Nina Murray joins us from the little lakeside town of Moses Lake in Washington State, about a three hour drive east of Seattle.
“I graduated from Massage school, top of my class, in 2009 and started my business, Knot Release Therapies (www.knotreleasetherapies.com), as soon as I had my license in my hot little hand. I worked by myself for a couple of years, until my oldest son was 14 then I had him working as my receptionist. Two years ago I hired my first employee.
“I had worked with a business coach for a couple of years. I’m always on the lookout for the best way to market my business. That is when I found your book (The Big Salon Marketing Blunders and How to Avoid Them) and really enjoyed what I was learning from it because it was so different from what I had been told or even from what I was used to when I worked in marketing,” says Nina.
So why did you join Worldwide Salon Marketing?
“I try to be cautious when it comes to doing marketing online, so I did a lot of research to make sure that your company was real. I liked what I heard and read, so I thought I would give it a try.”
“I’ve learned that emotional marketing really works! I didn’t realize how powerful it is. Thursday I decided to try the massage template. When I called my receptionist, and told her the deal we were going to do, she got all excited and said that is such a good deal…even though all I had done was raise my price by $20 and put a value on all the included things that we already do!
“We sold $300 the first day. I have one client who is going to let me know tomorrow how many of the packages she wants for stocking stuffers!”
I speak with many salon owners who tell me, “I post on Facebook from time to time, but I don’t really know what to post and when.” Other times they say, ”I know I should be on social media more, and I need a plan of attack.” Well thankfully I know a thing or two about salons and social media.
When I started using social Media in my salon it was still relatively new and I didn’t really know what or how to use it as a business tool. After I sold my salon, and before I joined Timely Salon Software, I ran a small social media consultancy business I was able to see first hand how much of an impact social media could have on a business. I was able to grow salon businesses, increase profits, and strengthen relationships between the salon and their clientele. Here are some of the tips I’ve learned on how to get a business started with social media.
The secret to doing well on social media is to know your audience intimately. What type of client do you want to attract? Who are the clients you have in your salon now, and do you love to look after them when they’re in your chair? We all have clients who complain, moan and are never happy with what we do, but they still keep coming back and causing you grief. Lets not focus on attracting more like them. You can be picky about who you you choose to promote your business to.
Build a clear picture of who your perfect client is and give her a name. Build a virtual profile based on what she does, where she goes, and what personal values she has. Let’s start by giving her a name – we’ll call her Jessica. What social media platform does Jessica use? Is she in her 50’s and and in need of a regular colour touch up, or is she in her early 20’s and wanting to look like the latest celebrity? You’ll speak differently to Jessica depending on who she is as a person.
Once you know who Jessica is, you can speak directly to her in all of your business marketing. This starts with picking the right social media platform. If Jessica is 45-55 year old career woman, she is more likely to be on LinkedIn and Twitter than on Instagram and Snapchat, so take that into consideration when choosing your social platform. The 25 year old Jessica who loves to follow celebrity fashion might hang out in Instagram to keep up with the Jenners and Amy Pham, so making sure you have a presence on the right platform for your business is the first step.
My advice would be to nail Facebook before you venture out onto other social platforms, since everyone is on Facebook.
Now you know where Jessica hangs out online, it’s time to start sharing with her.
Show Jessica who you are as a brand and salon team. Post pictures of the hair you do or real things your team get up to outside of work, like courses they attend and team building activities. Continue the real conversations you have inside your salon on your social media pages.
It’s important to be relevant with what you post. There are so many pages posting so many things but you need to be known for something on social media. You’re a hair salon, so post things that are about salons or come from a hair salon’s perspective. For example, a picture of a cute dog is not relevant to your salon, but if the dog has a very cute hairstyle or has come in with a client, it might be.
Also remember that everything you post should be directed at Jessica. Keep in mind that you’re speaking to her. Before you push send, ask yourself if what you’re posting is relevant to your business and interesting to Jessica.
The final thing to keep in mind is that social media is about a conversation. It starts inside your salon business and should be continued through your social pages between salon visits. Hair salons are not only about doing hair; they are a place where we build strong client-stylist relationships, which adds significant value to the salon experience. Social media allows you to build and strengthen those relationships by maintaining your rapport outside your place of business.
