by Greg Milner | Mar 7, 2014 | Advertising Tips, Blog, The Right Mindset
George Slater piloting the helicopter Google sent us. (Amazing what you can do with Photoshop!)
Next time you post a promotion on Facebook, or send an offer to your clients by email or SMS, take a moment to think about this:
“If the world’s biggest, richest, smartest internet marketing company (Google) thought that promoting its business purely online was THE answer, why would it send a helicopter – one that actually flies – to thousands of small business owners???”
ANSWER: because Google knows that anybody who says ‘social media is all I do or need to effectively market my business’ is DUMB.
In the Worldwide Salon Marketing office today we were delighted when our Director of Online, George Slater opened the mail and there, among all the usual, dreary bills, marketing flyers and other postman-delivered flotsam was a big, colorful box from Google. Inside, a real remote-control helicopter. (And, of course, an offer from Google to encourage us to spend money on Adwords, which we do anyway!)
So, for a bit of Friday Fun, George and a couple of our web developers Pash and Andrew took our new chopper for a fly around the office…
[cf]chopper[/cf]But here’s the lesson. Here’s what’s instructive about this little bit of fun:
When Google’s marketing message arrived, we were in the middle of a boardroom meeting with a group of serious businessmen. For 15 minutes, these MBA and CPA-qualified suits were absorbed by Google’s ‘helicopter marketing’ as they flew the little chopper around the office, bouncing it off the walls and ceiling and crashing it into each other, laughing uproariously.
And they read every word of the Adwords promotion that came with the toy ‘Trojan Horse’. The lesson is simple: don’t believe the ‘gurus’ who tell you that it’s ALL about digital marketing these days, that direct mail is dead. It’s not. It’s alive and very, very well. And if you learn how to use it even a tenth as effectively as Google, you’ll reap the benefits in more clients, spending more money with you, more often.
Want to discover how to really market your salon or spa effectively (both online and offline)? Here’s what Lords ‘n Lads Barbershop owner Jason Quarrell says about being a Member of the My Social Salon marketing & mentoring program. (Click here to find out how to get a 30-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive)
[cf]Jason[/cf]
by Greg Milner | Sep 4, 2013 | Advertising Tips, Blog
PPC or Pay Per Click advertising works. If it didn’t, Google wouldn’t have grown into one of the world’s biggest companies in less than a decade. It works for millions of small businesses all over the world.
If you’ve never tried it, here’s your chance. And we’ll set up the entire process for you, write your ad for you, monitor results for you, send you reports, ALL FOR FREE. All you have to do is call us at head office here at Worldwide Salon Marketing and we’ll do the rest.
Google is giving away free advertising. As a Google Engage Partner, we get to give away FIFTY $100 Google Adwords Gift Vouchers, first in, best dressed. It’s easy; all Google wants you do is spend $25 with them, and they’ll give you an extra $100 worth of clicks to your website.
Here’s How to Claim Your Gift Voucher
1. Call our Head Office in Perth on 08 9443 9327
2. Ask for George Slater.
SIMPLE AS THAT!
CALL 08 9443 9327 NOW
by Greg Milner | Jul 16, 2013 | Advertising Tips, Featured, The Smell of Success
A facial with snail slime? It’s generated a fortune in free publicity for one Tokyo salon
I’ve been nagging salons and spas for years; “Find a Niche – or die.” If you continue to try to be all things to all people, you’ll never be anything of much value to anybody. Two examples of exactly that kind of ‘niche thinking’ leaped out at me from my newspaper this morning.
The first, from Japan, where one salon in central Tokyo has generated itself literally millions of dollars worth of publicity worldwide after a UK TV reporter tried out a new facial treatment – snail slime!
[cf]Snails[/cf]
As part of the salon’s “Celebrity Escargot Course” customers will get five minutes of snail therapy, along with massage and other facial treatments. The snails alone cost $106 – no doubt because they’re ‘organic’, surely a word that’s been re-invented as synonym for ‘expensive’.
The second example of clever niche salon marketing is from my own home town. Barber shops have been struggling for years against the rising tide of ‘unisex’ salons, but they’re fighting back – with the old-fashioned cut-throat razor.
As you’ll see from the article below (click to enlarge), these barber shops are – perhaps unwittingly, but fortunately – cashing in on the nostalgia market; a growing hankering for old-fashioned values, old-fashioned smells, ‘old’ technology – almost a revolt against the overwhelming glitz and bling of technology, speed, celebrity obsession and shiny new things.
So why am I telling you this? Hopefully, to get you thinking, planning, scheming, conniving, working to develop, exploit and cash in on your own niche, your own specialist area, your own small but lucrative area of expertise that can’t be found anywhere else, that can’t be commoditized.
