Scott
Bogdan has been a member of the Helios team since May 1998. In June
2001, Scott and his family moved to Indianapolis when Helios merged
with ETS and took over their salon software development division.
By
Scott Bogdan
MISSION
IMPOSSIBLE...NOT REALLY
“
Good Morning, Mr./Ms. Salon Owner. Your mission, should you choose to accept
it, involves marketing to the customer whom I’ve designated “The
Golden Tanner.” You may select any method you like, but it is essential
that your goal is to remain in business. As always, should any reader of this
article
be
unsuccessful after implementing my expressed ideologies, I will disavow all
knowledge of your actions. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.”
When people find out that my family owned an indoor tanning salon and
was involved in the retail side of the business, one of the most frequent
questions I get
is, “What were your most successful forms of marketing?” As a kid,
it drove me nuts when my Dad would answer my questions with another question,
and since we honor our fathers this time of year, I shall do the same. The questions
that need to be asked first are, “Who is your target audience” and “What
do you want to accomplish – or in this instance – sell them?”
The two most important factors in retailing are 1) getting more people through
your doors, and 2) once they get to your counter, getting them to spend as
much money as possible. Just look at all the trinkets that clutter the
checkout counter
at many mainstream retailers. You can’t go to a Starbucks and buy
a cup of coffee without staring (at eye level) directly into the pastry
portal, or
signing your receipt next to a square of chocolate or Michael Buble’s
latest CD. When one of the most successful retailers of this time places
such an emphasis
on trying to squeeze every last penny out of you during every visit, what
does that tell you?
Now, getting back to Dad’s first thought regarding whom your “target
audience” is. I’m going to assume that the vast majority of readers
have that answer locked up in their trusty salon software. Do you realize that
the information you collect at the Point-of Sale should be considered GOLD, and
mainstream retailers would do just about anything to have the kind of detailed
data you have for each of your clients? The key is to work from your strength
and in this case, it’s your client database because those people have
already proven to value your services and/or products.
Depending on the sophistication of your software application, you should
be able to segment your offers even more based on your customers’ previous buying
history. So, now that you know who your audience is, it’s time to
look at putting together an offer that will appeal to the largest number
of those
customers
AND get them to spend more money than they normally would.
I will leave you with two of my personal baseline idea:
Create a sense of urgency.
Don’t present offers that are valid for more than seven days (I personally
recommend three days.) If you give too much time to redeem the offer, you lose
a large percentage of your customers who will put off visiting your salon until
it’s more convenient for them – which most likely will never
happen.
Don’t discount products/services.
When you offer discounts on products or services, you are psychologically
telling the consumer that what they are used to buying is really not worth
what they
normally pay for it. What worked better for us was to offer some sort of
premium if they purchase something at normal price. Our most successful
campaign was
the “3-day $3” offer – buy a package or product (8+oz) and
get another one of equal or lesser value for $3.
If you’d like to find out other ways to more effectively market to
your customers, please see the ad next to this article. The seminars mentioned
in
the ad are not Helios exclusive; so even if you use another software product
or are not computerized at all, please consider attending.
Peace!
If there is a topic you would like discussed in
this column, please email scott@gohelios.com
