Going LIVE on Monday, February 6

We’re adding dozens of new salon advertising and marketing templates to the Members only ‘sealed section’ website site every month – this month, a completely new series of templates for those salons offering specialized salon services.

Balyage (like Rachael Bilson’s hair at left), IPL, chemical straightening, remedial massage, hair extensions, fat cavitation and much more… the new templates are instantly downloadable in Word format so you can easily edit them to suit your own salon’s offers.

You’ll find them in various sizes and formats, both US and A4, postcards, posters etc.

Never stare at a blank computer screen again!

The new templates join literally hundreds of done-for-you advertising only for salons & spas, in the world’s biggest specialist library for salon & spa marketing.

Just a handful of the hundreds of instantly downloadable salon marketing & advertising templates in the Members Only website

All you do is simply download them from the website, edit them to suit your own salon’s offers and specialties, enter your own business name and address, and bingo – instant advertising! Never again stare at a blank computer screen, not knowing what to write or how to lay it out.

These templates are being continually produced by our copywriting and graphics team, adding to our vast library every month.

The Members website is a storehouse containing literally years of proven, done-for-you direct response marketing templates. They’ve been downloaded, tested and proven to grab salon clients fast, all over the world.

Online marketing, email, SMS, newspaper ads, radio ads, salon posters, client letters – you’ll find them all on the Members Only website.

Not yet a member?

Still sitting in front of a computer screen, tearing your hair out, not knowing what to put in your ads?

Go here to find out how you can get Instant Access, for less than the price of a cut ‘n color!

WSM member Juanelle Venter and family, of Rare Beauti in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Juanelle credits WSM - and her own determination to succeed - for the growth of her salon and her prospects for 2012.

A few years ago I was in an elevator on my way to deliver a speech at a hotel conference room in Sydney. The lift stopped and a disheveled-looking guy entered and kind of slumped into a corner, looking at his shoes. In the way of these things, I smiled and said “morning, how are you today?”

He looked at me, looked back at the floor. “I’ll survive.”

Mmmm. There just isn’t much even I can do to help people who get up in the morning with their best hope for the day is merely to get to the other end of it. 

But I can help people like salon owner Juanelle Venter.  Because she gets up every morning not with mere survival in mind, but prosperity.

Juanelle owns Rare Beauti salon in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I’ve never met her, possibly never will.

For years, Juanelle had been longing to join the Inner Circle Premium program and get her hands on the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit. But there was always one thing stopping her.

South Africa’s lousy exchange rate. The low value of the rand makes it tough to import just about anything.

But back in December, when we released the new, more affordable mid-level Salon Accelerator program, it was the break Juanelle had been looking for.

“Thank you to WSM for all I have received up until now it’s been MIND BLOWING!!! I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed as my time is so limited, but any time I have when I don’t have a client begging for an appointment or Husband needing time or kids needing time, I try to research and plan my next step. This is great stuff, you guys are a life saver and I foresee a wonderful 2012. This program has helped me with staff hiring, implementing rules and regulations for the salon, becoming more professional and soon, I am hoping to get off the tools.

I have learn’t that without marketing, I would NEVER have been able to move my salon away from home, become more successful, and even thinking of opening a school and distribution. I have complete faith in the program and really think anyone that gets the program will NEVER LOOK BACK!!!

Keep up the great service. And thanks again, Juanelle.”

Just a handful of the many hundreds of salon advertising flyers, ads, letters and posters available on the members website for instant download

What Juanelle and all the new Salon Accelerator subscribers found when they joined was the ‘pot of salon marketing gold’:

• Instant, 24/7 access to the world’s biggest and best done-for-you marketing template library, just for salons & spas
• One on one coaching & guidance on how to use those templates to get more clients
• Email support – got a question or challenge, need an ad or flyer critiqued? Just send it to WSM.
• Access to the exclusive Members Only Facebook discussion forum

(On the Members website alone there are already hundreds of downloadable marketing templates, used by our Inner Circle Premium members all over the world, and we’re adding dozens more new templates every month.)

