Mothers Day’s coming – do you have sales balls?
Want to know one of the biggest differences between a good salon owner and an average one? A good salon owner knows the difference between business and busyness. If you are the owner of a salon, you alone are responsible for the bottom line. Employees are paid to be busy BUT business owners are paid to create business. Owning a business means that your daily activities must show up directly as money made or money lost.
So let me tell you about Michelle Botha, a salon owner who has what it takes to create business. Michelle is the owner of LaFonte Hair & Beauty in Brackenhurst. My son and Michelle’s daughter just happen to go to the same Nursery School. On Friday afternoon when my wife stopped by the school to pick up our son guess who was waiting in the School Reception area handing out personalized Mother’s Day gift vouchers to all the Mom’s collecting their kids? You can see her voucher below.
Michelle Botha's Mothers Day Voucher
Now that’s clever marketing! In a very short space of time, Michelle met with, personally introduced herself and handed out hair, nail and beauty vouchers to over fifty Moms. I believe that this is not the only Nursery School Michelle has visited in her trading zone.
You might be thinking to yourself, “I can do the same thing” Of course you can! But have you? Mother’s Day is the biggest Marketing event of the year for Salons and your Mother’s Day Marketing should have started on Monday 30th April. Since the 30th April, I have been in approximately 20 Salons and I am quite amazed that absolutely none of them have even started marketing for Mother’s Day yet! In fact last week I had coffee with a Salon Owner who was told me that her business ran at a loss for the month of April. When I asked her what she was doing to attract new clients and get old ones coming back specifically for Mother’s Day, she told me that she has been too busy to focus on marketing her Salon. Sounds to me like she is busy working on the wrong things. How about you?
If you are passively waiting for a stampede of people to make their way to your Salon this Mother’s Day it is time for you to wake up. You are running out of time to capitalize on a great money making opportunity. If this blog post has been a wakeup call for you, then here’s a plan of action that you can immediately implement using your Salon Studio CRM Software.
A fool proof Mothers Day Marketing Plan of Action
Step # 1: Start your Mother’s Day SMS Marketing Campaign today.
For those of you who are starting your Mother’s Day marketing a little late, SMS is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to put your Salons marketing message directly in the palm of your customer’s hand. SMS marketing works, but just in case you’re sceptical about using SMS, here’s a story about a new customer I helped yesterday. At about 3pm on Friday afternoon I helped Lona Britz from Bushman’s Rock Spa in Pretoria send out a bulk SMS from Salon Studio CRM Software to over 600 clients. The SMS’s weren’t even finished being sent before Lona contacted me to let me know that her phone had already started ringing.
To learn new ideas and to keep improving my skills as a marketer, I sign up to every possible SMS campaign I come across. One of the businesses I have subscribed to is Mikes Kitchen in my hometown. This morning while writing this post I received an SMS from Mikes. It read, “Mother’s Day Breakfast Buffet only R49-99. Book Now…” Guess where my wife, my mom and my mother in law are booked in for breakfast this Mother’s Day? I’ll say it again, SMS marketing works. It is quick, cheap and easy – so get onto Salon Studio CRM and start sending targeted SMS’s now!
2. Email Marketing Campaign
For Salon Management Studio Software Users this part is really easy. We are the only Salon and Spa Software Company that gives you a complete marketing solution that includes ready-made promotions as well as the ability to quickly and easily market your Salon via SMS, Email, Facebook and your Website from one software platform.
We have done the hard work, sales thinking and design for you. Go to the Store Tab inside of Salon Studio CRM and download the ready-made Mother’s Day promotions from the Members only Website. If you are not a Salon Management Studio customer you still have a lot of hard work ahead of you. You are going to have to create your own Mothers Day Promotions and Special Offers. Make sure you create one promotion for to help men buy for their moms and wives and don’t forget to make a mother daughter package.
This year we have created four new Mother’s Day Promotions. Make sure that you download them and customise them with your own specials and Salon contact details. The templates are all in an A3 size format so you can print them out as Point of Sale Posters or you can shrink them down, email them out and even place them up on your Facebook page. Here is an additional email marketing tip – use SMS together with email to boost your sales and response rate. After you have emailed your promotions to your customers, send them an SMS that instructs them to check their email for V.I.P info from your Salon.
3. We are getting busy sales letter:
Here’s another idea that works incredibly well. Email a simple sales letter to all of your customers alerting them to the fact that your scheduler is already getting busy with Mother’s Day bookings. So to avoid disappointment they must reply to the email and book their favourite service for themselves or their Mom before they miss out. Make sure that you don’t forget to mention that your Gift Vouchers are the perfect gift for Mom this Mother’s Day. For more information on how to create and sell Gift Vouchers that sell like crazy click here.
4. Place your specials on your website
If you have a website designed by Salon Management Studio, you can quickly and easily upload your monthly specials to your website directly from your Salon Studio CRM software. We always recommend placing your specials up on your front page. Make sure that they are the very first thing visitors to the website see. If you have a website that doesn’t allow you to add your specials whenever you want, then you have a website that is not working for you. You see, a website should do the work of a Sales Rep, i.e it should create sales. The problem is that most Salon Websites are nothing more than static electronic brochures. You need a website that you can regularly update with special offers, news and customer testimonials – not a boring static website that never changes.
If your website is not collecting prospects contact details or selling bookings to your Salon send an email to Jacques and we will show you how to turn your website into a sales tool that actually pays for itself every month.
5. Are your Mother’s Day Specials posted on your Facebook page?
If you have 200 customers on your database, I am willing to bet that at least 100 of them are on Facebook. Facebook marketing is free, quick and easy. As soon as you update your page with your specials, they are immediately placed on your fans pages. This means your fans get to see your specials immediately, but so do their friends and family members who are connected to their Facebook page.
6. Have you recorded your Mother’s Day Specials on your Salon’s voicemail?
I recently phoned a customer by the name of Michelle Wienand from Magnolia Beauty Sanctuary in Randburg. She is an incredibly business minded young lady. She was busy in a treatment so her voicemail came on. It went something like this, “Hi you have reached Magnolia Beauty Sanctuary. We are not available to take your call right now. I am sure you are phoning about our Gel Nail Special… “ She went on to tell about her latest special and then asked customers to leave their name and number. If someone phones your Salon it means they want information or they want to do business with you – so it makes sense to use voicemail to help you sell more products and services.
7. Train your staff to sell your Mother’s day promotions and give them targets
Small Business Marketing Expert Dan Kennedy shares the story about how most Small Businesses sales and marketing efforts are sabotaged by their very own “Sales Prevention Department.” Who cares if you have the greatest special offer for Mother’s Day but your staff don’t know how to sell it. Make sure that you teach your staff the following;
a. The exact details of the Mother’s Day Offers. I.e. services within the packages, prices and availability and special options etc…
b. Scripts on how to sell the packages over the phone or in person. Make sure that you role-play selling the packages at your weekly staff meeting. Important tip: don’t forget to set Mother’s Day sales targets for your staff!
c. Upsell, crossell and rebooking options. Don’t simply think about selling Mother’s Day Packages. Think about additional sales beyond Mother’s Day.
Consumers are going to spend money on their Mothers this month. The question is, are they going to spend their money at your Salon? If you do the above they will. So follow Michelle Botha’s example, take massive action and have a great month!
