And each and every year the website grows as more material is added and the archive gets bigger.  In fact there is over 6 years worth of archived material on the website now.  It’s easy for some of the older archives to be lost in depths of the website.

And it’s safe to say that if you were to employ a design firm or an ad agency to create the material on the members website and give you multiple options for designs, template sizes and concepts, you would be looking at spending into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  On the other side of the coin, if you were to try and design all this material yourself, well firstly you’d probably need a degree in copy writing, graphic design and a heck of a lot of time on your hands!!!

So, in this new feature I intend to delve deep into the archives, blow the dust and cob webs away and unearth some of the hidden gems that perhaps you have never come across before.

In this first feature I am going to look at a clever little flyer that was actually created by a Pizza Shop.

This was actually one of the very first promotions we use for our salon D’Aguiar: hair.skin.nails after joining the Inner Circle Program back in 2007 and it was a huge succuss. Our version was slightly different and at the top said ‘FREE $20 Voucher – No Strings Attached’  We then looped a piece of string through the flyer and hung it on peoples door knobs around our neighbourhood.  We consistently got 10 bookings from every 100 door flyers delivered and we had so many people saying they LOVED the out of the box marketing!

We still have dozens of clients that come to our salon today who originally came from this flyer. So when you think for the cost of a $20 service, we have made upwards of $4 – 5K from EACH of those clients since then, it’s a pretty good return on investment!

Here’s a link to find this template in the members only sealed section.

http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members/salon-marketing-ideas/ideas-to-steal/a-different-kind-of-mailbox-flyer-try-this/

If you are an Inner Circle Member and want to share a success story from another members only website ‘hidden gem’ then drop me an email chris@worldwidesalonmarketing.com and I’ll be sure to feature it in an up and coming article!

If you are NOT an Inner Circle Member and are sick and tired of sitting in front of a computer screen trying to come up with designs and copy for flyers and ads then you need to apply to join the Inner Circle Program and get access to the years of archives on the members only website and get your very own copy of the Essential Salon Owners Toolkit to help you market your hair or beauty salon/spa. Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive TODAY

A lot of people had a lot of good ideas before you were born. And most of those good ideas are still good ideas. But their lessons have been largely forgotten, which is why most hair & beauty industry marketing in the ‘modern’ era is a complete failure.

Take a look at this Revlon TV ad from 1973.

A 'Charlie Girl' had power and confidence unheard of among women in 1973 - hence the briefcase, and her hand on HIS backside instead of the other way round!

Anybody over the age of forty will remember the famous print and TV campaigns for Revlon’s ‘Charlie’ perfume. In the seventies, when women were still fighting to be seen as ‘equal’ to men, these ads were a revelation.
For the first time, they portrayed women as strong, deliberately sexy, confident and powerful at a time when most advertising put women firmly in the kitchen and laundry.

And if you’re a student of marketing, you’ll notice one more crucial thing: the ads aren’t about the product! There’s not even a hint about what’s in it, no dreary nonsense about how it was created by white-coated scientists with lots of letters after their names, in clinical laboratories using secret ingredients distilled from the purified secretions of a now-extinct South American tree frog.

Revlon founder Charles Revson knew the secret that most business people seem to have forgotten long ago; that nobody cares a damn about the product.

Revson’s advertising answered emphatically the only question that really matters:

‘Why should I, your prospective customer, buy this?’

There’s an old saying that talks about not being able to ‘see the forest through all the trees’.

Everybody suffers from it from time to time, even those who’re often seen by others as super-successful.

Like the salon owner who approached me last week for some advice. This very young salon owner joined the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program a few years ago when she was working alone and struggling, and became almost an ‘overnight’ success.

She devoured everything I teach about direct response marketing for salons, soaked it up like a sponge, rapidly and repeatedly implementing everything she found in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, and pretty soon found herself creating her own advertising through everything she’d learned.

Became, in effect, a marketing machine.  Her salon grew and grew, she bought another salon, and within two years of joining WSM was working almost exclusively from home, while her salons ran on automatic pilot.

But that wasn’t enough for all this new-found entrepreneurial zeal. It had to find another outlet somewhere. So she decided she’d develop her own skin care product line, and use the internet to sell it.

