What is so Potent, yet is used so little?

Sound too good to true? It should do! Nothing comes for without a price.  And this little secret does have a price that has to be paid – in FULL!

This little secret is so influential in the mind of the consumer, that it’s full weight cannot be measured. There is no way on earth that it’s value can be counted. Make no mistake though, it is worth so much more to your salon that I am almost afraid to reveal it. To allow for the secret to be revealed to the public is a well thought out risk.

I know that there will be screams of terror saying “I can’t do that,” or “we don’t do that here”, and quite possibly I will have to look over my shoulder when leaving work tonight, but it has to be said. For the secret not to be revealed is a crime in itself.

The secret relates to one of the most potent techniques that is used in marketing today. The secret adds incredible weight to all that you say about your salon.  To have professional writers highlighting this secret in their work about your salon  is breathtaking. It represents a sign of strength in the salon, and the business. It will give you leverage over ever other salon in the area that are not smart enough to capitalize  on this secret.

But…. to use it requires a whole lot of intestinal fortitude. Guts!

This is where the bold will tread without fear, and the timid will scurry off to the shadows of being an ordinary salon.

Inner Circle members will know exactly what it is.  It is a way to end competition, and make sure that you always stay at the top.

The secret ? A rock solid GUARANTEE.

Simple.

A guarantee can change the way that your clients looks at your salon. They will see that you are so confident in your salon, and how the salon operates, that you guarantee the results. This is one of the strongest methods for getting new clients to come and see you. It alleviates any concerns that they have about spending their hard earned money with your salon. Especially when there are salons everywhere.

A guarantee also gives you marketing advantage over all other salons in that you can guarantee  your salons work, but other salons will not. What sort of message will this send to the clients who are looking for  new salon?

NOTE: Only Inner Circle member salons will be admitted to this group. It is a manual process, requests to join are not automatically accepted until their status as Members has been confirmed by one of our Administrators.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Chris and Rachael D'Aguiar Sanders, Worldwide Salon Marketing New Zealand

If there’s one thing that is drilled into us Inner Circle members from the word go, it’s the importance of using a guarantee in our marketing.  And even though inner circle members refused to buy into the whole ‘recession hype’ there is no doubt that a lot of people did, and as a result people were watching where every dollar was being spent.

Thankfully all the recession talk is coming to end, the local and world economy is doing much better and people are generally feeling more positive.

It was evident that over the last 12 months, that Inner Circle members where having to work just that little bit harder to get the same amount of customers through the door.  I know that in our salon we were doing 3 or 4 different marketing promotions per month over winter as opposed to 1 or 2 the year previous.  I suppose you could say we are taking massive, massive action!

Sadly,  1 in 5 salons in New Zealand have gone under in the last 12 months, none of which I am glad to say are Inner Circle members…but still a shocking number all the same.  So what made our salon and Inner Circle member salons not only survive, but continue to make a profit and stand out from any other salon?

Sure we all give great service and treatments…but isn’t that what all salons say to their customers?

What is making those customers arrive at the decision that they are going to buy a service from you instead of the salon down the road?  Well there are a number of factors but at the end of the day I personally believe that having a

guarantee is THE most important one.

It removes that last element of risk and makes the customer feel more confident that what they are buying from you will work…after all , you believe in what you do so much and that you and your team are the best, so why wouldn’t be confident enough to offer a guarantee?

And looking back through the last 12 months I have seen more businesses from many different industries start to adopt a guarantee in their marketing, all to gain the trust of those penny pinching consumers.  No longer is the guarantee confined to the hour long advertorials for the latest gym equipment, a new brand of cosmetics or another miracle slim down plan.

Here are just a few of the examples I have seen over the last few months:

Hyundai's outrageous guarantee stole the march on its US competitors

The car manufacturing industry in the USA took a huge financial body blow during the economic downturn.

And while companies like Ford, Nissan and Mazda have been laying people off in their thousands, Korean enterprise Hyundai were combating the recession and spending tens of millions of dollars advertising through events like the Super Bowl.

So how did they do it? Quite simply they offered a guarantee which read,

“Certainty, in uncertain times”.

Hyundai vowed that if you should lose your job in the year after purchasing one of their cars, you can return it and they wouldn’t make you pay any more of the monthly payments.  Hyundai’s guarantee offered peace of mind for someone who had fears about their job security.