Find out more about Salon Accelerator here

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 an Inner Circle 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 an Inner Circle 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 then you need to apply to join the Inner Circle Program and get access to the years of archives on the members only website and get your very own copy of the Essential Salon Owners Toolkit to help you market your hair or beauty salon/spa. Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive TODAY

Worldwide Salon Marketing is excited to announce that it is partnering with Salon Finder to launch the all-new Salon Finder app in Australia within a matter of weeks. It’ll be free to ‘claim’ your salon in it, add a bio, an image and contact details, and a tiny amount to subscribe and get your offers live on your salons very own App page…new ones every day if you like.

The All-New Salon Finder iPhone App

Salon Finder iPhone App (which is also available on iPad and iPod) was developed by Chris Sanders and his team in our Worldwide Salon Marketing NZ office and was released on the NZ App Store for download in December.  The App is not available in Australia yet but you can register your salon now at www.salonapps.co.nz so you are ready in time for the big launch in February!

As the world becomes increasingly mobile our industry has a fantastic opportunity to capitalize on this cutting edge technology while it is still VERY early days.

Think about when websites burst on to the scene 20 plus years ago. Done right, those early birds who got the worm set their businesses up for life! The only problem was the huge barrier to entry for Salon Owners – COST! Yes to have a website developed back then would set a salon back tens of thousands of dollars, which quite simply, most salon owners didn’t have!

And like the website craze from all those years ago, Smart Phone Apps are fast becoming the next big thing, so much so that many experts suggest that the internet is dying.

Similarly, with software developers charging tens of thousands of dollars (ouch!) to develop an iPhone App, cost will be a BIG factor preventing Salon owners from capitalizing on this technology now, while it’s running HOT!

So, Salon Finder and Worldwide Salon Marketing are making it very easy for Salon Owners to ride on this bandwagon now without the worry of crippling software developer costs.

Click this link here to see screen shots and information about how Salon Finder will help your Salon to capitalize on this ever-increasing market. 

And Salon Finder allows salon owners to take back some of the power from the ‘daily deal’ sites and do their own deals to tens of thousands of iPhone users who have high disposable incomes. And the best thing is that the customers contact them direct…there’s no middle man taking commissions of sometimes up to 50%. All a salon pays is a subscription fee, which begins from as little as $49 per month!

“The world has become more mobile, so our industry needs to move with it or risk being left behind,” says Chris Sanders. “Our industry is full of savvy, forward thinking business owners.  We are excited to bring this marketing tool to develop and enhance an industry we love. It also means salons can get away from their reliance on ‘daily deal’ websites that have been running loose and free offering cut price deals.  Salon Finder is all about empowering salon owners and building loyalty”

For more information on Salon Finder visit www.salonapps.co.nz or feel free to call Chris Sanders on +64 9 476 1592

A lot of people had a lot of good ideas before you were born. And most of those good ideas are still good ideas. But their lessons have been largely forgotten, which is why most hair & beauty industry marketing in the ‘modern’ era is a complete failure.

Take a look at this Revlon TV ad from 1973.

A 'Charlie Girl' had power and confidence unheard of among women in 1973 - hence the briefcase, and her hand on HIS backside instead of the other way round!

Anybody over the age of forty will remember the famous print and TV campaigns for Revlon’s ‘Charlie’ perfume. In the seventies, when women were still fighting to be seen as ‘equal’ to men, these ads were a revelation.
For the first time, they portrayed women as strong, deliberately sexy, confident and powerful at a time when most advertising put women firmly in the kitchen and laundry.

And if you’re a student of marketing, you’ll notice one more crucial thing: the ads aren’t about the product! There’s not even a hint about what’s in it, no dreary nonsense about how it was created by white-coated scientists with lots of letters after their names, in clinical laboratories using secret ingredients distilled from the purified secretions of a now-extinct South American tree frog.

Revlon founder Charles Revson knew the secret that most business people seem to have forgotten long ago; that nobody cares a damn about the product.

Revson’s advertising answered emphatically the only question that really matters:

‘Why should I, your prospective customer, buy this?’

There’s an old saying that talks about not being able to ‘see the forest through all the trees’.

Everybody suffers from it from time to time, even those who’re often seen by others as super-successful.

Like the salon owner who approached me last week for some advice. This very young salon owner joined the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program a few years ago when she was working alone and struggling, and became almost an ‘overnight’ success.