Social media doesn’t need to be a challenge if you see it as a way to continue your customer conversations and build relationships while they’re away. Of course to do this you need to know who you’re speaking to. Creating a profile of your perfect client will allow you to speak directly to them and keep them interested in who you are and what you do. Use this as a guideline when deciding what to post and when, and you will do just fine on your salon’s social media. Good luck out there!
Marketing & Business Development Manager at Timely Software. After 20 years of owning an award-winning salon and 3 years running online marketing businesses,Larissa knows first-hand how hard it is to keep up with the evolving digital landscape, while keeping clients happy and looking after the day-to-day pressures of running a business. larissa@gettimely.com
If you’ve ever felt down about your salon business, if you’ve reached the end of your tether, on the brink of failure, the bailiff knocking at the door, the bills piling up so high you can’t see over them….
You need to read this.
If you’re in up to your ears, like this WSM member, you’ll probably find it uncomfortable. I make no apology for that. Sometimes, I’m regarded as a bit of an ogre. I make no apology for that either.
“Woe is me…”
Last week, the following pathetic email arrived in my in-box, from a long-term Inner Circle member. I won’t identify her (I’m not that cruel) but she’ll recognize this story. In fact, she gave me permission to publish it. I’ve edited the letter for clarity.
“Hi Greg,
I am in dire straits. I owe the taxman money, suppliers, super, rent and many more.
I have even picked up a 2nd job to start helping me pay back debt.
I now work all day in the salon, get home at around 6pm or later make dinner for my little girl and then leave the house to get to my second job at 8.30pm to start at 9pm and finish at 2am, then get home sleep for about 2hours and then up again to start all over again, just going through the motion as a zombie.
I no longer see my 4 year old, have no zest for life due to being so exhausted day in day out. So I guess this email is a cry for help.
I want to have a successful business. I want to be a successful woman so I can have my daughter look up to me and say, ‘wow my mummy is such a successful person.’ Not to say ‘my mother lives day by day or even worse, has become ill from exhaustion.
I am even considering selling the business to try and cut the debt, but I have two young girls who work for me and depend on me, and I love my salon (even though its in need of a face-lift). I love being a member of the community. I love my work; it’s the only thing I can do well.
I even bought tickets to come to the (Salon Profit Secrets) seminar in Sydney, but my mother got ill and I was then unable to attend.
So I guess I am asking, what steps I should take in my marketing to become the business/role model woman I want to be.
Please, I am so dedicated to change my life. I just need you to be my light.
I have been a member of your (Inner Circle) program for around 2 years. The tool kit has sat on the shelf collecting dust, and I have forgotten about it.
Kind regards, Mary…”
After I regained my breath, and retrieved my dropped jaw from the floor, I wrote back to her. I could have written some molly-coddling crap, soothed her troubled brow and told her everything would be okay. But frankly, I was too bloody annoyed.
“Good grief.
You admit ‘the tool kit has sat on the shelf collecting dust, and I have forgotten about it‘….
What??? If all you did was get off your backside, take the thing off the shelf and USE IT, you wouldn’t be in the situation you are now in.
If you won’t take action to help yourself, with the tools you ALREADY HAVE, then what on earth do you expect us to do? Drag you kicking and screaming to the success trough? Show me you are prepared to do something, then do it, and then I’ll help.
Take the Toolkit down, start using it. Get onto the members site, start using what’s in there. But don’t just expect somebody to wave a magic wand and ‘fix everything’ for you, without you lifting a finger!”
Now, I fully expected this member to immediately collapse in a flood of tears, instantly resign her membership of the Inner Circle program and flounce off into a self-righteous cloud of failure, forever more blaming everyone and everything but herself.
But no. She thought about it for a couple of days, and wrote back thus:
“Hi Greg,
I want to thank you for your quick response back to my email, I know you are a very busy man. All I can say is that you hit the nail on the head with your comments about me.
I have spent the last couple of days reading the emails WSM has sent and using the members site and taking marketing ideas from the site and other salon owners.
