by Greg Milner | Jun 20, 2013 | Australia, Featured, Packaging Salon Services, The Right Mindset
It can only be the money. I can’t for the life of me imagine what else could possibly be attractive about running a business like a bank, where an entire army of customers almost universally loathe you.
I actually feel a bit sorry for the banks. The fact that they’re in business to make a profit – just like every other business – appears lost on media and government, who relish in taking a shot at this soft target every time interest rates hi the news. Pity nobody in the banking industry has the balls to stand up and say ‘Hey, wait a minute, we’re a business not a charity, it’s our job to make money…!’
(Isn’t it funny how most bank customers moan bitterly every time their mortgage rate goes up, complain about the ‘greed’ of big business when the banks publish their billion-dollar profits – but don’t twig that their own retirement savings are heavily invested in bank shares.)
But that other public whipping boy – the airlines – deserve every dose of doggy doo thrown at them. Dumber than a bagful of hammers, for years they’ve competed with each other on little more than price, a strategy that – in any business – can only lead to death.
According to figures from the US Bureau of Transportation, US airlines collectively lost only about $145 million in the last quarter of 2012, compared with $602 million in the corresponding period the previous year. For some years now, they’ve been fighting back with an almost-universally despised trick of ‘un-bundling’ air fares so that passengers have to pay extra for things that have traditionally been included in the price of a ticket.
More and more airlines are charging an average of $25 to check in a bag. Several will slug you an extra $8 for a blanket. It’s now common for cut-price airlines to charge extra for exit-row seats which provide a bit more room for tall passengers.
Airlines are beginning to charge extra for what was previously part of the deal – like $8 for a blanket. Oh well, at least you get to keep the blanket….
After years of cutting their own throats by discounting, these big dumb companies have suddenly realized they need to make money. But the way they’re doing it smacks of desperation, and worse, complete ignorance about the concept of adding value, packaging, differentiation and giving themselves an ‘unfair advantage’ over the competition without discounting.
Salon owners who are Members of Worldwide Salon Markeitng could give the airlines a much-needed lesson in such market-making processes.
In Australia, I fly Qantas exclusively. Of all the competing airlines, Qantas is regularly the most expensive carrier. That’s why I fly with them. The food is free, and good quality – even in Economy Class – unlike the inedible trash on US domestic airlines. There are no extra charges for blankets, checked baggage, headsets, movies or anything else. On many flights, even beer and wine is free in Economy. It’s all included in the price.
Where even a profitable airline like Qantas falls down is in its failure to capitalize on this competitive advantage. They still attempt to compete on price alone, too timid to shout from the rooftops
“Hey, we’re the most expensive – but there are no hidden charges, sneaky extras or nasty surprises when you get to the airport. When you buy a Qantas ticket, everything is included in the price!”
Here’s what’s instructive for your salon business:
Take a lesson from bumbling mistakes of the airlines. Instead of constantly trying to compete with rivals on price (discounting), figure out a way to package your services. Don’t allow your customers to ‘cherry pick’ your treatment menu on price alone. By learning to package – as our member salons have done using the templates and tools in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® you’ll find yourself attracting customers who are more interested in value than mere price, want service above perceived (often phantom) savings, and are prepared to pay for it.
by Greg Milner | Jun 16, 2013 | Australia, Blog, Email marketing, Featured, Mag 05, Website Marketing
Salon owner and WSM member Cherie Underwood is a passionate convert to the power of her salon’s online presence to attract customers
There are many ways to dominate any given market in the salon & spa industry. You can have product dominance, when your product or service is the only such product or service in your area. You can have demographic dominance, where more people in any given demographic come to your salon as against all the competition.
And you can have media dominance, where your marketing message gets the lion’s share of any given media in that particular market.
My Social Salon – gives your salon the power of Media Dominance
Here’s an example of Media Dominance that most salon owners would give their right arm for. In Jannali, in the southern suburbs of Sydney, long-time Worldwide Salon Marketing member Cherie Underwood has owned Femme Fatale Beauty & Skin Care for a number of years. Several years ago WSM constructed a website for Cherie, which quickly became the top-ranked website for relevant search terms in her area. Last year, we built her another website – because it’s better to have two, three, ten websites than just one. A quick Google search for ‘beauty salon Jannali’ now brings up the following results on Page One of Google: 
When you analyze it, there are a number of things worth pointing out here: 1) Cherie’s original website, www.femmefatalebeauty.com.au, is the very first result on Page One. 2) One of the pages from that website is listed at No. 2 3) The YouTube video we set up for Cheri on her own YouTube channel is listed at No. 3 – important because about 30% of all online searches are for videos. Note that the link to the video contains her salon’s phone number; important because getting a phone call to book an appointment is certainly her Most Wanted Response 4) Cherie’s salon is listed at the very top of Google’s map listings for salons in Jannali. Here’s another example of Media Domination online. In Manly (Sydney) the competition among cosmetic clinics is fierce. But WSM member Alice Cassidy of Manly Cosmetic & Laser Clinic is enjoying marketplace dominance on the world’s biggest search engine thanks in large part to the ‘secret sauce’ SEO strategies our Director of Online, George Slater and his team inject into the websites we build for members. High up on the first page of Google search – for the search phrase ‘botox manly’ – Alice’s business occupies no fewer than four of the top five positions. 
