How this NZ Salon Tripled Sales

Most of us have had that horrible experience with a Yellow Pages or advertising sales rep in the past where they think they know best as to how your ad should look, we’ve gone with what they’ve said thinking that they are the experts, only to be left with an incredibly ineffective advert that looks ‘pretty’ but generates no phone calls and a large invoice!

Chloe Wilson of Unique Beauty, Timaru NZ

Well for Chloe Wilson of Unique Beauty in Timaru, New Zealand the days of trusting ad reps are long gone! She now trusts in one thing…her own opinion of how an effective advert should be constructed.

Since then she has been going guns blazing and has in fact tripled her salons turnover since joining Worldwide Salon Marketing around 8 months ago.

Here is what Chloe had to say….

“When I opened up my beauty salon in April 2011, it was very slow at the start, I spent over 6,000 on advertising that wasn’t working, in August I found WSM on the internet and started up with a 1500 leaflet drop to the surrounding area to the salon. I had 15 people book in from it and more from there just it just flowed.

After having a few phone calls with Toni, I let her know how scared I was about putting this advert in the yellow pages – she reassured me it would work, so I stuck with it. The advert cost me $2000 and doesn’t just look like an expensive business card anymore.

When the YP came out in October I had 3 phone calls on the day of it coming out and about 20 the next week following. I still get phone calls every week for the deal in advert and just people getting other treatments.

Since November I’ve only had 3 quiet weeks and I’ve had fully booked weeks, working 3 late nights a week and I’ve tripled my income a week from $500 a week to 2,000-3,000 weekly. I have also 10 weddings this year as well which has brought me more people to the salon and 3 booked in for the end of the year (friends from brides has make-up done with me).”

For Inner Circle Members I have made the actual Yellow Pages ad used by Chloe available on the members website for you to see.

You can click here to view the Yellow pages ad in the members only website

Thanks for sharing your success with us Chloe.  I’m sure you’ll have inspired many salon owners to give their ad rep a good old kick in the backside the next time they try and tell them they know best!

 

Keep up the great work!

Chris Sanders, Director Worldwide Salon Marketing NZ

Isn’t it time you started making some real money in your salon and doing marketing that actually gets results just like Chloe got? If you are ready to take the next step in your business then click here NOW to find out more!

Hidden Gems of The Members-Only Website!

STOP PRESS: We’ve just opened the NEW Salon Advertising Templates Webstore here!

If you are a Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle member you will know what an amazing marketing tool and integral part of the program the members only website is.  Many members tell me how they often spend hours browsing around all the different templates and marketing ideas and solutions.

And each and every year the website grows as more material is added and the archive gets bigger.  In fact there is over 6 years worth of archived material on the website now.  It’s easy for some of the older archives to be lost in depths of the website.

And it’s safe to say that if you were to employ a design firm or an ad agency to create the material on the members website and give you multiple options for designs, template sizes and concepts, you would be looking at spending into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  On the other side of the coin, if you were to try and design all this material yourself, well firstly you’d probably need a degree in copy writing, graphic design and a heck of a lot of time on your hands!!!

So, in this new feature I intend to delve deep into the archives, blow the dust and cob webs away and unearth some of the hidden gems that perhaps you have never come across before.

In this first feature I am going to look at a clever little flyer that was actually created by a Pizza Shop.

This was actually one of the very first promotions we use for our salon D’Aguiar: hair.skin.nails after joining the Inner Circle Program back in 2007 and it was a huge succuss. Our version was slightly different and at the top said ‘FREE $20 Voucher – No Strings Attached’  We then looped a piece of string through the flyer and hung it on peoples door knobs around our neighbourhood.  We consistently got 10 bookings from every 100 door flyers delivered and we had so many people saying they LOVED the out of the box marketing!

We still have dozens of clients that come to our salon today who originally came from this flyer. So when you think for the cost of a $20 service, we have made upwards of $4 – 5K from EACH of those clients since then, it’s a pretty good return on investment!

Here’s a link to find this template in the members only sealed section.

http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members/salon-marketing-ideas/ideas-to-steal/a-different-kind-of-mailbox-flyer-try-this/

If you are a WSM Member and want to share a success story from another members only website ‘hidden gem’ then drop me an email chris@worldwidesalonmarketing.com and I’ll be sure to feature it in an up and coming article!

If you are NOT a WSM Member and are sick and tired of sitting in front of a computer screen trying to come up with designs and copy for flyers and ads, if technology bamboozles you, click here to watch the video and Request a FREE live demo of the My Social Salon program.

