by Greg Milner | Jul 20, 2009 | Advertising Tips
Salon Marketing Ideas: Salon Owners Fall for the Myth of Repetitive Advertising
Here’s a common nonsense spread by the likes of Yellow Pages and newspaper ad sales reps:
“You have to run your ad at least 6 times to know if it’s going to work.”
Ah, if only I had a buck for every salon owner who’s been fooled by that old chestnut. It’s a good ploy for the sales rep, for sure. As long as you believe that line, you’ll keep spending money on ad space in the vain hope he’s right. That eventually, the ad will work.
In the interests of Accurate Thinking, I’ll use an analogy to demonstrate the foolishness of this money-wasting myth.
If your ad doesn’t work the very first time, it’s never going to work.
Imagine for a moment that instead of selling beauty treatments or haircuts, you sell car tyres.
And in your city or area on any given day, there’ll be a number of people who, on that very day, have noticed their car’s tyres are getting a little ratty, a touch on the er…smooth side…and they need to replace ‘em quick before the cops pull them over and slap a work order on the car.
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| Typical salon ad you’ll see in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. You could run this ad a bazillion times and you’d be lucky to get a phone call. |
And let’s assume that of all those people, half of them read the local newspaper.
So you place an ad for your tyre shop in that newspaper.
Nobody calls. Zero, nada. Zip.
You call the newspaper rep and he tells you brightly “oh, you need to run your ad at least 6 times before it gets noticed.”
So you keep shelling out cash for this ad, week after week. Still no calls. By now, you’re beginning to blame the media for your lack of advertising success.
The truth is a little harder to bear. It’s not the media at all. It’s your lousy ad.
Let’s assume half of all the people who woke up that morning and decided they needed new tyres then opened the newspaper and saw your ad the first time it ran.
If the ad was any good, some of them would have called.
Here’s the real truth: the reason your ad didn’t work the sixth time you ran it is the same reason it didn’t work the first time you ran it – it was a lousy ad.
If it had been any good in the first place, a percentage of all those people looking for new tyres for their car on that very day would have called you.
It comes back to the Big Rules of an effective marketing strategy for a salon:
1) Make the right offer,
2) to the right market,
3) in the right media,
4) at the right time.
Clearly, in this make-believe scenario, it was the right market, in the right media, at the right time. Equally clearly, if those last three pins were lined up and you didn’t get calls, logically it was the first pin that was out of line.
So the next time an ad sales rep tries to sell you the Myth of Repetition, don’t fall for it. Either cancel the ad space, or change your ad so it answers the question at the top of mind of every prospect:
“What’s in it for me, right here and now?”
SALON OWNER ADVERTISING LIFELINE: If you want to know how to use advertising more effectively, the very best way you can do this is join the Inner Circle Marketing & Mentoring program, and get the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit with your Membership. Here’s where you go to find out more….
by Greg Milner | Jun 2, 2009 | Salon Advertising Tips
IC member Marnie Kallmeyer – discovered why advertising in glossy magazines can be TOXIC for your business, if you do it the magazine’s way instead of our way…
Yet more evidence, if any were needed, that the publishers of magazines are more interested in how advertising looks than how effective it is for the people who pay their bills – the advertisers.
Inner Circle member Marnie Kallmeyer of Beauty Image reports this week the frustrating experience of paying up-front for a full page ad in a bridal magazine. The magazine not only
a) refused to run her strong direct-response ad, they
b) told her there was too much text in it (!!), then
c) provided her with their version – the horrible, useless, space-wasting piece of ‘pretty’ junk you see below.
When Marnie objected and said ‘forget it, I’ll cancel the ad and have my money back’, the magazine refused to refund her!!
I spoke to Marnie today and here’s what she said:
The more you get accustomed to ‘our’ style of emotional, effective direct-response marketing, the more you become a marketer of your business rather than simply a stylist or beauty therapist, the more you will encounter this kind of idiocy among certain sections of the media.
Big lesson: ignore these fools, take your advertising dollars where they will be effective.
Big prediction: this magazine will inevitably join the ranks of so many others who refuse to run advertising that attracts customers – in the tank. The advertisers clueless enough to accept the magazine’s stupid rules soon wake up that their money is down the toilet, pull their ads, and the magazine sinks like a stone.
by Greg Milner | May 27, 2009 | Blog
Mystery Inner Circle member reveals she’s broken the chains of franchise marketing holding her back….
Hair Salon Marketing Strategies:The Mortal Danger for Franchised Salons & Spas
A glowing testimonial from one of our freshly-minted New Zealand members this week made me laugh out loud, but under that laugh were some warning bells.
