by Greg Milner | Jan 25, 2012 | Ads that Have Worked, Australia, New Zealand
STOP PRESS: We’ve just opened the NEW Salon Advertising Templates Webstore here!
If you are a Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle member you will know what an amazing marketing tool and integral part of the program the members only website is. Many members tell me how they often spend hours browsing around all the different templates and marketing ideas and solutions.
And each and every year the website grows as more material is added and the archive gets bigger. In fact there is over 6 years worth of archived material on the website now. It’s easy for some of the older archives to be lost in depths of the website.
And it’s safe to say that if you were to employ a design firm or an ad agency to create the material on the members website and give you multiple options for designs, template sizes and concepts, you would be looking at spending into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. On the other side of the coin, if you were to try and design all this material yourself, well firstly you’d probably need a degree in copy writing, graphic design and a heck of a lot of time on your hands!!!
So, in this new feature I intend to delve deep into the archives, blow the dust and cob webs away and unearth some of the hidden gems that perhaps you have never come across before.
In this first feature I am going to look at a clever little flyer that was actually created by a Pizza Shop.
This was actually one of the very first promotions we use for our salon D’Aguiar: hair.skin.nails after joining the Inner Circle Program back in 2007 and it was a huge succuss. Our version was slightly different and at the top said ‘FREE $20 Voucher – No Strings Attached’ We then looped a piece of string through the flyer and hung it on peoples door knobs around our neighbourhood. We consistently got 10 bookings from every 100 door flyers delivered and we had so many people saying they LOVED the out of the box marketing!
We still have dozens of clients that come to our salon today who originally came from this flyer. So when you think for the cost of a $20 service, we have made upwards of $4 – 5K from EACH of those clients since then, it’s a pretty good return on investment!
Here’s a link to find this template in the members only sealed section.
http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members/salon-marketing-ideas/ideas-to-steal/a-different-kind-of-mailbox-flyer-try-this/
If you are a WSM Member and want to share a success story from another members only website ‘hidden gem’ then drop me an email chris@worldwidesalonmarketing.com and I’ll be sure to feature it in an up and coming article!
If you are NOT a WSM Member and are sick and tired of sitting in front of a computer screen trying to come up with designs and copy for flyers and ads, if technology bamboozles you, click here to watch the video and Request a FREE live demo of the My Social Salon program.
by Greg Milner | Oct 5, 2010 | New Zealand, The Smell of Success
I’m a firm believer in attitude playing a big part in the success or downfall of your business, whatever industry you are in. Winston Churchill once said “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference” and when it comes to Inner Circle member Heidi Morton of Bodyscape in Wellington, NZ, her positive, massive action taking attitude has made a world of difference to her business.
Heidi joined the Inner Circle program in the midst of a global recession (July 2009), but this didn’t stop her from growing her salon by over 40% and being so busy that she had to move to a new premises that was double the size of her previous spa!
Here’s an email I got from Heidi just yesterday….
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“After a full year of being involved in Worldwide Salon Marketing the results for our business speak for themselves. Whilst I had a good grasp of business and marketing options prior to becoming involved, Chris, Rachael and the team certainly made sure that I didn’t forget how important it is to ensure MASSIVE ACTION means MASSIVE RESULTS. I am now a firm believer in all wheels of the spoke.
Just over a year ago I had a profitable business that was making ends meet but certainly not a retirement plan. Being a busy Mum and a non beautician partner in the business I often neglected the marketing aspect of our business, focusing too much on the numbers at the other end. We had no trouble attracting and keeping clients but I knew we could do better, a lot better.
12 months later we have a brand new spa on Lambton Quay in Wellington, double the size of our previous spa, all paid for out of the increased turnover in our business. I would not have the courage to do this if I didn’t know of all the tools we could use that could generate us money.
