Remember when a Motorola brick cost half a year's salary and you got a workout just lifting it up to your ear?

Yep, hard to believe, considering you can now pick up a TV that’s twice the size, ten times the clarity and half the weight for what amounts to chump change…a few hundred dollars.

What happened with the TV market is the same as happens with almost all products and services…sooner, rather than later, they become little more than a mere

commodity

Prices – and margins – fall through the floor. Readers older than 40 will remember when those early Motorola brick phones cost six months salary. Today you can buy a faster, better, smaller and smarter mobile phone for a hundred bucks.

Every business faces this same inexorable slide into commoditization.

And the more the business relies on the blunt instrument of price to compete, the faster the process of aging. Before you know it, you’re rotting away faster than Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. It’s a cancer.

And it affects the hair & beauty industry as much as any other.

Yes, it’s true that at least in the foreseeable future, a haircut or a facial is not going to be something you can buy online at Amazon. People will always need hair & beauty treatments in person. Even Bill Gates hasn’t worked out how to administer a brazilian over the internet.

But that doesn’t mean you’re immune. By and large, as far as the general public is concerned, one hair salon is pretty much the same as the next. A facial is a facial is a facial.

So how can you tell when you’ve become a commodity? The warning signs are obvious, if more than a little frustrating, frightening and perplexing.

When phone inquiries start with “what’s the price of a X?”…

When your clients complain about the price.

When you phone a regular client you haven’t seen for three months, only to be told “Oh, I couldn’t get an appointment with you last time so I went to that place around the corner, and I kind of just kept going there….”

That’s when you know you and your salon have become a commodity. Invisible, interchangeable.

Now, before you rush off for a health check, there ARE ways to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Here are three:

1) you can innovate. A new product/service, even a slightly up-graded one, can give you an edge over the competition.

2) you can bundle, or package. Garden variety service like a hair cut, juiced up with add-ons and/or ancillary services that increased perceived value.

3) you can slice and dice your client list and/or target market so that you can more carefully and precisely match your product/service offer or package with the buying preferences of that particular niche market.
(Any and all of which, of course, require a carefully crafted salon marketing message to support them)

Even that may not be enough to halt the slide. So what else can you do? Here’s where it gets trickier…and requires more brass balls.

a) you can put your prices UP. A lot. Proudly, with your head held high. And no, there is absolutely no value in telling your customers your prices are going up soon. Just put them up. One of two will raise an eyebrow. The rest will simply fall into line.

b) Choose which customers you want to do business with, and those you do not. And fire them. Nothing creates and fosters demand for your services like the perception of scarcity, of unavailability. You may lose a few customers. But those who remain will be more profitable.

c) pay bonuses based on profit margin, not merely turnover. Nothing focuses an employee like “Sure, go ahead and spend money on new chairs, after all, some of it’s your money…”

Sound all to complicated for you? Go on then, hang out the discount sign, sit by the silent phone, and sulk as the life is inevitably sucked out of your business. ‘Cos it WILL happen if you do nothing.

Are you asleep at the wheel of your business?

It never ceases to amaze me how little effort most business owners put into researching their target market. It’s because most business owners are simply

bone lazy

Take this example of outstanding, Olympic-quality incompetence. Today I received the following email, apparently from a company purporting to be ‘experts’ in mailing lists…

“Hi,
Had a chance to visit your website and understand you are a marketing and advertising service provider. Many similar companies like yours have already started boosting their marketing and client retention activities for coming year.
Please brief us on your target audience (Industry:?, Job Titles:? and Geography: ?), I will get back to you with counts and quote for your review. If you already have an existing database, which is old and with many missing information, please forward me 20 – 50 samples for a no cost test append.
Our ready to use lists – Marketing professionals, High Net Worth individuals, Pharmacists, Publishers, Retailers, IT decision makers, Key decision makers, CMO’s, CEO’s, CTO’s, Technology users, HR executives……
Appreciate your time and I definitely look forward to hear from you.
Warm Regards,
Caroline
Marketing Coordinator”

This fool’s approach to getting new business is so lazy, so incompetent, so completely thoughtless it beggars belief. Here’s just a partial list of errors:

1) “Please brief us on your target audience….” Good grief. Our website, which Caroline claims to have visited, literally screams ‘salon owners’ from every page. A seventh-grader could work that out in less than 20 seconds.