All good so far. Then she ran into a bank of fog that clouded her once-clear vision. She wrote to me and asked

“Greg, I need a bit of reassurance…is this web-based ‘glop’ a good idea, or am I frigging mad???!!! We all have these days when we wonder ‘what the hell…’ – don’t we?”

We do indeed. This is what I wrote back to her:

“Don’t think of it as ‘web-based glop’. There is no such thing as an ‘internet business’. The internet is not a business, it’s merely a media. Just one media.

You need to think of your idea as a business, like any other business. As a marketing and sales business that just happens to be selling a beauty product or products, using the internet as just one of the many forms of media it uses to get its message out, gather leads, make sales to those leads.

It’s much bigger than just an ‘internet business’. And it’s not something you can do for a couple of hours a week, sitting at the kitchen table in your track pants, thinking this is all it takes.

You’re contemplating setting up and growing a business. Not a hobby. Don’t think of it as a ‘internet glop’ hobby. Imagine instead that you’re setting up a drilling company, or a construction business, or a fashion brand. Do all the same things you would do for your ‘glop’ business as you would do for those businesses.”

She got it immediately.

“ Thanks for that…..reality check. You’re exactly right! It comes down to marketing and sales…there are companies selling the same product, the difference will be my marketing and my sales ability…which these other companies have no idea about!”

She hit the nail on the head.
Most people, particularly in big, dumb companies, lose sight of the fact that it’s not what you’re selling that matters, it’s how you market and sell it.
They fall under their own spell, mesmerised by their own wonderful product or service, deluded into thinking that their prospects, customers and clients actually give a damn about the product. They don’t, at all. People only care about what a product does for them, not the product itself.
Which is exactly why you see most companies selling any kind of hair or skin product blathering on endlessly about obscure and meaningless ingredients – essentially, selling the sausage instead of the sizzle.

So the next time you’re tossing around product options for your salon, look closely, ask questions, and when the product rep tries to blind you with science, hold your hand up and demand clear, concise answers.

“If you were standing in front of a customer, what would you say to this customer that would clearly, in a single sentence, convince the customer to buy your product as against any and all options available to her?”
Unless and until you get a great answer to that question, all you’re selling is ‘glop’.

Big marketing secret: find out what makes your customers grumpy, and give them a solution

There’s a common view in the beauty and hair industry that your marketing must look ‘slick’ and ‘professional’, with little more than pictures of glamorous women with impossibly-coiffed hair, swan-like necks and flawless makeup.

That’s all very well, if like the Loreals and Clairols, you have an advertising budget the size of the national debt of a third-world country. Greece, for example, or Italy.

But that ain’t the case for the average beauty or hair salon. For your business (and my business), the less ‘professional’ looking your marketing, the better. (Besides, you and I can’t afford blanket, ‘brand’ advertising that the big dumb companies throw gazillions at.)

This week I want to show you a perfect example of home-grown marketing that appeals precisely because it’s not typical, slick advertising.

The ordinary garden hose isn’t exactly what you’d typically associate with clever, powerful advertising. But garden hoses and hose fittings have turned into an international sales phenomenon for a Sydney family business, thanks to a great product, a ‘brass balls’ guarantee – and plain-Jane advertising based on

a middle-aged man and his daughter, sitting on a couch!

Many Australians would now be familiar with this TV ad:

Here’s what’s instructive, a lesson you can take away from this:

• The guy in the ad is the inventor of the product. That really is his daughter. They could have hired sun-burnished actors with maple-syrup voices to do this. But to their credit, they resisted the temptation to do ‘professional’, instead opting for ‘different’ – broad Australian accents, even a hint of sibilance, a down-home approach that deliberately and perfectly targets their prime market – people like them.
• They crafted their product, and their marketing, to perfectly solve the problems that annoy the crap out of people – like me – about such an ordinary and mundane product, the garden hose. The damn things kink all the time. The fittings burst apart. Grrrr.
• And they back themselves with a brass-balls, money back guarantee. Few business owners are prepared to do this. Fewer still have either the balls, or the smarts, to shout it from the rooftops.
• They’ve ignored normal distribution methods via supermarkets and hardware stores, instead using TV to drive customers to their website (www.hoselink.com.au) and 1300 number.

So effective is this advertising, so perfectly does it speak to me, that as soon as I saw the ad, I went online, whipped out my credit card, and ordered two of their garden hoses. Me, ordering garden hoses online!

And paying more than $30 per hose, instead of a few dollars at a discount store!

