Most small business owners don’t have much of an idea of what exactly they expect out of an advertisement. Mostly they believe it is just informing the public about all the services that they offer.
While the purpose of most advertising is just that, there is a problem with this kind of advertising. They will be expecting their ads to do too much, to appeal to all possible prospects. And by doing so, it achieves nothing. Asking a single ad to do everything is asking too much of it.
A single ad should have one purpose, one job, one expected outcome, and nothing more. If you want to sell a particular kind of body treatment or hair service, only sell that service. Sell it hard, with a great offer, a terrific headline and a strong guarantee. Don’t simply fill your ad with a bullet-pointed list of everything you do. That’s not an ad, it’s an expensive business card. And nobody ever sold anything off a business card.
These kinds of ads are what are called SPORKS. Sporks – for those who are not sure – are tools that TRY TO BE EVERYTHING TO EVERYBODY! (They are a cross between a spoon and a fork. It tries to cover 2 bases and in the end it does a bad job of both.)
You have to learn how it is that you stand out from the sea of salons that exist. Only by having the right tools and the right mentors can you successfully change your salon from a “same as everyone else” salon, into a well defined, structured salon that is the expert in the field.
Advertising gone wrong
Here’s a typical beauty salon ad that tries to be all things to all people. It’d make an okay business card, but it’s not an ad.
So instead of saying in your advertisement something like “Call us for all beauty needs such as body treatments, pedicures, manicures, massages, nails, facials, blah blah blah…’ make your ad specific, make the offer very clear.
A word of warning: Most of the people who sell you advertising space or services are ignorant of this kind of advertising, and if they’re ignorant of it, they fear it, because it is so accountable.
Ad executives are not accustomed to this kind of accountability. In fact even the most pragmatic and hard headed businessman generally has very low expectations out of his ads. It’s basically the case of “Put it out there and hope for the best.”
Often, magazines have even refused to run ‘our’ kind of ad, because their main interest is producing a glossy publication that looks pretty to their readers, rather than accepting advertising that actually works for their advertisers, the people who actually pay the magazine’s bills.
Do you find this hard to believe, that ad agencies actually make ads that make their paper or magazine look better than actually trying to sell your product? Well here’s a link where you can check for yourself exactly what ad agencies are most interested in doing.
As the caption says “Ad agencies create advertisements to win awards, not to sell your product.”
There’s a big disconnect between what you expect of your ad, and what ad agencies want out of the ad that they create. Unless the both of you are thinking along the same lines, how are you going to get any mileage out of all the money that you spend on the advertisement?
As part of their on-going membership of Worldwide Salon Marketing, salon owners get one-on-one coaching, access to exclusive Members Only discussion forums on Facebook, plus 24/7 access to our Library of hundreds of done-for-you marketing & advertising templates, video tutorials, and much more. Many members have used these templates to create their own ads and have been taken aback by the response.
But many members have also hit a brick wall when trying to get one of these Direct Response ads published in their local newspaper, or a magazine. One salon owner even received a call from the owner of the newspaper, asking her if she knew what she was doing as her advertisement was very different from all the other ads that they were running and he was concerned that the ads were not going to work for her. While the interest he displayed in his client was commendable, his knowledge of advertising is woefully inadequate.