2) Merely clicking on ‘About us’ would have instantly identified me as the CEO of the company. Yet this idiot Caroline doesn’t even bother to address the email to me. Instead, a weak impersonal ‘Hi’ is deemed as sufficient. It’s not sufficient, it’s insulting.

3) Nowhere does the email identify the name of her company, where she’s located, or provide any other identifying information other than her return email address. Is she perhaps writing from the moon? And it certainly doesn’t direct me to a website where I can investigate further.

4) Apart from evidence of laziness in almost every line, it demonstrates a level of illiteracy that would embarrass most ten year olds.

Sadly, such incompetence, lack of preparation and pure ignorance is the norm in business, rather than the exception. A few months ago we advertised a job position at Worldwide Salon Marketing. Of the six we short-listed for an interview, only ONE could provide even the most rudimentary facts about the company, what we do, who we market to etc etc.

And yet ALL the information is readily available at a key-stroke, via our web presence.

Take this as a lesson: when you are targeting new customers for your salon or spa, ask yourself – and get answers – to relevant questions such as:

a) what kind of people do I want as customers?

b) what can I find out about these people?

c) what do they read, what associations or groups might they belong to, do they have children, what sports do they play, where do they go on holidays, what other products do they buy, what other services do they typically use….

The more you know about your target market, the better you can fine-tune offers and services that perfectly match that target market. Fit, toned members of the local squash club are unlikely to respond to a weight-loss offer, no matter how outrageously it’s presented. But an offer headlined

“Instant Glamor Hair That Makes even Squash Players Look Like Movie Stars”

might have a better than even chance of attracting the eye of those squash players, don’t you think?

Google’s famous ‘Don’t Be Evil’ mantra might well be adapted for use in almost any business seeking new customers:

“Don’t be Lazy!”

IC member Molly Verbrugge of Indulgences in Little Rock, AK - staggered at how a single, simple and cheap little promotion helped DOUBLE their June sales.

“…We are stoked and plan to run this sale the entire month of June in 2011!”

Inner Circle member (3 years) Molly Verbrugge of Indulgences in Little Rock, Arkansas, is justifiably glowing after a Worldwide Salon Marketing promotion she used for just two weeks in June this year boosted sales to $81,235 – a staggering DOUBLE her takings of $41,956 for the same two week period in 2009.

Now if that doesn’t get your attention, you’d have to be comatose from the neck up.

It came about after a coaching call with Tim & Kanna Reilly in our Arizona office, after they’d modified and implemented a WSM marketing campaign in their own clinic in Scottsdale.

“After speaking with Tim and giving my review of our discussion to Leslie (my spa manager), she and I decided we might benefit from running the promotion ourselves! Well, we started running the sale on June 17th.

We sent email blasts along with approximately 5 newspaper ads totalling a cost of around $750. We began the sale on June 17th and it ran until July 3, 2010. Last year during the time-frame of June 17th thru July 3rd, we had total revenues of $41,956, this year our total revenues were$81, 235!!!

We are stoked and plan to run this sale the entire month of June in 2011.

Thank You Tim and Kanna and Worldwide Salon Marketing for your invaluable marketing ideas!

Husband-and-wife team Tim & Kanna Reilly's Body Solutions Laser & Skin in Scottsdale, Arizona, grew 63% in 2009 - after a massive 500% increase in 2008 - thanks to the marketing and 'sales thinking' tools in the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program...

Successful marketing is NOT about re-inventing the wheel, unless you’re particularly a) rich, and b) prefer to risk your money on experimentation. Tim and Kanna had proven this particular strategy works, having rolled it out with massive results every year for three years.

Here’s how Kanna describes the promotion:

“We started it in 2008 when we came to our One Year Anniversary, and now do what we call the “Penny Sale” every year.  It happens to be June.  We ran the Penny sale for the entire month.

We printed the copy on paper with US pennies around the borders.  We also e-mailed out to our database of customers 4 times that month.  No other advertising at all, just e-mail and in store flyers! You can also mail out to your client database in an envelope with pennies printed on it.  This year our total gross sales for June was up 62% over our average monthly sales.

We originally did this for a few reasons:

1.  To let clients know that we are celebrating our anniversary and to let them know that we appreciate their patronage and loyalty and to reward them we offer the penny sale.