One that can’t be compared on price alone with the me-too services offered by a dozen other salons within walking distance of your own.
NOTE: Niche products and niche marketing is the subject of an entire seminar session we’ll be conducting for Worldwide Salon Marketing member salons in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane later this year.
Worldwide Salon Marketing is THE place salon owners come to for expert advice, tools, strategies and done-for-you systems online and offline that make marketing your salon easy.
When you join WSM, you’re becoming a Member of the world’s most exclusive group of entrepreneurial salon & spa owners.
SPECIAL OFFER: Get the world famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit when you sign up for My Social Salon, the ONLY complete, done-for-you web, mobile and ‘traditional’ marketing system for hair & beauty salons.
Click here to watch the free video.
by Greg Milner | Mar 25, 2013 | Advertising Tips
FREE: we have two complete copies of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, valued at $4,995, to GIVE AWAY to the next two salons or spas to join WSM’s ‘My Social Salon’ marketing program – see below!
Back in the late seventies, there was a band called Woolley and the Camera Club. No, I don’t remember them either. I doubt anybody remembers them, ‘cept their mothers. But they recorded a one-hit-wonder that gained a cult-following, “Video Killed the Radio Star”.
Apart from a catchy tune, everything about the title and the chorus was wrong. Yet so-called ‘experts’ have since paraphrased the same message, that suddenly, the ‘new’ is killing off the ‘old’. Video didn’t kill radio. Radio is bigger than ever, and growing in reach and effect, specially as daily commutes to work and home again get longer. Particularly talk-back radio. People like to sit in their cars and be part of a conversation. You don’t get that listening to music on an iPod.
Neither did TV kill off movies, as so many doomsayers predicted in the fifties. Quite the reverse. TV made the movie business bigger. There are lessons here, for those who want to run their salon or spa business with a pulse, instead of by rote learning, or worse, on the basis of ill-informed opinions from Gen Y staff, the next graphic designer you talk to, or any one of legion of so-called ‘internet marketers’.
It always makes me chuckle when I see a salon or spa owner declaring, often in forums, that ‘I’ve tried newspaper advertising and “it” doesn’t work.’ Or ‘I’ve done radio advertising and “it” was a waste of money.’ Such comments betray a lack of understanding of what advertising actually is. But worse, they make it obvious that few owners of small businesses such as a hair or beauty salon realize they’re talking about the relative merits of various media, rather than advertising itself.
Let’s get at least one thing straight – newspapers, direct mail, Facebook, Twitter, mobile apps, websites, radio, TV, cinema, billboards, posters in the window, the elastic band of underpants worn above the jeans by cool dudes, and yes, word-of-mouth ALL have one thing in common:
They are just MEDIA.
In other words, they are no more and no less than delivery boys – merely a device by which a message can be delivered from Point A – usually you, the business owner – to Point B, the eyes and ears of your intended target market. To claim that any of them, either individually or collectively, ‘doesn’t work’ is akin to claiming the world is indeed flat, that the sky is really red, not blue.
It is true that some media that worked decades ago no longer has the same impact. But today’s online shopping sites are just the modern version of the mail-order catalogue of the 1930s. (And yet, real, hard-copy catalogs are still being mailed in their hundreds of millions every year by some of the biggest, smartest companies on the planet. Think Victoria’s Secret. Or IKEA.) When email caught on in the 1990s, the ‘experts’ predicted the end of direct mail. Could they have been any more wrong? Email is just about dead as a means of driving new business, yet direct mail has not only survived, it’s bigger than ever.
What has NOT changed – and this has never had anything to do with mere media – is the need for every business to find a way to differentiate itself from its competition, and to then translate that difference into words, images, sounds to be used in the various forms of media appropriate for that message, and the target market you want to reach.
Declaring that you’ve given up all forms of paid advertising in favour of Facebook ‘because it’s free’ is just plain dumb. Sure, you wouldn’t run an ad in Seniors Weekly if you want to appeal to working women in their thirties. But do you really expect Facebook to deliver you hordes of affluent, 60-year-old customers who drive to their golf club in Mercedes convertibles? (Nope. You’d advertise in their golf club newsletter!)
Yes, it’s complex. More so now than ever. So how DO you navigate your way to a sensible, well-planned and reasonably well-executed strategy, one that takes into account all forms of media, that helps you develop and deliver a compelling message to the right people, at the right time, using the right media for that target market?
It’s the primary reason we developed the salon & spa marketing program called My Social Salon.
Hundreds of salons & spas around the world have already signed up for MSS. Because for the first time, anywhere in the world, the busy, time-poor salon owner can access and use the power of ALL forms of media, online and offline, in a single, proven, affordable system.
