Salon Marketing – Different Country, Same Challenges

by Greg Milner on 20/04/10 at 5:47 pm

Katina & Rafael Demetri-Meade of Venus Inspired in Woodford Green, Essex UK - Katina joined the Inner Circle Premium program and received her Toolkit at the Salon Profit Secrets seminar in Kingston-on-Thames

Every owner of every salon thinks that their business is somehow ‘different’, the problems and challenges they deal with every day are in some way unique.

And it always makes me laugh when a salon owner tells me ‘this wouldn’t work for my salon because my salon is different…’

Er, actually, it’s not. Yesterday in Kingston-on-Thames, UK, salon consultant Rebecca Page and I hosted a Salon Profit Secrets seminar, and in a question and answer session, the accents may have been different, but the problems and challenges were exactly the same as I’d heard at a hundred such sessions in Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

Here’s what’s instructive: there is not one single, solitary problem or challenge you have ever encountered in business -- or will ever encounter in your entire business life -- that has not been encountered, challenged, analysed and solved by another salon owner, in exactly the same position as you find yourself in, somewhere in the world.

Lisa Parsons (left) of Hair & Makeup Bar in Middlesex UK joined the Inner Circle Premium program at the seminar, encouraged by the success of other UK salon members like Debbie Osborne (five years membership, right) of Elysium Laser and Skincare Clinic in Crowthorne, Berkshire.

It is for this precise reason that so many salon owners are continuing to join the Inner Circle Premium marketing & mentoring program (the one that comes with the Toolkit) -- because they recognise the immense, undisputed value of being able to network with each other, to solve problems.

At the UK seminar, I was delighted to meet for the first time some UK salon owners who have been members of the program in some cases for 5 years, and wouldn’t dream of leaving it.

Debbie Osborne, Chantal Fallon and Clare Cockell have been evangelists for my kind of direct response marketing for salons & spas almost since the founding of the company in 2004…and as they all say in the videos below, their salons have survived and prospered through Britain’s recession while others around them have given up and closed their doors.

Here’s Clare Cockell, from The Reef, in Maidstone, Kent:

Chantal Fallon, from Red Carpet Hair & Beauty in Worcester:

Deb Osborne of Elysium in Crowhtorne, Berkshire:

As I write this, the morning news services are reporting that UK airspace has at last been re-opened after a six-day shutdown due to the Icelandic volcano.

The air crisis again highlights the the most dangerous number in business…the number

1

European airlines alone are estimated to have lost a billion pounds in the six-day shut-down. But what about the thousands of other businesses whose very existence relies solely on the ability of airlines to quickly transport goods and people?

It’s a strong reminder that you must do everything in your power to structure your business so that it is NOT reliant on one of anything…one supplier, one source of leads and customers, one means of delivering service or product, one key staff member (you?)…

In my own business, I’m painfully aware of this fundamental truth, and have striven since day one to set up Worldwide Salon Marketing so that it is NOT dependent on any ONE thing. Our billing systems are diversified, our sources of leads and new Members are varied and as far as possible fail-safe, our systems designed so they are dependent on no single person.

It is, of course, simply impossible to predict a random event like a volcano. The ‘it’ll never happen’ mindset has once again proven to be hazardous. I would never have a business that’s totally reliant on, for example, the internet -- as so many do. Could the internet ever be completely shut down?

Nah. It’ll never happen.

I’m off to Colchester Castle, built in the 11th century by William the 1st on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius, constructed a thousand years before. The Romans knew a thing or two, but even they were under the delusion their empire would last forever.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

A post by Greg Milner

The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality. Greg is co-founder and CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing, a writer, direct response marketing consultant, specialist marketing systems adviser and coach. He (sometimes) accepts private consulting clients.