The point is this: a combination of time, careful construction, frequent website updating, and an understanding of what it takes has given Cherie media dominance of her market. By achieving the top four spots on search listings, Cherie’s business has automatically reduced the amount of her competition her prospective customers can find. You simply can’t do it any better than that.
Want that kind of media dominance?
by Greg Milner | Jun 4, 2013 | Blog, Featured, The Right Mindset
Sharp-eyed Worldwide Salon Marketing member David Wood of Elan Men’s Hair in Brisbane is another who can thank his immersion in ‘our’ way of salon marketing for honing his B.S. Antenna to a state of high alert.
David sent me an article written by a purported ‘expert’ on customer retention that makes my eyes water.
Under the heading “Don’t ask customers why they left you!”, the article argues, correctly, that customers leave for three main reasons:
* Drawn: They are drawn away to a supplier that offers them substantially more of what they value (e.g. service, benefits, savings, etc.).
* Drift: They drift away to a similar supplier who offers them marginally more. Most often this occurs at points of change in their own life (e.g. moving job/house/site, having children, etc.).
* Driven: In the absence of a strong engagement, they become disenchanted over time and then a particular incident (trigger) pushes them to change suppliers.
But then the author falls in a hole, with the scholarly opinion that “…instead of asking them why they left you, try the following strategies to reduce customer defections:
1. Conduct value research
* Use analysis of relevant online discussion forums, traditional focus groups and other tools to identify what customers actually value from their relationship with you. Then use these insights to drive value into your customer relationships.
2. Leverage your customer data
* Use customer complaints data to prioritise and address those things that annoy customers (and start collecting it immediately if you don’t already!)
* Statistically analyse customer transactional behaviour to identify other change triggers (positive and negative).
Online discussion forums? Focus groups???
Oh, yawn. In other words, tip-toe around, do anything except send ‘em a letter, in an envelope, with a stamp on it, asking them to come back and giving them a bloody good reason (offer) to do so.
It’s classic avoidance strategy, padded with big words and fancy phrases, to give business owners comfort for not doing what it takes to get the damn customers back.
If you want to do ‘research’, here’s my contention: get the customers back first, then find out why they left in the first place. If they’re standing right in front of you, having eagerly responded to your ‘come back’ offer, that’s a pretty good place to start your ‘focus group’. Particularly after they’ve just been blown away by a ‘wow’ experience.
“C’mon Shirley, we haven’t seen you for three months. What happened?”
Sometimes, ‘experts’ just love to over-think things. Thankfully, our Members know the value of a well-crafted ‘Raise the Dead’ series of letters they can simply download from the Membership area. Many are getting a 30% response rate, or better, sending these letters to their ‘missing in action’ clients.
Like, for example, Hannah McEnteggart of Oasis Health & Beauty Spa in Great Missendon, UK:
by Greg Milner | May 30, 2013 | Featured, Latest News, The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
At school, everyone gets a prize. In real life? Not so much…
At last, a glimmer of light in the dark and murky corners of political correctness. An up-market private girls school in my part of the world has admitted that the ‘everybody gets a prize’ mentality that’s infected our education system for decades might not be actually doing our young people any good after all.
St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls (The West Australian, May 25) has written to parents explaining why it has decided to minimize praise (like “well done Angela, you failed, but you tried, that‘s the main thing!”), reduce reward stickers for participation (eg “here’s your certificate for actually coming to school, even though you tanked at everything.”) and setting deliberately difficult work so students could experience failure.
Eureka! Hurrah! Finally, an admission from green-tinged academics, the corduroy-jacket-and-leather-elbow-patches brigade, that constantly telling kids they’re wonderful, special, all-time winners just so their precious little self-esteem gets puffed up like a poisoned cat could just possibly be setting them up for a rude shock when they suddenly arrive in the real world.
A world that rewards people who actually get things done, not merely make a feeble attempt and give up. A world that punishes failure and praises success, not ATTEMPT. A world that has few leaders, and many followers. A world that is full of obstacles, pitfalls, challenges and tall buildings that can’t leaped in a single bound by a pimply teenager in a Superman suit, aided by a teacher whispering ‘wow, you’re really great. You failed, but you’re really great all the same.’
And out in the real world, nothing is less forgiving of failure than business. Particularly the world of small business, the one you and I inhabit. You may have noticed that customers who give you their money do not gently pat you on the head and whisper ‘good try!’ when you fail to deliver what they’ve paid for. To the ears of those molly-coddled through school any time in the last thirty years, it may sound harsh when suppliers you haven’t paid send the bailiff in to take your furniture.
And when you employ some youngster straight out of school (beauty school, particularly) is it any wonder they look like startled deer caught in the headlights when you (too gently) suggest to them they might like to actually work instead of Facebooking their friends till they’re blue in the face?