We try everything and anything that WSM throws our way or we think can think of. Our Queen of Referrals competition run during 2010 (a version of the Queen of Referral program, but our Queens are competing for $1,000 of prizes by referring the most new clients and the most spend) has so far bought in over 200 new clients in 8 months whose first visits have spent over $10,000 let alone what they have spent after that. This doesn’t count referrals outside the Queens competition we run.
We have a monthly package deal that normally sells over 30 packages a month with add ons not discounts! We regularly do the Wellington Women’s package (our version of Hollywood women’s ? yes I like to put my own touch on everything!) and bring in 20 or so new clients when we do it. We sold over 100 of the packages on a voucher site when we ran it. 100 new clients in a day, $10,000 in a day – fantastic.
We put our karma cards on car window wipers outside the shop a free 30 minute service. The recipients of this love it and rave about how we have made their day. They refer their friends and we get more new clients. We use the yellow pages to advertise a package, not how pretty we look. Over the last 12 months we have had over 500 phone calls from our yellow pages ad (last year about 100). We display our packages everywhere , have a montly newsletter, weekly e-specials (always with add ons now not discounts). The only time I discount now is with our txt-a-deal days, whereby we may have a quiet day once in a while and then it is a discount to get them in the door today. Of course we don’t forget the basics, new client letters, raise the dead postcards, birthday vouchers, referral thank yous. These basics keep your current clients happy. Funny enough we recently moved from a $10 to a $20 birthday voucher and doubled the number we are getting back in the month, and a larger percentage of these back were clients we have not seen for a long time. At Christmas we wanted to up our retail sales so packaged together the retail products with free gift vouchers for treatments, this went down a treat. From December to February we always offer a deal for rebooking a free ad on service or product. We find if we can get the client 3 times monthly in a row then they won’t shop around elsewhere for a while.
Numbers wise, our turnover is up over 40% year on year, month on month. I have employed more staff and we are still growing. We have not gone backwards in over 15 months. I want to double over two years and we are on track for this to happen. Our staff love that they are more busy and have more $’s in their pay packets.
WSM is not an easy fix, it takes time and effort. I love the way it prompts me to think outside the square, I have some great ideas to implement in 2011 (2010’s move took up too much of my time!) and can’t wait to see what happens with my business.
By the way, this year I have had two overseas holidays, won another trip overseas (karma coming back to get me!), spent more quality time with my kids and have felt a lot happier about where I and the business is heading. However I never lose sight of the customer, our most important asset and whilst I know I can get new clients easily I still look after our current clients with quality, friendly service with value added services for them as well. They love it and complain to us if they are not getting enough deals or promotions like last month, which was our best ever and contained no promotions other than our monthly special as we were too busy all our rooms busy all the time. Now if only I could find some quality staff to expand!!”
Cheers, Heidi
by Greg Milner | Feb 18, 2010 | Advertising Tips
A Salon Client Card Template For Advertising – is this the world’s WORST ad?
If you own a salon business or a day spa business, you’ve probably put at least some effort into crafting an ad that might pull some response. Unless you’re equipped with the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® (or even equipped with the very basics contained in the new Lite program) you’re probably doing it blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back, but I give most salon owners credit for at least having a crack at it.
But this salon deserves to have the earth open up and swallow it whole, never to re-appear. This ad was sent in by long-term Inner Circle member Rebecca Skehan of Gaia Hair in Queensland. Like most Members who’ve been ‘converted’ and educated in the kind of Direct Response marketing we do (the kind that puts so many noses out of joint in the beauty industry), Rebecca has developed a keen eye for the wasteful, nonsensical, slap-dash crap that passes for ‘creativity’.
In fact it’s a burden that many of us carry. Many times, I’ve been taken aside by a member at one of our salon owner conferences, and told
“Greg, your system has ruined my life. Everywhere I go, I see small business advertising that’s so pathetic I’m constantly having to stop myself from going into that business and ‘saving’ them…”
Well folks, suck it up. Knowledge IS a burden. I can never go anywhere and simply switch off. I can’t stop myself looking at an ad, a billboard, a letter, without instantly and consciously analyzing it, wondering what’s it supposed be achieving, critiquing it, mentally re-writing it. But you can’t save people who won’t lift a finger to save themselves.