2.  July and August are brutal in Arizona as our temperatures reach 110 degrees F and over.  Many people leave town for weeks on end to avoid the heat.  So in order to boost sales and keep people coming in we offer the Penny Sale.  Originally, this helped us pay the rent for the two months in advance while our books were slower in the beginning for those hotter months.  You can also use this strategy to pre-pay for equipment investments or Salon renovations etc.

What we found:

1.  We found that many of our higher margin, more costly services was what people bought the most of (which was fine with me).

2.  We also found that clients purchased services they didn’t regularly come in for or had never tried before.

3.  We received and still receive more referrals in the month of June than any other month of the year.

There are many ways to use this program. You can run it for only a few days, or a few weeks, or for the entire month as we do.

Remember to remind your client base about the Penny Sale and when it will end.  We had a majority of our sales come in the final week as people rushed in or called their orders in by phone.  And when we ran our final e-mail  that in 24 hours the sale would be over we could hardly keep up with the phone volume.

FOR INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS:

Want the exact same flyer Kanna, Tim and Molly used so effectively? Members can log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ here and download the promotion in Word format so you can start marketing yourself – and watch your own sales skyrocket!

FOR NON MEMBERS: If you think your salon deserves the same kind of results Molly is getting, go to www.salonhowto.com now for more information, and complete a simple online form to apply for a 90-day Risk Free Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit.

Here’s where Molly’s salon is located: (Click here to see where ALL our Members are located around the world)

View Larger Map

Every month, we mail a hard-copy newsletter to several thousand salons who have requested it.

For those who don’t want it delivered in the post, here you can download this year’s newsletters in pdf format and print them out at your leisure.

Jan 2010 Newsletter

Feb 2010 Newsletter

March 2010 Newsletter

April 2010 Newsletter

May 201 Newsletter

June 2010 Newsletter

July 2010 Newsletter

August 2010 Newsletter

September 2010 Newsletter

October 2010 Newsletter

I actually feel a bit sorry for the banks. The fact that they’re in business to make a profit – just like every other business – appears lost on media and government, who relish in taking a shot at this soft target every time interest rates hi the news. Pity nobody in the banking industry has the balls to stand up and say ‘Hey, wait a minute, we’re a business not a charity, it’s our job to make money…!’

(Isn’t it funny how most bank customers moan bitterly every time their mortgage rate goes up, complain about the ‘greed’ of big business when the banks publish their billion-dollar profits – but don’t twig that their own retirement savings are heavily invested in bank shares.)

But that other public whipping boy – the airlines – deserve every dose of doggy doo thrown at them. Dumber than a bagful of hammers, for years they’ve competed with each other on little more than price, a strategy that – in any business – can only lead to death.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, US airlines collectively lost about $5billion in 2009. Now, they’re fighting back with an almost-universally despised trick of ‘un-bundling’ air fares so that passengers have to pay extra for things that have traditionally been included in the price of a ticket.

More and more airlines are charging an average of $25 to check in a bag. Several will slug you an extra $8 for a blanket. It’s now common for cut-price airlines to charge extra for exit-row seats which provide a bit more room for tall passengers.

Airlines are beginning to charge extra for what was previously part of the deal - like $8 for a blanket. Oh well, at least you get to keep the blanket....

After years of cutting their own throats by discounting, these big dumb companies have suddenly realized they need to make money. But the way they’re doing it smacks of desperation, and worse, complete ignorance about the concept of adding value, packaging, differentiation and giving themselves an ‘unfair advantage’ over the competition without discounting.

Salon owners who are Members of the Inner Circle Marketing & Mentoring Program could give the airlines a much-needed lesson in such market-making processes.

In Australia, I fly Qantas exclusively. Of all the competing airlines, Qantas is regularly the most expensive carrier. That’s why I fly with them. The food is free, and good quality – even in Economy Class – unlike the inedible trash on US domestic airlines. There are no extra charges for blankets, checked baggage, headsets, movies or anything else. On many flights, even beer and wine is free in Economy. It’s all included in the price.

Where even a profitable airline like Qantas falls down is in its failure to capitalize on this competitive advantage. They still attempt to compete on price alone, too timid to shout from the rooftops

“Hey, we’re the most expensive – but there are no hidden charges, sneaky extras or nasty surprises when you get to the airport. When you buy a Qantas ticket, everything is included in the price!”