Build the Hype…Louise Gray of Louise Gray Skin Care in Auckland Did Just That!

Whenever putting together any marketing campaign it’s not just as simple as printing a few flyers or emailing a handful of clients and all of a sudden being bombarded with calls from them wanting to buy what your advertising – sure that would be nice but with the increasing competition out there all vying for your customers dollar or pound (not just from rival salons) then you have to think smart about how you are going to get your clients so excited and worked up about a package or product you are about to release, that they are already pre-disposed to buying it from you when it finally does go on offer. You have to build the hype in advance.

Michael Hill Was Creating A Buzz!

Last week I walked past a local jewelry shop and noticed a long queue of customers eagerly waiting outside.  There was a rope fence separating them from the entrance and a red velvet curtain blocking customers from seeing inside the store.  The customers were standing on tippy toes trying to see what was going on inside…they were REALLY excited!

The blackboard outside the store said…

‘TODAY ONLY – Make Me An offer on All Jewelry in Store’

They had created a buzz, excitement and mystery with their customers and passers by, and put a time limit on it to add to that – TODAY ONLY!  People are naturally inquisitive and if they see people flocking like sheep then they don’t want to feel left out…they want to be in the know too!

As salon owners we need to be creating this type of hype with our clients, planning and executing our marketing with thought and not just being impulsive or reactionary.  That’s how so many salons waste money – as they say ‘you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’

And planning is exactly what Louise Gray of Louise Gray Skin Care in Ponsonby, Auckland did in order to sell over $6000 of Christmas 2 for 1 vouchers.

Louise Gray and her Team in Auckland, NZ

In a coaching call early in November last year I talked through with Louise the importance of building hype especially when doing a promotion such as this or similarly memberships.  I helped her to construct a 3-step email campaign and planned what dates to send out the emails.

The initial email called for her clients to register to get early bird notification when these vouchers went on sale – just 15 minutes more notice than non-registered clients.  The email also limited the number of 2 for 1 vouchers going on sale to create urgency and get people to register.

Email 2 reminded her clients to register and also let them know how many had registered so far.  This increased the urgency as it showed the demand for the 2 for 1 vouchers was HOT!

The 3rd email was to pre registered clients announcing the vouchers where ON SALE NOW and created urgency for these clients to call and get their voucher before the email was sent out to all 2136 clients on her database 15 minutes later.

The sequence of emails created a buzz and subsequently sold $6000 worth of vouchers.  And of course that means there is going to be an influx of new clients in the salon over the next few months as the ‘free’ voucher had to be given to a new client and had an expiry of 3 months to get these people in the door fast!

And the best thing of all…email is FREE!

So next time you are planning any marketing campaign, think about how you are going to deliver that campaign to your target audience to get the best results.

 

NZ Salon Superstar, Hana Snowden of Ataahua Day Spa – 10 New Clients a Week and works on client’s when SHE wants to!

Every salon owner loves the thought of getting more new clients through their business.  It means an increase in turnover, profit, more product sales and so on.  But what it also means for a lot of salon owners is more time ‘on the tools’.  And that’s scary when you are already working 50 hours a week trying to run a business, make appointments, do the GST, pay the wages, do the marketing and everything else on top of that!

Hana Snowden, Owner of Ataahua Day Spa in Lower Hutt, NZ

But for WSM member Hana Snowden of Ataahua Day Spa in Lower Hutt near Wellington, getting 10 new clients a week means FREEDOM.

Hana has been in our marketing and mentoring program now for 8 months and in that time she has seen her business grow and grow.  Hana was a Beauty Therapist at the time of joining and has worked incredibly hard and taken lots of action to build her business.  She soon realised the value of working ‘on’ her business instead of ‘in it’ servicing just one client at a time.

For those of you who have read ‘the E-myth’ you will be familiar with the concept of working more on your business as opposed to in it.  For those who haven’t read it, it’s a MUST read so go out and get your hands on a copy asap!

Hana could spend an hour or 2 putting together her marketing campaigns that would bring her in lots of customers as well as thousands of dollars, instead of being in a treatment room making 50 bucks for a waxing appointment.

And this growth in turnover and customers allowed her the freedom to make the decision to pull herself ‘off the tools’ once and for all.  She set a date (15th March) and told all her customers that as of that date she was a business owner, not a beauty therapist and would be handing her clients over to an employee.

Now I am not saying that being a beauty therapist or stylist is a bad thing. Rather being the owner of your business is a better thing, instead of being an employee/slave to it!

And Hana knows that should a staff member be sick, or someone leaves and has to be replaced then she can step back in, albeit temporarily, and cover for them – she has that option available to her.

