by Greg Milner | Aug 27, 2009 | Increasing Retail Sales
Salon Business Plan Template: Salon Marketing Increases Sales by 25% in One Month
Here at WSM, we love celebrating YOUR success – which is why I always look forward to our monthly group coaching call. Not only do we get to talk to members who have gotten it spectacularly right, but these inspirational stories also help other members to grow their own businesses. As the old adage goes, success breeds success, and I hope Rachel Howe’s terrific achievements motivates you on your own journey.
All the way up north from gorgeous and sunny Brisbane, QLD (yes, we’re jealous!), Rachel is a young sole operator who has had some amazing results since joining us a mere 6 weeks ago. Implementing just a handful of powerful strategies contained in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®, her sales has jumped from around $8,000 –$ 9,000 per month to $12,400 – a massive 25% increase! Product sales have been even more impressive, almost doubling from $2,500 to $4,600.
But Rachel proves that not only is it possible to grow your business substantially using the Toolkit®, she also tells us how easy it was, and spills the secret on her phenomenal retail sales:
However, the most amazing part is that she managed to do all of this simply by mailing 200 existing clients on her database a seasonal offer, directly from the Toolkit®, booking in 19 clients. These sales added up to over $2,000, proving that you don’t always need to go trawling the streets for new business when you’ve got a gold mine filed away in your salon computer hard drive. And even better than that – there’s no need to re-invent the wheel. If a template directly from the Toolkit™ can help Rachel achieve these results, they can do the same for you and your salon.
Being a sole operator, the road to success can seem especially daunting – no moral support from a co-owner, no staff in the salon to help out when things get hectic. Being a member of the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle not only offers you support through coaching and meeting up with other salon owners, but also takes the stress of marketing your business off your shoulders. Everything is literally done for you – just add your salon details, and watch the money roll in…
by Greg Milner | Aug 12, 2009 | Salon Advertising Tips
Salon owner Jemima Richards used a series of linked sales letters straight from the Toolkit to triple her marketing response
Salon Website Template: The ONE Marketing Strategy That Will Triple ANY Salon’s Direct Mail Response
Call me old-fashioned – somebody did once, and I said ‘fiddlesticks’ – but it’s a mystery to me why so many salon owners (even some Inner Circle members, who should know better) just do NOT get one of the simplest, easy-to-implement salon & spa marketing strategies I have ever taught.
Well, from Jemima Richards of Sync Detoxify Nourish Regenerate yet more proof – if any more were needed – that this strategy DOES work, works brilliantly, and all you have to do is implement it.
Says Jemima:
“Had to just let you know that we have been laughing a lot around here because I am an idiot! The reason for the laughter is the amount of return we are getting (using your strategy) and how many more bookings we are getting from the 2nd and 3rd letter.
“You always said it, and not that I didn’t believe you…if only I had been doing this all along…!”
What Jemima is talking about is the proven direct mail strategy of a linked series of letters to a list of customers or qualified prospects. Most businesses send one letter, and no matter what response they get, presume the rest are simply not interested, and give up.
It is a fatal marketing mistake. You leave untold amounts of money uncollected, sitting on the table.
Hear this: if you are tempted to do a one-shot mailing and stop there, save your money. They don’t even feel the breeze.
As Jemima says – and we have proven over and over and over again – you’ll often get a BIGGER response off letters #2 and #3 than you will off the first letter.
It is precisely why the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™ is FULL of these linked, sequential letters, for a multitude of purposes and events, e.g.,
- The ‘Raise the Dead’ letters for getting ‘lost’ clients back. Written specifically for this purpose, with fun, from Rupert the Dog.
- The New Client re-booking letters, a series of three.
- The change of season letters to existing clients
..and a ton of other letters for every imaginable purpose.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, my clients would think I’m pestering them.”
No, they won’t. Here’s the truth: clients leave you because of neglect, not because you’re sending them nice letters.
