Is your salon or spa marketing as hopelessly bad as THIS??
by Greg Milner on 02/12/08 at 8:36 pm
Michelle's been a dental nurse for 20 years...but even she knows enough about direct response marketing to know these ads are bad for business....
My beautiful bride-to-be Michelle is a self-confessed victim of glossy women’s magazines. But even Michelle, whose only education in marketing has been assisting me at seminars (which, mind you, is pretty good education) can spot an example of useless, expensive ‘brand’ marketing from 50 yards.
So she won’t be surprised (I hope) when she gets home tonight and discovers I’ve torn a couple of pages from her latest glossy to show you today.
(And yes, these two ads really are from guys called Frank and Ernest, here in my home town.)
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| Double click on these ads to bring them up full-screen. |
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These two ads – one for a hair salon, the other for a beauty salon – occupy full pages, costing (I estimate) many thousands of dollars each. And as any of our Inner Circle members would know, they are so bad, they’re laughable.
(And if you’re not an Inner Circle member, don’t have the Toolkit, look at these ads and think ‘what’s so bad about ‘em?’ then you’re as much a victim of lousy advice as these salon owners are.)
I’m not going to do a forensic analysis here of just why these salons would have been better off standing in the shower while tearing up $100 notes, but here are just a few of the more obviously glaring errors. You can double-click on these ads to bring them up in full-screen.
Take the first ad. Poor Frank Basile. (Although if he’s spending this kind of money on advertising, maybe he’s not poor, just misguided.) Frank has obviously been told by his ad sales rep that the place to put the name of his salon is right up top of the ad. As if his name alone is a compelling reason for people to keep reading the rest of the ad. Not that there’s much to read. Just a picture of a pretty babe – gosh, you don’t see many of those in these glossy mags – and some meaningless drivel about a new staff member who is ‘only 20…’ and a ‘multi-award-winning stylist…’
There is nothing in this ad that sells anything. Nothing that compels the reader to pick up the phone and make an appointment. Not a single piece of properly-crafted sales copy. No before-and-after pictures (which just might have been a proper use of the otherwise-waste-of-space bedroom eyes babe).
Even the line at the bottom, ‘visit our website at www.frankbasileforhair.com.au’ is completely wasted. What rivetting reason is given here for making me want to visit the damn website? Will there be anything there for me to look at, download, get for free? Dunno, ‘cos I couldn’t be bothered. And neither would anybody else.
Unknown to Frank, his ad is nothing more than a really, really expensive business card. (Frank, if you’re reading this, call me. You could do with the help.)
The second ad isn’t much better. At least Ernest had the good sense to put the name of his salon at the bottom of the ad. But perhaps even he realises that a name like ‘House of Ernest’ is hardly one that, standing alone, would give anyone much of a clue as to what the business actually does.
But it’s all downhill from there. Ernest, like most salon owners, likes to talk profusely about the business, the products, instead of talking about what is actually of interest to the customer. And that, of course, is
the customer!
Ever seen a weight-loss ad that doesn’t talk about, show pictures of…the customer? Nope. The weight-loss people worked out a long time ago that fat people are vitally, obsessively interested in themselves and their appearance. So you would imagine, wouldn’t you, that prospective customers of a beauty salon would be interested in their appearance too?
But Ernest, like 99% of salon & spa owners, falls into the fatal, profit-sapping trap of talking about his business. “Our clients have come to trust our therapists for their unsurpassed expertise and dedication to cutting-edge treatment technologies…” blah blah blah. Not a single line about the customer…her fears, fustrations, embarrassing skin blemishes, how she can look ten years younger in 6 weeks, the secret of the amazing product breakthrough that allows her to maintain that youthful new image with easy care at home, etc etc.
I could go on. Expensive ad space completely wasted with a useless picture of bottles of glop. No call to action. Meaningless headline. And not a single device of any kind which actually allows the salons to measure the effectiveness (or otherwise) of these ads. Just about any Inner Circle member who’s been in the program longer than two weeks could tear this ad to pieces faster than a lion dismembers a gazelle.
Dear Frank and Ernest hear this:
Advertising is Salesmanship in Print.
If your ads were live salesmen, you’d have them mercifully put down. But you continue to lavish money and hope on expensive marketing that doesn’t sell anything. It’s no wonder, I suppose. There are very few voices – apart from mine – that are prepared to deliver the brutal reality required to save salon owners like Frank and Ernest from themselves.
*Sigh*.
Thankfully, our IC members have the tools, the education, the guidance to help them avoid being such ‘advertising victims’. And most importantly, the sense to realise that if even the world’s most talented sportsmen, business achievers and professionals need mentors and coaches, then there’s a fair chance they could use ‘em too.Â
Here’s my guarantee: if up to one month of using everything in the Inner Circle system – the Toolkit itself, the sales strategies, the Advance Notice Marketing Triggers, the one-on-one and Group Coaching Calls, all the new material uploaded regularly to the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’ – and a vast amount of other ‘done-for-you’ material – you have not increased your salon sales by at least 15% – you can resign from the program, and get all your money back (apart from shipping). Click here to see if you qualify for membership. (We get over 100 applications each month, and choose no more than 30.)
From our Inner Circle members…
From Christine Campbell, Sculpt Advanced Face & Body, Hastings, New Zealand
“Amazing, really amazing. We only joined Inner Circle in October, and already I’ve run an ad and a flyer from the Inner Circle toolkit – the ad and flyer combined cost me about $500, and within a couple of days had brought in bookings worth $5,000!
“It was the type of ad I would never have run before….no pictures, just lots of text – and we got no less than 50 bookings in a few days. It’s quite a thrilling experience to hear the phone ringing over and over again as soon as we ran the ad.”
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A post by Greg Milner The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality. Greg is co-founder and CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing, a writer, direct response marketing consultant, specialist marketing systems adviser and coach. He (sometimes) accepts private consulting clients. |
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