Here’s what’s instructive for your salon business:

Take a lesson from bumbling mistakes of the airlines. Instead of constantly trying to compete with rivals on price (discounting), figure out a way to package your services. Don’t allow your customers to ‘cherry pick’ your treatment menu on price alone. By learning to package – as our Inner Circle member salons have done using the templates and tools in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® you’ll find yourself attracting customers who are more interested in value than mere price, want service above perceived (often phantom) savings, and are prepared to pay for it.

You can’t help anyone by making less money than you could.

The best thing you can do for poor folks is not be one of them. Set an inspiring example for anyone who might want to pay attention, but don’t feel the least bit guilty about having a beautiful home or many, even when the TV news shows you a family living in a cardboard box beneath a bridge. There are a lot of homes around just as beautiful as yours for sale, and if the people living in the box really wanted a home, they’d get jobs, save money, start a business, and soon live somewhere better, and eventually buy a beautiful home too.

You moving out of your home and into a box beneath the bridge won’t help them.

Said that way, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Taking prosperity away from one person does not automatically enrich another. The entire ‘great society’ experiment has also shown us that taking prosperity away from some and giving it to others doesn’t accomplish anything of lasting significance either. This is the theory of
liberalism; government as Robin Hood. But Robin Hood was a thief. And he had a lot less overhead than the government. The first flaw in government redistribution of wealth schemes is there seems to be very little of the wealth they confiscate that makes it through their bureaucracies to actual redistribution. The second flaw is that dependence reinforces dependence; it does not create independence. The person who is deemed “poor” and has a basket of food sufficient for his needs dropped off every Monday by Robin Hood rarely finds a plot of land and, absent tools, digs with his hands until his knuckles bleed in order to plant and tend a garden.

Our welfare state has been and is a trap more than a ladder, a gigantic industry and government bureaucracy dependent on it has developed and become entrenched and powerful, and the Democratic Party has as one of its chief and most reliable voting blocks the population dependent on welfare – which is why liberals are so
eager to expand it.

Theft is theft and there is no justice in it. The government as Robin Hood actually steals from the rich and the poor at the same time. Its gifts are more harmful than helpful, as they reinforce dependence. Its thefts suppress innovation, economic growth, job creation, job preservation in the U.S., even charity. It is impossible to tax a population to prosperity. Abraham Lincoln, a hero of liberals for his leadership in civil rights, but despised by any liberals who know of his economic philosophy, said, “You cannot help the weak by weakening the strong.”

The first thing to think about money is that there’s plenty of it for everybody willing to do what works to attract it and work to earn it. Never
think of money as finite, so that a dollar you get deprives someone else of a dollar. Second, then, go get as much of it as you want by creating value
to exchange for it, without guilt. Don’t ever feel guilty about sitting up front in the first class cabin because somebody else is in back, in coach.
Your choices got you where you are, their choices have gotten them where they are. If you want to be charitable, that’s fine. But don’t feel guilty.
Guilt repels prosperity. And don’t let anybody else sell you negative ideas about money either.
Your emotional relationship with money is very important. You might not realize you even have an emotional relationship with money but you do, and it’s fragile and easily, adversely affected.

People who constantly lack money have in common negative emotions about it and toward those who have it. Their relationship with it is full of
fear, anxiety, envy and resentment. People who have plenty of money have in common positive emotions about it. This is not coincidence. It is cause and effect.
Next, never focus on lack. Don’t dwell on or worry about what you haven’t got. Worry has never made money materialize. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t
work. Instead, concentrate on something productive and profitable, on finding new or better opportunity, on somehow making yourself more
valuable. Because of the nature of my business, over 30 years, I’ve gotten to know lots and lots – thousands – of people who once lacked money and now have a lot of it. Most of them are not any smarter than you.

Many do not have college educations. Some come from ‘mean streets.’ Many have failed once or several times before succeeding. They are genetically, intrinsically nothing special. Their thinking and behavior differed and differs from the majority who don’t do well financially, but they are not different – so anyone, including you, can achieve and enjoy the same prosperity they have if you will learn about and adopt their thinking and behaviors. There is no shortage of opportunity.

