Next time you have a client in your reception area, sitting in your chair or lying on a treatment bed, take a minute or two to check ’em out. Because I can pretty much bet my own mother they’re not browsing your product shelves, or reading your brochures.
Nope. Nine times out of ten, they’ll be staring into their smartphone; texting friends, playing games, checking out their Facebook page, browsing the web…anything but paying attention to you, your business, your products or promotions.
Do you really wonder why it’s become so difficult to get your message through to your customers and prospects?
Times have changed. It wasn’t so long ago that marketing a salon was limited to direct mail, the occasional newspaper ad, word of mouth, and a face-to-face up-sell or re-booking at the reception desk. That was about it. Life was….simpler.
Those media are still hugely effective, much to the chagrin of the ‘gurus’ who long ago predicted the internet spelled the ‘end’ of traditional hard-copy. (Yes, email might be cheap and efficient. But nowhere near as devastatingly effective in generating response and sales as a letter, a stamp and an envelope. Our own WSM member salons attest to that over and over again.)
But the way your prospective customers are searching for hair and beauty services has changed forever. And if your salon isn’t at the top of a Google search, can’t be quickly and easily found and located on a mobile phone, and shared via social media, there is now no question that you are losing business. Lots of it. To your competitors.
You are being left behind. To put your head in the sand, plead ‘technophobia’ and pine for the ‘good old days’ is akin to insisting the earth really is flat.
Think about this for a moment; this week, Apple launched its latest gadget, the iPhone 5. Since 2007, they’ve sold 250 million of these things. Plus 87 million iPads. That’s more than the entire population of the United States. (Compared with Android devices, Apple’s iPhones and iPads account for no less than 91% of all mobile web browsing.)
But for most owners of salons, it’s hard enough to know what needs to be done, let alone actually understanding the technology and getting it done. Which usually means dealing with a dozen different suppliers, web developers, sales people and technology companies. It’s like trying to herd cats. And it’s expensive.
Which is why, long ago, we recognized that somehow, the team at Worldwide Salon Marketing had to find a way that salon owners could get the benefits – more customers, more repeat business, more engagement with their clients – without having to figure it all out for themselves.
With the launch of My Social Salon, it’s finally come together. Website, SEO, social media, mobile apps – in addition to the vast amount of traditional marketing material we’ve supplied since 2004 – all in a single, done-for-you system that completely removes the pain and headache for 90% of salon owners.
Tamara O’Dowd of NRG Hairdressing in Leederville, Western Australia. “Business has grown by 40% in the 4 months since joining WSM and getting the My Social Salon online system…”
Case study: until a few weeks ago, Tamara O’Dowd’s hair salon in inner-suburban Perth was doing okay. But only okay. She had a website, but it was barely on the radar, and certainly couldn’t be easily viewed on a mobile phone. She had a Facebook fan page – any ten year old can set one of those up – but like most business owners, she found it difficult to maintain and engage fans with interesting material, other than daily offers. And she certainly didn’t have an iPhone app she could use to promote special offers to her clients’ phone screens.
Tamara signed up for My Social Salon – and almost overnight, her business grew by 40%.
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Kerri-Ann Ryan, Water Lily Day Spa, Tipperary, Ireland
Around the world, My Social Salon is changing the way salons interact with their clients. It’s not just about having a website that ranks at the top of Google searches. It’s also about having ‘sticky’ social media that engages clients, keeps them close, with status updates that are done for you every day:
“I am absolutely delighted with the daily fan page status updates!!! It has created a much more personal touch to my page which I wasn’t able to create myself. I have gained a few more followers already…” says Kerri Ann Ryan of Water Lily Day Spa in Tipperary, Ireland. (Check out the new VIP club on Kerri Ann’s Facebook fan page here.)
Anita Bell, WSM Member and owner of Platinum Hair in High Wycombe, WA
And a new, free iPhone app that gets clients engaging – and booking services – on the run:
“I am loving the Salon Finder app, we had our first booking from a client while she was in the salon buying a gift voucher for her friend – too easy!”
My Social Salon is now available for salons in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland.
Women battling cancer – and the debilitating side-effects of chemotherapy – are to get a morale boost with the announcement today of a million dollar fund raising campaign led by Worldwide Salon Marketing.
WSM CEO and founder Greg Milner has kicked off the campaign with a personal $100,000 donation to the global support community Look Good Feel Better. Throughout the world, Look Good Feel Better runs hair and makeup workshops to help women fighting cancer feel more confident about themselves.
Salon Marketing Webstore to Donate $10 from Every Purchase
WSM’s new salon & spa marketing webstore will provide salon & spa owners with a huge library of proven, ‘done-for-you’ advertising and marketing templates. From Sunday, July 1, salon owners will be able to choose from hundreds of templates to help them promote their salon’s services and treatments – and $10 from every purchase will be donated to Look Good Feel Better, in the purchaser’s own country.
“I’m excited to be part of this massive effort on behalf of Look Good Feel Better,” said Mr Milner.
“The hair and beauty industry has been very good to me over the years, and you get to the point where it’s time to give back. And Look Good Feel Better is the perfect way to do that for us.
“Most of our Member salons are of course owned by women, and they’re all over the world, just like Look Good Feel Better, so no matter where you are when you purchase a product from the webstore, your donation will go to a Look Good Feel Better branch in your own region. You’ll be benefiting women fighting cancer in your own country.”
Sally Harald,Program Manager of LGFB said “On behalf of the thousands of cancer patients Look Good…Feel Better support each year, we extend our gratitude to Worldwide Salon Marketing for their generous support of our program. We look forward to a long and happy association with Greg and his team”.
Look Good Feel Better began in Australia in 1990, and quickly spread around the world. The video below shows just what a fantastic volunteer organization it is:
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Please do what you can to SPREAD THE WORD and let’s together build a ONE MILLION DOLLAR fund for women battling cancer all over the world!
If you have ever thought that marketing won’t work for your salon because you are in a small town then you should watch this video.
In this short clip, Suzy Poole owner of Body Divine in Kerikeri shares how she has taken her salon from a pretty dire state of affairs to a busy, profitable business in under a year, with big plans for expansion.
I was visiting Kerikeri for a couple of days this week and decided to pop in for a cuppa with Suzy and check out her salon. And I was really impressed with what I saw.
Suzy has created her own economy, while others around her continue to struggle on. In fact, Suzy’s business is growing so fast that she is in the process of expanding her existing salon and building a hair salon out the back.
What stood out the most on my visit to Suzy’s salon was the energy that she puts in to marketing her business, it’s clear that she has a great attitude, is incredibly passionate about it and a real ‘massive action’ taker.
And while I was in the salon clients were walking in and asking to buy one of her mini memberships that she had just released that morning. And as you’ll hear in the video, one customer even left a cheque in her mailbox with strict instructions so she didn’t miss out on one of only 10 memberships released!
Check out the video here….
For those of you who are not familiar with Kerikeri it’s a fairly small town in the Bay of Islands, population a few thousand.
Thanks for the grand tour of the salon Suzy and keep up the excellent wor
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.
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!
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.
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!
You are being left behind. To put your head in the sand, plead ‘technophobia’ and pine for the ‘good old days’ is akin to insisting the earth really is flat.
