by Greg Milner | Apr 20, 2015 | Featured, The Smell of Success
A salon owner once asked me – with a completely straight face – if I could write her an ad that would flood her salon with customers and turn her business into a thriving cash machine. Overnight.
In other words, “give me one perfect off-the-shelf, simple solution to a complicated, multi-faceted, ever-changing and, more to the point, on-going, ever-increasing problem.”
It amazes me how so many people in small businesses somehow expect a single, ‘silver bullet’ answer to a complex problem:
how to get more customers.
Very, very few business owners ‘get’ the complexity and difficulty of the task, the details that matter.
Keith and his new bride Yumi…their wedding was an exercise in military precision
I’ve just returned from a family wedding on a tiny jungle island called Koh Tao in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, where one of my son Keith married his beautiful South Korean bride Yumi.
At such a remote location, the wedding was a logistical nightmare, requiring more than 18 months of planning. Emails and phone calls went back and forth for month after month. Six months before the big day, Keith flew to Koh Tao to personally co-ordinate the various elements of the event.
Getting the wedding guests committed to booking their flights – from as far afield as Vienna and Brisbane – was an exercise in trying to herd cats.
Depending on where they were coming from, it took guests at least two, often three or four plane rides plus a two-hour boat trip just to get there. Co-ordinating accommodation for 30 people, plus caterers, wedding planners and photographers by remote control in a non-English speaking third-world country was an exercise in patience, understanding and persistence.
Koh Tao – a jungle covered speck in the gulf of Thailand.
The event went off without a hitch, all thanks to my son and his new wife. And it made me think;
It seems to me if business owners put as much thought, planning and attention to detail into their product launches or marketing campaigns, their lives would be so much more prosperous.
But people invest more effort, expend more energy, drive themselves into more of a tizzy over their…Christmas parties…than they do their own businesses. Go figure.
And yet, when focus, energy and attention to detail is turned into a carefully-planned campaign to generate business, much can happen.
Example: Kim Susskind’s Brazilathon Campaign
Just part of the free publicity generated with a carefully planned and executed marketing campaign…
Last year, Noosa salon owner Kim Susskind wanted to generate publicity to promote a planned ‘brazilathon’ – to create a ‘world record’ number of brazilians performed in a single day. Over a period of weeks, I worked with Kim to design a campaign that got her not one, but two front page stories in the local newspaper, radio air time, social media exposure, and a series of emails and text messages that – in combination – produced saturation coverage in her local market.
The result: a new ‘world record’, the talk of the town, and a backlash from competing salon owners jealous of Kim’s new-found fame. (Kim now features as a columnist in the same local paper, further cementing her ‘authority’ as an expert – the ‘go-to’ person in her area.)
Worth noting: this could not have been achieved with a lazy mere email, a single mailbox flyer, a hap-hazard text message, or a thrown-together post on Facebook.
Successful marketing isn’t an event, it’s a process.
Kim’s campaign required planning. But the most careful plans in the world are useless without timely, persistent execution.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Abraham Lincoln
by Greg Milner | Apr 9, 2015 | Featured
When posting pictures to your blog, make sure you first re-name the picture so that the file name is keyword rich. For example, if you right click on this one and ‘save file as…’ you’ll notice that the file name is ‘beauty-salon-suburb-girls-day-out-at-races-fashion.jpg’ – this is important for SEO.
Posting BLOGS – How to Get Better SEO for your salon’s website – Websites are never ‘finished’. If you want yours to be ranked on the front page of Google, it takes maintenance and attention. And the owner of the salon is the person best-placed to do that on a regular basis. After all, you’re the one with access to the information, you can take relevant photos on your phone quickly and easily, and your clients and staff are accessible.
So here’s a simple ‘recipe’ for a Blog Sandwich.