And, also for the first time, we giving away one of the most famous, enduring and still absolutely relevant marketing & sales tools ever developed for the small salon or spa. The Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®. The Toolkit, full of done-for-you templates, strategies, sales systems and CD/DVD tutorials, has been used by more than 4,000 salons & spas around the world to bring in more clients, more often, than any other such system on the planet. And it’s still being used heavily by smart salon owners today.
We’re giving away a complete Toolkit, valued at $4,995, to the next TWO salons who join the My Social Salon program. Watch the video below, and complete the form to get a free LIVE DEMO of the entire system….and you might qualify for WSM membership.
[cf]cartoon[/cf]
by Greg Milner | Feb 29, 2012 | Advertising Tips, Featured, The Smell of Success
Every stylist or therapist dreams of starting or buying a salon and one day selling out for a fat payday. Few achieve the goal. For most, owning a salon is run as an income model. If and when it gets sold, it’s usually for little more than small change, with not much more to sell than fixtures and fittings, and what’s left of a lease, the owner only too happy to get out from under a pile of debt, the on-going bills and the stress of being the main income-earner.
Only a tiny percentage build their business with an equity model – a deliberate strategy to turn the business into an asset worth selling.
But there IS a formula, a process that can turn the dream into reality. It’s called
starting with the end in mind.
Nicki Nolan sold her Garaldton (WA) hair salon after 3 years in business – “Very happy with the price – the buyers didn’t even quibble”
The young lady you’re about to meet followed that formula to a ‘T’ – and reaped the rewards.
Nicki Nolan built her business in the remote West Australian country town of Geraldton.
Notably, Nicki sought out an appropriate mentor – joining up with Worldwide Salon Marketing very early in her business life – and actively, aggressively used the marketing and other business tools that came with her membership. She followed a plan, took massive action, and persisted, rather than giving up and throwing her hands in the air at the slightest hurdle.
So how did she ‘live the dream’ when so many never even get close, after 20 or even 30 years in the business? For 95% of people who own and run a business in the beauty and hair industry, it will never be much more than a poorly-paid job. Few take the trouble to educate themselves on business and marketing. Instead, they plunge into business ownership on little more than a wing and a prayer, assuming that because they are merely good at cutting hair or applying skin treatments, little else is required.
To build equity – something you can sell – you need systems. Written and implemented systems for raising leads, converting them to sales, re-booking them over and over again, up-selling products.
You need written systems that manage staff, systems for stocking products, systems for managing accounts.
Having documented, rigidly-enforced systems gave Nicki the confidence and the know-how to create that ‘Holy Grail’ of salon owners the world over; equity, something she could sell to an interested buyer.
Just this week, Nicki walked away from her salon in the mid-west town of Geraldton with a pile of cash.
Any salon owner can follow this formula. It is NOT rocket science. Nicki had no special opportunities, no advanced education, no lucky breaks; She just did what worked
by Greg Milner | Apr 21, 2011 | Advertising Tips
The article that reveals the truth behind ‘scam ads’ created by ad agencies. Click to show a full-sized image
For years I’ve been warning salon & spa owners that entrusting their advertising dollars to the so-called ‘creatives’ at ad agencies is akin to standing in the shower tearing up $50 notes. Now, here’s proof, if any more were needed.
In my local paper this week, a long feature article from the head of one of this country’s best-known advertising outfits, The Brand Agency. Managing director Steve Harris out-and-out admits that
Ad agencies create ads to win awards, not to sell your product.
His very first paragraph is a killer:
“Creative advertising awards have long been the currency by which advertising agencies and their creative staff measure their success and ability.”
Not, you will note, by the quantity of actual sales the ad produces!
“Creative awards have no relationship whatsoever to the delivery of results to advertisers, the companies which pay for the ads to be developed and produced.”
And to add insult to injury,
“To produce these ‘scam ads’ the agency often finds a willing client to approve the workd and then funds the advertising production and pays for the advertising space to run the ad…these clients are taken on by the agency purely for the opportunity to produce an ad that will hopefully win an award.
“To win an award an ad must be the one most liked by a panel of advertising ‘creatives’, based on a set of creative criteria. It doesn’t actually have to sell anything…”
Well gee, roll me down the road and call me dusty.
It’s a refreshing admission from within the mysterious world of advertising itself that the smart business owner will keep his or her own counsel, continue to advertise and market their salons & spas ‘our’ way, and don’t get sucked in by the fools so willing to take your money to stroke their own ‘creative’ egos.
As famous ad man David Ogilvie was fond of saying,
“creative is what sells”
He might have added, “Not what wins awards.”
