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!!!

If you want the results that Lynda is achieving then you need to join the Inner Circle program TODAY and get your own copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®. Go here to see if you qualify for a 30 Day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system – completely risk free.)

Every week I have dozens of phone calls from salon owners asking about our Inner Circle program and more often than not I hear that old chestnut…”but I am in the wrong area of town, it won’t work for me, there’s not enough people in my area, it’s the wrong demographic….blah, blah, blah”.

I feel like saying to them “try telling that to Lucyanne Tipoki!!!”  Lucyanne, owner of Xpertise Hairdressers, is in the small sunny Northland town of Kaikohe where there is a population of ONLY 3000, and she is letting NOTHING stand in her way!

Lucyanne Tipoki from Xpertise Hairdressers in Kaikohe, NZ

In fact Lucyanne says that she often gets visits from other salon owners in her town trying to find out what she is doing and why she is always so busy, while they are twiddling their thumbs in utter boredom.

Lucyanne had been in business for almost 20 years, doing pretty well but in the last couple of years she was starting to see a huge decline in business and the stress was mounting.

“Things were getting stale, no excitement was happening and I think my clients were feeling it too.  I was almost ready to close my doors”

Fortunately Lucyanne made the decision to turn her business around.  She joined the Inner Circle program in May this year and got her own copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®.  And the rest shall we say, is history!  Here’s what Lucyanne has to say about the Inner Circle program and how it has changed her life massively in just SIX months….

“I MUST SAY I LOVE BEING IN THE INNER CIRCLE PROGRAM!!!

I received a flyer in the mail and what caught my eye were the words, SECRET TO SUCESS AND ROADS TO RICHES on the flyer.  But I put the flyer down and completely forgot about it until the next flyer came in the mail 2 weeks later.  I re-read the flyer again and I took action and joined the Inner Circle program.

I had attended the seminar in Auckland last year and I was very impressed and learnt a lot in that short amount of time.  I didn’t join that day because I had been in over draft and out of credit for a few years.  I knew I was going to join somehow.  It took me almost another 6 months since seeing the program to join and I must confess I was trying to come up with my own ways of writing ads and letters but after hours and hours of working it out, I just gave up and thought blow it, I am just going to join, (knowing that worldwide marketing has already done the written work for all their members).

So since I’ve joined the IC program it has added a whole new outlook on how to run a more exciting, fun, stress free, business.  It has changed my life.  It almost feels like I’ve just opened up a brand new business and it feels like I’ll do 100% plus better than the last 20 years.

It’s great receiving heaps and heaps of already proven ads or ideas from other members.  I love it as it’s almost like everyone is about helping each other out.

My most successful campaign so far was the Unlimited Free Foils deal.  I put the ad in our local Northern News and it cost $200.  Within 3 days I had sold 25 unlimited foils packages and made $2,200 extra in turnover.  10 out of those 25 clients were upgrades too so I increased my average client spend and 15 of these people have become regular clients.

The people in the far north thought I had won lotto. To give a way something for free in the far north is very rare.  People thought I was crazy.  (It has been a big eye opener to potential clients offering value for money in my ads because it has hardly been done in the hair and beauty industry).  But hey they took the offer and it has been an amazing response.

The phone kept ringing for weeks and still does.  I am known now for ‘Hey are you the salon that always offers amazing packages’.  It’s cool and I am happy to say ‘YES I’ve always got something free to give away’.”

*And it’s important to note here that with every promotion Lucyanne does, she gets it out there in as many ways as she can to maximise her response.  It’s on her answer machine, in her shop window, in her monthly newsletter, it’s posted to her existing client base, dropped in letterboxes and much more.  She takes MASSIVE action!

“I now spend about one to two hours a day on marketing as it keeps me all hyped up and excited ready for the next promotion.  I plan to triple my turn over and work more on the business than in the business.  I could do marketing full time.  I love it.”

And Lucyanne’s advice to anyone thinking about joining the Inner Circle program is simple…

“You really can’t afford not to.  Chris and Rachael are perfect role models for offering advice on any business solutions and coaching strategies they are so understanding and helpful.”

So if YOU want the kind of results Lucyanne and our other members are achieving (regardless of what town you are in), you need to be a Member of the Inner Circle program, complete with your own edition of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®. Go here to see if you qualify for a 30 Day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system – completely risk free.)