The Blog Title should be keyword rich and catchy. For example – Beauty Salon (Your Suburb) Girls Day Out At The Races
First Slice of Bread: Paragraph one – repeat the title in bold as an opener and what the blog is about. Example: Beauty Salon (Your Suburb) Girls Day Out At The Races – on Tuesday the Staff at Jenny’s Beauty Salon got to do a bit of team bonding and we with 15 of our clients went to the local race track for bubbly and strawberries.
You’ll notice with this picture, when you go to save it, it has a similarly keyword-rich file name.
Sandwich filling: Middle Paragraph, add in local keywords for your area – just like your local newspaper, Google already knows your local area keywords and will pick up keywords relevant to your area, so adding it in will make sense to their systems. Example – “We ran our own little competition to see who could get the best picture of themselves into the local paper “The Morning Gazette”. The prize was “Hollywood Woman Make Over”.
Bottom Slice of Bread – add a call to action – such as ‘please comment, call or txt.” Example – Here are three great pics of the Girls trying to get themselves noticed in front of the camera man. Which one do you think is funniest, please comment below. We will post another blog should any of the girls get into the paper.
NB: when adding pictures to your blog, the file name of the picture is important – you can save your pictures with file names such as beauty-salon-suburb-girls-day-out-at-races.jpg and variants of that. (And by ‘suburb’ we mean your suburb, again it’s a keyword thing.)
Check out what WSM member Glenda McCallum does with her blog posts here. (Glenda’s website went first page of Google after only 1 month ‘live’ so it proves the value of frequent blog postings) Blog posts don’t have to be fancy, they are not there to impress customers, they’re there to impress the search engines.
If you want to go really in depth here is an infographic:
by Greg Milner | Apr 2, 2015 | Featured, Salon Advertising Tips
In my daily newspaper, a story that shows just how little even experienced business people know about pricing, value propositions and marketing. If you own a salon or spa and want to charge premium prices for your salon body treatments or hair styling, this story is a classic example of how not to do it – and a lesson in how you CAN do it.
A reader had written a glowing letter of praise for the magnificent quality of food and service at one of my city’s top restaurants. “Very stylish, with interesting, tasty and creative food.” he wrote. “The service was almost faultless too, thank you.” And then came the “….but.”
“A smallish plate of (beautifully cooked) pieces of suckling pig and a little bowl of sauerkraut was…$55. Oh, COME ON…! Is this just cynicism? Do you just think people will pay this because they don’t want to be thought of as uncool by complaining…?”
The diner’s complaint was justified, because the restaurant had failed to justify its high price by providing value. And yet, that value was easily explained, had the restaurant’s management bothered to find out how to do so.
In fact, they had the answer at their fingertips. Yet they blew it. Sarcastically, they wrote to the customer thus:
“As far as going into detail and explaining our prices for you we won’t bother. We’re sure you don’t email big companies such as Calvin Klein or Armani and ask them to explain themselves for the expensive prices for a pair of jeans or a white T shirt.
“We serve good quality food that has had a lot of love and hard work go into it.”
Huh? As if other restaurants charging half the price serve lousy food thrown together by trained monkeys? Dumb. Yet they had the right answer at their fingertips. In the very same article, the restaurant’s part-owner and high-profile chef David Coomer detailed exactly the right justification for charging top dollar – yet, ignorantly, this brilliant sales information is presumably kept a secret from the company’s customers.
Each pig costs us about $180 to buy. It is air-freighted clear across the country from Victoria, and collected at Perth Airport by restaurant staff. By the time preparation, garnish and labour costs are added, it doesn’t leave much of a margin.
“If you were a rational restaurateur, you wouldn’t bother,” said Mr Coomer. “But we want to be perceived as people who are dedicated craftsmen serving very good quality food.”
