by Greg Milner | May 1, 2013 | Featured
Getting your salon marketing message out to your customers, clients and prospects used to be relatively simple – because you had very little choice when it came to which ‘media’ to use.
You had word of mouth of course – always the best kind of advertising. You had one-on-one, face to face marketing. Maybe some direct mail and the occasional ad in the local newspaper. And if you were really adventurous, some radio and possibly TV. Now? Well, the range of online and offline media is enough to make the mind boggle.
And then again….
Why are apps becoming so important for small businesses like salons & spas? Because your clients and prospects are starting into them – and using them – all day, every day.
There’s ONE form of media that almost every single one of your clients and prospective clients is carrying with them, pretty much 24 hours a day. Their smart phone. And they’re staring into those little screens, for hours and hours. When they’re at work. When they’re watching TV. On the train or bus. When they’re in your salon. Which is why more and more smart salon owners are opting for a ‘smart salon app’ as a key plank in their marketing armoury.
For Baltimore salon owner and Worldwide Salon Marketing member Jill Turnbull, having her clients download the app WSM built for her salon has brought in an extra ten new clients per week….and that’s just from the referral tab within the app!
[cf]Jill Turnbull[/cf]
Our technical department here at WSM has built dozens and dozens of apps for salons & spas, and they’re starting to have a big impact. If you want to see what a your own salon or spa app might look like, grab your own smart phone, go to the App Store or Google Play store and download one or two of these recent examples:
For a Cosmetic Clinic: |
For a Hair Salon: |
For a Beauty Salon: |
by Greg Milner | May 1, 2013 | Featured, Online Marketing
Okay, you’ve got a website for your salon or spa business. Excellent. Can’t be in business these days without at least one. But maintaining a website, keeping it updated with fresh content, keeping it on Google’s radar so it gets to the top of search rankings and stays there…well, that’s a whole different story.
Unless you’re easily found in local searches for your products and/or services, your website may as well be sitting in the middle of the Simpson Desert. And one of the most crucial ingredients for lifting a website up the rankings is….new and frequently updated content. But for the average salon or spa owner, maintaining and updating a website with fresh content is beyond them.
You’re not trained as a writer. You don’t have the technical skills. And more than anything, you don’t have the time.
So, what to do? At Worldwide Salon Marketing, we’ve come up with a solution that not only keeps your website updated regularly with fresh, readable, relevant content, it does your social media updating for you as well.
Watch this brief video as our Director of Online, George Slater explains what happens:
%CODE1%
Says Sydney salon owner and long-term WSM Member Lesley Morgan-Wesson:
“THIS IS AMAZING! Thank you all so much for being innovative, forward-thinking and excellent at your jobs… in a world of mediocrity, spin and under-performance you guys ROCK! Kind regards, Lesley.”
The website/social media updating system detailed by George in this video is now an integral part of our complete online and offline marketing program for salons & spas, My Social Salon.
CHECK OUT ‘MY SOCIAL SALON’ HERE – and if you’re sick and tired of trying to do everything, all by yourself, apply for a No Contracts WSM membership, and watch your sales climb steadily upwards!
by Greg Milner | Apr 24, 2013 | Featured, Newsletter marketing, Website Marketing
Download a FREE sample of articles from the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank here!
Faced with the task of writing an article for a salon newsletter, a blog post or a social media status update, you can’t blame most hair stylists, beauty therapists or salon owners for throwing their hands in the air and groaning “I don’t know how to write an article!”
Let’s face it – you’re not trained as a writer; you’re trained to cut hair, do skin treatments, massages or nails. So it seems almost perverse that with the explosion in new media in the past few years, the need for the written word to promote a salon business is bigger than it’s ever been.
Websites require regular, frequent updates (blog posts) to keep them fresh and ranking highly in the search engines. Social media – like Facebook fan pages – need daily status updates to keep fans interested and responsive. Emails need interesting content, newsletters need articles containing news, not just product or service pitches.
It’s a LOT of work. More than most busy hair & beauty professionals can commit to, even if they had the skills to turn out an article that’s both interesting, compelling, and conveys the right message – over and over again.
The Salon & Spa Beauty Bank – at last, an online resource of done-for-you articles for hair & beauty salons to use in their own newsletters, emails, blog posts and status updates.
Thankfully, at last, there’s a solution.