Your email back has made me think of my past actions and also I took a step back and thought ‘what can I lose if I work the program, seeing you have made many people successful (they have also wanted it too). So I have turned a new leaf so to speak. I have designed up a newsletter to send out to my guests with my ideas, and also ideas I got from the Members Only site.
Your response was truthful, which made the tears flow. I am now taking control of my life, business and family, and so want very hard to succeed to be a role model in the industry and for my daughter.
And I have not only taken the Toolkit off the shelf and dusted it down, I’ve opened it and used templates for future marketing.
Fingers crossed for me, and hopefully I will be one of your guest speakers one day, that came out of financial despair to running a chain of salons. I thank you again….”
It could have gone either way. Mary could have just as easily rolled over and curled up in a corner, hoping the world would go away. It took bravery to do what she did.
Too many business owners go under because they fail to take control, and therefore responsibility. The two are inextricably linked.
To quote Dan Kennedy, ‘being broke is just a temporary circumstance. Being poor is a state of mind’.
Are you a poor salon owner, or merely broke? If you’re poor, there’s not much I or anybody else can do for you. If you’re merely broke – like Mary – then you know what to do. Get off your butt, and take action.
And one day, soon, I expect we’ll hear more from Mary. She’ll be on this website, proudly telling the story of how she dragged herself from the depths of depression, resignation, despair….to success. I’ll be the first to applaud.
“…We are stoked and plan to run this sale the entire month of June in 2011!”
Inner Circle member (3 years) Molly Verbrugge of Indulgences in Little Rock, Arkansas, is justifiably glowing after a Worldwide Salon Marketing promotion she used for just two weeks in June this year boosted sales to $81,235 – a staggering DOUBLE her takings of $41,956 for the same two week period in 2009.
Now if that doesn’t get your attention, you’d have to be comatose from the neck up.
It came about after a coaching call with Tim & Kanna Reilly in our Arizona office, after they’d modified and implemented a WSM marketing campaign in their own clinic in Scottsdale.
“After speaking with Tim and giving my review of our discussion to Leslie (my spa manager), she and I decided we might benefit from running the promotion ourselves! Well, we started running the sale on June 17th.
We sent email blasts along with approximately 5 newspaper ads totalling a cost of around $750. We began the sale on June 17th and it ran until July 3, 2010. Last year during the time-frame of June 17th thru July 3rd, we had total revenues of $41,956, this year our total revenues were$81, 235!!!
We are stoked and plan to run this sale the entire month of June in 2011.
Thank You Tim and Kanna and Worldwide Salon Marketing for your invaluable marketing ideas!
Husband-and-wife team Tim & Kanna Reilly’s Body Solutions Laser & Skin in Scottsdale, Arizona, grew 63% in 2009 – after a massive 500% increase in 2008 – thanks to the marketing and ‘sales thinking’ tools in the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program…
Successful marketing is NOT about re-inventing the wheel, unless you’re particularly a) rich, and b) prefer to risk your money on experimentation. Tim and Kanna had proven this particular strategy works, having rolled it out with massive results every year for three years.
Here’s how Kanna describes the promotion:
“We started it in 2008 when we came to our One Year Anniversary, and now do what we call the “Penny Sale” every year. It happens to be June. We ran the Penny sale for the entire month.
We printed the copy on paper with US pennies around the borders. We also e-mailed out to our database of customers 4 times that month. No other advertising at all, just e-mail and in store flyers! You can also mail out to your client database in an envelope with pennies printed on it. This year our total gross sales for June was up 62% over our average monthly sales.
We originally did this for a few reasons:
1. To let clients know that we are celebrating our anniversary and to let them know that we appreciate their patronage and loyalty and to reward them we offer the penny sale.
2. July and August are brutal in Arizona as our temperatures reach 110 degrees F and over. Many people leave town for weeks on end to avoid the heat. So in order to boost sales and keep people coming in we offer the Penny Sale. Originally, this helped us pay the rent for the two months in advance while our books were slower in the beginning for those hotter months. You can also use this strategy to pre-pay for equipment investments or Salon renovations etc.
What we found:
1. We found that many of our higher margin, more costly services was what people bought the most of (which was fine with me).
