by Greg Milner | Aug 11, 2009 | New Zealand
Salon Templates Make Salon Superstars – Inner Circle Member of the Week: Linda Gordon
The salon ad campaign that brought in 56 new clients in 5 days: “We placed the ad in the New Zealand Herald and Aucklander on Thursday and again in the Herald on Sunday. The total cost for the 3 ads was $1760, and by Monday afternoon we had 56 bookings…and the phone is still ringing!”
One of the most commonly asked questions I get from new Inner Circle members is ‘What happens if a salon down the road joins the program and is doing similar marketing?” …to which my answer is normally something along the lines of, “Well firstly, you are better to be in the program than not as you will have such a huge upper hand over the salons that are not members.”
Secondly, what makes your salon different from the salon down the road? By this I mean ‘what is your unique selling point or USP, that would make me choose you over the other salon regardless of whether they are an Inner Circle member or not.
And thirdly, do you really care what the salon down the road is doing?
Linda Gordon, owner of Arya Day Spa in Auckland
I had an interesting conversation with Linda Gordon of Arya Day Spa about a month or so ago which was very similar to this.
Linda joined the Inner Circle program at the Auckland Road to Riches Seminar and during our first coaching call she asked why we would sign up her salon, which is only about 2km down the road from our salon.
My answer, well it went like what I have written above. And if I believed for one minute that joining salons to our Inner Circle program in the local area was going to be to the detriment of our salon, then I wouldn’t do it.
But I like to walk to talk, so there are at least 2 salons within the vicinity of our salon that are in the program. All these salons are experiencing massive results. Paul Davis of ‘The Pureskin Clinic’ down the road in Ponsonby has seen his Salon grow 20% per month since joining the program 5 months ago, and now Linda Gordon is getting these exceptional results from her marketing. Both these salons give the customers completely different messages from each other, and from our salon. That’s what makes them stand out.
So you can imagine, when Linda emailed me this week to tell me about the ads she had run in the New Zealand Herald had brought in a total of 56 new clients in just a couple of days, I was over the moon for her.
“We placed the ad in the New Zealand Herald and Aucklander on Thursday and again in the Herald on Sunday. The total cost for the 3 adverts was $1760, and by Monday afternoon we had 56 bookings…and the phone is still ringing!”
So this campaign has brought in to date $5544 and if only 50% of these clients become regular customers worth around $1500 per year to Linda, then this campaign has just increased her annual turnover by $42,000.
You see our real competition is not the salon down the road but in fact it is the Supermarkets and Chemists that sell all the cheap cosmetic and hair products to ‘our’ clients.
I had one of those stomach turning conversations with Julieanne Narbey of ‘Hair @ Yours Mobile Salon’. Julieanne used to work for one of those competitors (something a bit like ‘Shampoo n things’).
In her own words she said, “I was amazed at how many people would come into our shop having just had their hair done literally 10 minutes earlier and would buy the product they needed for their hair. I asked why they hadn’t just bought it from the salon and their response was almost always that the hairdresser hadn’t told them about the products or attempted to sell them anything.” Is this going on in your salon on a daily basis and costing you serious amounts of money?
But back to Linda, congratulations on being our Salon of the week and long may I keep hearing these success stories from you!!!
by Greg Milner | Jun 2, 2009 | New Zealand
Beauty Salon Marketing Strategy: We get (lots of) mail…
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.”
by Greg Milner | Apr 20, 2009 | Getting Salon Clients Quickly
Tanning Salon Marketing: A Salon Owner’s Story – One Decision CAN Make All the Difference
Lisa Gray of Beauty Naturally in Sandgate, Qld, shares the strategies that saved her business from extinction – and put money in her purse for the first time in years.
(Play the interview recording below and listen in as Lisa describes how her business has taken off.)
By the beginning of 2008, Lisa Gray was at the end of her tether. Years of running herself ragged had left her with little energy, even less money, and the ‘ideas cupboard’ was bare.
Lisa says you ‘could have fired a cannon’ through her little beauty salon on the northern fringes of Brisbane. But as is so often the case, the teacher appears when the student is ready, and Lisa was ready.
In the next 12 months, her sales rose from $170,000 to $230,000, including a 25% increase in product sales. Her return bookings rate rose from a meagre 40% to 68%. She took on between 9 and 15 new clients every month. But the biggest change is her new attitude to her business.
“I get excited about actually having a business,” says Lisa. “I’m not so stressed, and when you’re not so stressed you’re more creative, you’re more at ease with yourself, you enjoy what you do. I actually look forward to staff trainings and staff meetings!”
“It’s exciting, it’s not a drain, and I don’t feel negative, I feel very very positive.”
Here’s just a partial list of the ACTION Lisa took to turn her business around:
1)Distributes a flyer offering a Toolkit-inspired $99 special offer to 500 local homes every month. “This has been brilliant, we get a regular flow of new clients from this.”
2)Sends out the series of New Client Letters in the Toolkit to each new client every week. “They work very well…largely responsible for our higher re-booking rate.”
3)Has implemented the Queen of Referrals program in the kit. “Our clients are loving this…”
4)Sends out a monthly newsletter. Not every quarter or every couple of months, every month, using the Newsletter Templates in the kit. “I get a fantastic response from these newsletters…”
5)Started running a regular, small, lead-generating ad in the local newspaper. “A great response…”
6) Hired a full-time receptionist. “Amazing what a difference that’s made to sales…”
And that’s just the start. As Lisa says, “All this and I haven’t even scratched the surface of the whole Inner Circle program and the Toolkit!”