Whoever ‘wrote’ this ad is clearly desperate, like a cornered animal. But obviously not desperate enough to bother taking the time or putting in the little energy required to find out even a little information on what works in advertising.
And it’s not difficult. Fifteen years ago, you’d have had to get in your car, drive to the library, take out a couple of books, drive home again, and spend hours studying. Now, there’s Google. There’s NO excuse.
Try this yourself: Google ‘direct response advertising’. There’s page after page of people trying to sell you stuff, written by some of the best marketing copywriters on the planet. It’s a veritable university on your desk. If ALL you ever did was study what these guys have written, the structure of the piece, the way it leads the reader down a slippery slope to the Most Wanted Response… and applied even some of it to your own marketing, you’d be that far in front of most of your competition you’d be outta sight.
This particular ad is barely worth spending any time on. Certainly, I doubt any prospective customer did. But a couple of points worth mentioning.
One, it’s clear ‘distress selling’. May as well hire a megaphone, stand on your salon’s roof and shout “Hey, we’re starving, there’s really nothing going for us at all, but we’re really cheap!”
Second, the most important thing about any print ad is it’s headline. If the best you can come up with is the name of your salon, go flush your marketing money down the toilet.
Lastly, this ad begs for cheap clients, who’ll only ever want to spend five bucks. It has absolutely zero redeeming features. If I owned a salon nearby, I’d have a big sign out front that says
“We Fix $5 Haircuts”
Good grief. People like this don’t deserve the luxury of having customers.
FOOTNOTE: Even among our own Inner Circle members, there are always a few who are not long for this world. One, who joined the program recently, moaned and whined during a coaching call today that “no, I haven’t even opened the Toolkit, I haven’t been on the Members Only site, and anyway my business is different, this kind of stuff won’t work for me, and in any case I don’t want to do any of this marketing stuff, I want it all done for me…”
Sometimes, losers manage to weasel their way through a crack in our usually well-tuned Loser Filter.
by Greg Milner | Feb 15, 2010 | Ads that Have Worked
Did the headline suck you in – force you to keep reading? If you have a pulse, it’s the reason you’re reading this sentence now.
Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz – his advertising skills sold billions dollars worth of products
The headline – the ‘ad for the ad’ – was written by one of the greatest direct response copywriters of the past 50 years, Eugene Schwartz. His ads, for everything from beauty and diet products to investment services and gardening, have resulted in sales of billions of dollars.
Schwartz’s ads are so powerful, so magnetic, they’ve been copied in some form for decades. They’re classic direct response.
And yet…and yet, despite overwhelming evidence that direct response-style display ads, hard copy direct mail and yes, online marketing is the only effective, measurable, accountable form of marketing that any small business owner should invest in, I still hear
“but it’s so unprofessional, my clients are far too sophisticated/educated/up-market for that kind of thing…”
Well, I’m more than happy for the ignorant and the arrogant to continue wasting their hard-earned money on pretty, ‘imagey’ kind of creative advertising while the rest of us get one with what works, instead of re-inventing the wheel.
As the master of direct response, David Ogilvy once declared, ‘creative is what sells‘. He might well have continued, ‘who cares about winning creative advertising awards, if the ads don’t get customers to pick up the phone and buy?’
For the education and interest of those readers wise enough to at least acknowledge they don’t know much about marketing and would like to inform themselves – being armed with knowledge gives you a pretty good buffer against making dumb, expensive mistakes – here’s a small sample of some of the greatest direct response advertising ever printed.
(And for Inner Circle members, the complete Eugene Schwartz ‘swipe file’ of classic, powerful headlines, available for download now from here in the Member’s Only ‘sealed section’ of the website.)