Don’t resent those who do well. All envy and jealousy of the rich is counter-productive, just as is the desire for something to be taken away from
those who have it, to be given to you. Everybody who is doing very, very well financially has something to teach you, to reveal to you, if you
will observe them and study them. The fact that their success exists can and should inspire and encourage you.
It is tempting to look at the wealthy as undeserving or lucky. This is rarely the case. Few who watch Jay Leno host The Tonight Show and know
how wealthy he is are aware of how much time he spent sleeping in his car – he was twice arrested for vagrancy, in L.A., near the current location of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This the truth behind 9

9% of the rich, the rich and famous, and the successful in any and every field of
endeavor; there is reason not happenstance.

Educate yourself about money and about success.

Instead of wasting any time in jealousy, envy, resentment, self-pity, or paralysis, invest that time in educating yourself. Even if you are ‘resources challenged’, the public library stocks countless books about success, biographies of successful people, how-to books about every kind of
business, as well as current magazines about money, investment, business and success. Prepare your mind for the financial position you intend being in, not the one you are in now.

Develop a ‘success consciousness’ as well as a true understanding of why and how money moves about, from one person or entity to another. Ultimately, sooner not later, you will need to narrow your focus to an area of specialty, a means of making income and developing wealth that you are going to personally use in the short-term. But you can start broad and find your
way to narrow. If you’ve never read the classic book in the success genre, THINK AND GROW RICH, by Napoleon Hill, that’s a very good place to begin.
As soon as you are willing to think of yourself as an entrepreneur, my book, ‘The No B.S. Guide To Wealth Attraction For Entrepreneurs’ is another
excellent resource, although it is a bit more advanced. Don’t wait. The saying is: time waits for no man. You can’t wait until you know a lot more or economic circumstances in your town or the world are better or the seasons change or for any other reason. You must start moving in the direction you wish to go, toward prosperity. Procrastination is the language of the poor. A man I know who made himself a multimillionaire
by building up a lawn care and landscaping business, then buying up other such businesses, began with a borrowed push-mower, cutting lawns on weekends. At night, he studied every book he could find on business in general and about the landscaping business in specific, read that industry’s trade journals, collected literature from companies in the industry. One day a customer whose lawn he mowed engaged him in conversation. Told about the young man’s business goals, the customer, a wealthy entrepreneur, offered to loan him the capital he needed to get equipment and start a business.

Most people would call this luck. It is not. It could not have happened if the young man hadn’t gotten started cutting lawns with a borrowed push-mower, and probably wouldn’t have happened if the young man hadn’t prepared himself to speak knowledgeably and intelligently about his business plans. I could tell you hundreds of nearly identical stories and hundreds more that do not involve a wealthy benefactor but involve some other “leapfrog” move, that all might be called “luck” by the ignorant, but all were sparked by getting started and by being prepared.

This is something we cannot transfer from one person to another, forcibly, by taxing the one and handing money to the other. It is called “initiative” and each person already possesses everything they need to exhibit it and apply it.

Important Notices: Contents are © 2008/DanKennedyPolitics, however anyone is free to virally transmit or distribute, copy and publish, or otherwise disseminate these materials as long as each each article, blog, e-book, etc. is disseminated intact and in full, including with this notice at its end. This item reprinted from DanKennedyPolitics and that entire site is in no way whatsoever affiliated with or endorsed by Glazer-Kennedy
Insider’s Circle™, Entrepreneur Press, Adams Media, Lillo Publishing or any other business entities with which the author, Dan Kennedy, has
connection. The opinions expressed here are those solely of the author.
And, while every reasonable attempt has been made to verify the accuracy of the content on which the expressed opinions are based, no warranty of such accuracy is made nor liability for same accepted. The contents of this site are provided for entertainment purposes only.
THE AUTHOR, DAN KENNEDY is a serial entrepreneur, celebrated business author, sought after advisor to businesses worldwide, and an accomplished professional speaker – frequently appearing on public programs with four former U.S. Presidents, General Norman Schwarzkopf, General Colin Powell; business leaders and super-entrepreneurs; and Hollywood and sports celebrities. Information about the author can be found at www.NoBSBooks.com. He may be communicated with directly via fax @ 602-269-3113.

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:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqhSx9t_QFY

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRYMDAEVBQ

Deb Osborne of Elysium in Crowhtorne, Berkshire:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmpKXj-drTo

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.

We sent newsletters in hard copy to thousands of salon & spa owners every month.... click on the image and complete the form to get your copy delivered, FREE, each month

In the Members Only ‘sealed section’ forums this week, a question from an Inner Circle Premium member which opens up a whole can ‘o worms:

“Can any one tell me how I go about making my newsletters appear in HTML format when someone opens their email?”