(They are, by the way, bloody brilliant. And they don’t kink.)

Now, you could just shrug your shoulders and think ‘well, this has nothing to do with salons and spas’.

But for the smart salon owners (eg our Inner Circle member salons around the world) this should be food for thought.

Not ‘this doesn’t apply to me’; rather,

“How can I apply this thinking to my business?”

Some – I’m sure only a tiny number – actually took action. Among them, one of our scores of salons in New Zealand. The headline on their very next ad read:

“Do want to look like a Chilean miner’s wife…or his lover?”

Barely able to control her laughing, the salon owner reports that the day the ad appeared, one local resident indignantly hammered on the salon door, complaining that the ad was offensive to Chileans! Some people need to get a sense of humor.

The world would indeed be in a fix if the Irish got depressed about Irish jokes. (And there’s no shortage of jokes about New Zealanders either. Or Australians, for that matter.)

But the fact there are very few Chileans to offend in the back blocks of New Zealand, and that the ad is unlikely to be widely read in Chile itself isn’t the point here.

For Inner Circle member Emma MacDonald of Dockside Hair Culture in Urangan, Queensland, the advantages of being outrageous have been dramatic. After she headlined her ad with  “Do want to look like a Chilean miner’s wife…or his lover?” she emailed Worldwide Salon Marketing in a panic:

“I have had a woman call me on behalf of ten people who are apparently horrified and disgusted at this ad. I copped an absolute earful including being told to grow up. I also got told that not one of these people will ever come to my salon and they will be spreading the word. I’m extremely shocked that I got that response!”

I told Emma: the only thing you should even remotely get upset about is: did the ad work? Did it bring clients in? Did it result in new appointments?

Well, as a matter of fact, yes it did!

TWENTY new clients, $3,100 worth of new bookings – and that’s without even considering the flow-on effect of those new clients re-booking, referring friends, and more.

As a relieved Emma acknowledged when I spoke with her on the phone a few days after that ad ran in the local paper, if you’re not living on the edge, you’re wasting space…

Click the play button to listen in to what she said:

The lesson here is that advertising is about getting attention. Frankly, if your ad or flier doesn’t aggravate, annoy or otherwise offend some people, then you may well be wasting your time. There’s no point at all in spending money on advertising that says, in effect, ‘hey, look at us, we’re pretty much the same as the next guy.”

The trick, of course, is treading the fine line between being outrageous enough to get noticed, but not so outrageous that you upset everybody.

History is littered with case after case of stunts that sounded great over a few beers on Friday afternoon, but turned pear-shaped in the execution.

Oprah's famous car giveaway almost turned into a disaster for General Motors

Back in 2004, Oprah Winfrey famously gave away a car to every member of the 276-strong studio audience. It was supposed to be a marketing stunt for General Motors, and it did generate millions of dollars of publicity for its Pontiac brand. But the stunt turned sour when each ‘lucky’ recipient was hit with a $7,000 sales tax bill. Embarrassed, GM had to cover the cost.

Sometimes though, you can hit the jackpot. America’s famous Nathan’s hot dog joints, founded by Polish-American Nathan Handwerker in 1916, is one such case. Legend has it that Nathan hit on a marketing coup when doctors and nurses from nearby hospitals were lining up in their uniforms to buy his hot dogs.

His advertising began carrying the following headline:

“If doctors eat our hot dogs, you know they’re good!”

Nathan’s is now a massive business, and the original store alone sells a million hot dogs a year.

(And by the way, that headline would have been far less effective if he’d left out ‘you know’…)

Years ago, I wrote a headline for a salon client that many of our Inner Circle members use – profitably – to this day. It was a straight ‘steal’ from a headline written by the late, great Gary Halbert to promote Tova Borgnine’s new perfume line:

“Beauty expert swears on the bible her skin treatments contain no illegal sexual stimulants!”

It’s compelling simply because a) it has ‘sex’ in the headline, and b) it forces the reader to ask the question, ‘so, er…what are the legal sexual stimulants?’

Too much advertising is timid, ‘me-too’ stuff. If you don’t get their attention with a great headline, you’re dead in the water, no matter how good the rest of the ad is, no matter how magnetic the offer.

And if you’re not offending somebody, somewhere, then you’re probably not pushing the outside of the envelope nearly enough.