(And if ONE client complains, are you going to use that as a pathetic excuse to ignore the rest of your client base?)
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 | Jan 14, 2009 | Getting Salon Clients Quickly, Increasing Retail Sales, Motivating Salon Staff, Salon Advertising Tips
Hair Salon Marketing Plan: How This Salon Got 165 New Clients in ONE Month-Special Group Coaching Call For Inner Circle Members
Motion Beats Meditation, Every Time – Hit ‘Play’ on audio below.
First, some interesting news that belies all the gloom and doom. International research and survey firm Synovate reports that a poll of 11,500 people in over a dozen countries found 41% of people plan to spend the same amount on beauty products and services as they did before the downturn, while only 27% said they would cut down. (source: www.synovate.com)
And there are other signs (hard to find in the mainstream press) that the outlook is not ALL thunder and lightning for 2009. China? The most recent figures I can find indicate China’s growth will ‘only’ be around 7% this year. ONLY 7%?? In any other country, 7% growth would produce dancing in the streets and joyful public fornication.
There are other indicators that the world hasn’t actually stopped turning. Principally from our own Inner Circle members. I love it when I hear from members who are truly kicking some serious butt… despite the ‘recession’, without regard to any and all obstacles put before them, regardless of nay-saying friends, family and/or staff, while ignoring the self-fulfilling talk of gloom and doom.
Like Chicken Little, for some people the sky is always falling in. For a few (certainly most of our Members) what falls out of the sky is money.
Nadia Valerio of Valerio Hair in Doncaster, Victoria. A real ‘action woman’.
Among them, Nadia Valerio of Valerio Hair in Doncaster, Victoria.
Most salons struggle to fill chairs/treatment rooms at this time of the year. Nadia and her staff of 11 are struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of clients, all brought in using simple ads, flyers and sales strategies from the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™
Get this: In November last year Nadia took an ad from the Toolkit and ran it in the local paper. The salon was run off its feet, in just five weeks they took in no fewer than
165 NEW clients.
(MEMBERS: Log into the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’ and you’ll find the ad that Nadia used under “Getting New Clients – Hair”)
That result was achieved despite what many would see as a massive handicap – located in a huge shopping mall with no fewer than EIGHT directly competing salons.
“Every client that came in the week after then received a $10 welcome letter/gift voucher to come back to the store and so far in 8 weeks of the first ad going to print 45 of those clients have come back, it has been the most amazing response, I could not have asked for anything more and this is just a start. We have put together a plan for the next 6 months and can’t wait to put it all in to play. Once again thank you WORLDWIDE SALON MARKETING you have taken my business to the next level,” writes Nadia.
by Greg Milner | Jun 1, 2008 | Packaging Salon Services, Salon Advertising Tips
Salon Marketing Plan Strategy: Getting Your Clients to Pay ONE YEAR Up Front…
Need cash in a HURRY? When I’ve needed cash in a hurry, I’ve always found that the best way to get it is…drum roll…. ask your customers for it.
That’s exactly what Inner Circle member Nikki Gilbert (left) of Creations Beauty Studio, just outside Canberra, did recently.
“How I Brought in $12,000 …. in ONE Week, from just SEVEN Clients”
(No wonder she’s smiling!) What Nikki did was create a terrific value-added offer as a marketing plan for her salon, based on the techniques in her Toolkit. (In Nikki’s case, $4,572 worth of facials, microdermabrasion, waxing and massages over 12 months, for just $1,794.)
She took a carefully hand-written two-page letter template from the kit (Inner Circle members see below), written on yellow legal pad…and re-wrote it in her own hand. Then she printed a bunch of them, and sent this two-page letter to just 15 of her clients.
Result?
“I had seven clients take up the offer, for a total of $12,558. I am delighted!” says Nikki.
NOTE TO WSM MEMBERS:
The exact letter that Nikki used is now available in the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’. Login and click on the category ‘marketing to existing clients’
Not yet a WSM member? Click here to find out more about My Social Salon
