Salon Owners Fall for the Myth of Repetitive Advertising

by Greg Milner on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 1:03 am

Here’s a common nonsense spread by the likes of Yellow Pages and newspaper ad sales reps:

“You have to run your ad at least 6 times to know if it’s going to work.”

Ah, if only I had a buck for every salon owner who’s been fooled by that old chestnut. It’s a good ploy for the sales rep, for sure. As long as you believe that line, you’ll keep spending money on ad space in the vain hope he’s right. That eventually, the ad will work.

In the interests of Accurate Thinking, I’ll use an analogy to demonstrate the foolishness of this money-wasting myth.

If your ad doesn’t work the very first time, it’s never going to work.

Imagine for a moment that instead of selling beauty treatments or haircuts, you sell car tyres.
And in your city or area on any given day, there’ll be a number of people who, on that very day, have noticed their car’s tyres are getting a little ratty, a touch on the er…smooth side…and they need to replace ‘em quick before the cops pull them over and slap a work order on the car.

Typical salon ad you’ll see in the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. You could run this ad a bazillion times and you’d be lucky to get a phone call.

And let’s assume that of all those people, half of them read the local newspaper.

So you place an ad for your tyre shop in that newspaper.

Nobody calls. Zero, nada. Zip.

You call the newspaper rep and he tells you brightly “oh, you need to run your ad at least 6 times before it gets noticed.”

So you keep shelling out cash for this ad, week after week. Still no calls. By now, you’re beginning to blame the media for your lack of advertising success.

The truth is a little harder to bear. It’s not the media at all. It’s your lousy ad.

Let’s assume half of all the people who woke up that morning and decided they needed new tyres then opened the newspaper and saw your ad the first time it ran.

If the ad was any good, some of them would have called.

Here’s the real truth: the reason your ad didn’t work the sixth time you ran it is the same reason it didn’t work the first time you ran it – it was a lousy ad.

If it had been any good in the first place, a percentage of all those people looking for new tyres for their car on that very day would have called you.

It comes back to the Big Rules of an effective marketing strategy for a salon:

1)    Make the right offer,
2)    to the right market,
3)    in the right media,
4)    at the right time.

Clearly, in this make-believe scenario, it was the right market, in the right media, at the right time. Equally clearly, if those last three pins were lined up and you didn’t get calls, logically it was the first pin that was out of line.

So the next time an ad sales rep tries to sell you the Myth of Repetition, don’t fall for it. Either cancel the ad space, or change your ad so it answers the question at the top of mind of every prospect:

“What’s in it for me, right here and now?”

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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.