Salon Marketing; here’s what you’re missing out on in the headlong rush to social media…
by Greg Milner on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 at 2:25 pm
‘Everybody’ is rushing headlong into social media, Facebooking themselves into a lather of red-faced emotional excitement. It’s the bright shiny object, and the ‘experts’ are shouting at whomever will listen, “don’t bother with anything else, Facebook etc is where you need to be.”
Well, let’s get a little perspective here. Sometimes, you need to take a deep breath and look at things with a little of what I call ‘accurate thinking.’
Let’s take a quick look at what kinds of media are available for salon & spa owners to use in their marketing.
I’ll lump Facebook, Google, email, Twitter, mobile phones and anything else you use a screen to look at as ‘Online’.
(And I’ll include in that the ‘daily deals’, which are marketed exclusively online.)
Then there’s everything else. All that old-fashioned, dreary, clunky, ‘expensive’ stuff that suddenly is so Nineties, so last season; direct mail, print advertising, TV and radio, outdoor advertising – I’ll lump all that together and call it ‘Offline’.
It seems pretty clear to me that salon & spa owners are increasingly falling in love with ‘online’, rushing to it like lemmings to the edge of the cliff. And in the mad rush, increasingly ignoring everything else. Email, social media, web marketing are the new Kings, relegating ‘traditional’ media as mere serfs and peasants.
Well, I’m here to tell ya, if that’s how you’re thinkin’, you’re missing opportunity. There IS validity in the argument that says “look around at what everybody else is doing, and do exactly the opposite. The herd, as Warren Buffett is fond of saying, is almost always wrong.
Victoria's Secret mail 400 million catalogs a year. Hmmm, if online marketing's so hot, why would they do that?
Here’s why you need to pay attention:
As more and more businesses abandon ‘old-fashioned’ media in favor of the siren call of online, seduced by it’s newness, it’s perceived cheapness, its ‘instant’ results, they’re unwittingly running into quicksand. The law of diminishing returns applies. You can double the power of a car’s engine, but the speed only increases by 30%, not 100%.
The more people rush to online, the more difficult it is to attract attention, to be heard above the ever-growing noise.
And suddenly, back in the ‘offline’ room, you can hear a whisper. Because nobody’s there. And that’s where opportunity lies, my friends.Think about this: your mailbox was once one of the few methods by which advertisers could reach you. Today, almost nobody sends marketing by direct mail any more.
And here’s the secret: those in the ‘almost nobody’ category are reaping the rewards of near-empty mailboxes.
According to the Direct Marketing Association of America, Victoria’s Secret ships more than 400 MILLION catalogs a year in the US alone – that’s 1.33 per person. And merchants across the US are sending a total of over 20 billion catalogs annually, a figure that’s increasing by 5% annually.
They’re doing it because
a) it works. And it’s working better and better, as it competes with fewer and fewer marketing messages directed at the consumer’s physical mailbox. The air in the mailbox is getting clearer and clearer.
b) They’ve figured out that ignoring direct mail would actually reduce the effect of the effort their putting in online.
The really smart businesses are increasing their use of old-fashioned media, not decreasing it. Victoria’s Secret sales generated by a combination of catalog-driving-to-online are increasing 10% annually, compared with only 4% annual increase in the company’s stores.
Is online really the ‘holy grail’? Not according to some of the world’s biggest ‘online’ companies. Google persistently uses hard copy to pitch its ad space. Hmmm. If Google can’t figure out how to market themselves using only online media, how are you doing?
Price comparison website moneysupermarket.com has just hired a direct marketing company to manage its first hard-copy mail campaign. Huh? Now, hooda thunk it – why would an online company want to use old-fashioned, clunky letters ‘n stamps ‘n envelopes?
And as more and more email becomes pesky, direct mail becomes more welcomed. According to research by Pitney-Bowes (admittedly a direct mail specialist) more than half of people surveyed got annoyed by monthly emails. Only 23% found regular direct mail aggravating.
There are very good reasons we at WSM focus a large amount of time on creating more and more advertising and marketing templates for our member salons in a form designed to be used in good ole hard copy; print ads, posters, letters, mailbox flyers and more. Email and other forms of online marketing might be efficient. But nothing is as effective, as long-lasting as hard copy.
