by Greg Milner | Jul 29, 2009 | Hiring Salon Staff
Another 16 salons & spas joined the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program at our Road to Riches seminar in Perth this week – no doubt many of them attracted by not only the done-for-you marketing tools in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™ but also by the unique system we use to help them find quality staff.
The WSM Staff Finder service – free for Inner Circle members, $195 for non-members – uses a combination of offline and online systems to drive quality job prospects direct to the salon owner.
Mario Raia of Ethos Salon in Washington State – instant respones from Staff Finder system
One of our recently-joined members in the US, Mario Raia of Ethos Salon in Washington State, got an instant response when he used the system, starting with a small ad on the online classifieds services craigslist (www.craigslist.org)
“I already got 3 prospects today. Wow!! I used a service called www.craigslist.org in the Portland, Oregon Market.
Here is my copy:
Free Report for Stylist and Esthetician Jobs
Attention Hair Stylists & Estheticians! FREE Special Report – valued at $29 – reveals the crucial questions you MUST ask – and get answers for – BEFORE you agree to take on a different job. There are no obligations, and we will not be trying to sell you anything. This is just our commitment to try and improve the industry we are in. Download the report at: www.saloncentral.com/ethos-salon.html
IC member Carolyn Evans of Zash Hair Design in Sunnybank Hills, Queensland – 14 job applications from a single online ad.
IC member Carolyn Evans of Zash Hair Design in Sunnybank Hills, Queensland, had even better responses, when she placed her small ad on another online jobs service, driving prospective staff to the special web page we set up for her:
“Just to give you some feedback, I have had 14 contacts from my job ad – and the quality of applicants is much higher than any other means of advertising I have used in the past.”
To find out more about how the Staff Finder service works, go here.
MEMBERS: It’s FREE to use, all you have to do is contact Karan at our office, karan at worldwidesalonmarketing.com
NON Members: it’s a mere $195 to use the Staff Finder system, go here to find out more, complete the Order Form and we’ll instantly set it up for you.
by Greg Milner | Jul 29, 2009 | The Smell of Success
Info Salon Marketing Superstars – Inner Circle member of the week: Dr Usha Venkataraman
There are good reasons we created the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™ and the Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program for beauty and hair salons, rather than for lawyers, or…doctors, for example.
Lawyers and doctors – as anybody who’s ever dealt with them will confirm – already know everything. Just ask them. So I was never going to beat my head against a brick wall trying to teach a doctor or a lawyer about marketing.
Dr Usha Venkataraman of Aesthetic Image & Laser Centre in Melbourne – sales more than doubled in two weeks after joining the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program in June 2009.
But occasionally one of them slips under our guard and finds their way into the Inner Circle program, like Dr Usha Venkataraman and her colleague Soraya Pricop did at a Road to Riches seminar in Melbourne just over a month ago.
Click here to see the salon’s location
Luckily for these two, they weren’t like most doctors. For years their combined medical/cosmetic clinic had struggled, despite them ‘trying everything’.
So Dr Usha joined the Inner Circle group and took her Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit home that day. And unlike many, they took action right away.
Soraya takes up the story:
“In the two weeks leading up to the seminar, my side of the practice (cosmetic) took just $2,500. After the seminar, I read through everything in the kit, listened to the tutorial CDs, took notes during my first coaching call… basically just followed the system.
“In my next 6 days at work, spread over two weeks, my takings jumped to $7,500! Dr Usha had a similar dramatic increase in takings. In a typical 5 hour session (before joining the program) she would take $2,000, maybe $3,000 at the most. But we just did some figures…in a recent 5 hour session, her side of the practice took…$8,000…!”
“It is quite amazing that we had struggled along barely making money for years, and suddenly, just a little bit of education and the right tools, and it’s made a remarkable difference…”
Note to all Doctors: yes, your business is different, yes you’re all very clever and yes, obviously you already know everything. It’d be just too awful to spend all those years in expensive medical school and not know everything.
by Greg Milner | Jul 22, 2009 | New Zealand, The Smell of Success
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| Caroline Martelli (2nd from right) and staff at Martelli’s Beauty & Makeup in Mt Maunganui, New Zealand |
Salon Marketing Ideas That Made This Salon Superstars – Inner Circle Member of the Week: Caroline Martelli
Congratulations to Inner Circle member Caroline Martelli of Martelli’s Beauty & Makeup in Mt Maunganui, New Zealand for a cracker of a result from an advertorial layout in her local paper this week.