Former spa owner (and long-time Worldwide Salon Marketing member) Susan Vincent of Staunton, Virginia realized the need for salons & spas to have ready access to a wide variety of done-for-you articles covering every imaginable hair or beauty-related issue, treatments, services, news and images. So Susan created the world’s first (and only) library of hundreds of articles, written precisely for the purpose of saving salon owners the agony and anxiety of having to create their own material for their websites, newsletters, emails and status updates.
For the very reasonable access fee of $97 a month – no contracts, you can leave whenever you like – Susan’s articles remove the pain of spending hours, days even, staring at a blank computer screen to research, gather material and put one laborious word after another. (Just think for a moment; what’s your time worth? Writing just one newsletter article or blog post a week might take you an hour of research and another hour of writing. Two hours a time, four times a month – 8 hours!)
In this interview, I asked Susan how she got the inspiration to start the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank.
[cf]Susan Vincent[/cf]
Download a FREE sample of articles from the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank here!
by Greg Milner | Apr 15, 2013 | Blog, Featured, New Zealand
There are some really crucial elements to any successful salon marketing ad or flyer, an attention grabbing headline, a strong offer, guarantee, use of scarcity and of course a call to action.
So when Lynette Adams of Glory Salon in Thames, Coromandel recently put together a Mothers Day campaign using a Worldwide Salon Marketing template, to run in her local paper using all the above marketing elements, she was excited about what results she would achieve.
But her excitement soon turned to anguish when the paper arrived in her letterbox only for her salon PHONE NUMBER to be missing of her ad. She checked the original and the phone number was there, but the paper had accidentally deleted it when converting the file to a PDF. The call to action was completely gone.
Now you’d expect the salon phone to be quiet as a mouse. Instead, what happened completely amazed and amused Lynette. Here’s what she emailed to me…
“I have sold 19 of the ‘out of order’ Mothers Day packages already!!! + when I saw the ad they had left off my contact details (somehow they had got deleted from bottom when converted to pdf) so they are going to run it again this week for free! Kinda cool that still got response from people without the number as they would have had to look it up.”
You see, what happened here was that the other parts of Lynette’s ad where so strong and enticing that people actually took the time to find her salon’s number in the phone book or on the net and call her to book. Her customers simply didn’t want to miss out on what was on offer. That’s pretty amazing and goes to show how incredibly effective and powerful the Worldwide Salon Marketing templates are, even when they are not used 100% right!!!
And there was one other thing that really made her ad stand out. She got the paper to print the ad upside down. Yes that’s right, upside down…except that bit was done on purpose.
WSM members can view the ad used by Lynette in the members website by clicking here now
Now I am not saying you should all leave your phone number off your ads from now on, but just imagine what would have happened if the phone number was on the ad!!! It will certainly be interesting to see how Lynette’s follow up ad goes with the phone number on it.
And Lynette went on to tell us how she had done in the last 12 months since joining Worldwide Salon Marketing…
“So happy just looked at figures up $4000 on last March!!! + I started WWSM end March last year so from 1 April to 31 March this year increased my turnover by 50% AMAZING!!! Sold $5000 more in vouchers as well =) Thanks so much for all your help really appreciate it! Lynette x”
Keep up the great work Lynette! And make sure the paper send you a proof next time!
If you want to achieve results like Lynette then call me now on ** *** **** (haha, just kiddin 09 476 1592) or email me chris@worldwidesalonmarketing.com – or if you prefer you can click here to fill out a contact form and we’ll be in touch within 24 hours.
Happy Marketing
Chris D’Aguiar-Sanders
09 476 1592
0800 029 668
by Greg Milner | Apr 10, 2013 | Featured, Marketing Superstars, The Smell of Success
Marnie Kallmeyer – WSM member 5 years – owner of Evoque Salon in Perth. “I bought a Jeep!”
Five years ago, Marnie Kallmeyer was broke. Her Perth beauty salon was struggling week to week, she’d lost her house, she was on the verge of nervous breakdown.
So I couldn’t help but smile this week when Marnie turned up at my office in her brand new $60,000 Jeep SUV. She’d picked it up that morning from the dealer. “I wanted to show you that you were right,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for everything Worldwide Salon Marketing has taught me about marketing & the salon business.”
