A Salon Client Card Template For Advertising – is this the world’s WORST ad?

by Greg Milner | Feb 18, 2010 | Advertising Tips

A Salon Client Card Template For Advertising – is this the world’s WORST ad?

If you own a salon business or a day spa business, you’ve probably put at least some effort into crafting an ad that might pull some response. Unless you’re equipped with the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® (or even equipped with the very basics contained in the new Lite program) you’re probably doing it blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back, but I give most salon owners credit for at least having a crack at it.

But this salon deserves to have the earth open up and swallow it whole, never to re-appear. This ad was sent in by long-term Inner Circle member Rebecca Skehan of Gaia Hair in Queensland. Like most Members who’ve been ‘converted’ and educated in the kind of Direct Response marketing we do (the kind that puts so many noses out of joint in the beauty industry), Rebecca has developed a keen eye for the wasteful, nonsensical, slap-dash crap that passes for ‘creativity’.

In fact it’s a burden that many of us carry. Many times, I’ve been taken aside by a member at one of our salon owner conferences, and told

“Greg, your system has ruined my life. Everywhere I go, I see small business advertising that’s so pathetic I’m constantly having to stop myself from going into that business and ‘saving’ them…”

Well folks, suck it up. Knowledge IS a burden. I can never go anywhere and simply switch off. I can’t stop myself looking at an ad, a billboard, a letter, without instantly and consciously analyzing it, wondering what’s it supposed be achieving, critiquing it, mentally re-writing it. But you can’t save people who won’t lift a finger to save themselves.

Whoever ‘wrote’ this ad is clearly desperate, like a cornered animal. But obviously not desperate enough to bother taking the time or putting in the little energy required to find out even a little information on what works in advertising.

And it’s not difficult. Fifteen years ago, you’d have had to get in your car, drive to the library, take out a couple of books, drive home again, and spend hours studying. Now, there’s Google. There’s NO excuse.

Try this yourself: Google ‘direct response advertising’. There’s page after page of people trying to sell you stuff, written by some of the best marketing copywriters on the planet. It’s a veritable university on your desk. If ALL you ever did was study what these guys have written, the structure of the piece, the way it leads the reader down a slippery slope to the Most Wanted Response… and applied even some of it to your own marketing, you’d be that far in front of most of your competition you’d be outta sight.

This particular ad is barely worth spending any time on. Certainly, I doubt any prospective customer did. But a couple of points worth mentioning.

One, it’s clear ‘distress selling’. May as well hire a megaphone, stand on your salon’s roof and shout “Hey, we’re starving, there’s really nothing going for us at all, but we’re really cheap!”

Second, the most important thing about any print ad is it’s headline. If the best you can come up with is the name of your salon, go flush your marketing money down the toilet.

Lastly, this ad begs for cheap clients, who’ll only ever want to spend five bucks. It has absolutely zero redeeming features. If I owned a salon nearby, I’d have a big sign out front that says

“We Fix $5 Haircuts”

Good grief. People like this don’t deserve the luxury of having customers.

FOOTNOTE: Even among our own Inner Circle members, there are always a few who are not long for this world. One, who joined the program recently, moaned and whined during a coaching call today that “no, I haven’t even opened the Toolkit, I haven’t been on the Members Only site, and anyway my business is different, this kind of stuff won’t work for me, and in any case I don’t want to do any of this marketing stuff, I want it all done for me…”

Sometimes, losers manage to weasel their way through a crack in our usually well-tuned Loser Filter.

Salon Marketing Ideas: Salon Owners Fall for the Myth of Repetitive Advertising

by Greg Milner | Jul 20, 2009 | Advertising Tips

Salon Marketing Ideas: Salon Owners Fall for the Myth of Repetitive Advertising

Here’s a common nonsense spread by the likes of Yellow Pages and newspaper ad sales reps:

“You have to run your ad at least 6 times to know if it’s going to work.”

Ah, if only I had a buck for every salon owner who’s been fooled by that old chestnut. It’s a good ploy for the sales rep, for sure. As long as you believe that line, you’ll keep spending money on ad space in the vain hope he’s right. That eventually, the ad will work.

In the interests of Accurate Thinking, I’ll use an analogy to demonstrate the foolishness of this money-wasting myth.

If your ad doesn’t work the very first time, it’s never going to work.

Imagine for a moment that instead of selling beauty treatments or haircuts, you sell car tyres.
And in your city or area on any given day, there’ll be a number of people who, on that very day, have noticed their car’s tyres are getting a little ratty, a touch on the er…smooth side…and they need to replace ‘em quick before the cops pull them over and slap a work order on the car.

Typical salon ad you’ll see in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. You could run this ad a bazillion times and you’d be lucky to get a phone call.

And let’s assume that of all those people, half of them read the local newspaper.

So you place an ad for your tyre shop in that newspaper.

Nobody calls. Zero, nada. Zip.

You call the newspaper rep and he tells you brightly “oh, you need to run your ad at least 6 times before it gets noticed.”

So you keep shelling out cash for this ad, week after week. Still no calls. By now, you’re beginning to blame the media for your lack of advertising success.

The truth is a little harder to bear. It’s not the media at all. It’s your lousy ad.

Let’s assume half of all the people who woke up that morning and decided they needed new tyres then opened the newspaper and saw your ad the first time it ran.

If the ad was any good, some of them would have called.

Here’s the real truth: the reason your ad didn’t work the sixth time you ran it is the same reason it didn’t work the first time you ran it – it was a lousy ad.

If it had been any good in the first place, a percentage of all those people looking for new tyres for their car on that very day would have called you.

It comes back to the Big Rules of an effective marketing strategy for a salon:

1)    Make the right offer,
2)    to the right market,
3)    in the right media,
4)    at the right time.

Clearly, in this make-believe scenario, it was the right market, in the right media, at the right time. Equally clearly, if those last three pins were lined up and you didn’t get calls, logically it was the first pin that was out of line.

So the next time an ad sales rep tries to sell you the Myth of Repetition, don’t fall for it. Either cancel the ad space, or change your ad so it answers the question at the top of mind of every prospect:

“What’s in it for me, right here and now?”

SALON OWNER ADVERTISING LIFELINE: If you want to know how to use advertising more effectively, the very best way you can do this is join the Inner Circle Marketing & Mentoring program, and get the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit with your Membership. Here’s where you go to find out more….