]]> http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/salon-marketing-101-getting-noticed/feed 0 http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/salon-marketing-why-should-i-buy-from-you?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=salon-marketing-why-should-i-buy-from-you http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/salon-marketing-why-should-i-buy-from-you#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:29:12 +0000 Greg Milner http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/?p=3424 I’ve written a lot, taught a lot, on the subject of USP or Unique Selling Proposition.

While most of our IC Premium Members ‘get’ the reasoning behind all the Emotional Direct Response salon marketing ads, flyers, letters and other material in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, very few owners of salons & spas even attempt to understand the importance of having a truly unique message for their prospects and customers.

In 1961, famous American advertising executive Rosser Reeves introduced the idea of USP in his book Reality in Advertising.

According to Reeves, there are three requirements for a USP:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Each must say, “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”

(Your headline must contain a benefit – a promise to the reader.)

2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer.

Here’s where the “unique” in Unique Selling Proposition comes in. It is not enough merely to offer a benefit. You must also differentiate
your product.

3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the masses, i.e., pull over new customers to your product or service.

The differentiation cannot be trivial. It must be a difference that is very important to the reader.

(What Reeves was talking about here was making a BIG promise. So much beauty industry marketing, particularly among average ‘corner store’ hair and beauty salons, is pathetically timid. “Come to us and we’ll make you look much better…” Vague, wishy-washy nonsense.)

Big companies spend millions, billions of dollars building a strong brand. There are lots of soft drink manufacturers, many of who sell a ‘cola’ product. But you can only buy Coke from Coca Cola.

Unfortunately, YOU don’t have the kind of money Coca Cola has to build a ‘brand’. So we use ‘guerilla marketing’ methods to achieve differentiation in a USP.

One of the best methods I know to create a strong USP is when your product or service has a unique feature, one that competitors can’t boast about. Of course, if you have that advantage, it all becomes pretty easy.

But what if you’re just an average salon doing pretty much the same kind of stuff as the competition?

According to Reeves – and I agree – uniqueness can either come from a strong brand (an option 95% of salons can’t use) or from a claim not otherwise made in that particular form of advertising.

In other words, saying something about your business or service that others could be saying, but aren’t!

It’s called Making the Invisible Visible.

For years, Schlitz brewing company dominated the market by 'telling the story' of how they made their beer. No different from the way everybody else made their beer, but they 'made the invisible visible'

For example, Milwaukee’s famous Schlitz brewing company went from nowhere to market leader when they started ‘telling the story’ of how they made their beer, in painstaking detail. Ironically, they made their beer exactly the same way every other brewer made beer, but crucially, nobody else was telling the story.

There’s another VERY large advantage to taking this approach. I call it ‘claiming the high ground’. Once you’ve done it, your competition is left to look like followers instead of leaders if they copy you.

Famously, Reeves crafted a USP for M&Ms – ‘It melts in your mouth, not in your hand’ – that had the opposition chasing them for decades, and is still in use today.

What could the competition do, run an ad that said “we also melt in your mouth, not in your hand”? I don’t think so.

If you’re a reasonably intelligent salon owner (in other words, one of the few who understand that the money’s in the marketing, not in the product or service) then you might have picked up on a couple of crucial lessons in this post.

Creating a USP is not necessarily about how good your product or customer service is. Everybody claims they provide ‘great customer service’. Big deal.

As you can see from the examples I’ve quoted here (Schlitz and M&Ms) they didn’t talk about how good their product was.

Instead, they talked about stuff that was actually peripheral to what was in the bottle (or the box).

So, think: what can you say about your business that is unique (or perceived to be unique), that either cannot be said or isn’t being said about a rival salon?

And remember, it’s not about you, the business, or the product – a truly ‘sticky’ USP is always about the customer, and the benefit to that customer.

If reading ‘bores’ you, if the idea of learning something fills you with horror, if you have the concentration span of small Burmese grasshopper, this is not for you. It involves thought. So if your typical reading is four minutes with a copy of Who Weekly, this will make your eyes glaze over.

If however, you have even a passing interest in what actually makes people buy stuff (your stuff, maybe), what makes for ‘good’ advertising and what deserves to be instantly consigned to the trash, this will be rivetting, eye-opening stuff.  (And particularly if you believe the nonsense peddled by so many fools about ‘people won’t read it if there’s lots of text’, and ‘fill it with lots of pretty pictures and not much else…’.)

