by Greg Milner | Jan 7, 2010 | The Right Mindset, US
Husband-and-wife team Tim & Kanna Reilly’s Body Solutions Laser & Skin in Scottsdale, Arizona, grew 63% in 2009 – after a massive 500% increase in 2008 – thanks to the marketing and ‘sales thinking’ tools in the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program…
Hair Salon WordPress Template: The Beauty Business that Grew 63% in 2009
Economically speaking, was 2009 the worst year since the great depression or was it a year of salon business growth and prosperity?
Well, it depends on who you ask. For us it was a great year, better than 2008 in fact. For many small business owners in our industry it was a year filled with financial stress and for a large number of salon owners – complete financial meltdown.
Thanks to the tools and strategies that we learned from the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle program we were able to turn our failing medspa into a highly successful and profitable business. For us, 2008 was a great year; we grew more than 500% over 2007.
At the end of 2008 we sat down to establish our goals for 2009. Could we possibly expect to have a better year in 2009 than 2008? Expect may not be the right word, but we certainly planned on having a better year.
Planning may certainly be the key. An old college professor of mine used to love saying, “Plan your work and work your plan, if you fail to plan you can plan to fail.” Those words have meant more to me now as a business owner than they did as a student.
It’s all about planning. Success doesn’t come knocking – looking for you. It won’t break down your door and insist on coming in. You have to go after it; hunt it down and claim it for yourself.
Plan your marketing for an entire year. Inner Circle members should have received a big full page calendar for 2010.
This allows you to look at the whole year in one glance. Commit to marketing consistently every week. You might not know exactly what your marketing offer will be on April 5th yet, but just know that on April 5th you WILL have something ready to go. That kind of marketing commitment done on a regular basis will create momentum, and momentum, like a wave, will pick you up and carry you towards your goal.
Thinking about marketing without taking any action steps to put those ideas in motion is a waste of time.
You must act on your ideas and then track your response. If the response was good, then do it again. If your response was bad, you need some new ideas. What, you don’t have a ton of fresh new ideas just waiting to burst forth from your brain??
Hmmm…reminds me of a high school English teacher I had. He used to say, “Smart people learn from a dumb person’s mistakes, but wise people learn from a smart person’s mistakes!” So be wise, don’t be smart. Use tools, strategies and ideas that have already been proven to work. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. You can grow your business in record time IF you have the right tools and IF you take action to implement those tools.
We did and that’s why our 2009 was 63% higher than 2008; it was our best year yet!! You’ll have to excuse me now, I have to go set our 2010 business goals!
by Greg Milner | Dec 8, 2009 | Getting Salon Clients Quickly
Susan Anderson’s gift voucher campaign paid off in a big way…
This Beauty Salon Business Plan Template Has Customers Queuing Up….
Susan Anderson of Lillian Mack Skin Clinic in Moranbah, Queensland has been pinching herself over how her salon business has been transformed.
Logging into the Members Only ‘sealed section’, Susan downloaded a special Gift Voucher offer many of our Inner Circle members had been running successfully in the lead-up to Christmas, and advertised it in the local newspaper last week.
She was almost knocked over in the rush…
“I had queues outside my door for the first two hours and then the rest of the day was solidly constant, I did not move from my front counter all day, even had one of the local coffee shop ladies bringing me coffee for free!! …and congratulating me on such a fantastic idea, we were the talk of the town!!
They have been on sale for 4 days and we’ve sold $24,980 worth of Gift Vouchers, and seen lots of new faces come into the salon so will have gained quite a few new clients…I am over the moon.”
by Greg Milner | Nov 19, 2009 | Marketing Superstars
Hair Salon Template Superstar of the Week – Ann Marie Ryan of Hair Fx, Tipperary, Ireland
Superstar of the Week – Ann Marie Ryan of Hair Fx, Tipperary, Ireland
It’s amusing when we get questions from salon owners like ‘will this work in Boisie, Idaho/Dorset, UK/Invercargill, NZ?’
Huh? Well, I guess if people in those places don’t buy things/eat/wash their hair/live in houses/drive cars….maybe marketing a salon business ‘my’ way’ wouldn’t work. I know nothing about Tipperary, Ireland, but presumably it is populated by people who respond to my kind of salon & spa marketing. At least, that’s what Ann Marie Ryan has discovered:
“Hi Greg,
This is Ann Marie Ryan in Tipperary Town,I joined the Inner Circle program and got the kit from you in July, prior to getting the kit I had been sending a new client letter, but only one, I never followed it up with any more.
And, like hundreds of other IC members around the world, Ann Marie’s response from her
direct mail has improved dramatically.