(And for those salon owners who watch this and think ‘she must be working 80 hours a week’, take note: two months ago, Marnie broke her hand, putting her completely out of work. In the next two months, her salon’s turnover & profit hit new record highs!)
[cf]Marnie[/cf]
If you own a salon or spa and you’re struggling, fed up with not making enough money for yourself, then isn’t it time you took action?
Click here to find out how you can join Marnie and hundreds of other salon owners as Members of Worldwide Salon Marketing
by Greg Milner | Mar 20, 2013 | Featured, The Smell of Success
New Survey Reveals the Shocking Cost of ‘No-Shows’
Hair & Beauty salons are losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year because of no-shows, and the lack of deposit-taking policies for fear of upsetting clients.
In a new survey conducted by Worldwide Salon Marketing, the vast majority of 130 salon owners questioned revealed they had no policy of taking deposits to secure appointments, and even it they did have a cancellation policy in place, it lacked ‘teeth’.
Telling figures that show most salons are letting clients get away with murder
According to WSM founder & CEO Greg Milner, the results are a wake-up call to the industry. “If salons want to be taken seriously by their clients and stop hemorrhaging money, they have to take the lead from industries like travel, hospitality and entertainment, which simply refuse to take bookings without payment,” he says. “Customers accept those policies completely. Try booking a concert ticket and telling them you’ll pay when you get there. It just doesn’t happen.”
The survey of 125 salons reveals
- 88% do not take deposits.
- The average annual loss through no-shows is a whopping $10,000 per salon, with one salon reporting a staggering $52,000 – even though fully 80% of salons claimed they sent appointment reminders by text message.
- Extrapolated across Australia’s approx. 25,000 hair & beauty businesses, the losses represent $250 million annually.
- Of the 12% of salons who insist on deposits for appointments, the average annual losses dropped to less than $2,000
- Asked ‘How many times must a client ‘no-show’ before you no longer take bookings from them?’, 31.5% said three times, while another 32% said “I always let them book another appointment because I’m too scared to lose the potential business.”
It appears the industry is beset by fear. According to one respondent,
“We do have a cancellation policy, but rarely enforce payment, as so few other beauty clinics do so. Clients will not come back.”
And this from a salon in Melbourne:
“I would like to put a cancellation thing in place but I don’t have credit card facility nor any way of safely storing peoples numbers. And yip I am scared of scaring people away.”
But that fear appears largely unfounded. Said another salon owner,
“We started taking credit cards or a cash deposit on February 1st this year, for the first time. It works a charm, no more no shows, the clients now know we’re serious.”
The survey shows that among those salons which insist on deposits or pre-payments, the rate of no-shows drops dramatically across the board. “It also positions the salon as a business to be respected,” says Mr Milner. “It’s just plain rude to book a one or two-hour appointment and simply not turn up. You wouldn’t dare do that to your doctor or dentist because you respect them too much. It’s about time hair & beauty professionals swallowed a small teaspoon of cement, and hardened up,” he said.
Those who have ‘hardened up’ and imposed a strict cancellation policy backed up with deposits report dramatically-improved results.
“We’ve had a 100% Cancellation Policy in place for almost 6 years. It has virtually eliminated no-shows and forces clients to respect our business. EVERYONE in this industry should do the same – it will educate clients that they are visiting professionals whose time is valuable,”
says a Sydney salon owner. And a West Australian salon owner agrees, with impeccable logic:
“It should become common practice in all salons to take deposits, like the hotel and holiday industry, people will just accept it as common practice. Nothing is gained from those who are scared, and just end up hurting the industry with their fear. Even Spreets and other common daily deal sites do it, so why not the salon itself?”
Here’s how veteran WSM member Marnie Kallmeyer describes her deposit-taking and cancellation policy:
[cf]Marnie[/cf]
BONUS GIFT for salon owners who want to eliminate ‘no-shows’ forever!
Want to stop no-shows? Join the Lite marketing program and get this proven client letter FREE – a Bonus Gift valued at $297 – but PRICELESS!
This is the first page of a 2-page, proven client letter that stops no-shows dead. Carefully setting out what your client can expect of you, and importantly, what you expect of your client, this letter has been used successfully by hundreds of WSM member salons around the world – and you can easily edit it to suit your own salon.
Join the Lite program FREE for the first 14 days – and you’ll get to download this letter as a Bonus Gift worth $297 – but priceless when you consider how much no-shows are already costing your business every year!
