by Greg Milner | Aug 20, 2014 | Australia, Marketing Superstars, Packaging Salon Services, Salon Advertising Tips, The Smell of Success
Asking clients for cash up-front puts the fear of god into many salon owners – but not for Anita Clements of Twisted Desire in Corinda, a suburb of Brisbane. Using marketing templates she simply downloaded from the Worldwide Salon Marketing Million Dollar Resources Library, and some guidance on how to use them, Anita planned and executed a Membership drive that netted $9,200 in up-front sales – in two days, from just a handful of her many hundreds of regular clients.
In this video, Anita explains exactly how she did it, and followed it up a day later with a VIP ‘Blonde Night’ that attracted 30 clients brought in another $3,000 in bookings and product sales. (It’s salon marketing like this that’s helped Anita get ‘off the tools’ and work on the business instead of in it.)
(Note to Worldwide Salon Marketing Members: go here to the Members Library to download the actual marketing pieces Anita used to achieve this excellent result.)
Not a member? Go here to find out how to get a 30-day money back guaranteed Test Drive of the entire marketing program ‘My Social Salon‘.
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by Greg Milner | Jul 25, 2014 | Salon Advertising Tips
If your salon marketing’s ‘ugly’
Funny how people get fixed on stuff that doesn’t matter, as excuse for why ‘it’ doesn’t work in my town/my industry/my business yada yada yada.
This week, an email from a salon owner (not a Member) who’d seen some advertising by a nearby My Social Salon member salon, and was now chiding me for ‘dumbing down’ the beauty industry by encouraging our Members to use ‘copy-heavy’ advertising that puts more emphasis on the words than the pictures.
It was ‘unprofessional’, she said, ‘to do your kind of ugly marketing when we’re in the beauty industry. The advertising should reflect the quality of one’s salon. Yet you are encouraging salons to make their advertising look tacky.’
Well actually, no, I’m not.
But the whole premise of this writer’s complaint is off-target anyway. It’s typical of the wrong-headed thinking that pervades in all types of business, not just the beauty industry.
I’ve never advocated doing ‘ugly’ advertising for its own sake. What I DO advocate is doing ‘different’ advertising.
If a newspaper page is wallpapered with ‘pretty’ looking ads, complete with the usual photos of glamour babes sporting glossy hair and flawless skin, I’d want my ad to look exactly the opposite.
I’d want it to draw the reader’s eye like a bright light draws moths on a dark night, not to melt into the background as part of the blur of sameness.
But frankly, it’s not a desire to look ‘professional’ or ‘beautiful’ that makes most salon owners subscribe to the ‘my ad has to look pretty’ syndrome. It’s a lack of focus, and a belief that an ad should tell the reader everything about what the salon provides.
No, it shouldn’t. An ad should have one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is to get the reader to take action. That action might be to pick up the phone and call for a special offer, or it might be to do nothing more than go to a website and download a gift voucher…. One thing, that’s all.
Try to make your ad do more than one thing, and it’ll almost always fail. Too many choices, and people do nothing.
And if your ad is attempting to get people to do one thing, every single word, picture and graphic on that ad should be directed at that single purpose. Nothing wasted. No blank spaces.
Which in many cases means filling the ad with text.
If that makes it look ‘ugly’ compared with all the other ads in the same space, well and good.
Want HUNDREDS of downloadable, editable salon marketing templates that WORK? Check out My Social Salon, the world’s most comprehensive salon advertising and marketing program.
by Greg Milner | Mar 16, 2014 | Salon Advertising Tips
LIVE now on the Members Only website
All NEW Mothers Day advertising, posters, fliers – instant downloads for Members
We’re adding dozens of new salon advertising and marketing templates to the Members only ‘sealed section’ website site every month – in March, a completely new series of templates for one of the BIGGEST salon marketing events of the year.
Mothers Day is a big day for salons & spa marketing all over the world. It’s when thousands of salons make (or should make!) a large part of their annual revenue.