Two reasons that question raises alarm bells for me:

1) I fear this salon might be making the mistake of ‘downsizing’ to email-only newsletters, and

2) I fear this salon owner might be under the illusion that because email delivered with pretty pictures might look more ‘professional’, it is profoundly less effective than text-only email.

But let’s look at the biggest mistake first – relying only on email newsletters, believing that it ‘saves’ money and time compared with real, paper ‘n ink newsletters delivered in an envelope, with a stamp.

The argument for a hard-copy newsletter is compelling. As New York writer Ellen Neuborne complains: “I’ve been a member of a professional organization for the last eight years. Among the benefits is a monthly newsletter. It used to come in the mail, until last year … then it came via e-mail. Then that was updated so that I received an e-mail alert and a link to a downloadable PDF. “

Trying to do it ‘on the cheap’ by eliminating – or not starting – a hard copy newsletter and relying only on email is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Here at Worldwide Salon Marketing, we have an opt-in email list of well over 12,000 salons & spas who have requested our material electronically. We also have a physical address list of more than 5,000. Yes, a lot of our material is delivered by email – the link you got to this blog post, for example.

But every single month, every single salon owner who has requested our hard copy newsletter gets one in their mailbox.

(If you want to test me on that, go here and simply complete your contact details, and you’ll get our hard copy newsletter delivered to you free, every month, in the post.)

And I can tell you unequivocally, member acquisition through delivery of our hard copy newsletter are at FOUR TIMES the rate enjoyed by our online marketing. Yes, email might be far more efficient, but it is far less effective.

According to Dan Kennedy, by far THE most compelling reason to send hard copy vs email is:  getting your stuff actually read.

“It is THE only thing you can send to your customers with certainty it will be read by the majority of them. Most (marketers) foolishly like believing their customers read whatever they send them, but that is NOT the case at all. And good (marketers) are often fortunate to pull (only) a 2% to 5% response on a good offer to their house list, their own customers. Why would 98% say no? They wouldn’t. The vast majority never read the mail, e-mail, etc. Some years ago, I worked with a client with nearly 50,000 customers. On a solo mailing with a good offer, he typically made 250 sales of whatever: ½ of 1%. I convinced him to start putting out a really good newsletter and investing heavily in selling as many of those customers as possible into its subscription. Two years later he had 11,000 paid subscribers. We dusted off an offer he’d once sent to all 50,000, and made 263 sales, sent it to the 11,000, in a sealed envelope, in with their newsletter, and made 489 sales.”

Yes, the young 'uns might be wired...but their (older) customers like it written on paper, with ink.

It’s common, particularly among the under 30s, to believe that because they are fully wired, do not read newspapers, never send or receive ‘snail mail’, rely only on Twitter, Facebook, email and web, that their customers are the same. They grossly underestimate the numbers, particularly of older, more responsive, more affluent people, who prefer paper.

Relying only email and web, even SMS, to deliver communication to your customers and prospects is a recipe for swift death. Business is about relationship above all else, and you can’t foster a relationship with a weekly email, more than 90% of which are instantly deleted, if and when they get past the junk mail filters.

For members of our Inner Circle Lite program, everything – videos, interviews, downloadable advertising and marketing templates – is delivered online. And for that they pay a very small amount. (Go here to find out more.)

And our Inner Circle Premium members, as example, get monthly Advance Notice Marketing Triggers (containing all-new advertising templates for all sorts of ‘trigger events’ like Mothers Day, Valentines Day, Christmas etc etc) delivered to them by email and web. They talk with each other via the Members Only sealed section forums. Yes, we do conduct email correspondence with Members, for speed and efficiency.

But we don’t rely on it. Our Premium members get a new audio CD tutorial or interview posted to them every month, along with a Members Only hard-copy newsletter containing marketing suggestions, Member stories, and critiques of ads and flyers. Delivered to their physical address, in an envelope and a stamp. For those at Premium Coaching level,  we talk with them on the phone, every month, individually. During our seminars, we hold special Members Only closed-door breakout sessions, facilitated in person – by me or one of my team – where members can sit around a table with each other, swapping ideas, winning strategies, ‘AHA’ moments…We send our Members surprises, in the mail, irregularly, frequently, unannounced. We involve them as much as we can with each other, via our forums, on this blog site as Inner Circle member of the week.