Er, how on earth are they going to be perceived as dedicated craftsmen, if they don’t tell the story, shout it from every available rooftop. If I were Mr Coomer, I’d be instantly re-printing the menus, complete with the story of each and every dish. E.g.,
“For our suckling pig, we personally select only the best available animal from a specially-certified farm, approved by our part-owner and master-chef David Coomer, (name of farm?) in the cool highlands of sub-alpine Victoria. Each pig costs approximately $180. Most restaurant food supplies are trucked across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth, a distance of 2,500 miles, however we believe in only delivering the very best and freshest food to our diners, so instead of trucks, our animals are air freighted at a cost of $70 each. At Perth Airport, our restaurant staff personally meet each arriving aircraft to inspect the purchase and ensure it has arrived in perfect condition….”
Etc etc. You should by now be getting the picture. There is Magic in the Details.
Too often – and this applies to salon & spa marketing as much as the marketing of any other business – the owner assumes that the customer has no interest in the process, only the end result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hark unto me; there is case study after case study of smart entrepreneurs turning the actual process into a ‘business within the business’, not only generating another revenue stream, but using the process as means of not merely justifying the high prices of its products, but making the customer feel intensely excited about paying those high prices.
Case in point: premium European car manufacturers such as Mercedes and Porsche have erected massive museums in the grounds of their plants, tied to tours of the factory where customers can watch their car being built.
Schlitz beer – telling the story, revealing the DETAILS, turned Schlitz into the world’s biggest
Famous US brewer Schlitz was the biggest in the world for decades, thanks at least in part to advertising which – unlike other companies – extolled the process by which their beer was made. (See example on this page.)
There is much to be learned and even more to be implemented in your salon or spa business from this. Do you simply present your customers with the end product and assume they know how you arrived at that product? Is your method of pricing little more scientific than the ‘Flinch Test‘?
(Explanation: the Flinch Test is one of three common pricing methods used by all businesses. Method #1: Look around at what everybody else is charging, and take an average. Method #2: figure out what a product or service costs you, and simply add a margin. Method #3: stick any old price tag on the thing, and if the customers don’t flinch, keep pushing it up until they do.)
The restaurant had a magnificent story to tell, yet failed to do so, and its only defence against price criticism was arrogance. That’s not stupidity, it’s ignorance. There’s a difference. Stupidity is not being ignorant, it’s being ignorant and refusing to educate yourself despite an abundance of information at your fingertips.
by Greg Milner | Feb 25, 2015 | Blog, Featured
Are you hiding your business personality under a paper bag?
Two emails, from opposite sides of the planet, got me thinking this morning; what is it about personality that makes so many business owners do everything in their power to hide it from their customers and potential markets? It seems to me that most salon & spa owners bend over backwards to use their ‘professional’ image as a shield, deliberately protecting their own life stories from the people who give them money. Or want to give them money.
One email came from a WSM Member and owner of a large and very up-market spa in the Middle East. My team and I had been working with this very talented and driven businesswoman on an extensive re-design of her online and offline marketing. At my request, she’d sent me absorbing details of her up-bringing in Russia, her childhood love of all things fashion, beauty and glamour, her move to Dubai as a young single mother knowing no English or Arabic, and the fascinating story of how she finally shunned the party life and established her now-successful spa in the heart of the city.
I wrote her a new biography based on these ‘personal’ details, complete with pictures of her with famous people such as Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post, and Italian fashion guru Roberto Cavalli, for use in all kinds of media, online and offline. She wrote back,
“Can we skip all that personal stuff and keep it only professional?”
There followed a long, detailed and incredibly bland ‘shopping list’ of her achievements and business milestones. I wrote back:
“I disagree. It’s precisely that lack of ‘personality’ in most company executive profiles that makes them all so ‘beige’ and dreary. People in business are generally so afraid of exposing any sign of having a real personality or personal history, hiding it behind a purely ‘professional’ front, that they all tend to blend seamlessly together in a blur of sameness. Do you really think Sir Richard Branson would be where he is now, do you really think Steve Jobs (Apple) would have been able to create such a huge company, if it weren’t for their willingness to put their private lives out there, to allow people to see who they were as humans (and very flawed humans at that), not just ‘professional’ business operators?”