WSM member salons & spas can access literally hundreds of templates for all their advertising needs in the Members Only sealed section website here.
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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. |
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Sandra
Feb 21st, 2012
I don’t believe what I just read – this is either an early April Fools joke or else you are the biggest hypocrate in the world Mr Milner. Your article opens with this
‘Everybody’ is rushing headlong into social media, Facebooking themselves into a lather of red-faced emotional excitement. It’s the bright shiny object, and the ‘experts’ are shouting at whomever will listen…
This from the man who has been promoting the use of Facebook to ‘whomever will listen’ for the past 18 months (go back and check some of the things you said in your videos and wrote in your articles about Facebook).
Can’t take you seriously anymore.
Sandra.
Greg says:
I’m not in the habit of responding to those who prefer to hide behind the anonymity of a first name, and aren’t willing to present any credentials to back their opinions. My own credentials, experience and history of providing marketing advice, tools and logical, well-thought-out strategies over many years are publicly available for all who want to find them. At no stage have I ever suggested that online marketing is invalid. To the contrary, in article after article I’ve nagged till I’m blue in the face that a business cannot grow without marketing online – in ALL its forms. You need only browse through years of posts on this website to know that.
Facebook (and various other legs of social media) are important. I’ve never said otherwise. You cannot afford to ignore them. But they’re just media. The internet is nothing more than another form of media, with a few unique attributes. Doesn’t make it any more deserving of attention than any other form of media.
I was not, in this post, in any way suggesting social media marketing – or any other form of online marketing – was invalid. To suggest I was doing so betrays a Johnny-come-lately ignorance of everything I’ve ever taught over many years. Read the rest of the website before shooting your mouth off.
This post was very clear in its intent – go ahead, market yourself as hard as you can on Facebook and everywhere else you can think of online. But to do so while at the same time ignoring the more expensive, more difficult, sometimes slower, less efficient (yet more often than not more effective) forms of media is short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating in the extreme. Further, it signalled a caution: take with a grain of salt the advice of self-proclaimed experts who will tell you with a straight face that online is the only thing that matters, that direct mail and all other forms of non-electronic media are dead…
Hopefully ‘Sandra’, whoever and wherever you are, your stated assertion that you will no longer take me seriously gives me some confidence that you’ll keep your anonymity intact, and such asinine, ill-informed proclamations to yourself.
Beth Brennan
Feb 21st, 2012
Hi Greg, no doubt the power of direct mail is awesome – only thing Victoria Secret has an amazing army of spokes bodies! While the capacity of direct marketing continues to defy trends such as social media the cost in Australia is prohibitive. How can we hope to challenge and join the body beautiful in a cost effective way?
Greg says:
Beth, I used Victoria’s Secret as an extreme example to illustrate a point. Having said that, any business can use direct mail – if they do it with a pulse – in conjunction with and as support for online marketing. Eg, newspaper ad with point to website and some kind of free downloadable offer; letters to clients with point to Facebook fan page to ‘like’ in return for some kind of reward; hard copy newsletters (the old fashioned ‘Trojan Horse’) with competition tied to website to increase hits and therefore search engine rankings.
As to ‘cost’ of postage – it’s all relative. Prohibitive…really? If you spend $1,000 on properly-crafted direct response piece in hard copy mail, or print advertising, and bring in $10,000 in business at a gross ROI of 10 to one, is it expensive – or cheap?
It’s all about testing, measuring, testing again, finding what works, and then rolling it out in bigger numbers.
And here’s another thing to think about: if it costs you $20 to acquire a $2,500-a-year client using online media, but it costs ten times as much $200) to acquire a similar customer by direct mail or other forms of offline marketing, does that invalidate the use of the more expensive media? No, of course not. Because the ROI on both makes both of them worthwhile. You just have to know your numbers.
In a perfect world, we would all lazily rely on our online presence alone. But Worldwide Salon Marketing would not exist today had I ignored direct mail, print marketing etc because it was more ‘expensive’. Indeed, I continue to spend at least as much offline every year as I do online.