I’ve just finished working through the huge stack of Yellow pages Critiques that came in from those savvy salon owners who invested in “Salon Yellow Pages Advertising Secrets” and got their bonus critique.
I think for most salon owners the critique they got was a mix of pleasure and pain.
The painful bit was the dose of brutal reality about how bad their ad really was and the money they’d left on the table… or they’d literally thrown away over the years depending on how you want to look at it.
It was a slap in the face for some as not many really knew how much money they’d made… or not… from their Yellow Pages ad. It was not definitively measurable. And it’s not that hard to make your yp ad measurable, I mean, more so than the haphazard way of hoping that your staff will record where your new clients come from.
All your advertising should be measurable and it should always pay its way when you factor in the lifetime value of a client principle.
Imagine if you did the math… and it’s always about the math… and you worked out that “your yp ad cost” divided by the “new yp clients” equalled $330 plus.
Would that freak you out? It would me and it did one client too. Ouch! $330 cost for each client.
They had no idea on the math for their ad and they had never figured their client acquisition cost before… Now, if you’re a high end high priced high average client spend salon that’s fine but if you’re not… you’re in trouble.
Their ad actually generated a reasonable number of new clients but the math wasn’t working so my take was this… Let’s turn that ad around and turn it into a new client generating money spinning ad. An ad that would give them the command position for their category.
Here’s some food for thought.
If you look at any page in the yp directory and divide all the calls evenly between all the ads, including yours ‘cause if your ad has the “sameness” of all the other ads, like a bullet point list of what you do and your business name at the top of the ad then it is a “sameness” ad and not a “commanding” ad so just divide it between the other ads the same size.
What % do you think your ad pulls right now? 10%… 20%… 30%… maybe. What would your business be like if you could double that? What would your life be like then?
This is where the pleasure part came in for these salon owners.
Why? They realised that they could probably pull 70% or 90% or even 100% of the calls. It can be done with a cleverly crafted ad and if you make a great offer. It was that simple (plus a heap of other secrets from the manual). And they could easily measure the results too.
The other pleasure was they actually got a real live over the phone critique session with me, which is a part of the over delivery of service that we do at Worldwide Salon Marketing.
I never told anyone that as a part of their critique I would actually phone them up. The deal was you submit your ad and I’ll critique it and get it back to you but hey, my thinking was it’s a lot easier to understand if I actually get you on the phone and walk you through it.
Here’s what Lesley Morgan-Wesson said only a week after she got her manual.
“…I am THRILLED…!” Thank you SOOO very much for your help with my Yellow Pages advertisement. I couldn’t even have started this without your “Salon & Spa Yellow Pages Salon Secrets”. I did exactly what you advised… built the whole ad by implementing your page by page instructions. Not that this was easy… but it was a whole lot better than anything I have ever come up with on my own.
Of especial help was your availability to critique the ad… I don’t know how you come up with these amazing ideas… every time I changed the ad using your suggestions it became tighter… more powerful and I could see how the whole ad jumped out to grab the reader with a power packed grab of benefits. I’m thrilled with it!
Lesley Morgan-Wesson, Lady at Bay, Neutral Bay, New South Wales.
Now, good news for some salon owners.
I’ve just found out that some districts still have a month to go before the yellow pages deadline closes so there’s still time to get your copy of Salon Yellow Pages Advertising Secrets
For those who’s deadline has already closed!!!
Get the manual now anyway so you can follow the testing tips (Yes, you can test your ad before you give the yp people all that money) which means you will have a finely tuned and well crafted ad to get a big jump start for next year. You can test to your hearts delight and you’ll still get your critique. You don’t get better than that.
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