Frankly, it’s mostly only of interest to our Inner Circle Premium marketing & mentoring members, so I’ve reserved the best stuff for them, but at least non-members reading this should ‘get’ that if you know absolutely nothing about advertising, you’re in good company.

Because most of the so-called ‘smartest guys in the room’ in the big ad agencies don’t know any more than you.

Take one of the world’s top car makers, Honda. This esteemed Japanese company spent no less than $US107,000 on a full page ad in the New York Times magazine in May this year. Take a moment to cast your eyes over this ‘masterpiece’ below.

For their $107,000, Honda – thanks to the geniuses at their high-priced agency – ended up with an ad that clearly gave the ‘creative’ art director a warm fuzzy feeling, but breaks almost every rule in the advertising book.

The Honda ad misses the mark in so many ways. Here are just a couple:

1) the entire premise of the ad is a single small headline in the middle of the page – “Our speakers can create an interesting sound. Silence” – followed by one paragraph of text so tiny you need a magnifying glass to read it. Here is what it says (clumsily):

Most speakers only create sound. Ours, on the other hand, can also take it away. Microphones inside the cabin constantly monitor unwanted engine noise. When noise is detected, opposing frequencies are broadcast through the speakers to eliminate it, literally fighting sound with sound. The result is dramatically reduced engine noise for a quieter, more comfortable cabin. Active Sound Control in the Acura TSX V-6. The most innovative thinking you’ll find, you’ll find in an Acura. Learn more at acura.com.
—Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

2) “The wickedest of sins,” said ad guru David Olgilvy, “is to run an advertisement without a headline.” This pathetic effort for Honda contains a bizarre headline of three blank treble clefs with no notes of music. Er, doesn’t the sound system in the Honda play music??

3) Then, in a tribute to laziness, the copywriter has left the remainder of the page entirely blank. A complete waste of (very) expensive real estate.

Ogilvy, the creator of the most famous ad agency in the world, Ogilvy and Mather, was a stickler for research. And that discipline produced some of the world’s greatest advertising campaigns.The writer of this appalling Honda ad clearly didn’t do any research. If he had, he would have been able to creatively ‘steal’ some of Ogilvy’s work.

(This article continues in the Members Only ‘sealed section’ here – where Members will discover some of the most successful advertising ever created, and why it’s so compelling.)

Toni Cunningham, Owner of Decadence Salon in Palmerston North, NZ

Toni joined the Inner Circle Premium program back in December 2009 and has seen her salons weekly turnover increase by significant 20%  in that time.  And the great thing about Toni is that she doesn’t get deflated or defeated when she does a campaign and doesn’t quite get the results she wanted, because she has so many other successful salon marketing campaigns on the go that she is always getting great results from different areas.

When I get calls from ‘non inner circle members’ telling me that their marketing isn’t working, I normally ask them what marketing they have done, to which the response is something like,

“Well I delivered 37 flyers into mailboxes 8 weeks ago and I haven’t heard back from anyone yet…”

It is simply not enough, and the results will show that.

Many Salon owners have been slaves to their business and staff, not paying themselves a wage for 1, 2, 10 even 20 years and most of these people have the perception that marketing is a waste of time and has to be expensive, but it isn’t.  There are so many low cost strategies if not FREE ways you can market your salon.

Read on below to see how a low cost mailbox drop brought in $4158 for Toni Cunningham in the month of April…

“Hi Chris

Just wanted to let you know that April was our best month (even bet Christmas) it’s fantastic to see the salon growing continuously every month. I have to say couldn’t have done it without WSM.

I have to say it’s really rewarding after my husband and I have dropped 500 flyers to go into the salon and see 10 messages on the phone and then the calendar just fills up, its great.

The team get such a kick out of seeing the calendar fill quite rapidly.

I have only been in the program since December and have seen some great results, have made a part timer full time ,and we are in the process of hiring another stylist.

If this is what we have achieved in the last 6 months I say bring on the next 6 months.

Last month we took massive action, we did our monthly newsletter, Kids Free Hair Cuts Flyer (in school holidays), Autumn Flyer, along with all the New client letters, birthday letters, Raise the dead letters.

By far the Autumn package was the most successful,  we are dropping 500 every week and getting amazing results. It cost $45 for flyers and envelopes and we booked 42 packages at $99 and what is even better, is 34 were new clients.”