The success of Apple, and of Virgin, and of thousands of other business household names, wasn’t because they merely created great products or services, or had excellent ideas. It was people
bought the story of their creators.
The problem – and the obvious solution – is this: people want to do business with people, not merely faceless, professional, one-dimensional entities. The more you cover that up, hide it behind mere ‘branding’, the more difficult it becomes to differentiate your products and services from a thousand other ‘me-too’ competitors.
The second email was a request for my comment on the ‘re-branding’ strategy of a nationally-franchised spa chain. I’ll preface this by saying that the entrepreneur behind this chain is obviously driven, talented, progressive and the owner of a very sharp business brain. But my opinion was sought purely on the re-branding exercise he’d just spend a not-insubstantial amount of money on. So I replied:
Well, on the face of it, re-branding a business is all terribly important for the owners of that business. Years ago, the Commonwealth Bank paid a consultant more than $1million to design a new logo, of which the bank was extremely proud, but I doubt any of the bank’s customers gave much of a toss about it. They care about what interest rate they’re paying on their mortgages, and the service they get from the people at their local branch or at the call centre.
As always, people put self-interest first, and there’s daylight between that and anything a company does or says about itself.
Which is why I’ve never paid the slightest attention to our own brand imagery. A graphic designer threw our logo together in half an hour years ago, and I’ve never bothered to change it, because I don’t think any of our Members pay any attention to it. The fact that our systems and processes help them make more money is really our brand.
From a pure branding point of view, it’s probably more important to your franchisees and prospective franchisees, because (presumably) it makes them feel they’re part of a more polished organisation.
But in the overall scheme of things, no, I don’t believe spending large amounts of money on pure branding exercises can ever be measured in terms of Return on Investment. I’ve always taught people to spend money on the things that measurably bring customers through the door, which is direct response marketing (online or offline), lead generation, upselling and cross-selling, and branding should always be a by-product of that process. Unless of course you’re a big publicly-listed company and have lots of shareholders money to spend.
Now, it would be mere dogma to claim that ‘branding’ has no place or value in small to medium businesses. But in isolation, absent any measurable, complementary and supporting systems and process for getting customers through the door…and absent the essential ingredient of personality…branding alone cannot do all the heavy lifting.
The entrepreneur came back with a very well-argued case for ‘brand-awareness’, particularly for the benefit of franchisees and employees, and ended with “Let’s revisit this conversation in 6 months and see what the results are:-)”
Yes, let’s do that. But whatever the results, it’ll be damn-near impossible to look at any figures – positive or negative – six months from now, and say with absolute certainty that ‘re-branding did that’.
by Greg Milner | Feb 11, 2015 | Featured
Every salon has at least one – a grumpy, horror client
There’s a widely-held and often-quoted fantasy in business that holds “The Customer is Always Right.”
Of course, it’s nonsense. If you own a salon, or work in one, there’s a better than even chance you’ve got at least one ‘project’ client; the one whose mere appearance in the salon is enough to send shivers down your spine. The one who scares small children, makes grown men shake in their boots, the one who complains, disputes, argues, walks out without paying, never turns up on time, if she shows up at all….
Recently we ran a short competition on our Facebook fan page – the best ‘horror client’ story got a free Android mobile phone app built for their salon. And the stories came in from all over the world, all of them proof that anybody working in a service industry like hair & beauty needs industrial-strength thick skin and, uh… ‘brass balls’.
Brisbane salon owner Michelle wrote that after putting up with one particularly nasty woman for six years, she finally plucked up the courage to ‘sack’ the client.
“She was always rude to us and the other clients. She used to spit her coffee at us if it didn’t taste right or if the cookies that day weren’t right. She would make fun of our make-up and clothes. If another client was in her ‘usual’ seat she would walk over to them and say something. Always asked the apprentice if she was pregnant. Every time we did her hair she was never happy (however she kept coming back for 6 years!) I was stressed for the entire day when I knew she was coming in, she came late to every appointment, and one day she rang to make another appointment and I told her we were booked out, so she asked for another day and I said we were booked out forever. It was the best feeling when I broke up with her.”