Staying in the USA, a real estate firm was boldly offering to buy the vendors home at an agreed price should they not sell the house within 90 days.

And probably the most bizarre guarantee I heard recently was here in New Zealand.

They are now offering a guarantee on IVF treatments.  If you don’t get pregnant through IVF after 3 attempts you will get 70% of your money back.  The catch is, you have to pay for the cost of the 3 treatments up front ($24,000), and even if you are successful on the first attempt, you don’t get refunded for the other 2 remaining treatments.   But for most wannabe parents it’s a price worth paying!

So if you are not using a guarantee then start using one and if you are, then maybe now is a better time than ever to look at it, and see if there are any ways you can make it even stronger and bolder than it already is.

And of course we like to practice what we preach at Worldwide Salon Marketing New Zealand, so we offer a 30 day money back guarantee when you join the Inner Circle program and an extra 60 day ‘Pay no more’ guarantee on top of that.

So if YOU want the kind of results our members are achieving, you need to be a Member of the Inner Circle program, complete with your own edition 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.)

The harder you try to sell your prospect on how good your salon is, the faster she backs away, emotionally if not physically

A phone conversation with a salon owner this week started like this:

“I’ve got a new salon opening up just three doors down, three others nearby are cutting prices, I don’t know what to do!!”

This salon owner was beginning to panic, but she was missing the point, so I told her, ‘settle down, and think for a moment’.

Most hair salons, beauty salons and day spas are terrified of their competition, ever watchful for price undercutting, more worried about what their perceived competition is doing than they are about their own backyard.

And that’s primarily because of a misconception about who your competition really is.

Your biggest competitor isn’t the salon down the road, it’s not the worry of staff leaving and taking clients with them. No, your biggest competitor  is…

Your own prospect.

Imagine this for a moment. Your prospective client, whether she’s just walked into your salon, or she’s picked up the phone to call you after seeing one of your ads, has only four basic choices.

1) She can choose to buy from you
2) She can choose to do it herself
3) She can choose to do nothing, or
4) She can choose to do business with somebody else.

Only ONE of those four choices involve a rival salon. The other three involve only YOU.

As Harry Beckwith writes in his best-seller about marketing in the service industry, ‘Selling the Invisible’, Peggy, your typical prospect, is fearful – fearful of making the wrong decision. Peggy is not looking to make the ‘superior’ choice, she is looking to avoid making the bad choice.  It is less risky for her to do nothing.

Almost every prospect for every service would rather minimize the risk of a bad experience than shoot for the best experience.
It’s called ‘looking for good enough’. Forget looking like the superior choice, make your salon an excellent choice. Then, eliminate anything that might make you a bad choice.

And that means eliminating the risk of Peggy doing business with you, eg with a free trial, or a money-back guarantee. And make sure you deliver a good service, rather than spend needless energy attempting to convince Peggy that yours is the best service.

Peggy isn’t looking for the best. What she wants is a comfortably good result, without any risk.

Which is why, in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™, there are hundreds of already-proven ads and flyers that contain these ‘risk-reversing’ devices.

These devices haven’t been written into these marketing pieces just to fill out a bit of space. They’re there for a very good reason.

Because your competition is not the rival salon nearby, your strongest competition is your prospective customer. And you need every means you can muster to get that prospect to make the ONE choice you want them to make.

Karen Briffa, owner of Le Beau Day Spa

Most Inner Circle members will have heard of Karen Briffa, owner and founder of Le Beau Total Body Management - winner of the 2006 Spa Establishment of the Year and a string of other business awards.

At just 34 – and the mother of two young children – Karen has become a rare bird in the beauty industry….actually taking home a fortune from her business. (In 2007, her three-year-old spa turned over in excess of $2.5million…and a very healthy profit.

And if you want to exactly copy what Karen’s done…here’s how:

The Million Dollar Salon & Spa Procedures Pack

Find out more about the Million Dollar Salon & Spa Procedures Pack here

Karen joins the Worldwide Salon Marketing Board of Advisors

While on the subject of Karen, we’re delighted to announce she has agreed to join our Board of Advisors, set up to advise us on the ever-changing needs of the salon and spa industry, and specifically, the needs of small-to-medium salon owners.

We’re always seeking to develop new products and services for the business side of the industry, and we’ll be looking to appoint more Advisors in the near future.