But so many face the thought of marketing with a shudder – all that work!
Not for Worldwide Salon Marketing members. As always, we provide our members with fresh direct response marketing templates – for all the major Marketing Trigger Events – throughout the year.
You’ll find them in various sizes and formats, both US and A4, postcards, posters etc.
Never stare at a blank computer screen again!
(STOP PRESS: new Mother’s Day Marketing & Advertising Templates here)
The new templates join literally hundreds of done-for-you advertising only for salons & spas, in the world’s biggest specialist library for salon & spa marketing.
All you do is simply download them from the website, edit them to suit your own salon’s offers and specialties, enter your own business name and address, and bingo – instant advertising! Never again stare at a blank computer screen, not knowing what to write or how to lay it out.
These templates are being continually produced by our copywriting and graphics team, adding to our vast library every month.
The Members website is a storehouse containing literally years of proven, done-for-you direct response marketing templates. They’ve been downloaded, tested and proven to grab salon clients fast, all over the world.
Online marketing, email, SMS, newspaper ads, radio ads, salon posters, client letters – you’ll find them all on the Members Only website.
Not yet a member?
Still sitting in front of a computer screen, tearing your hair out, not knowing what to put in your ads?
Go here to find out how you can get 24/7 access to the world’s largest Marketing Resources Library just for salons & spas
by Greg Milner | Jan 13, 2014 | Blog, Getting Salon Clients Quickly, New Zealand, Salon Advertising Tips, Salon SMS Marketing
It’s less than 2 weeks in to 2014 and our Worldwide Salon Marketing members are already out of the blocks with a roar with emails and phone calls coming in to our office from excited salon owners telling us about their successful campaigns.
This morning I spoke on the phone with Maree Hoare, of Red Hair in Palmerston North. Maree joined us just one month ago and has shown immediately what it takes to be a successful marketer of her business.
She hasn’t sat around waiting for the phone to ring, instead she’s got straight down to business, is creating her own success and taking complete control of her business.
When Maree opened her salon this morning she noticed some gaps in the booking system later in the week. So armed with the tools she needed to fix that problem, she opened up her computer, visited the members only template website and found an SMS example that she could adapt for her own salon.
She sent the message out to just 400 people of her SMS list and within 30 minutes had no fewer than 12 bookings.
“With schools being on holiday it gets a bit quiet around this time of year in Palmerston North, I need to keep my team busy and so at this late stage it seemed a text message to my clients would be the quickest option to fill the gaps later in the week. It took me a few minutes to put the message together from the examples on the website and then I sent it out and within minutes the phone was ringing hot! The system says the SMS’s are still being sent out so I am sure I will get even more calls than the dozen we have already had in the last half an hour. But I am really happy with the result.”
The hair offer Maree sent out by text was for $79. Given that a text will cost about 10c per message that’s a $40 cost for a return so far of $948. I would call that a great return on investment.
And the message also saw at least 2 long lost clients make a booking in the salon.
Since joining WSM in December, Maree has already put in to action steps to help her work more as a marketer on her business. Could you imagine earning $948 in 30 minutes if you were cutting someones hair or doing a facial? Not likely unless you are the hairdresser to David Beckham. So Maree is already seeing the value of her time spent marketing rather than being a technician cutting hair.
And in addition to Maree’s amazing SMS campaign she also launched her mini memberships last week which she has already sold 7 bringing in and extra $1400 in income.
A massive congrats to Maree for her great start to 2014 and we can’t wait to hear more from her as the year progresses.
For WSM members, you can see the SMS that Maree sent on our members only Facebook forum. Click her now to check it out.
If you are not a member of one of our WSM programs but want to kick start 2014 the way Maree has done then click here now to apply and one of our team will be on the phone to you immediately. Or call one of our worldwide offices to speak with someone now.
New Zealand 09 476 1592
Australia 08 9443 9327
USA & Canada 250 590 0449
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.