She devoured everything I teach about direct response marketing for salons, soaked it up like a sponge, rapidly and repeatedly implementing everything she found in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, and pretty soon found herself creating her own advertising through everything she’d learned.

Became, in effect, a marketing machine.  Her salon grew and grew, she bought another salon, and within two years of joining WSM was working almost exclusively from home, while her salons ran on automatic pilot.

But that wasn’t enough for all this new-found entrepreneurial zeal. It had to find another outlet somewhere. So she decided she’d develop her own skin care product line, and use the internet to sell it.

All good so far. Then she ran into a bank of fog that clouded her once-clear vision. She wrote to me and asked

“Greg, I need a bit of reassurance…is this web-based ‘glop’ a good idea, or am I frigging mad???!!! We all have these days when we wonder ‘what the hell…’ – don’t we?”

We do indeed. This is what I wrote back to her:

“Don’t think of it as ‘web-based glop’. There is no such thing as an ‘internet business’. The internet is not a business, it’s merely a media. Just one media.

You need to think of your idea as a business, like any other business. As a marketing and sales business that just happens to be selling a beauty product or products, using the internet as just one of the many forms of media it uses to get its message out, gather leads, make sales to those leads.

It’s much bigger than just an ‘internet business’. And it’s not something you can do for a couple of hours a week, sitting at the kitchen table in your track pants, thinking this is all it takes.

You’re contemplating setting up and growing a business. Not a hobby. Don’t think of it as a ‘internet glop’ hobby. Imagine instead that you’re setting up a drilling company, or a construction business, or a fashion brand. Do all the same things you would do for your ‘glop’ business as you would do for those businesses.”

She got it immediately.

“ Thanks for that…..reality check. You’re exactly right! It comes down to marketing and sales…there are companies selling the same product, the difference will be my marketing and my sales ability…which these other companies have no idea about!”

She hit the nail on the head.
Most people, particularly in big, dumb companies, lose sight of the fact that it’s not what you’re selling that matters, it’s how you market and sell it.
They fall under their own spell, mesmerised by their own wonderful product or service, deluded into thinking that their prospects, customers and clients actually give a damn about the product. They don’t, at all. People only care about what a product does for them, not the product itself.
Which is exactly why you see most companies selling any kind of hair or skin product blathering on endlessly about obscure and meaningless ingredients – essentially, selling the sausage instead of the sizzle.

So the next time you’re tossing around product options for your salon, look closely, ask questions, and when the product rep tries to blind you with science, hold your hand up and demand clear, concise answers.

“If you were standing in front of a customer, what would you say to this customer that would clearly, in a single sentence, convince the customer to buy your product as against any and all options available to her?”
Unless and until you get a great answer to that question, all you’re selling is ‘glop’.

“Give us a ridiculous, outrageous discount. We’ll send you a truckload of bargain hunters. And keep half of your money.”

Eager for even the most meagre of cash windfalls, thousands of salons & spas around the world have fallen for it. But what do YOU think?

WSM is conducting extensive research on the impact of the ‘daily deal’ craze on the hair & beauty industry. Please take our survey and give us your opinion.

Our survey is already producing some polarized results.

According to one salon owner in Reservoir, Victoria:

“I have not been tempted to employ the services of a daily deal company. However, I did buy a voucher from a daily deal website to inspect another salon. With 3 weeks left until the voucher expired, the young therapist, who was a sole operator, nearly began crying on the phone. She stated she was working 6 days a week, long hours every day and she simply could not honour the voucher unless a client cancelled. I felt so sorry for her (she also sounded physically and emotionally exhausted) I just left it alone!”

Another, on the Gold Coast in Queensland, says

“…personally I know of 2 businesses that have closed their doors after the “deal”. To be fair these salons were probably not traveling too well before the deal. but they both felt the deal hastened the death of their businesses. although I have said I feel the overall deal biz is a disaster for the industry, for smart operators it is a great thing. Between the GFC and the deal companies our industry is getting pruned. In my experience clients want experts and value, not second rate heavily discounted deals. We have never been busier and we never EVER discount.”

Dozens of salon owners all over the world are helping us with our research.

Please take just two minutes to give us your thoughts here.

(And no, we will NOT be releasing your private details:-)

Michael Hill Was Creating A Buzz!