For those salon owners who are NOT part of the Inner Circle program, well I guess you’ll look at these examples, wrinkle your nose in distaste and sniffily declare them far too unworthy of your further study.
For those salon & spa owners smart enough to have joined the Inner Circle program including the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®, the following examples will hopefully encourage and inspire you to go back to your Toolkit and begin to better understand the thinking behind the hundreds of advertising templates contained within it.
You can right click on these thumbnail images and ‘save as…’ to download the ads in full screen, so you can study them in detail. My advice: analyze these from the point of view of ‘HOW can I use this information to develop better marketing for my salon?’ rather than “this isn’t for a beauty or hair business so it doesn’t apply to me!’
What does a gorgeous, “over-the-hill” international model do when sales of her new book are flat as a pancake and she’s got no idea how to turn it around?
Simple. If she’s Oleda Baker, she calls Eugene Schwartz.
This is the 1973 ad for “The Models Way to Beauty, Slenderness and Glowing Health” which eventually sold over 60,000 copies with the help of Gene Schwartz’s pen.
The caption beneath her photo is very effective. “This is an unretouched photo of 39 year old Oleda Baker, author of this eye opening new guide.”
Shirley Polykoff wrote this ad for Clairol in the 50s, “Does she …or doesn’t she? Hair color so natural only her hair dresser knows for sure.”
It was so successful in selling product that today Clairol is able to spend over $30 million a year in the USA alone on advertising – yet it won not a single ‘creative’ award.
The ‘Does she or doesn’t she?” headline was at first turned down by Life magazine as being ‘too suggestive’. The Life editors would turn pale at what advertisers get away with these days.
The myth that ‘they won’t read it if it’s too long…”
Advertising sales reps ought to be hung, drawn and quartered for insisting on spreading this toxic myth about marketing.
Most of ’em deride ‘direct response’ marketing as ‘okay for weight loss and hair replacement advertising, but you wouldn’t use it for professional services and products….’
Mmmm, really? Click on the picture here, the front cover of one of the world’s most respected business publications, and you’ll find a 15-page sales letter that’s pure direct response, sent out by the publishers to drive subscriptions.
Strange to say, it worked.
In 1919, Lillian Eichler was an 18-year-old working for a New York advertising agency when she was asked to figure out an ad that would sell a bunch of old copies of Ealnor Holt’s pre-1900 The Encyclopedia of Etiquette.
But most of the 1,000 copies sold came back within the 5-day guarantee period, the readers turned off by the antiquated text. But the publishers (Doubleday) were smart enough to realize that if Lillian’s ad could at least move the books, maybe she could re-write the original and turn it into something more appealing to the modern’ reader.
It did. Lillian’s version, the Book of Etiquette, sold 2 million copies at $2 each over the following two years, nearly $30 million in today’s money. Amazing to think that such powerful marketing copy could come from the pen of an 18-year-old.
Now, take a good look at all the examples above. If you note nothing else, note this: ALL of them feature columns of tightly-written copy, not mere pretty pictures and a phone number.
Go apply that thinking to YOUR advertising, and what your sales soar.
by Greg Milner | Jan 25, 2010 | New Zealand
Hair Salon Website Template Free For NZ Salon Superstar of the Week – Lynda Moodley of Lynnel’s Hair Studio, Manukau
This week I got a very excited phone call from one of our Inner Circle members, Lynda Moodley of Lynnel’s Hair Studio in Manukau. Lynda placed an advertorial in her local Manukau Courier and the phone has been ringing red hot ever since!
Prior to being an Inner Circle member Lynda was your typical salon owner, chasing a dream to have a salon bustling with customers and money flooding out of the till, whereas in reality her dream was dragging her down and the only thing flooding in, were bills, bills and more bills.
