaign.

Let’s dive in.

There are two types of popular marketing: branding, and direct response. This type of marketing I’ll be talking about is will be direct response.

Branding marketing works wonders for Apple and your local bank – but it’s a money guzzler for salons and spas.

As a salon owner, marketing can be VERY overwhelming, and it’s very easily a huge waste of money. That is, if you don’t do your marketing right. Time and time again, salon owners (and specifically, our members before they join any of our programs) will run branding ads, or ads promoting HUGEEEE discounts.

The thing is, “50% off an eyebrow wax,” or “50% a cut and color!” just doesn’t work. I’ve never been compelled to book in for a “discounted” service – have you?

Direct response marketing, put simply, creating adverts and offers that benefit the customer, NOT the salon or spa. Discounts work on the salon’s behalf – they get you in customers.

Direct response, however, ALWAYS will solve a client’s problem: whether it may be frizzy hair, long hair, hairy legs, cellulite, acne – whatever your service is, you solve a problem.

You already know the 3 elements you must figure out before you write any ad – and if you don’t, read them now, otherwise the following won’t make much sense.

Those 3 elements (you’ve gotta know what you’re selling, to whom, and why they should buy from you) are crucial for you to figure out these 7 must-have elements in ANY marketing campaign, especially for your salon.

They are –

A headline: your salon name is a SHITTY HEADLINE.
An offer: no, this isn’t discounting. DISCOUNTING IS EVIL!
List benefits: what specific problems do you solve? Bumpy legs from shaving, frizzy hair?
A guarantee: This is the most powerful, yet rarely, and so poorly used.
Some proof: How can you prove what you say is true? How can you make your potential clients TRUST you?
Scarcity: why should they call now to book?
Call to action (CTA): what do they do next?

Phew. That’s a lot to take in.

See, 99% of salon marketing falls into the fatal, profit-grabbing trap of talking about their own business:

“Our clients have come to trust OUR experts… for OUR expertise…. our cutting-edge machines…..”

STOP. Just, stop. I was bored writing that sentence, and I’M A MARKETER!

Marketing that fails is bragging about your business. Marketing that makes money, always puts the client first. Always.

See, advertising is SALESMANSHIP IN PRINT.

Here’s an INCREDIBLE direct response ad – written from a manufacturer. It’s clearly been written by a copywriter – someone who’s job is to write marketing for a living – someone like me.

It has a headline that’s direct, and to the point. It’s job is to appeal one to those are interested, and to compel the intrigued readers into reading the ad.

Let’s dive in:

1. Headline

The headline here is straightforward, and bluntly put: it’s about making more money. They’re clearly targeting people who use Seal-It, either in their current business or as part of their hobby. By giving them this elusive idea that they can MAKE money from the products they use instantly intrigues them.

Read on.

2. Offer

They’re not selling a product itself through this ad, instead they’re creating a relationship with the interested reader. This is called lead generation advertising.

The offer here is to become a distributor of Seal-It, and to make money: they’ve made it clear: “Become a Seal-It Distributor and make money now!”

3. Benefits

Seal-It did it beautifully: a simple list, clearly stating the benefits… “unlimited earning potential,” “no franchise fees…” – they’ve already stated the solutions to a reader’s potential questions.

4. A guarantee: This is the most powerful, yet rarely, and so poorly used.

Although they don’t state a specific guarantee, the little yellow box stating who they can potentially sell Seal-It too, and the testimonial below the box replaces the guarantee.

5. Proof

They’ve added a clear testimonial – AND an image of the couple. Any form of testimonial will increase trust, and increase sales, but photos of the person whom the testimonial is from will increase sales even MORE.

After all, humans connect better with other humans.

6. Scarcity

Usually, in direct response marketing, you’ll have a limit on what you’re selling. That limit is in either time the offer is available, amount of appointments/quantity available, or anything that makes people **act now**.

After all, that’s what scarcity is designed to do: scarcity triggers the fear button that every human has.

7. Call to action (CTA)

They’ve made it clear: “Call now for your free information packet!”
Can’t get any clearer than that.

I’ll bet your first reaction of this ad was “there’s too much text in it! Nobody will read it!”

To the contrary, actually. The people who WILL read this ad are PRECISELY the only people the advertiser wants. That’s true for you, that’s true for ANY form or direct response advertising:

This is a real advert written by Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest marketing firms in the world. Click the ad to read the entire thing.

This is a real advert written by Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest marketing firms in the world. It’s long, about ten-times longer than the Seal-It ad above, yet, it’s one of their best converting ads of all time. Click the ad to read the entire thing.

This ad is not only written for their perfect client, but it covers ALL 7 elements. They’ve written the ad so well, that even I want to call Ogilvy – and I’m not even in the financial industry!

Here’s the thing: if people aren’t interested in what you have to sell, they won’t read a THING.

But if people ARE interested – they’ll read everything. They’ll soak EVERYTHING UP with a sponge.

And that’s the difference between brand advertising, and direct response advertising. You want to tap into your perfect client’s mind, and push their pain points. This is why you must figure out your perfect client before you write anything for your salon marketing.

Because if you don’t know what your perfect client wants, how can you sell anything to them?

Here’s an example of a direct response ad for the salon industry:

If you have wrinkles, dark-eyes or anything else that dermatitis cream solves – you bet you’d be reading that ad. Chances are, you’d be picking up that phone, too. And that’s what direct response marketing is designed to do:

Get people to pick up the phone and call you.

And to do that, you need to have an irresistible offer. Figure out what you’re going to sell, to whom, and why they should buy from you, and start writing your ad following the 7 elements above.

When your salon marketing is done right, the ad will be ringing: off the hook.