For another salon owner, Joanne, it was a client who just refused to go away, no matter how many times it was made crystal clear she wasn’t wanted…
“I had a client that was a reject from someone else (no doubt). I had her color card (shades EQ) and followed it to the T. She would not let me cut her hair , as she did not trust me so she said. When I would blow dry her she would randomly pull the cape off and say ‘we’re done!’ To top it off she had this wild Janice Joplin hair, it was grey and a real mess. She needed a deep conditioner, which I repeatedly recommended. I even sent her home with a few vials for free. She really needed about 6 inches cut off, but would not let me, because she was afraid of not being able to tie her hair up…. I told her ‘you don’t need 20 inches of one length hair to be able to tie it up’.
She was just never happy…she would always e-mail after her appt. and complain. I would re-do her, this went on for about 6-8 months. Her 50th birthday was coming up in 4 months and she had some idea of a coming out party, and she wanted her hair like Oprah’s Curley do. Honestly, the woman needed to lose 60 pounds, put some make- up on. I too was stressed when I saw her name in the book. I finally divorced her, by e-mailing her and saying that I was not the best stylist for her hair, as we were not able to understand each other. I could recommend another salon that used her colour line. I gave her 2 weeks notice, she had the audacity to say that she would not be able to find a new salon in 2 weeks, so she would come one more time to me! I couldn’t believe it! Would you still come to me after I told you I don’t want to see you anymore? She did finally hit the road and I never saw her again. Life’s to short to have people bring you down.”
For California salon owner Lia Alden, it was the abusive client who was obviously ‘a bit sauced’ every time she came in:
“I had a long time client that constantly cancelled on me at the last minute, no showed and other things to that manner. (Oh and she was constantly a bit sauced when she would come in).
“One time she cancelled her appointment for the next day and so since it was an open appointment someone else booked their appt. in that spot. I actually felt a lot better knowing that the appointment time went to someone who wouldn’t cancel again and went forward with my day. Anyhow, she called back later that day and said she wanted the appointment time that she cancelled back again.
Our receptionist at that time told her it was already booked. And obviously she threw a temper tantrum and insisted she get the appointment back!!! Again the receptionist told her it was impossible but if anything changed she would call her back. About 15 mins later she called again and continued to throw a fit, again she was given the same answer. Still again about 1 hour later she calls back – now the receptionist is getting frustrated, but I’m with a client and the receptionist continues to give her the same answer.
The client insists that I call her and settle this. Anyhow, I am booked until late that night and can’t get back to her until late… So of course, she calls back one more time about 15 mins before I’m done for the day. She starts screaming and cussing and insists that I leave my client and ‘fix’ things…..HERE IS THE CATCHER…. the receptionist thinks that she’s hung up the phone and she starts venting about the woman. She is telling someone else and about her yelling and cussing and being drunk all the time and saying how crazy she always was…at that time I was off and finally sat down for the first time that day and heard the story in its entirety from the receptionist. I was at the front desk hearing the story when my client comes stumbling into the salon….
She is obviously drunk and she is PISSED OFF. She said that the last time she called the salon she was actually on her way over to the salon to talk to me because I never called her back. But also what we didn’t know is that our receptionist didn’t hang up the phone and she had been sitting in our lobby’s bar listening to the entire conversation my staff was having about her. She was so mad she could barely even speak. Needless to say I just stood there with my jaw open!! I couldn’t believe what happened and why it WAS happening.
She was foaming at the mouth mad!!! She walked back out to get in her car and sped off. Normally I would be upset about the situation but she was so mean and nasty that we all just started laughing so bad that we started crying….
She was definitely NOT right in this situation!!”
Drunks are one thing. Thieves are another. And age is no barrier. For Bathurst NSW salon owner Belinda, it was a light-fingered pensioner who complained bitterly after her hair colour mysteriously went darker after she left the salon.