And from chatting with Toni recently she dropped another 500 flyers around the neighbourhood in the first week of May and got another 9 bookings (49 in total so far).  And of course these results do not include all the new and existing clients she got from her other marketing campaigns.

So Let’s break things down.

500 Flyers plus envelopes cost Toni $45.

She delivered 2000 flyers over 4 weeks in April, so the total cost for the flyers and envelopes was $180.

Each of those 42 clients spent $99, so an immediate income of $4158 (this does not include any retail sold).

Let’s say on average each new client is worth $1000 per year to Toni and that half of the 34 new clients became regular clients.  That would be an increase in annual turnover of $17,000.

Not a bad return for a $180 investment.

Well done Toni and keep up the excellent work!

So if you now believe that Marketing is definitely worth the investment after reading this story and you want to get hold of the same marketing tools and strategies as Toni then you need to join the Inner Circle program TODAY and get your own copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®. Go here to see if you qualify for a 30 Day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system – completely risk free.)

P.s. I think a special mention has to go out to Shane (Toni’s Husband) who has been helping out delivering flyers for Toni week in week out….good on ya!

BONUS for Inner Circle Premium members: Want to get your hands on Toni’s flyer? Login here to the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and you can download this flyer in Word format and use it for your own salon!

Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz - his advertising skills sold billions dollars worth of products

The headline – the ‘ad for the ad’ – was written by one of the greatest direct response copywriters of the past 50 years, Eugene Schwartz. His ads, for everything from beauty and diet products to investment services and gardening, have resulted in sales of billions of dollars.

Schwartz’s ads are so powerful, so magnetic, they’ve been copied in some form for decades. They’re classic direct response.

And yet…and yet, despite overwhelming evidence that direct response-style display ads, hard copy direct mail and yes, online marketing is the only effective, measurable, accountable form of marketing that any small business owner should invest in, I still hear

“but it’s so unprofessional, my clients are far too sophisticated/educated/up-market for that kind of thing…”

Well, I’m more than happy for the ignorant and the arrogant to continue wasting their hard-earned money on pretty, ‘imagey’ kind of creative advertising while the rest of us get one with what works, instead of re-inventing the wheel.

As the master of direct response, David Ogilvy once declared, ‘creative is what sells‘. He might well have continued, ‘who cares about winning creative advertising awards, if the ads don’t get customers to pick up the phone and buy?’

For the education and interest of those readers wise enough to at least acknowledge they don’t know much about marketing and would like to inform themselves – being armed with knowledge gives you a pretty good buffer against making dumb, expensive mistakes – here’s a small sample of some of the greatest direct response advertising ever printed.

(And for Inner Circle members, the complete Eugene Schwartz ‘swipe file’ of classic, powerful headlines, available for download now from here in the Member’s Only ‘sealed section’ of the website.)

For those salon owners who are NOT part of the Inner Circle program, well I guess you’ll look at these examples, wrinkle your nose in distaste and sniffily declare them far too unworthy of your further study.

For those salon & spa owners smart enough to have joined the Inner Circle program including the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®, the following examples will hopefully encourage and inspire you to go back to your Toolkit and begin to better understand the thinking behind the hundreds of advertising templates contained within it.

You can right click on these thumbnail images and ‘save as…’ to download the ads in full screen, so you can study them in detail. My advice: analyze these from the point of view of ‘HOW can I use this information to develop better marketing for my salon?’ rather than “this isn’t for a beauty or hair business so it doesn’t apply to me!’

What does a gorgeous, “over-the-hill” international model do when sales of her new book are flat as a pancake and she’s got no idea how to turn it around?

Simple. If she’s Oleda Baker, she calls Eugene Schwartz.

This is the 1973 ad for “The Models Way to Beauty, Slenderness and Glowing Health” which eventually sold over 60,000 copies with the help of Gene Schwartz’s pen.

The caption beneath her photo is very effective. “This is an unretouched photo of 39 year old Oleda Baker, author of this eye opening new guide.”

Shirley Polykoff wrote this ad for Clairol in the 50s, “Does she …or doesn’t she? Hair color so natural only her hair dresser knows for sure.”

It was so successful in selling product that today Clairol is able to spend over $30 million a year in the USA alone on advertising – yet it won not a single ‘creative’ award.