Caroline joined the Inner Circle program in June and one of the first things that she said to me after joining the program was “Chris, I am going to be your best member ever!”
And if her first month in the program is anything to go by, she is certainly keeping her word. You see Caroline is a perfect example of someone who takes massive action. She has a great attitude, has implemented numerous techniques from the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™, found out what works best for her salon and has seen her business thriving in just the few weeks the doors have been open.
Caroline ran a combination editorial and ad in her local Sunday paper and by the next day she had 14 new clients. Four days later she has now got a total of 24 new clients from that one ad, and they are still calling.
“I am totally gobsmacked,” says Caroline. The ad cost Caroline $450 to run and has so far brought her in over $2,300 in one week. If only 50% of those new clients become regular clients worth around $1500 per year each, then that will have increased Caroline’s annual turnover by $18,000…Not bad for a single promotion!!!
In addition to this Caroline has also booked in 26 clients (11 new and 15 existing) from a combination of ‘Raise the Dead’ letters (from the Toolkit), new client letters, a mail box drop, in salon promotions and much more. Keep up the great work Caroline!
Want the ad Caroline used? Log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and navigate to ‘Getting New Clients – Beauty’ and you’ll find it under July 23, ready to download.
New Zealand salon owners: if you want the kind of results Caroline is getting, call Chris Sanders in our Auckland office, 0800 029 668
by Greg Milner | Jul 20, 2009 | Advertising Tips
Salon Marketing Ideas: Salon Owners Fall for the Myth of Repetitive Advertising
Here’s a common nonsense spread by the likes of Yellow Pages and newspaper ad sales reps:
“You have to run your ad at least 6 times to know if it’s going to work.”
Ah, if only I had a buck for every salon owner who’s been fooled by that old chestnut. It’s a good ploy for the sales rep, for sure. As long as you believe that line, you’ll keep spending money on ad space in the vain hope he’s right. That eventually, the ad will work.
In the interests of Accurate Thinking, I’ll use an analogy to demonstrate the foolishness of this money-wasting myth.
If your ad doesn’t work the very first time, it’s never going to work.
Imagine for a moment that instead of selling beauty treatments or haircuts, you sell car tyres.
And in your city or area on any given day, there’ll be a number of people who, on that very day, have noticed their car’s tyres are getting a little ratty, a touch on the er…smooth side…and they need to replace ‘em quick before the cops pull them over and slap a work order on the car.
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| Typical salon ad you’ll see in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. You could run this ad a bazillion times and you’d be lucky to get a phone call. |
And let’s assume that of all those people, half of them read the local newspaper.
So you place an ad for your tyre shop in that newspaper.
Nobody calls. Zero, nada. Zip.
You call the newspaper rep and he tells you brightly “oh, you need to run your ad at least 6 times before it gets noticed.”
So you keep shelling out cash for this ad, week after week. Still no calls. By now, you’re beginning to blame the media for your lack of advertising success.
The truth is a little harder to bear. It’s not the media at all. It’s your lousy ad.
Let’s assume half of all the people who woke up that morning and decided they needed new tyres then opened the newspaper and saw your ad the first time it ran.
If the ad was any good, some of them would have called.
Here’s the real truth: the reason your ad didn’t work the sixth time you ran it is the same reason it didn’t work the first time you ran it – it was a lousy ad.
If it had been any good in the first place, a percentage of all those people looking for new tyres for their car on that very day would have called you.
It comes back to the Big Rules of an effective marketing strategy for a salon:
1) Make the right offer,
2) to the right market,
3) in the right media,
4) at the right time.
Clearly, in this make-believe scenario, it was the right market, in the right media, at the right time. Equally clearly, if those last three pins were lined up and you didn’t get calls, logically it was the first pin that was out of line.
So the next time an ad sales rep tries to sell you the Myth of Repetition, don’t fall for it. Either cancel the ad space, or change your ad so it answers the question at the top of mind of every prospect:
“What’s in it for me, right here and now?”
SALON OWNER ADVERTISING LIFELINE: If you want to know how to use advertising more effectively, the very best way you can do this is join the Inner Circle Marketing & Mentoring program, and get the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit with your Membership. Here’s where you go to find out more….
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.
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