It came via our New Zealand franchisee Chris D’Aguiar-Sanders, from a salon owner who, for reasons which will become clear, doesn’t want to be identified – yet.
If you are you part of a franchise network, thinking about buying a franchised salon, or joining a franchise, then listen carefully, ‘cos you could be buying trouble. Now, that is not to say that franchising per se is a bad idea. There are many excellent benefits to being part of a franchise network, but in our experience – and that of many of our Inner Circle members – the ability of the franchisor to provide effective and efficient marketing copy is NOT one of them.
(And before you go all smarty-pants on me, Worldwide Salon Marketing is an exception to the rule!)
In general, the hair salon marketing strategies provided by the typical beauty industry franchise is, frankly, hopeless – the standard ‘branding’, imagey kind of marketing that looks pretty, doesn’t sell. Worse, in most franchise agreements, the franchisee salon is forced to not only use this ineffective marketing material, but pay dearly for it.
This salon owner – we’ll call her Jennifer – is part of a large franchise network, and suffered greatly because she has been forced to use the marketing provided by the franchisor. (And rest assured, I have seen this franchisor’s advertising. It is unutterably dreary. Little wonder it hasn’t worked for ‘Jennifer’.)
‘Jennifer’ joined the Inner Circle program in late March, and writes:
“After 3 years of struggling to get my revenue up in my medispa, and having a small client base, in desperation I madly grasped at the flyer from Worldwide Salon Marketing, offering a FREE DVD, that other salon owners had used and had literally doubled their sales and profits by changing the way they marketed.
“This I thought was for me, what else have I got to lose except my business, so I needed to act now especially in these times of recession.
“After watching the DVD, I thought this is for me so became a member, and I have had fantastic results! I have never had this type of over whelming response from any advert I have done previously (who said flyers don’t work!)
“Very simple but very powerful marketing tools, that have convinced me. So upward and onwards to grow my business, I feel I am now starting to take control of my business as I can see it already has started to grow. The support and encourgement , and feeling of working in a strong supportive team, leaves me with a very motivated fantastic feeling.
Thank you Worldwide Salon Marketing.”
Jennifer’s story is not an isolated one. All over the world, salon owners who are part of franchise networks are using the tools, ad templates and sales strategies in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit to double, triple their sales and profits in spite of the marketing ‘rules’ imposed on them by their franchisors. Many are doing it without the knowledge of the franchisor, and in several documented cases, our Members have ‘seen the light’ and fired their franchisor.
The are two points here: 1) franchisors would actually make more money if only they got out of their own way, swallowed their own egos, and allowed their franchisees to market themselves with the best tools at their disposal. And 2), the last thing the owner of any business should do is delegate their marketing to a third party, e.g., a franchisor.
Marketing IS the business. It’s the only thing that brings in the money. By accepting without question the marketing knowledge, experience and most importantly of all, the actual marketing material the franchisor insists you use, you effectively abdicate from responsibility for the results.
Speaking of results, check out the latest results being achieved by some of our Inner Circle members.
by Greg Milner | Apr 8, 2009 | Salon Advertising Tips
Beauty Salon Marketing 101: Back to Basics
Asking Too Much Of Your Advertising.
Most business owners try to get their ad 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, 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.
Here’s a typical beauty industry salon ad…. typically thoughtless, wasteful advertising, trying to do everything and in the end achieving nothing.So instead of saying in your advertising 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 are ignorant of this kind of advertising, and if they’re not ignorant of it, they fear it, because it is so accountable.
Many, many times we have had Members tell us that advertising reps have mocked the copy-intensive style of advertising in the Toolkit, sneering at it because it looks unprofessional, doesn’t look glossy, doesn’t have lots of pretty pictures in it, has too much text, etc etc.
Often, magazines have even refused to run this 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.
The general advertising industry is not at all tied to results. What the smart business owner has to do is educate himself enough so that he’s an informed, well-researched consumer when he does deal with service providers like agencies and printers and publishers.
As a small business owner, you should be investing only in marketing that is results measurable, so that you can track what you get for your dollar. You have to learn to say no to certain advertising reps or advertising opportunities, unless and until those opportunities pass the accountability test, for example if you’re approached to advertise in a magazine, you ONLY go ahead with that offer if you can run YOUR kind of ad, not their kind of ad – and only then if you’ve satisfied yourself that that particular publication is attracting the kind of readers you want as clients.
Most businesses in the beauty industry are out there with no message at all. Typically, salon owners will buy or lease their space, hang a sign out the front, spend a huge amount of time and energy on the interior, fret over the logo etc etc…. and open the door and wait for customers.