The ‘Does she or doesn’t she?” headline was at first turned down by Life magazine as being ‘too suggestive’. The Life editors would turn pale at what advertisers get away with these days.

The myth that ‘they won’t read it if it’s too long…”

Advertising sales reps ought to be hung, drawn and quartered for insisting on spreading this toxic myth about marketing.

Most of  ‘em deride ‘direct response’ marketing as ‘okay for weight loss and hair replacement advertising, but you wouldn’t use it for professional services and products….’

Mmmm, really? Click on the picture here, the front cover of one of the world’s most respected business publications, and you’ll find a 15-page sales letter that’s pure direct response, sent out by the publishers to drive subscriptions.

Strange to say, it worked.

In 1919, Lillian Eichler was an 18-year-old working for a New York advertising agency when she was asked to figure out an ad that would sell a bunch of old copies of Ealnor Holt’s pre-1900 The Encyclopedia of Etiquette.

But most of the 1,000 copies sold came back within the 5-day guarantee period, the readers turned off by the antiquated text. But the publishers (Doubleday) were smart enough to realize that if Lillian’s ad could at least move the books, maybe she could re-write the original and turn it into something more appealing to the modern’ reader.

It did. Lillian’s version, the Book of Etiquette, sold 2 million copies at $2 each over the following two years, nearly $30 million in today’s money. Amazing to think that such powerful marketing copy could come from the pen of an 18-year-old.

Now, take a good look at all the examples above. If you note nothing else, note this: ALL of them feature columns of tightly-written copy, not mere pretty pictures and a phone number.

Go apply that thinking to YOUR advertising, and what your sales soar.

(IC Members: Log into the Members Only section, navigate to Getting New Clients – Hair, and you’ll be able to download the exact ads and text messages Rechelle describes here)

“I have been in business for 11 years and never had the success that I am having now….I have been a Worldwide Salon Marketing member for about 5 years, but didn’t change much about how I marketed my business so obviously I didn’t get the results.

“The salon was not doing so well in 2007, things were really bad, I then made a decision to do something about the business. So I took action, I went off the tools working only three days in the salon and two full days on the business at home in my office.

“The first thing I knew I needed to get sorted was the marketing and be consistent with it.

Every month we did two big promotions via text message. Each SMS was to 2000 clients. We had a massive response from this particular SMS.  

(Members: Log into the Members Only section and navigate to “Getting New Clients – Hair” to copy the exact text Rechelle used)

“This SMS I started to send out in June 2008 and we are still sending it every fortnight.

“Sales increased in 2008 by 40% compared to 2007! That’s $109,509 extra (Real Big Green Ones) in 2008 sales.

“I also did this exact promotion in a newspaper advertisement which also was a huge success.

It was a half page ad costing around $350 each time and was placed each month from July 2008. We are still placing the ad every month and it’s still working.(Members: Log into the Members Only section and navigate to “Getting New Clients – Hair” to copy the exact ads Rechelle used)

“We also did all the normal marketing such as newsletters, new clients letters, birthdays and referrals all from the Toolkit, we are getting an average per month 90 new clients. Retail sales have gone through the roof – up $6000 per month.

The Toolkit gave me the tools, the ideas, the ingredients to make my marketing fantastic and I was persistent with it and it gave me real results. I have attached a copy of the newspaper ad and a picture of myself receiving the best customer service business award for 2008.

All the best, Rechelle Watt, Lamonde Hair Face Body, Toukley, NSW.”

So indulge me for a moment, while I indulge myself in a little ‘I told you so…’

Just about every other day, I hear from people who tell me ‘oh, I bought your system and it didn’t work for me’, or ‘I joined the Inner Circle program, but my customers are different/more sophisticated/too poor/too affluent’ etc etc.

Excuse me for a few seconds, while I gently tear my own fingernails out with a pair of rusty pliers.

Actually, the ‘system’ works fine. Gets more customers, gets your existing customers spending more. If it doesn’t work for you, it’s YOU, not the system. This week, two entirely unsolicited letters from Inner Circle members who ‘get it’.

Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa...record retail sales from a simple promotional flyer

First, from Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa here in my own home town. And for Inner Circle members, see below for details of how to get the exact promotion Michael used to achieve the spectacular results he describes here:

“To keep the ball rolling on Retail sales, I thought I share again with the INNER CIRCLE member’s another VERY successful  in-house promotion we’re running with our NEW MAKE-UP RANGE.