Last week I walked past a local jewelry shop and noticed a long queue of customers eagerly waiting outside.  There was a rope fence separating them from the entrance and a red velvet curtain blocking customers from seeing inside the store.  The customers were standing on tippy toes trying to see what was going on inside…they were REALLY excited!

The blackboard outside the store said…

‘TODAY ONLY – Make Me An offer on All Jewelry in Store’

They had created a buzz, excitement and mystery with their customers and passers by, and put a time limit on it to add to that – TODAY ONLY!  People are naturally inquisitive and if they see people flocking like sheep then they don’t want to feel left out…they want to be in the know too!

As salon owners we need to be creating this type of hype with our clients, planning and executing our marketing with thought and not just being impulsive or reactionary.  That’s how so many salons waste money – as they say ‘you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’

And planning is exactly what Louise Gray of Louise Gray Skin Care in Ponsonby, Auckland did in order to sell over $6000 of Christmas 2 for 1 vouchers.

Louise Gray and her Team in Auckland, NZ

In a coaching call early in November last year I talked through with Louise the importance of building hype especially when doing a promotion such as this or similarly memberships.  I helped her to construct a 3-step email campaign and planned what dates to send out the emails.

The initial email called for her clients to register to get early bird notification when these vouchers went on sale – just 15 minutes more notice than non-registered clients.  The email also limited the number of 2 for 1 vouchers going on sale to create urgency and get people to register.

Email 2 reminded her clients to register and also let them know how many had registered so far.  This increased the urgency as it showed the demand for the 2 for 1 vouchers was HOT!

The 3^rd email was to pre registered clients announcing the vouchers where ON SALE NOW and created urgency for these clients to call and get their voucher before the email was sent out to all 2136 clients on her database 15 minutes later.

The sequence of emails created a buzz and subsequently sold $6000 worth of vouchers.  And of course that means there is going to be an influx of new clients in the salon over the next few months as the ‘free’ voucher had to be given to a new client and had an expiry of 3 months to get these people in the door fast!

And the best thing of all…email is FREE!

I have made the emails available to Inner Circle Members by clicking the link here…

So next time you are planning any marketing campaign, think about how you are going to deliver that campaign to your target audience to get the best results.

If you want to know the secrets to putting together a successful marketing campaign and creating hype and buzz with your clients then isn’t it finally time you joined the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle Program and got your very own copy of the Essential Salon Owners Toolkit.   Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit with done for you marketing and systems, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Those salons that did well from it succeeded because they rigidly enforced their own strict conditions on the coupon buyers. The many more whose businesses were severely damaged by succumbing to the overblown promises made by the deal company reps have cause to rejoice.

The daily deal craze is on very wobbly legs.  According to Bloomberg, more daily deal websites closed down in America in July (38) than opened (36).

In my home town, it’s reported that the entire regional sales staff of Australia’s biggest deal company walked out en masse. And investors in the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, Groupon, look on nervously as it’s share prices swings wildly from extreme to extreme.

The volatility isn’t surprising. And further evidence that the ‘bright shiny object’ of online marketing ain’t the saviour it seems. The problem with daily deal sites – all of them – is they attract and congregate bottom feeders, bargain hunters in search only of the next fantastic (and unsustainable) eye-watering discount.

As Dan Kennedy writes in his latest newsletter,

…these are not customers in search of a restaurant or hair salon to patronize on an on-going basis if they like it; these are hit-and-run raiders in search of the next bargain….”

Many salons & spas will attest to that. Innumerable are the stories of small businesses being buried in hundreds, perhaps thousands of dribbling, slavering coupon carriers baying for their deal, demanding an appointment now, abusing the business owner and staff when their rudely-delivered demands weren’t met immediately, and when they were, made it clear they were completely uninterested in either re-booking and becoming a long-term customer, or buying any retail product.

And worse, so inundating the business with loss-making trades that profitable, long-term customers can’t get a look in. I’ve heard of many once-profitable salons & spas being pushed to the brink of closing their doors, virtually overnight.

Neither should it be surprising that such daily deal websites produce such an overwhelming number of grab-it-’n-run bottom feeders. The very nature of the pitch ensured it. And there is more evidence that the craze is like a catherine wheel – burning briefly and bright, then fizzling to a puff of smoke and ash.