Very few spend any time at all on the only thing that really matters, which is getting customers through the door. Very few spend any time or research on what they’re going to communicate to the market about who they are, and why prospects should do business with them. Very few spend any time doing what we call ‘sales thinking’: which is analyzing what you sell, what your USP is, what your customers really want – and crafting a perfectly-pitched message that sells you and your business.
You see, advertising is nothing more than salesmanship in print.
by Greg Milner | Mar 4, 2009 | Ask the Experts, Salon Goalsetting
Marketing Plan For A Beauty Salon: How do YOU Compare with This Salon Owner??
History is a great teacher. In 1944, General Eisenhower assembled the greatest invasion force in history to storm the beaches at Normandy.
Eisenhower knew that anything less than MASSIVE, overwhelming force, and the Allied attempt to drive the Nazis out of Europe would fail.
It remains a source of mystery to me why so many business owners don’t get this lesson. Regularly, I get email from salon & spa owners who moan that ‘I sent one of your letters to 30 of my clients and only got one appointment…’
Or, ‘I ran one ad…on page 68, down in the bottom right hand corner…and I didn’t get any response…”
One letter? To just 30 people? Well, what do you expect? What else did you do?
It’s a well-known law that action and results are inextricably tied together. Yet it’s a never-ending source of bemusement to me that so many salon & spa owners have massive expectations from minimal action.
So it’s instructive to look below at what’s required to get BIG results. And it shows clearly that the 80/20 rule applies in all things… Clearly, only 20% of salon & spa owners are prepared to take this kind of action, but they make 80% of the money in the entire industry.
Inner Circle member Lisa Conway of Marinelli hair only joined the IC program and received her Toolkit in mid-2008. At the members-only closed-door networking session after this week’s Road to Riches salon marketing seminar, Lisa told me how, until she joined the program, she had spent years in fear, afraid to make changes in her business, afraid to confront lazy staff, afraid to take any action.
All that changed when she ‘saw the light’. In this email Lisa sent the day before the seminar, she reveals a partial list of the action she’s taken, the marketing she’s implemented, in just a few months…
“I got thinking about what I have introduced or changed in our salon since I joined the program and got the Toolkit last July….
1.Send out SMS to a data base at a moments notice with deals to make the phone ring.
2.Collect and use Email to send special offers
3.Advertise with huge success in the local paper.
4.Letter drop our area
5.Put flyers on car windscreens
6.Stand in the street outside our salon handing our brochures
7.Give away $50 vouchers in coffee shops to faces I don’t know.
8.Queen of referrals program
9. Raise the dead letters
10. Birthday $10 vouchers
11. Made a fabulous brochure using an offer and great testimonials
12. Thank you for choosing us letters and $10 vouchers
13. Introduced another retail line so we have two now
14. Went from never doing any treatments in salon to doing 30 a week
15. From not one package to consistently doing packages
16. Weekly staff group meetings
17. Weekly staff training in salon
18. Weekly staff one on one
19. Introduced a fabulous system that puts all staff behaviour into 4 simple groups (Attitude, team, skill and Neglect) easy for us both to track and understand.
20. Display the salon’s weekly takings in lunch room showing both great and not so great work.
21. Know my average dollar sale and watched it go up
22. Know how to find so much more out of my computer
23. I have used movie tickets, holidays and chocolate as staff incentives, not just money.
24. Have staff that gets to work on time and has had their breakfast.
25. Have a staff birthday club that we go out for breakfast.
26. A manager who can now manage staff issues with out me.
27. Cleared out the staff I had with bad attitudes
28. Made our 100% money back guarantee common knowledge
29. Ring all colour work one week later to check if client is happy
30. We regularly back the computer up more than once every day.
31. Dialled up and joined a conference call
32. Listen to disks sent every month that motivate me.
33. Raised my price across the board twice
34. My on the floor time is now 4 hours twice a week.
35.I asked one client to find somewhere else to have her hair done.
36. Renovated the salon completely from 6 stations to 10 and 2 basins to 3
37. Know what % my staff cost me, know what it costs to open the doors
38. Sent my staff to another salon to get their hair done for the experience
“I have enjoyed this journey very much, I would never have believed this much could be done in such a small space of time not to mention watching my profit go up and my anxiety level go down. I am looking forward to the next chapter………….. Lisa.”
So, no fewer than thirty eight specific changes, actions and outcomes… and the biggest outcome of all, a massive $60,000 increase in sales in the 5 months August-December 08 compared with 07.
How do YOU compare with this list?