The list of real ‘touchy-feely’ instances is a long one. And the newsletters- both to members and non-members – is the ‘glue’ that holds the business together.

FREE DOWNLOADABLE NEWSLETTER TEMPLATES: Our Inner Circle Premium members can log into the ‘sealed section’ here and get simple, double-sided newsletter templates they can download and use as the basis for their own salon or spa newsletter. Inner Circle Lite members: you’ll find a handy template in Week 6 of the Lite Program.

But if you MUST send newsletters by email…

1) DON’T bother with html (it’s nerd-talk for email with pictures and graphics and fancy layout). Business is about relationship at its core. You wouldn’t send a fancy html letter to your mother, would you? We gave up fancy html emails long ago. Our response rate went UP.

2) DON’T simply attach a pdf file to the mass email and hit ‘send’. You’ll clog up servers, and might get a very rude note from your ISP.

3) DO what we do. Send a plain vanilla text only email to your customers, with a link to the newsletter in html on your website.

4) DO personalize the email. Notice every one of the emails you get from us has YOUR name in it?

Feel free to comment on this post below. (And I fully expect a rash of ‘but my email marketing works great for me’ comments).

Here is a sample newsletter for you!

Salon-Marketing-Newsletter-March-2010

Luxury comes cheap in Bali - and they get people through the doors with efficient, sophisicated marketing

Rightly, you no doubt have zero interest in my recent five-day break at a luxury private villa near the beach in Bali, where the staff outnumbered our party of eight by two to one, and you couldn’t move without a butler polishing something or mixing you a clever drink by the pool.

But you might be interested in how we came to be there, and how a little island in a third-world country has profitably embraced the kind of marketing that any salon owner can do, but few bother with.

When I first visited Bali 35 years ago, it was a dirt-poor backwater of rice paddies and fishing villages. Electricity was a rarity.

But for many Australians, for whom Bali is but a few hours flight away, the island’s allure these days is as a holiday in a tropical paradise offering a vast choice of luxurious, cheap accommodation, where the people are almost embarrassingly courteous, civilized and welcoming.

In the mountain villages, among the rice paddies and melon groves, the people are still poor by western standards. Yet on a bicycle ride down the mountain from the volcano at Kintamani to the cultural center of Ubud, we were greeted endlessly by smiling children dressed smartly in school uniform.

But the astounding growth of tourism in the relatively-affluent coastal resorts like Seminyak has spawned a new breed of Balinese; well-educated, hard-working, industrious. (Unable to sleep one night, I walked outside into the dark, warm tropical air at 4am to find a lone security guard patrolling the villa grounds, and was taken aback when he cheerfully stuck up a conversation in very passable English. A security guard!)

But the pay, even for the best jobs in the big villas, is low. One of our butlers told us he earned the local equivalent of about $170 a month. Which explains why you can build a luxurious three-bedroom villa, including land, for less than $250,000! Five full-time staff, maintenance and utilities will set you back $1500 a month.

Typical among Asian countries, small businesses – and there are thousands of them, tiny shops all selling the same sarongs, handbags and wood carvings – have absolutely no earthly idea about even the most basic direct response marketing methods – ‘my’ kind of marketing. They’re all competing on price alone.

But the island’s (often foreign-owned, locally-managed) luxury accommodation industry has become very sophisticated at cheaply and efficiently reaching a global market that was all but  denied it until a few years ago, save for the laborious and clunky work of travel agents.

To find our villa on the coast near Seminyak, I didn’t even leave my desk.  Google ‘seminyak villas’ and you’ll discover brilliantly-executed websites that give you virtual tours of the property, location maps, vast numbers of photos, testimonials, nearby restaurants, tour operators, even menus you can choose to be cooked by your private chef. You can book online, you can phone them up, or you can get your travel agent to do it for you.

Here’s the villa we settled on – for less than $100 a night per head.

They leave nothing to chance. As I often say, the more you tell, the more you sell. The Balinese accommodation industry has discovered the immense power and efficiency of the web to generate leads, drive sales, confirm bookings. They might not be the most adept at other forms of media – direct mail, outdoor displays, print media advertising etc – but in this particular media, they’ve become slick, sophisticated and experienced.

It’s a lesson in doing one thing, and doing it well.