Shotgun Marketing - Blasting Holes in Your Bank Balance

What I am about to say will upset some salon owners....get ready for it......contrary to common belief, not all advertising is good advertising! 

When times are tough, and let's face it, they are pretty tough right now,
it is vital to make your advertising dollars work harder for you than ever before.

Gimme all your money!

Shotgun marketing, as the name implies, relies on shooting out many many pellets of advertising material as you can afford to to try and reach as many people as possible.  This approach might be useful for a start-up business that needs to make its local market aware of its existence but after that, it is just too scattered to make the kind of impact that is needed to build an existing business.

Here's somthing you really need to know and embrace....not everyone wants to be your client.  Savvy salon owners appreciate this and spend their precious advertising dollars only in ways that will reach the kind of people who are likely to come in and spend.  In most cases, that is to their own database or to people who are very much like the ones who are already purchasing from you.
 

Do you know who these people are and more importantly, are you making them the target of your marketing efforts?

Next time you are approached by people asking you to advertise in their magazine, newsletter, internet listing etc and so on, ask yourself some important questions first before you sign on the dotted line.

• Am I getting this message to my target market (my clients or those people just like them) or am I spending a lot of money advertising to people who just aren't interested in what I am selling?
• Is the money I am about to spend going to be a good investment and achieve the desired outcome?  Am I going to see a substantial return on my investment and how can I measure the results?
• How could I refine my marketing, spend less money and reach the people who are most likely to buy my product?

Perhaps it's time to re-focus your approach to marketing in 2011 to ensure that every dollar you spend from this point forward creates maximum impact with your target market.

Wishing you prosperity and success
Pam

Photo by Boaz Yiftach

Are You Paying Too Much For Staff You Don't Need?

Well, we are very close to the end of 2010.  A pretty disasterous year for many with not much happiness on the horizon for 2011.  Clients are still holding on tighly to their precious money and it is becoming harder than ever for many salons to increase sales or simply keep pace with previous years' income.  So, what can you do about making things better for your business?

The fact of the matter is that if you have exhausted at all the other ways to reduce expenses and increase income, it might be time to look at your roster.    No-one likes the idea of putting off loyal team members but the reality is that you have to have enough profit after the cost of providing your treatments to pay the rest of your bills.

Simon Howden

One of the biggest expenses in any service based business is in it's wages, so this is one area that needs to be monitored very closely to ensure that your wage to turnover ratio has not gone through the roof during these difficult times.  For instance if your wages to turnover (exc GST) used to be around 35% and has now crept up to over 40%, you need to take action to get this back under control.  Reducing rostered hours may be the only way to do this if you cannot increase your income.

Now is the time to prepare for 2011 and  for whatever it may bring.  Reducing expenses is one area that simply cannot be ignored for most salons.  This is a good time to evaluate your roster to ensure you are not paying staff to simply stand around.  Tighten up your appointment taking, get rid of those expensive gaps that have crept in between each service and make your employees time more valuable to your salon.

If you need help to get your expenses or roster under control for the new year, give me a call and let me help you improve this area of your business.

Salvatore Vuono

Wishing you prosperity and success in 2011
Pam


Season's Greetings from me and my family to you and yours.

Finding your Profit Gap

It’s challenging and exciting being a business coach. I have the opportunity to work with a wide variety of businesses and business owners and I have never yet found any two to be remotely similar. This is where the fun part comes in though! Getting to find the profit gap in any business is literally like finding the gold at the end of the rainbow and often it is much easier to find than you would expect.
Helping my clients to find the profit gap in their businesses involves utilizing a series of questions aimed at pinpointing where a business could be making substantially more money but isn’t for one reason or another. It is not unheard of for a small business to find up to $10,000 more in just one month of trading if they know where to look.
To get you thinking about where the profit gaps may be in your business, here are some coaching questions to get started:
When is the last time you price checked your competitors to make sure you have not been left behind in your market?
When is the last time you had a full price increase for the services and products your business offers?
How are you measuring the productivity and return on investment of each member of your staff?
How do you know which services or products in your business are your “heroes” and how are you maximising their impact on your bottom line?
What incentives are you providing to your staff to ensure greater productivity is achieved?
How are you using your current database to market to your best customers – the ones who have already spent money in your business?
When is the last time you looked at the expenses in your business to see where you are paying too much for what you are getting?
And as a final thought, if you are spending more time working in your business rather than on your business, chances are you just have created a job and not built a business!