“Four weeks after the customer called to complain that her blonde hair had turned brown she called to make another appointment for a hair colour. I was again confused! Could this be the same client. We discussed on the phone that she only wanted the regrowth done and a trim so I quoted her on this and she complained about the price. She was given a pensioner discount which meant she would be paying $45 for her regrowth and $30 for a cut to this she replied that she did not need a cut only a trim. I then explained that they both take the same amount of time because we are cutting the same amount of hair. She was not entirely happy with this reasoning but booked in anyway.
All the staff were warned and told of prior experiences with this customer and we agreed that we would not go darker than a level 8. The customer arrived smiling and friendly the consult went fine the senior stylist checked the colour with me and then applied. As I walked around the corner I noticed the client was now having a full colour.
I checked with the stylist that she quoted on this service as it was not in the original quote. The stylist placed her hands on the clients shoulder and said ” yes we discussed this didn’t we” client nodded. I made the client a cuppa and she smiled and said ” thank you dear” as old people do. About 45 min later while I was around the other side of the salon my apprentice started laughing and said to me ” she got her money back ” I had no idea what she was talking about and then she said ” that’s how she is getting her free colour, she has done a runner “.
Apparently the woman had told us that she had parked in a 2 hour parking zone and had to go and move her car so with our cape and towel around her shoulders she took her handbag and walked out of our salon. I was dumbfound. I called my husband to ask him what I should do nothing like this had ever happened before. 30 min later I tried calling the client on her home and mobile numbers but she did not answer so I called the police to ask their advice. At first they said they could not do much as these sort of clients don’t give the right address and phone details. When I told the officer that I had the correct details they informed me that they would call the client and suggest that she return my belongings ( cape and towel) and pay for my services before I make a formal complaint.
About 2 hours after the client walked out of my salon to move her car she waltzes back into the salon with a towel places it in the reception desk and said “I’m here to pay for my colour” so I tried to charge her for the full colour that she had but she refused as she did not ask for a full colour ” your stylist done that all by herself without asking me” by this stage I was over it so I charged her the price that we originally quoted. When I asked her for my cape she was highly offended and stated ” what do you take me for a thief! I did not take your cape” to this I replied “well you did leave here over 2 hours ago to move your car and you left with a towel and a cape and without paying, you have returned our towel paid you your services but there is still the matter of a cape so yes I guess that is what I’m saying” with this she stormed from the salon. I called the police to let them know that she had returned and I would not be following it up. I was shaken but relieved that the situation was finally over it had been a stressful day, but alas it was not so. 2 hours later I was called to the phone ‘IT WAS HER AGAIN. ” I have just had a message from senior Sargent …… From Bathurst police station making slanderous accusations regarding me. I wish to inform you that I have family who are higher up in the police force than your senior Sargent…. And I will be taking this further”. My response was “well I have signed witness statements from all my clients today regarding your behaviour so you take it as far as you like” and with that I hung up. It goes without saying that this client will not be welcome In our salon again.”
But perhaps the prize should go to Tracey in Launceston, Tasmania, and a one-time client who was obviously in for a good time, not a long time:
“We don’t have many complainers but we have our fair share of nut jobs! Only last week one of my seniors had a lady booked for a Brazilian Wax and Brow Shape. The therapist did her Brazzy first then her brows. Whilst doing her brows the client put her hand down her pants and put a ‘smile on her face’ (polite way of saying you know what) complete with wriggles and groans. WTF is wrong with some people!!!! Needless to say we won’t be rebooking this freak! We laugh about it now but it nearly made my senior puke when she realized (too late) what the client was up to.”
by Greg Milner | Feb 6, 2015 | Ads that Have Worked, Featured, Salon Advertising Tips
“Salon Marketing Why Salons Fail?” I just don’t get it. How can it possibly be that so many salon owners and beauty professionals spend so much time, effort and money furnishing their shop, making things look glossy and sexy, hiring and training staff…and put so little effort into the one thing that really matters; getting customers.
