It’s fashionable to mock the appearance – in September! – of tinsel ‘n glitter Christmas promotions in the major department stores.
But the smart business owners in the hair & beauty industry will be using such examples of ‘crass’ commercialism as a warning bell:
Are you ready for the biggest trading event of the year?
Are you, really?? And, more to the point, have you properly prepared for the post-Christmas slump? Any salon or spa owner can make money in the week leading up to Christmas. Pretty much all you have to do is…show up.
That’s the lazy way. If you really want to make the most of it…legally, ethically and morally attract as much money as possible from the wallets of your clients to your own…well, that takes
– Planning
– Execution, and
– Follow-up
It’s now the middle of October. Planning should have been well underway by now. Less than 10 weeks to go. Much less, in fact, if you consider the following list of marketing activities you can/should be doing:
Christmas cards. Yes, old-fashioned Christmas cards, in the mail. Why? Because hardly anyone sends them any more. A Christmas card arriving in the mailbox stands out. It gets read, and appreciated. Says long-term Worldwide Salon Marketing member Nicole Panayiotou of Blush Professional Beauty Touch in Sale, Victoria:
“We are sending cards to 4,200 clients this year. I’ve just made a card on Vista Print, we put a $15 voucher to use in Jan and one for Feb and a hard copy of the December newsletter with a heap of promos and updates on it! Yes it does cost but the return is worth it!!!
Jan and Feb are just as big as Nov and December!”
Gift Vouchers. Many, many of our Member salons have used the ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ gift voucher promotions – downloaded directly from the Members Only Million Dollar Resources Library – to bring in large lumps of extra cash in the lead-up to Christmas. BUT…this promotion requires care and thought to work properly. The Most Wanted Response isn’t really the cash…it’s to fill the salon with clients – preferably new ones – in the hiatus after the Christmas rush. So, you want to encourage your Gift Voucher buyers to give away the free one as a gift to friends and family who are not currently clients of the salon, and – as described by Nicole above – restrict them for use only in January/February.
(And of course, have a plan in place to upsell to those new clients when they redeem their voucher.)
The famous Christmas Tree promotion. Also downloaded from the Million Dollar Resources Library, this promotion has worked wonders for many of our Member salons over the years. It works like this:
1.Erect the biggest Christmas tree you can fit in a prominent position in your reception area.
2.Hang it with brightly coloured small gift boxes.
3.In each gift box is a gift voucher, varying in value from say $20 upwards. One of the gift boxes contains a ‘hero’ gift voucher of much greater value, say $200.
4.Here’s the promotion to your clients in month of December: “Book and pay for your January appointment, and choose a Gift Box from the tree for a chance to win a Gift Voucher valued at up to $300!
There are templates and a complete ‘how-to’ for these promotions in the Million Dollar Resources library, just download, edit and print.
(Not yet a Member? For just $US99, join up here and get access to literally hundreds of done-for-you promotions like this.)
Get your ‘Lost’ Clients Back. This is a gold-plated time to make an effort to bring your ‘missing in action’ clients back into the salon. Tim Tialdo from Glo Extensions in Denver used a carefully-worded series of letters he downloaded from the Million Dollar Resources Library (the famous ‘Rupert the Dog’ series) and sent them to 100 of his missing clients. Here’s how he describes what happened:
That’s just a small taste of the concrete, nuts and bolts ACTION you can take to maximise your Christmas trading…and post-Christmas trading.
See, most salon owners slack off during the Christmas season – they feed on the excess egg nog and chocolate. But you, no, you’re different. You ramp up your marketing when everything slacks off.
Hell, it was Warren Buffett who said “be greedy when others are fearful, be fearful when others are greedy.” Well, in this case.. Be proactive when others are lazy.
Santa might well be a really nice guy. But are you gonna just wait for Santa to deliver the goodies, or are you gonna go out there and grab ‘em for yourself?
