by Greg Milner | Sep 1, 2009 | The Smell of Success
Funny title, serious message for business owners
Salon Web Template: Do You Insist The World is Flat?
If you own your own business, this is for you.
Every so often, we get a complaint from a Member, like this one: “We have purchased all of your marketing material about one month and a half ago. We are NOT HAPPY….(I just wanted to) let you know of my disappointment with the marketing so far…”
These do become tiring, particularly in light of overwhelming evidence from literally hundreds of salons & spas all over the world who are using the very same marketing system, and achieving documented – and in many cases, truly spectacular – results.
To verify this, you need only browse around this website. Go look under Salon Superstars. These are real owners of real salons & spas, all over the world, all of them using the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® containing exactly the same Direct Response marketing and advertising templates for flyers, letters and ads, and the ‘sales thinking’ that goes behind them.
Dan Kennedy – brutal, but accurate
So what is the difference? Idly, I was reading through a little booklet by Dan Kennedy. It’s called
“Why Do I Always Have to Sit Next to the Farting Cat”
but the whimsical title is just an eye-catching headline for a very serious, hard-nosed and instructive essay on why a few people achieve success when the vast majority don’t.
So I quote Kennedy here, as answer at least in part to the complainers:
“If you own your own business, there’s a pretty good chance you also own some of my marketing courses, and/or own a marketing system put out by someone I’ve influenced.
If you own a Marketing System specific to an inudstry, odds are it’s been put into your hands by somebody who I work with. I’m familiar withi the system you have. And I have something important to tell you about it.
The first thing you should know – “it” works. Each of these industry advisors have thousands of business owners who can testify to that. Questioning the efficacy of these Systems is like insisting the world is flat. The time for such an argument has long since passed. These leaders and their Systems are proven.
So the second thing to know is – it’s about you, not ‘it’.
I remember being at one of Joe Polish’s boot camps for carpet cleaners, and listening as a carpet cleaner went on and on about how nothing of Joe’s he tried worked because all his customers were cheapskates and everybody in his town bought only based on the cheapest price. Finally, I stopped him. I asked if there was a shopping mall in town. When he said yes, I wondered out loud how that could be.
If everybody there only bought by cheapest price, the only store there would be a Wal-Mart. You see, insisting that everybody buys by the cheapest price is stupid. (And, incidentally, fewer than 10% of customers buy that way, unless offered no other basis for making a decision.) Then I pointed out to him: he chose his customers. He did certain things to attract them. If they were all cheapskates, his fault.
I find a lot of people fail to get the results they should, that others get, for one or more of these reasons. One, they don’t actually use the Systems as instructed. They fool around with it, use pieces of it, change it.
Two, other aspects of their businesses are so screwed up, marketing that brings more customers in the door is futile.
Three, they are self-defeating whiners and complainers. There is an intangible to business, and that is attitude.
Fourth, they never do much of anything. If they start, they don’t follow through.
So I want to tell you again, questioning the efficacy of these Systems is like insisting the world is flat. The time for such argument has long since passed.”
There’s a saying. A poor carpenter blames his tools. I’m here to tell you, you own extraordinary tools.”
Amen. And by the way, I’ve just ordered a whole truckload of those little books from Dan’s printer in the States. Our Inner Circle members will each get a copy, free.
If you are NOT yet an Inner Circle member, you do NOT yet have the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®, you are fighting a lonely battle devoid of the right knowledge, useful tools, with both arms tied behind your back, re-inventing the wheel every day, probably doing it the same way you’ve always done it, probably getting the same lackluster results you’ve always got.
You CAN change this, by applying for a 30-day Test Drive of the toolkit and the entire Inner Circle marketing & mentoring system.
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 | Jul 13, 2009 | About Us, Beating the Competition
Hair Salon Marketing Tips: When your competition copies you…
Do you find it annoying when a competing salon sees how successful you are, and simply copies your advertising for themselves?
Yep, there it is, virtually a direct copy of the ad you ran only last week.
Well, get over it. Pay it no more attention. In fact, you should be celebrating it. Because what they’re seeing (and copying) is only the tip of the iceberg of your success.
What they cannot see, and therefore cannot copy, is all that bulk below the waterline – the systems that turn that great marketing into solid sales behind the counter.
I know this because it happens to us all the time.
Just this week, one of our operatives in England emailed me a link to the website of yet another salon marketing wannabe
who’s seen how Worldwide Salon Marketing has grown from a spare-room start-up into a multi-million dollar business – and wants ‘in’ on the action.
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Yet another one – if you search the web long enough you’ll find more and more of these sites popping up, purporting to offer salon owners ‘the’ answers to all things marketing.
Apart from a website, few have any more depth to them.
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This new player – he’s by no means the first, and won’t be the last – has even gone so far as to blatantly copy our product names, e.g., he’s promoting his own ‘Inner Circle’ program, he’s offering his own ‘7-Step Mini Marketing Course’, and more carbon copies of the systems and marketing collateral we’ve developed over the last 5 years.
Our ‘spy’ was worried about our new ‘competition’. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Because I know that 99% of all start-up business owners fail to do the things which create depth, structure and longevity for their business. In other words, they do no more than enough to skim the surface for short-term cash, and don’t invest in resources to create a long-term business.
The bigger we get (400 current member salons, growing by 30-40 per month) the more we invest in strengthening the foundations.
Here at head office, there are ten staff engaged in coaching members, providing member services, marketing, internet support, accounts and product development. In New Zealand and America, we have franchisees devoted to supporting our Members in those countries, and soon, similar operations in the UK.
Over the years we’ve invested millions on establishing systems for database management, offline and online marketing, seminar events, product packaging, product delivery, intellectual property development, member services, and office management.
(more…)
by Greg Milner | Apr 9, 2008 | Getting Salon Clients Quickly, Salon Advertising Tips
Chris Burkinshaw
Salon Marketing: $300 Hair Salon Ad Turns Into $9,200 in new Sales and 15 New Customers
Inner Circle member Chris Burkinshaw of Turning Heads in Wagga, New South Wales, reports terrific success from a cheap little ad he ran in the free newspaper in his town last week.
Chris took a salon template from the WSM system (see My Social Salon here), modified it to suit his salon, and booked space in the paper last Wednesday to test the offer.
Within two days, 7 bookings. By Monday of this week, another 8 bookings. And still coming in.
Ad cost: $330
Total sales so far: $9,200! (In a week.) That’s a gross return on investment of 27 to 1.
Plus, at a new to frequent client conversion rate of only 50%, and average annual client value of $1000, his salon marketing adds up to an extra $7,500 of extra annual revenue. Do only that every week, and you’re adding $390,000 to your annual turnover, in a year.
As Chris says, “We’ve never, ever had this kind of response from our newspaper advertising before.”
Now, only Inner Circle members will find this salon marketing ad in their email in-boxes in the next few days, but I will tell you what the ad DIDN’T have in it.
It didn’t have glossy pictures of glamorous young things sporting impossible-to-maintain hair styles that only have a place on the catwalk. It didn’t have vast acres of blank space, or clever tag lines. What it DID have was LOTS of text, a great OFFER, a simple, compelling headline, a guarantee that would make most salon owners vomit with fear, a Call to Action – and the name and contact number of the salon at the bottom of the ad, where it belongs, not the top of the ad, where most business owners would put it.
(NOTE to Members: watch out for this ad in your in-box. Feel free to use it.)
