Salon Marketing Superstars – Inner Circle member of the week Marnie Kallmeyer

The very best part of my job is knowing – with more and more proof every day – that our salon marketing tools and systems are at least partly, and in many cases wholly, responsible for helping more salon owners make more money than any other single product or service in the entire industry.

This week’s story is typical of so many.

When Marnie Kallmeyer of Beauty Image in my own home town came to us two years ago, joined the Inner Circle coaching program and got her Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®, she was almost at the end of her tether. Failing business, too few customers, the stress causing cracks in her marriage. A story many reading this post would be familiar with. (And Marnie’s salon is in a wealthy suburb, the kind of place where if you’re going to get run over, at least it’ll be by a BMW or Merc)

She was almost at the end of the road…but not quite. Overwhelmed by the task, Marnie got her Toolkit, and then let it sit untouched on the shelf…. for more than a year! She’d taken Step #1 – making a Decision. But she’d then dropped the ball, and didn’t follow through with Step #2: Action.

Finally, in December 2008, Marnie was literally two weeks away from bankruptcy. The house had gone, and the business within a nano-second away from closing the doors.

“I remember you telling me once that the teacher will appear when the student is ready,” Marnie told me this week.

“By December, I’d had your material for nearly 18 months and I had barely touched it. I was so depressed, scared, overwhelmed – and yet somewhere inside me was a voice that kept telling me that I didn’t want failure to be my story. I so wanted a better story to tell people.

“So I took the Toolkit off the shelf, gritted my teeth, and said to myself ‘it’s either this or give up’.

There is nothing quite like the prospect if imminent death to send adrenaline through the veins. 18 months after making The Decision, Marnie finally Took Action, and threw herself into implementing the marketing tools in the kit. By January this year (2009) Marnie was seeing results. It fired her up, and she threw herself into the task of turning herself from being a technician, into where the real money is – being a marketer.

It worked, spectacularly.

“I compared our end-ofJune figures with the same 12-month period the previous year.

“I was astounded. In the 12 months to June our little salon did an EXTRA $160,000 in takings – and almost all of that increase was from January this year,” she said.

Example:

Marnie created a great OFFER to sell her IPL hair removal treatments, then did up flyers to paste all over the salon, and a big poster for the front window. (Zero cost, high impact). This campaign involved no newspaper advertising, no mailbox flyers, no direct mail. Just a single long-form email to her clients, and the promotions in the salon.

She created two packages, one at $1,369 (with leg area) and one at @ $1,149 (without leg area).

At $1149 (without leg area) we sold 9 packs worth $10,341
At $1369 (with leg area) we sold 13 packs worth $17,797
total = $28,138 and 22 packs.

There are only a few not doing their faces, but most are and I absolutely insist they must purchase our Vitamin C serum and our SPF to assist their “new look’ we are working on. Most have also added cleansers, moisturisers along the way at some point.
That is another $184 from them and of course helps to give them better results. We also upsell Microdermabrasion and Peels along with the IPL tretments, $40 a peel and $100 a microderm.
We ran this for all of July and I allowed a couple extra to do this in August. Perhaps 7 weeks in total.
We have a couple who are taking the mickey out of this, but most are great and some talk about doing their faces but just run out of time and get too busy.

Allowing only 4 months worth means it is enough to get them started… but as IPL usually needs 5-10 treatments it means tthey are seeing enough to have made a differnce but not quite enough to finish.. so I will of course recommend they keep going…. individual,expensive treatments or perhaps I’ll let them do another course at the same price.. but then they may only need to use 2-3 visits instead of 4 again… fingers crossed. Hopefully I should get a good 6 month plus flow on from this promo.

WANT THE EXACT EMAIL AND POSTER MARNIE USED? Log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and you’ll find it under ‘Marketing to Existing Clients’

Marnie also uses a machine called Formostar to provide body wrap treatments, and had more success with an advertising campaign she ran in two local newspapers. She combined a Formostar offer with another offer for eyelash extensions.

“Usually I sell HEAPS of lash appointments, and a few Formostar treatments - but this ad brought it the other way around.. I sold so many Formostar packs that we can no longer take any new clients for it, at least for the next 3-4 weeks while people finish their packages.

“I wanted to target NEW clients as with either treatment they are on the bed for at least an hour and that gives us the chance to ‘tell’ them about everything else we do, and mostly they do end up having other treatments done at some point with us.

With the lashes we upsell face waxing and tinting, another $50 odd depending on what and then usually they end up having other waxing etc. They need to come 2-3 wekly for their lash refills so it usually times well for other waxing and also see other clients regularly that are doing/talking about other treatments.

The Formostar is 2-3 times a week so they are always seeing other clients having had other treatments and lots of people leaving with lovely lashes!
I line up the walls with promo and reading material and it usually works. I have got in some slimming coffee and tea and great body/cellulite creams so up-selling those too.

I have done 1 ad in the (daily paper) that I went halves with another salon – cost about $280.00.

Result?

Sold 23 packages for a total $10,350

(The ad I forwarded you cost $204.60)

I must say I haven’t counted the creams and coffee total… tsk tsk.

WANT THE EXACT AD THAT MARNIE USED? Log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and navigate to “Getting New Clients – Beauty”

That’s a total of $39,000 from just two promotions, only one of which involved attracting new clients. It’s these results and many more like them that have changed Marnie’s life dramatically.

“Thanks Greg for giving the great tools and for all of us happy enough to share what works.”