‘What YOU think doesn’t matter…a damn.’

by Greg Milner on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

It’s tough, changing the whole way you think about your lovely salon or spa, your image, what friends and family think about you and your business.

More regularly than I can be bothered with, we get salon & spa owners – not, I should qualify, those who are already Inner Circle members – offering their sneering contempt at the kind of customer-grabbing marketing tools, strategies, tactics, copywriting, templates and advice we provide to our Members.

(And for yet more overwhemlming evidence that ‘my’ kind of marketing works – as against the usual ‘pretty’ advertising that blights the beauty industry like a money-burning cancer – see below)

Until, of course, they become members, and it miraculously starts working for them. (Or, to their horror, they don’t become Members, and they see it working brilliantly for their competitors!)

I was brought to this train of thought by a paragraph in a recent Dan Kennedy newsletter, where a new member wrote:

"I don’t like being marketed to… I refuse telemarketing calls, I get upset over so-called free products that you have to pay shipping charges for, I don’t like today-only bonuses, I don’t like expiration dates, I don’t even like $9.95 – it’s ten bucks. But I want to become a real marketing person…"

He went on, but you get the drift. Here’s the lesson:

Whatever your thoughts and personal opinions about marketing in general, specific tactics in particular, or whether you like or do not like being ’sold to…’ – they are your personal opinions, NOT necessarily those of your customer.

You are not your customer. What you think about your marketing matters not a damn, it’s what your customer thinks that matters.

(And if you, dear salon owner, are reading this newsletter for the first time after years of spending thousands of dollars on pretty ‘brand’ marketing that gives you a wonderful warm feeling, generates loads of compliments from your staff, friends, family and the lawnmower man – but not a dollar of revenue from those know-nothing ‘customers’ – then perhaps this is a wake-up call; the only opinion about your marketing worth a penny is the opinion of your customers – and they vote with their wallets, not their mouths.)

As Inner Circle member Kanna Reilly of Scottsdale, Arizona says in this month’s Inner Circle CD of the Month, "we used to do all that kind of lovely, high-gloss stuff. It never worked, but even knowing that, the first time we took a bunch of your flyers down to the post office to send out, in plain white envelopes, it was still hard for me to reconcile that with the up-market ‘image’ of our business.

"Until of course, the money started pouring in from that mailer. We did $9,000 in sales over the next few days. Up till then we’d rarely take that much money in a MONTH!"

It comes down to this: sure, keep your opinions about what constitutes so-called ‘tacky’, hard-nosed direct response marketing versus so-called glamor, imagey, up-market ‘brand’ marketing. Just don’t let those opinions interfere with what actually works.

Keep them to yourself, and ignore the opinions of everyone else, except those who might, or do, give you money.

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.