We’ve been giving away a FREE MAKE-UP CONSULTATION – VALUED AT $97 and our retail sales have been nothing short of amazing, being at a new record for us at $38K for the month thus far…. Our top girl has topped $12k for the month ( and has earned herself almost $2500 in commission) and its all due to our in-hose flyer and team focus. One of our team sold $3,200 in ONE DAY of make up and accessories to clients and didn’t have a single booking. The beauty of our new make-up is that it is mineral and you need a special set of BRUSHES to apply the product……WOW even more products to SELL to our clients. There is NO excuses for not selling to clients, it’s just a matter of Focus, Product knowlege and exceptional service.”

(NOTE TO INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: to download the exact promotion that Michael used, log in to the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and navigate to Retail Product Promotions. You’ll find it there as a pdf you can right click on and download to your own computer.)

NOTE OF CAUTION FOR EVERYBODY READING THIS: Do NOT call Michael to ask him about this promotion or waste his time trying to get him to solve your business problems for you. Just like every other Inner Circle member, he had to pay to get the tools and guidance that’s helped him make more money. He, like many of our IC members, get a stream of calls from people wanting to pick their brains for free. Don’t be cheapskates. Pay to join the program, and you’ll get exactly the same tools and help as Michael and hundreds of other Members.)

Carl & Mellanie Smith of Saving Face Health & Beauty in New Zealand - raising prices by a whopping 30% resulted in (surprise, surprise!) an immediate increase in sales of...30%.

Second case in point: Carl Smith from Saving Face Health & Beauty in Whakatane, New Zealand (it’s pronounced FOK-A-TARNY). As Carl writes tellingly in this email,

“Why to we have to hurt before we act?”

“Hi Greg,

Just wanting to let you know that sometimes it takes getting to the point of pain before we act.

As a director of Saving Face Health & Beauty Ltd, I became an Inner Circle member in March of this year because, as you have heard so many times before, we were struggling as a business.
My Inner Circle coach told me on my very first call that we needed to increase our prices by at least 10% and strive to be charging the same as clinics in Auckland and even Australia – no excuses!!! However, while I have had great results in applying everything else he has recommended, I have been reluctant to up the prices by any significance. I did increase them but by only about 5%.

As a result of putting into action ideas from your marketing manual such as memberships, monthly newsletters, ‘raise the dead’ letters, ‘Queen of referral’ letters, ‘new client’ letters etc, we have been so busy that we had to employ another therapist. However we were still not making any money. We were still struggling to just pay for the overheads and bills, and as I said to David about six weeks ago, “this is so much hard work. I am so tired, I just want to sell the business”.

Well at the end of August I finally said to my wife & business partner, “this is just not on. We either put up our prices to match city prices or we stop providing any services that we are not making any money on”.

So as of the first of September we put all our prices up by 30%!!!  Well we have had our best month ever. We had a turnover of $63,310.32 for September compared to $44,801.65 for August. AND we only had about two or three clients make a bit of a complaint but as far as I am aware they still rebooked. All the rest didn’t even blink an eyelid!

Now, when we still have the odd quieter day due to cancellations, we still make ‘target’ with relative ease, and when we have a good day, we have a REALLY good day.

Why do we have to hurt before we act???

Mellanie & I are looking forward to seeing you in Auckland on Monday 20th October*.

Kind regards
Carl Smith
Saving Face Health & Beauty Ltd
19a Bunyan Rd
Whakatane

(If you are in New Zealand and have NOT yet booked a ticket for either our Auckland seminar on October 20 or our Wellington seminar on October 21, do so NOW by calling Ticketek on 0800 842538 – FREE for Inner Circle members, call our office on +618-9381 6621 to register)

Does this stuff work in Australia” YES. Does this stuff work in the UK? YES. Does this stuff work in the USA? Well, of course it does, if you get out of your own way, put aside your ego, ignore your well-meaning friends, family, staff members and the advertising sales reps, none of whom know anything about how to use direct response marketing to drive salon & spa sales.

Listen to US Inner Circle members Tamara Schultz-Snyder of Tehachapi, CA and Susan Woodbury of Belmont, NH as they describe how their sales have (surprise, surprise!) skyrocketed by simply using the tools in the Inner Circle Toolkit…