To quote the bleeding obvious from Primary Schools Association president Stephen Breen, who acknowledged that schools and parents had probably (the italics are mine) gone too far in puffing up children’s self-esteem by praising everything. “As a consequence, a lot of kids don’t accept criticism.”
Maybe, just maybe, kids might be better educated with some harsh reality right from the get go. Had the Allies lost the Second World War, it’s difficult to imagine Churchill gently admonishing Montgomery with “Well old chap, you gave it your best shot, that’s all that matters!”
I re-post from last year a short lesson in life for young people – and grown-ups who still think life should be just like it was in school.
by Greg Milner | May 19, 2013 | Featured, Salon Advertising Tips
“Why it’s Good to be Bold in your Salon Marketing” There is truth in advertising after all. Most business owners are too timid in their marketing. Unwilling to stand out from the crowd, they therefore blend in with it – and make the BIG mistake of failing to get attention.
No chance of that here. Instead of the usual wishy-washy reasons business owners use when they put on a ‘sale’, this guy tells it like it is. There’s nothing timid about it, he gives his customers the real reason he wants their money. There is great value in being straight. (“I have a HUGE tax bill to pay, so here’s how you can help…”)
But it never ceases to amaze me how dumb the so-called experts in the ‘business press’ can be. Mr Toksana’s bold marketing strategy was criticized for it’s ‘tackiness’ by the brilliant minds at the Business Scotsman website. Check it out here.
Why it’s Good to be Bold in your Salon Marketing
Boldness counts. Especially when it skirts close to the edge of acceptibility, like this out-there ad for a furnture company in Northampton, UK. The test is this: push the envelope far enough to upset a FEW people, and you’ll know your marketing message is getting attention. Annoy everybody, and you’ve gone too far.
Why it’s Good to be Bold in your Salon Marketing
by Greg Milner | May 14, 2013 | Featured, Salon Advertising Tips
Many times every week, we interview salon owners and almost invariably, to the question ‘what kind of marketing are you doing right now, or have done in the past?’ we get an answer like this:
“Oh, I’ve tried mailbox flyers/direct mail/newspaper ads/Yellow Pages/radio…(take your pick)…and IT doesn’t work/it’s a waste of money/it never got any results….” Blah blah blah.
And it always amuses me. What they’re actually saying is
“I couldn’t make it work…for me.”
If mailbox flyers ‘don’t work’, then why do ya reckon that every night when you go home, your mailbox is overflowing with ‘junk’ mail from every kind of real estate business under the sun? Would they keep doing it, week after week, month after month, year after year, if IT wasn’t working? No company has a bottomless pit of money.
If newspaper advertising was a complete waste of money, it would seem to me that almost every company on the planet is staffed with
The Dumbest People in Dumb Town
Because you’ve gotta ask yourself, surely they wouldn’t keep shelling out year after year if the thing didn’t produce a result?
If newspaper advertising was nothing more than a black hole that sucks down money like a vortex and never spits anything back out again, newspapers would a) never have got off the ground in the first place, or b) would long ago have gone out of business, their only source of oxygen cut off en masse.
But it’s pretty typical. Salon owners – most owners of small businesses, in fact – blame the media when their marketing doesn’t work. It ain’t the fault of the media. It’s yours, for lack of clear thinking.
Most business owners get the process all backwards. They book space in the newspaper then they think about what to put in the ad. And because they’ve done the last thing first, with no ‘sales thinking’ the ad usually ends up looking like nothing more appetizing than a business card.
Here’s the process:
1) Marketing message. What are you going to say to your target market that is compelling, that cannot be ignored, that is unique, that must be responded to?
2) But the best marketing message on the planet is no better than the worst marketing message on the planet if it falls on deaf ears. Who are you going to say it to – and by deliberate strategy, who are you NOT going to say it to? Are you specific with your preferred target market, or are you just going to throw mud at all of ‘em and hope some of it sticks?
3) Finally, when you’ve figured out what compelling message you’re going to deliver, and who you’re going to deliver it to, the media pretty much chooses itself. (Hint: you’re hardly going to create a great offer appealing to debutantes/young brides-to-be, then book a full page in ‘Seniors Week’, are you??)
Be intelligent with your marketing. Do the ‘sales thinking’ process in the right order. Identify your target market. Create a compelling message/offer just for them. Only then do you choose the media you’re going to use to deliver that message to that market.
Once you get the process right, you’ll find that in fact, with better Direct Response methods applied to the copy, whichever media you choose is going to work a whole lot better for you. And that applies to online – websites, apps, social media – just as much as it does to hard copy.
Want salon & spa marketing that’s actually proven to work? The famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® is FULL of done-for-you marketing templates used successfully by thousands of salons all over the world – and it’s just a small part of the entire My Social Salon marketing & mentoring program, including website SEO, your own customized Smart Salon Mobile App, member forums, unlimited tech support, access to the entire Members Only ‘sealed section’ website and template library, and much more.
It can only be the money. I can’t for the life of me imagine what else could possibly be attractive about running a business like a bank, where an entire army of customers almost universally loathe you.