Interesting case this week which shows just how vigilant you need to be to stop people sabotaging your marketing efforts.

Untrained staff will do it all the time, if you let them. Phone rings madly after your ad comes out, only to be met by “uh…sorry, don’t know about that offer, hang on, I’ll ask someone…”

That’s something that IS under your control, and only YOU can fix it. But what about when your local newspaper refuses to publish your ad because ‘it’s against the law…”!!!?

Inner Circle member Tamara Jones of Beauty Bliss in Cairns, Queensland – 40 new clients from a single $300 ad on page 23 of the local newspaper. But no thanks to the newspaper itself.

It happend to Inner Circle member Tamara Jones of Beauty Bliss in Cairns, far north Queensland.

“At first they point-blank refused to run my ad at all,” says Tamara, “Then they refused to let me use the word FREE!“

Turns out that some fool at the newspaper had half-read – and totally misunderstood – a recent case where the consumer watchdog had clamped down on an internet company pretending to offer free bonuses which weren’t actually free, they were hidden by inflated prices.

Rightly so…but for the newspaper to interpret this as a blanket ban on the use of the word ‘free’ was clearly nonsense. I know this because, being the diligent reporter that I am, I personally phoned the relevant mouthpiece at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and got it from the horse’s mouth.

“Are you saying that it’s now illegal for businesses to give away stuff for free?” I asked the spokesman.

“Not at all,” he said, “all we’re doing is stopping people building the cost of so-called bonuses into an inflated price for the original product,” he said.

Sometimes, bureaucracy is a a condom on progress. But its effect is magnified a thousand times by officious and ill-informed employees mis-interpreting the ‘rules’ and needlessly preventing perfectly-legal marketing.

So what happened to Tamara’s ad?

On a happier note, Tamara persisted with the idiot newspaper rep. With no time to check the facts with the authorities, she agreed to change the word ‘free’ to ‘bonus’, and let the ad run last Saturday.It was published way down in the paper, on page 23.

“We had 21 bookings on Saturday, another 17 on Monday, more on Tuesday, and the phone is still ringing. 40 bookings so far, and the ad is scheduled to run again Thursday. I am so impressed. Of these bookings, only 2 are existing clients. My new therapist was supposed to be only working 3 days a week, she’s already doing 5 days…this is great for us, the salon is buzzing again, thank you to all the staff at Worldwide Salon Marketing…!”

Forty new clients…let’s say she keeps only half of them for the long term…and each is worth say $1,000 a year. So that single $300 could well have added $20,000 a year to Tamara’s sales. That’s pretty good leverage.

INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: Want to see the ad Tamara used? Log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and navigate to Getting New Clients – Beauty’ and you’ll find it in .jpg format you can download. Hair salon owners: don’t give me grief about ‘oh, that’s for beauty, we’re a hair salon’. Instead, think: “How can I make this work for my hair salon…?”

Inner Circle member Chris Burkinshaw of Turning Heads in Wagga, New South Wales, reports terrific success from a cheap little ad he ran in the free newspaper in his town last week. 

Chris took a template from the Inner Circle marketing & sales training toolkit, modified it to suit his salon, and booked space in the paper last Wednesday to test the offer.

Within two days, 7 bookings. By Monday of this week, another 8 bookings. And still coming in.

Ad cost: $330

Total sales so far: $9,200! (In a week.) That’s a gross return on investment of 27 to 1.

Plus, at a new to frequent client conversion rate of only 50%, and average annual client value of $1000, it adds up to an extra $7,500 of extra annual revenue. Do only that every week, and you’re adding $390,000 to your annual turnover, in a year.

 As Chris says, "we’ve never, ever had this kind of response from our newspaper advertising before."

Now, only Inner Circle members will find this ad in their email in-boxes in the next few days, but I will tell you what the ad DIDN’T have in it.

It didn’t have glossy pictures of glamorous young things sporting impossible-to-maintain hair styles that only have a place on the catwalk. It didn’t have vast acres of blank space, or clever tag lines. What it DID have was LOTS of text, a great OFFER, a simple, compelling headline, a guarantee that would make most salon owners vomit with fear, a Call to Action – and the name and contact number of the salon at the bottom of the ad, where it belongs, not the top of the ad, where most business owners would put it.

(NOTE to Inner Circle members: watch out for this ad in your in-box. Feel free to use it.)

Here’s how Chris describes their recent marketing breakthroughs….