Here’s what’s instructive: never, ever waste your money on one-shot mail. It doesn’t even nick ’em on the way by. If you want impact and response, you must have repetition. And if you ‘can’t be bothered’ with multi-step mailing, you deserve your lack of success.
Sporadically I had sent letters to clients that had not been in the salon for some months, but I was never very confident about doing this. Since September I have got a bit braver in my marketing through your constant contact via email & the website.
I started a newsletter, November was my 3rd issue. I am getting a great response to this.
(Note for Members: there are several templates for simple single-sheet, double-sided newsletters in the Members Only ‘sealed section’ – just navigate to “Marketing to Existing Clients” and you’ll find them in there.)
For Christmas I am running with (a campaign I found in the Members Only ‘sealed section’) I did in May for Mothers Day, but didn’t know then how to promote it properly at that time.
My sales for September & October have seen an increase of 20% on the same months last year. November so far is 11% up on last year but we have also had different people on holidays totaling 3 weeks plus 2 members of staff out sick over the course of the last 4 weeks. One girl is on crutches & the other hurt her back, ‘I used to think hairdressing was a safe profession’.
I now have the guts to go ahead with the ideas and templates you guys are constantly sending my way. Here’s to a great Christmas for all:-)
‘Go n’eiri an bothar leat’ (may the road rise with you)
Ann Marie
Hearty congratulations to Ann Marie. Until the Global Financial Crisis, Ireland was one of the ‘tiger’ economies of Europe, and then sank into one of the worst recessions anywhere in the world. But, like other Members, Ann Marie discovered that with the right marketing tools, salons and spas can create their own economies, virtually independent of the wider economy. Best wishes to all our Members in the UK and Ireland.
by Greg Milner | Nov 12, 2009 | Email marketing, New Zealand
Free Salon Business Plan Template Marketing Superstars – NZ Inner Circle Member of the Week Tracy Power
If there is one thing that salon owners are guilty of it’s not rewarding our existing clients enough! You know, those clients who have been coming to us for years if not decades, spending all their hard earned cash to make themselves look and feel amazing! We just assume that they would never betray us and go to another salon…
Far too frequently I hear salon owners say,
“Why would I offer this special package to my existing clients when they are already going to come in to the salon anyway and spend more than the package…”
It’s quite simple really…
If you don’t reward your existing LOYAL clients, they will eventually leave and go somewhere that does reward them!!!
Tracy Power – Woman Day Spa, Nelson NZ
So it was music to my ears today when I spoke with long term Inner Circle member Tracy Power of Woman Day Spa in Nelson, New Zealand. Last week Tracy emailed her clients a Christmas promotion she found in the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and followed the same format used by Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa in Perth.
The phone immediately began to go crazy.
Within 2 hours of emailing the promotion Tracy had sold 50 vouchers making $6000. In fact, the promotion went so well that they ran out of gift vouchers and had to call the printer urgently to have more made!
“I couldn’t believe it, the phone was going so crazy I actually didn’t know what to do!!! Within 2 hours we had sold all our vouchers and yesterday we sold another $2000 worth.
We have told our clients that we will be releasing another 50 next week and I have already had one client request 20 x $50 vouchers.
Before I sent the email I was a bit worried that I would be giving away too many free vouchers, but when some of my clients came in to pick up their vouchers they were thanking me so much for the wonderful gift…they were just so happy and it made me realise that I need to reward them more often!
And of course some of the clients will give these vouchers to their friends for Christmas so I will get lots of new clients in January too!”
So far Tracy has made $8000 in early bird xmas voucher sales, from an email that cost her ZERO, ZILCH, NADA….Now that’s not a bad return on investment!
But more importantly, Tracy has made her existing clients feel incredibly special with this offer and she will reap the rewards from this in the months and years to come.
Well done Tracy for being our Salon Superstar of the week – You really deserve it…
by Greg Milner | Sep 2, 2009 | Blog
Salon Price List Template: WSM named among 100 Fastest Growing Companies
We’re delighted to reveal that – thanks to our many hundreds of Inner Circle member salons around the world – Worldwide Salon Marketing has been named by Business Review Weekly among Australia’s top 100 fastest growing small to medium companies.
With average annual revenue growth of over 48% over three years, WSM was 74th on the list of the ‘Fast 100’ – in the worst economy the world has seen for 75 years.
(And aside from our Members, it’s in no small part due to a VERY dedicated and talented team here at head office, as well as our representatives in NZ and the USA)
The recognition is even sweeter, coming as it does after a horrible economic year. But it shows what can be achieved when you set out to do nothing but help salon and spa owners actually make some real money and start to pay themselves what they’re worth.
We’ve certainly come a long way since co-founder Jill Groves and I sat down in a spare room in my house five years ago and created the company from scratch.
The BRW Fast 100 issue hit the newsstands on October 29.
