The difference marketing makes – how to get 18 extra bookings in a week

Towards the end of last December, I received an email from a very distressed Salon Owner based in an upmarket part of Johannesburg East. For most Salons in South Africa, November and December are the busiest months of the year. However, for this Salon Owner, her November and December was dead quiet. In fact, it was so dead that she told me if things didn’t turn around quickly, she wouldn’t even be able to pay her suppliers at the end of January.

In her email, she asked me if Salon Management Studio could help her put together a promotion that she could use to market her business through Salon Studio’s CRM Software. Because her Salon specialized in weight loss, we created a special offer that she could email to her database, print out as flyers and use for a post box drop. You can see the promotion below.

Click here to download

I gave her the ready-made special offer early in January. Three weeks after creating the promotion, I phoned her to find out how it was going. To my absolute amazement, her answer was, “I haven’t done anything with the promotion.” Two weeks later, she was selling off her equipment and her doors are now closed.

The sad part – she only opened her business in October 2012 and by February 2013 it was gone!

In the meantime, I took the weight loss promotion and uploaded it to Salon Management Studio’s Marketing Toolbox for Salon Owners and I waited to see what some of my other customers would do with it. (In the second half of this case study, I am going to show you how much cashflow one Salon Owner created with the exact same marketing template.)

So what went wrong?

Mistake # 1: I don’t need marketing because if I build a gorgeous Salon with the latest products and equipment, people will automatically beat a path to my door!

This Salons problem actually started before the business even opened its doors. Right from the word go, this Business Owner made the biggest business mistake I see people make when they open a Salon. They spend ninety five percent of all their time, money, energy and thinking on products, equipment and interior design while almost no time, money or energy is spent thinking about how to find and retain customers.

The fact is, if you don’t have a steady stream of customers coming in the door, you don’t have a business. But, for some insane reason in the beauty industry, marketing is an afterthought. Salon Owners seem to spend hundreds of thousands of Rands opening a business, and only after the doors open do they stop begin thinking about how to get their scheduler full. Please don’t make this mistake.

In our marketing workshop, “The frustrated Salon Owners guide to marketing that works and puts money in the bank” one of the business principles we teach is, “Before you by a product for your Salon, have a proven, tested plan to sell it.” You may have the best products, the latest equipment and the most beautiful Salon in your suburb, but none of that guarantees success if you don’t have a marketing plan.

Mistake #2: You can’t make money without taking action

Could this Salon Owner have increased sales and filled her scheduler if she took action and started aggressively marketing her Salon? Of course she could have! – in fact I will prove it to you shortly. Stop and think about it – the timing for selling weight loss packages was right – it is really easy to sell weight loss programs in January and February after everyone has spent the whole of December eating junk.

My business partner Peter has a wonderful expression, he says “If you want to catch fish, you have to get wet!”  Every Salon Owner I know wants to make a success of their business, but there are very few Salon Owners who are willing to “get wet.” I recently had a Salon Manager in Pretoria East ask me to give her advice on how to improve a promotion, when I told her how she could improve her marketing, the response was, “I don’t have the time to do it properly.” I beg your pardon? You don’t have the time to do the one thing that brings money into your business??

No wonder why so many Salon’s across the country have empty diary’s for most of the week! You have got to take action, but you have got to take the right action. It is not the economy that is causing Salon’s to close down. It is salon Owners and Managers who are busy doing the wrong work.

R18 000 worth of Sales

Speaking of taking the right action, now let me tell you about Natalie Sadie from Satten Faces in Vanderbijl Park. For many years now, Vanderbijl Park has been an economically depressed area as many of the steel industries in the region scaled down dramatically.

But, as I teach in all my marketing workshops, location has very little to do with your Salon’s success if you know how to market.

Natalie holding the weight loss promo

Natalie recently made a decision to get serious about her marketing and she now spends more time doing marketing and less time doing treatments.

Over December, Natalie spent a lot of time working on her customer database. Remember, what you do in December will determine what kind of January you will have. What you do in March determines what kind of April you will have etc… So Natalie phoned almost all of her customers and updated their contact details. She even contacted inactive clients and got permission to send them specials via email. Remember, your marketing can only be as good as your customer database.

Next, Natalie booked herself into one of Salon Management Studio’s Email Marketing Workshops at the end of January. She equipped herself with knowledge and tools that makes the work of marketing easy!

After attending the workshop, Natalie logged into the Salon Owners toolbox inside of Salon Studio CRM and guess which ready-made, done for you weight loss promotion she came across? The same one I created for the Salon Owner we spoke about earlier.

Natalie downloaded the ready-made promotion, did a little sales thinking and added in her a special offer using weight loss services she offered on her treatment menu. She also printed it out and placed it all over the Salon The ready-made promotion was designed to sell weight loss packages by driving clients to your salon for a consultation and a trial demonstration which they paid a small fee for. At the end of the trial, the client is presented with a special offer on a series of ten treatments. In Natalie’s case, it was approximately R1000 for the package.

Next, she sent the promotion via email to 120 select clients on her database – the results? Eighteen extra clients booked in for the week. Her scheduler is full and she has feet walking through her door. Every one of those 18 clients can be rebooked and upsold. In fact, Natalie actually commented to me that she even ran out of certain stock items and had to place another order with her supplier!

Now here is the point I want to make – how much money did it cost Natalie to generate R18000 worth of Sales – NOTHING!

So the question I want to ask you is, “IF NATALIE SADIE CAN DO IT, WHY CAN’T YOU?”

If Natalie can update her database, what’s stopping you

If Natalie can get the tools and training, why can’t you?

If Natalie can put the right message in front of the right people at the right time, why can’t you?

If Natalie can get her Scheduler full in Vanderbijl Park, why can’t you?