Salon Marketing Superstars – Inner Circle Member of the Week Michelle Weston

by Greg Milner on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am

Long term IC member and Toolkit owner Michelle Weston of Northmead Beauty Therapy in New South Wales - "massive action gets massive results"

Every time I hear ‘oh, your kind of marketing doesn’t work for my business/my town/my clients’, and tell one of our veteran Members about it, they literally laugh out loud. Members like Michelle Weston of Northmead Beauty Therapy in New South Wales, who’s enjoying year-on-year growth of 35% thanks to doing it my way.

She writes:

“Did you know that we have now been dealing with each other for over 4 years now?

Despite having the Toolkit I never really took EVERYTHING you said on board until I closed one of my salons and was able to focus on one. I de-cluttered, re-evaluated in July 2007 and have not looked back. I now have a full time receptionist and still we simply cannot keep up with everything I have in place.

Here’s a sample of the kind of marketing I do all the time:

I use New Client Letter series 1, 2 & 3, sent every Monday

Birthday letters

The ‘Rupert the Dog’ letters to get ‘lost’ clients back in (although we never use Letter #2 of this series as we get such a good result with the 1st letter)

Monthly newsletter (sent with everything)

SMS only very occasionally,

Email, always using the idea of 1, 2 & 3 of repeating the promos in emails

Every email goes as the home page on my website and is also in the monthly newsletter

4 visit voucher

Mini membership

Gold, Silver Bronze Membership (only available once a year about now!!)

I use every monthly promo you offer (Advance Notice Marketing Triggers emailed to all Members); xmas, valentines- mothers day etc etc

Our main focus of our website is to attract clients into our store or to at least make contact with our store, not to sell to them. It is then up to my therapists to follow (the system in the Selling Like Crazy component of the Toolkit)

Not everything works for every salon thoug. Surprisingly, the Queen of Referrals has never worked with our older clients – they like to keep that they come and visit us a secret!

If anything is not done we do notice a decline in revenue. I find how busy the salon is depends on how much marketing I am doing. Obviously with all this to be done I do not work in my salon as a therapist.

Action is exactly what is required. Lately with so many ideas in my head I simply need to stop marketing sometimes in order for my salon to be able to cope with the influx of clients. At the end of the day we are a neighbourhood shopping centre and we need to give 100% service every time.

Results: Our last quarter to September 09 shows a 35.2% increase in turnover on last year! September 08 was a 36% increase on the year before that! I cannot give you a specific number against those times when we have not used a multi-step style system as we are very strict with how we implement our marketing and I have done so since February 2008. But I can assure you it took me a while to ‘get’ the multi-step mailing system but once I did, I have definitely seen a constant increase in revenue. Before that I was making money now I am making more money!!

Multi-step marketing?? means to me doing everything in threes -that is the key for me.

I try and use this philosophy in everything I do.

In May I had a new staff member start, and we did a “I want a $29 facial with Erin” promo using your basic idea new staff letter from the Toolkit. Price point was also very attractive. We used stock we received complementary from our suppliers to conduct the facials. Our tester stand for makeup was not being used much during this time so it sparked up some excitement there too.

The clients needed to pay up-front to make their appointment. The objective was for me was to see how many Erin could turn into rebook full facial and how well she retailed. She knew what was expected of her.

We sold 111 facials to clients, all wanting to meet Erin. That was $3219.

Plus, Erin sold $3346 worth of product!

Cost of promo absolute minimum – We did this as a home page on the website, sent email twice and had it in the monthly newsletter which sits on front desk and is given to every client as well as posted with every direct marketing letter during this time.

Erin even maintained 65% of these facials as regular clients!! That $$$ value works out to be about a potential $43,200 in additional revenue (each facial client is worth about $600 a year)

The exercise showed Erin what was expected every time a client visited the salon, our clients got to meet Erin and I got to see just how profitable Erin could be!

Every promo must go out in at least 3 ways, either via newsletter, email, web page, SMS or direct mail, newspaper. Promos are reinforced in the salon with posters in every room. Even posters must be done in a 3 theme. e.g., say in a-frame at front of store then in front area then in rooms.

At the end of they day I work extremely hard on my marketing for my salon. However, I do soooo much enjoy it and much of that comes from you, your staff and my fellow Inner Circle members. All your ideas keep me inspired.

Michelle.”

I rest my case. The time for insisting that this system doesn’t work is long gone. If you can’t make it work, it’s you, not the system.

If you’re finally fed up doing the same thing year after year, slavishly copying the ‘me-too’ kind of marketing 99% of salons and spas do because they’re too lazy/uninformed/un-motivated to do anything better… then it’s time you TOOK ACTION, joined the Inner Circle, got your own copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®, and finally started making the kind of money you deserve from your salon.

Go here to see if you qualify for a 30-day Test Drive of the entire system.

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.