And as I say to new inner circle members, joining the program doesn’t instantly qualify you for a salon full of customers and bags and bags of cash. No, you still actually have to put the work in to make that happen, which is exactly what Lynda has been doing day after day, week after week, month after month. And it is this MASSIVE ACTION that has seen her salon grow consistently each month, employ her first staff members and become the leading retailer in South Auckland for her product range.
Lynda Moodley Owner of Lynnel’s Hair Studio, Manukau
Since joining the Inner Circle program in 2009 she has seen her rate of new clients increase each month. In October she had 35 new clients, in November she had 46 new clients and in December she had 47 new clients. And I think it is fair to say that with her advertorial in January she will be breaking some more records this month….
Editorials and adverts (advertorials) are a fantastic way to promote your salon and more often than not will result in a much higher response rate than just an advert alone. It is a way to tell people a bit more about your salon and make them feel like they already know and trust you before they walk through your doors or call you.
If you are thinking about advertising in your local paper it pays to ask them (especially if you are a new advertiser) if you can have some editorial with your advert. Sometimes they will give you this for free in the hope of you advertising more with them in the future. Alternatively some papers will want you to lock in to a contract for x amount of adverts before they give you editorial space.
Lynda ran a 10 week advertising campaign with the paper. The first 9 adverts did not include editorial and the response rate was 2 – 3 bookings per ad. The advertorial in week 10 generated 27 phone enquiries, 15 bookings (12 of which were new clients) and an immediate income of $896.
Each new client would be worth on average $1000 per annum to Lynda, so the advertorial has potentially increased her annual turnover by $12,000.
Needless to say Lynda has found out what works best for her salon and will continue to run an advertorial column each month.
Members, click here to see Lynda’s editorial
And here’s what Lynda has to say about being an Inner Circle member…
“On many occasions I would sit in my quiet salon and think what on earth am I doing chasing a dream but there’s so much stress. I needed to be able to talk to others that are in my industry and understand exactly where I’m coming from and yes the inner circle program provides just that and definitely much much more.
Being a member of the inner circle program has decreased the stress level in my life in terms of marketing, gone are those days of sitting hours and hours in front of the computer screen and trying to figure out where to start with an advert. By being a member of the program we as a salon on average are doing 20-25 new clients in a month. October this year we did a record of 35 new clients and we have just broken that record again with 46 new clients in November.
My coaching calls are definitely my favourite. I am always excited to talk to Chris because I know even if I have had a low month he’s always there to encourage me and get me motivated. The other aspect of the program that I enjoy is the fact that everything is done for me all I have to do is just change my details and off goes the marketing.
Our most successful campaign that seems to work for us is the Hollywood Woman’s Hair Package. Every month we put out at least 2000 flyers and on average we get a return of 15-20 new clients taking up this offer and definitely topping that with retail sales.
According to my supplier Lynnels retails more products that any other salon that they supply in South Auckland
I spend at least 5-7 hours if not more on marketing each week. Just about every chance I get I’m in front of my computer going through the kit and getting an advert sorted.”
And all of Lynda’s hard work hasn’t gone un-noticed by her husband too….
“Well, my precious husband sees all hard work I have been putting into my business as well as still being a mummy and a wife so he decided to honour me and buy me my dream car. I drive it very proudly with my salon magnets on both sides of my car which includes a $99 offer and frequently I notice people at the lights or round abouts reading my magnet.
Check out Lynda’s new BMW!!!
My goal is to be DEBT FREE, to be full time off the floor and definitely expansion in terms of employing staff. We have just employed another hairdresser because I cannot carry the work load on my own.
And my advice to people who are thinking about joining the Inner Circle program is ‘DON’T HESITATE. You have nothing to lose. If you are looking at closing the doors to your business don’t do it the inner circle program has the answers you are looking for and the mentors are amazing. If you shut the doors to your business you probably will lose the very thing that can catapult you right into your financial freedom. Give the program a try, you have everything to gain.”
Well done Lynda, you really deserve these fantastic results from all the hard work you are putting in….keep it up!!