Facebook saw the writing on the wall months ago, dumping its own daily deal service after much testing with big name brand suppliers.

And ‘deal fatigue’ appears to be setting in even for the bargain hunters. According to Time.com’s Brad Tuttle,

More than 1 in 5 daily deal vouchers are never used. Increasingly, customers who do redeem them complain of pushy upselling, tricky fine print, or that the service or product was a poor value or just plain bad, no matter how big the discount.

For those more resolute salons & spas who resisted the temptation to risk the deluge in the hope of quick cash, congratulations. For those who succumbed and got burnt, it’s a lesson in the importance of not only how you attract your customers, but where you get ‘em from.

The Trust is Gone! What are you doing to earn it back?

Consumer confidence is a fragile and delicate item.

It takes month and years to build up, through long sequences of events where the client and the salon share experiences. In an instant, it can be smashed into a million pieces, and for some clients, there is no going back to the salon.

Consumers are now realizing that the grass is not greener on the other side, and now feel that the daily deal websites and salons were “ripping them off”. The deals that they were signing up for, at what everyone could see were ridiculous prices for any services based business to try and honour, are proving to be bad experiences.. This was taken from an email that was sent across my screen earlier this week… It is about a value add offer that was sent to an existing client of a salon, as part of their marketing for the month.

“Thank you,

But please do not email me this type of thing.

This shows to me that consumers have had enough of the daily deals websites that have been extremely successful at taking their money ( and making sales happen when they would never have happened ), and delivered an experience NOT to remember. Consumers are angry that it has taken up 12 months for them to receive their $20 haircut, which they have had to drive 90 minutes to get to. They have over promised and under delivered on the whole experience. (AS a side note – it shows the emotional power that these sites have as clients will purchase something that they never would normally purchase, in a location that they never go. It is interesting to see how human respond to different emotional stimulus.)

They bought something for the “NOW” emotion that comes with bidding – you want it now and if you win it releases endorphins that make you feel good. Everyone is happy. The salon picks up some income, the clients gets a good deal and the daily deal website makes money as well.

Fast forward to the actual reality that transpired. The salon is probably at breaking point with an owner that is trying to figure out where it went wrong, while trying not to pull their hair out. The client will be wondering why they bought something that they will only use once ( buyers remorse ) and never go near again because the customer service was so poor. The company will be inundated with requests for refunds as clients will not wait for their allotted time for their treatment.

So this begs the question – “What are you doing to earn the consumers trust?”

What are you doing to make them see you as a knight in shining armor, who will slay the multi headed daily deal beast with your sword and wisk them away to a place that is safe and warm, where it is all about them?

Building trust is one of the key foundations of any relationship in today’s economy. You will not see it on the stock exchanges of the world, but it does carry that power. One way that you can build trust is through keeping your appointment times consistent. By this I mean that you do not change them around on the clients. They need to know that once they have booked in that they are going to get the appointment time and day they wanted.

Also you can make sure that you stay in contact with them through monthly newsletters that educate and entertain the clients. Fill it with content that the clients will want to read. An example is the process of what happens to the skin when the seasons are changing, and what the skin will need to look it’s best during this time.

A follow up phone call to see how the treatment was for the new client, an old client as well as it shows the existing clients that you still care about them, can go along way to establishing trust in the clients mind.

Another way to build trust is to give them all the information that they want, so that they can educate themselves, and see that you are the obvious choice for the service that you provide.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Here’s your chance to prove it.

Worldwide Salon Marketing is delighted to be sponsoring the 2012 Australian Beauty Industry Awards, with the winners announced at a gala dinner event in Sydney on August 12, 2012.

Naturally, we’re sponsoring the Best Marketing category, with the winner decided by an independent panel of expert judges.  (No, Worldwide Salon Marketing will not be sitting on the panel!)

Winning a category will entitle the winning salon to market themselves as “2012 ABIA Best Of…” in all future promotions, and coverage of each winner will be featured in Beauty Biz magazine.

To win it, you have to be in it!

Find out more here!

Our Inner Circle members, armed with the Toolkit and the other systems as part of the Inner Circle program, have a distinct and ‘unfair’ advantage here, particularly in the Best Marketing category. Use it.