Salon Marketing Ideas: Salon Owners Fall for the Myth of Repetitive Advertising

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….

Beauty Salon Marketing Strategy: We get (lots of) mail…

Beauty Salon Marketing Strategy: We get (lots of) mail…

Lorraine-Burke

Does ‘our’ kind of marketing work?

Just a couple of the many emails we receive each week from IC members all over the world…these from New Zealand members to our NZ franchisee Chris and Rachael D’Aguiar-Sanders:

From Lorraine Burke, of Loaf in Christchurch:

Just listened to your recent CD no 28 which has fired me up ……..and also  jogged my mind to write and tell you how wonderful your help and support has been for me over the last few weeks………It’s so nice to know you’re not on your own and support and encouragement at the end of a phone……….so thank you so much for that. Loaf has been up and running now for 5 weeks in which although I have been chasing my tail….. I have managed to start my marketing…I  just want to say how thrilled I am at the response.

If one ad can do so much in 2 weeks what will all the other marketing systems bring? I  placed the autumn makeover ad in one of the local newspapers, I have just done a tally and have reached 22 new clients………wow……. Out of them, 15 have rebooked….will get onto the ‘how to rebook’ section soon with my staff so we can make that at least 99%!!!!

So just doing the sums that’s

an extra  $2178.00 that we wouldn’t have had ……(as well as the hidden advertising by people talking)… so over a year that’s worth $24,640.00 per year and that’s without retail recommendations to our clients. So thanks again Rachael, I’m looking forward to our next coaching call and all the support you will be giving me over the following months…I hope one day I can return the favour and do something for you.”

From Paul Davis of Pure Skin Clinic, Auckland:

“We decided to take on someone to help us with the clinic as we have tried many things our way with very little success!
After looking around we decided to take on the Worldwide Salon Marketing team and thank god we did! It has been a great help to us to see where we were making the mistakes and to see immediate results!!!

Chris and Rachael have been there whenever we have needed help, which when you are trying to get things moving in the right direction GOOD help is what you need.
We totally recommend the system at Worldwide Salon Marketing and certainly have no regrets.”

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The ONLY 3 Ways to Increase Sales

*Sigh*… another day, another stream of applications for a free 90-day Test Drive membership of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program, and… scattered here and there, the inevitable plea for help from a salon or spa owner who’s left it till they’re on the brink of bankruptcy before taking action.

Many begin their application along these lines:
“I’ve been getting your newsletters/watching you on the web/receiving your emails for two or three years now, and I thought I’d better do something otherwise I’ll have to close my doors in 6 weeks.”

Er…you mean it took three years to work out that you don’t get different results by doing the same thing over and over again??

In the first three days this week we accepted ten new Inner Circle members, three of them on the 30-day Test Drive. But many more didn’t make it. Some went ‘above and beyond’ in their efforts to join the elite group.

Like this one: typical, common, but no less heart-rending for all its ‘me too-ness’. It landed on my desk with the subject line that did not bode well from the start:

“I’m not going to be your favourite customer because…….”

In a two-page fax, this salon owner admits “I have been sitting on your DVD for months, moving it from one pile of paperwork to another, always ‘going to get to that later.” (Yes, I’d like to procrastinate, but I’ll get to it tomorrow….)

“I have no money to give you at the moment.” (No surprise there, given the subject line)

“I haven’t even seen the whole DVD!”

And then, the story: “I have taken my turnover from $37K to $180K in two and a half years, but owe more now than I ever have. Without sounding conceited my salon has the best reputation in town and is quite high end for this market – my growth will back this up – when other salons are closing down I am putting on more staff. The trouble is they cost more than I am making! I need to save my salon’s life and indeed my marraige because believe me, my husbane is over the whole ‘we need to put more money’ in scenario…. I am averaging 2 hours sleep a night with worry, and have nowhere to turn for the money I need to salvage this situation…”

It’s time for some of what I call ‘Accurate Thinking’. If you’re in the same situation as this salon owner, lean closer, dear reader.

There are only THREE ways to increase revenue.

That’s it, three. no more, no less. No matter whether you’re a huge multi-national, or a corner deli. Here they are:

1. Get more customers. 2. Increase what each customer spends with you. 3. Increase your prices.

Folks, it ain’t rocket science. Business is actually very simple. People make it complicated. Profit is nothing more than the difference between your revenue, and your costs. If your costs are high, either reduce them, increase your prices, or better, a combination of the two.

(However, do NOT reduce your marketing spend. Increase what you spend on marketing – it is the ONLY thing that brings customers in…. and that includes referrals, which is just word of mouth marketing.)

FREE DVD: we’re happy to send anyone who wants one, a free DVD on salon & spa marketing. But we’d prefer you actually watch it when you get it, not months later, like the salon owner above. Click here to get the FREE DVD.