And if Hana has been getting 10 new clients a week up to now, imagine what it will be like now that she can focus even more on the marketing.

10 new clients on average a week is 520 new clients per year.  If each of those clients has a value to Hana of $1,000 each then she is looking at an increase in turnover of half a million this year alone.  Heck, even if she kept just 50% of them that’s still a quarter of a million!

Too many business owners (not just salon owners) make the mistake of creating a job for themselves and becoming chained to their businesses.  For many, the only way they feel they can make more money is to work more in the business so they can cover the bills.  But the business will just continue to suffer if no time is being spent on the important stuff, the marketing and getting systems in place.  And so the vicious cycle continues.

And I am talking from personal experience.  Just over 4 years ago my wife Rachael was working as a Beauty Therapist in our salon D’Aguiar: hair.skin.nails in Auckland.  She’d spend about 70 hours a week in there doing treatments, I would hardly ever see her, her hair was falling out due to stress and she was suffering severe RSI.

Just like Hana, we made the call (with the help at that time of Greg Milner) to pull Rachael off the tools, as nervous as we were that the clients would leave and the business would fail.  Well, of course the clients didn’t leave, the salon flourished and today we own 4 massively successful businesses (including the salon which is run by a manager and we pop in maybe once a week).

If someone had told me 4 years ago that I’d be running 4 businesses then I would have thought they were mad and laughed in their face.  But today, I understand the concept of working on the business, not in it.  So I still have plenty of time to spend with Rachael and our new 2 week old baby. It’s all because of  the world-famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®

Beauty Salon Business Plan Template: NZ Salon Superstar – How Setting A Target Helped Monique Porter Sell 18 Times More Product in Just One Month!

Monique Porter of Monique Beauty Therapy, North Shore, Auckland

Setting yourself goals and targets is so important in both your personal and business life.  Without having an end result in mind, how will you be able to visualise and achieve your desired outcome?

Let’s take ‘losing weight’ as an example in your personal life.  When you set yourself that goal did you have a specific number of kilo’s in mind that you wanted to lose?  Did you write that number down somewhere or have a chart on the wall plotting your weight loss over a number of weeks?  Was there a timeframe you wanted to achieve it by? Did you reward yourself for meeting certain weight loss targets and was there a consequence if you didn’t make your goal?  Come to think of it, did you even weigh yourself to find out what your current weight is – or was the whole idea a wild stab in the dark?

It’s crucial to set goals and targets in your business life too.

In a coaching call just over a month ago with Inner Circle Member Monique Porter of Moniques Beauty Therapy on Auckland’s North Shore, she explained how she was having real problems selling retail to her customers.  In fact, so much so that Monique, who is a sole operator, was selling no retail at all to her clients.

We talked through the retailing strategies in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® ‘Selling Like Crazy Manual’ and put in place some targets.  The target set was to sell just 3 products per week over the 4 weeks (12 in total) by the time we spoke next.  Baby steps to start with, but as you’ll hear Monique surpassed these targets with ease…

“I’ve gone from selling no product at all, to selling 18 products in just a month. I Sold 3 starter packages at $65.50 each, 9 bottles of product for in-grown hairs at $21 each, 4 flax seed oil products at $32 each and and 2 nail polishes for $10 each.  That’s a total of 18 products for the month and $532 in extra revenue!”

Now that Moinque has achieved her first target, she can and has set new targets to keep this momentum going.  If every month she got 18 different clients using her products, that’s 216 clients by the end of 12 months using her product ranges at a current average sale of $29.55 each.  Of course, this doesn’t take into account that many of these client will also start purchasing more than just one product.

It’s also worth looking at what would have happened if Monique had NOT sold product to these clients, apart from missing out on the obvious extra income?

These clients would have left her salon and more than likely walked straight down the road to the supermarket or chemist (a salon’s biggest competitor) and bought their product from there.  Now the products you get from a supermarket or chemist are generally not the best, so when the client found that their skin or hair wasn’t improving, the first thing they will do is blame the salon or therapist, not the products.  So it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see them in the salon again.

So it’s extremely crucial that as experts in your industry, be it hair or beauty, you need to share your knowledge with your clients and give them the products to keep looking after themselves at home, in between their visits to your salon.  That’s what your trained to do after all!

And don’t be afraid to sell people stuff!  Let me ask you a question.  You love to shop, right?  So why are people so afraid to sell other people stuff, be it hair products or whatever.  Whether you like it or not, you and your staff are sales people in your salon.

Well done Monique on your great product sales and looking forward to hearing more success stories from you!