Sure, all of those things – ensuring the ‘public face’ of your business is clean, well-groomed and wears a smile is important. But it’s at least as important to put the same kind of effort into the systems, tools and tricks that get customers through the door. And by that, I mean salon marketing systems, and the ‘sales thinking’ that needs to go into them.
Thumbing through a local suburban newsletter this week, I stumbled on page after page of truly awful marketing. My staff scanned a few of these, so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
Collectively and individually, these examples are about as lousy and useless as advertising gets. There are dozens of mistakes in all of these ads, I’ll point out just a few. (And see if you can identify them with your own marketing efforts.)
Let’s take this little gem of an ad. It’s right up there with the worst ads in the world. Hard to know where to start with this one, but let’s try
1) the headline. Er, there isn’t one, unless you count the name of the business. And almost without exception, your business name is the last thing you’d put at the top of your ad. In Dallas a few years ago, I met a guy whose industrial fan business changed it’s name from HVLS Fan Company to Big Ass Fans. Now that’s a name that’d pass for a headline. This one ain’t.
2) Price. There’s nothing else going for it. And, like most business owners who’ve made not the slightest attempt to educate themselves on any form of marketing, those who compete on price alone are on a slippery slide to oblivion. There’ll always be somebody who’ll undercut you. And in this case, even the price is airy-fairy. The mere use of the word ‘from’ sets off warning bells.
3) Story. There’s no story here to involve the reader. No compelling reason to read the ad at all.
4) there’s no proof. Why should I use this salon, other than on price alone? There’s not an ounce of evidence here that I’ll get what I’m paying for.
Salon Marketing Why Salons Fail
This ad isn’t much better. If the very BEST, most compelling thing this business can say about itself is that it’d like to ‘welcome Emma Harris to our team of highly qualified therapists’, they’re in deep trouble. There’s everything wrong about this ad, I’ll analyze three.
1) It makes the mistake of talking about the business, not the customer. ALL people act out of self-interest first. The unconscious first question in any reader’s mind is
‘what’s in it for me?’
In this case, a new therapist (big deal) at a salon I’ve never heard of. Be still, my beating heart.
2) It immediately sets the tone for the business by offering a 50% discount. Put aside that discounting is evil and profit-sapping by its very nature, the ‘50% off’ statement is meaningless anyway. 50% off what?
3) Like the ad above, there’s no compelling story here. What does ‘hair free’ mean? How do they do it? Will it hurt? Who’s had it done, and what do they say about it?
Here’s another one, from the same paper. (They must have all listened to the same ad sales rep; “Have a look at what all the other advertisers are doing, and do something pretty much the same.”)
This one makes the same mistake as Example #1 (name of the business at the top of the ad) plus a few extras.
1) A picture that wastes an enormous amount of ‘selling space’ without selling anything. Who are these people, and why are they in the ad?
2) There’s nothing even resembling an offer. Having read this ad, what is the reader supposed to do…cut it out and stick it to the fridge?
3) The bullet points are meaningless. Under new management? Didn’t know the last management, so why would ‘new management’ mean anything to me? ‘Subiaco service without Subiaco prices’? They’re price cutting. If they knew how to charge ‘Subiaco prices’, presumably they would. Business is about making a profit. ‘No appointment necessary’? It means they let customers call the tune, not the other way around.
By and large, these ads and thousands of others like them (yours too?) are little more than expensive business cards. If you want to make your marketing work, you have two choices:
1) Spend years studying great advertising, learning how to write copy that sells, implementing that knowledge, testing and measuring it in your salon. OR
2) Do it the easy way. Have a look at the Salon Marketing Starter Pack The Salon Marketing Starter Pack is full of templates you can use now to create winning flyers, sales letters and promotions. Including the Famous Raise The Dead Series.
Salon Marketing Why Salons Fail