2. We also found that clients purchased services they didn’t regularly come in for or had never tried before.
3. We received and still receive more referrals in the month of June than any other month of the year.
There are many ways to use this program. You can run it for only a few days, or a few weeks, or for the entire month as we do.
Remember to remind your client base about the Penny Sale and when it will end. We had a majority of our sales come in the final week as people rushed in or called their orders in by phone. And when we ran our final e-mail that in 24 hours the sale would be over we could hardly keep up with the phone volume.
Husband-and-wife team Tim & Kanna Reilly’s Body Solutions Laser & Skin in Scottsdale, Arizona, grew 63% in 2009 – after a massive 500% increase in 2008 – thanks to the marketing and ‘sales thinking’ tools in the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program…
Hair Salon WordPress Template: The Beauty Business that Grew 63% in 2009
Economically speaking, was 2009 the worst year since the great depression or was it a year of salon business growth and prosperity?
Well, it depends on who you ask. For us it was a great year, better than 2008 in fact. For many small business owners in our industry it was a year filled with financial stress and for a large number of salon owners – complete financial meltdown.
Thanks to the tools and strategies that we learned from the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle program we were able to turn our failing medspa into a highly successful and profitable business. For us, 2008 was a great year; we grew more than 500% over 2007.
At the end of 2008 we sat down to establish our goals for 2009. Could we possibly expect to have a better year in 2009 than 2008? Expect may not be the right word, but we certainly planned on having a better year.
Planning may certainly be the key. An old college professor of mine used to love saying, “Plan your work and work your plan, if you fail to plan you can plan to fail.” Those words have meant more to me now as a business owner than they did as a student.
It’s all about planning. Success doesn’t come knocking – looking for you. It won’t break down your door and insist on coming in. You have to go after it; hunt it down and claim it for yourself.
Plan your marketing for an entire year. Inner Circle members should have received a big full page calendar for 2010.
This allows you to look at the whole year in one glance. Commit to marketing consistently every week. You might not know exactly what your marketing offer will be on April 5th yet, but just know that on April 5th you WILL have something ready to go. That kind of marketing commitment done on a regular basis will create momentum, and momentum, like a wave, will pick you up and carry you towards your goal.
Thinking about marketing without taking any action steps to put those ideas in motion is a waste of time.
You must act on your ideas and then track your response. If the response was good, then do it again. If your response was bad, you need some new ideas. What, you don’t have a ton of fresh new ideas just waiting to burst forth from your brain??
Hmmm…reminds me of a high school English teacher I had. He used to say, “Smart people learn from a dumb person’s mistakes, but wise people learn from a smart person’s mistakes!” So be wise, don’t be smart. Use tools, strategies and ideas that have already been proven to work. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. You can grow your business in record time IF you have the right tools and IF you take action to implement those tools.
We did and that’s why our 2009 was 63% higher than 2008; it was our best year yet!! You’ll have to excuse me now, I have to go set our 2010 business goals!
FREE audio recording – Listen in as USA Members describe how their businesses have thrived in the recession
If your salon business is suffering, on the brink of closing the doors, barely able to find the rent – you’re not alone. More than a hundred US salons are closing every day.
While the Australian economy has weathered the economic storm better than any other country in the western world, the US has been among the hardest hit.
And yet…and yet, all over the USA, there ARE salons and spas that are thriving, despite the economy. How can that be? Simple – they have the right tools to bring customers in the door.
These salon owners don’t reveal their success secrets to everybody
Listen in on this tele-seminar, recorded LIVE on Wednesday, October 21, 2009, as salon owners Mario Raia from Ethos in Vancouver, Washington, Susan Vincent from Body & Soul Day Spa in Staunton, Virginia, and Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly from Body Solutions in Scottsdale, Arizona detail the strategies they’ve used to grow their businesses by as much as ONE THOUSAND PERCENT – right in the middle of the worst economic downturn in 70 years….
If YOU want the kind of tools that Mario, Susan and Tim are using to generate serious CASH despite ‘the economy’, you should immediately apply to become a Member of the Worldwide Salon marketing Inner Circle program, including the world-famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®
Nina Murray joins us from the little lakeside town of Moses Lake in Washington State, about a three hour drive east of Seattle.
