Step #3: Getting 'Lost' Clients Back for More
In this Lesson...
- The SHOCKING TRUTH about Why Clients Leave You - and How to Bring Them Back...and add thousands of dollars to your business value.
- Why you should never experiment with your marketing...
Hello again...is any of this stuff making sense so far? 'Cos before I go on with Step #3, I have a confession to make:
Nothing you'll discover in this mini-course is actually new.
There, I've said it. Now, before you click away in a huff, consider this: As the owner of a small business, the only kind of marketing you should be doing is marketing that's been used, tested and proven by other salon and spa owners!
Well, you don't want to spend your hard-earned money being a pioneer, do you? No, of course not. Why re-invent the wheel, when you can simply copy and do what's worked elsewhere, right? Right! Because
Pioneers come home full of arrows!
So, for very good reasons, nothing you'll discover in this course is new. It's ALL been proven to work, by thousands of small business owners, all over the world. In fact, in business, if I never have another new idea in my life, I'll be delighted, because I'm only interested in what's already been proven to work. I don't want to spend my money experimenting, and neither should you. So, having said that, let's get on with it...
In Lesson #1 we talked about using direct mail to ensure new clients keep re-booking for more treatments. But what about clients you haven't seen for a long time?
One of the Top Ten mistakes most business owners make is ignoring the farm in their own back yard.
Your client base is like your farm. You plant the seeds, water the budding plants carefully, fertilize the ground with nutrients such as special offers, Client Appreciation events, birthday cards and so on...
And if you do it right, you'll only ever lose a client for one of TWO reasons.
Inconveniently, people do DIE.
Okay, there's not a lot you can do about that. (Oh, but if you ever do find a way of preventing death, let me know. I'd love to be your manager!)
The only other method of losing a client that you can't do much about is when she moves to another state or country. Not a lot you can do with that, other than putting them in a straitjacket, but that is a bit radical
If you only ever lost a client for one of those two reasons, you'd be in good shape, wouldn't you? But the
SAD TRUTH ABOUT LOSING CLIENTS
is that most businesses lose clients and never, ever discover why they left!
(Haven't you ever been unhappy with a product or service you've purchased, and not bothered to tell the vendor, either because you felt you wouldn't get a positive response or simply because you couldn't be bothered? Yep, you simply took your business elsewhere. Well, here's a shocking truth - your customers are thinking exactly the same!)
So the poor business owner - in this case, that's you - continues to spend big $$$$s on advertising to attract new clients - yes, expensive print, radio, even TV advertising - just to
PLUG THE HOLES IN THE BUCKET!
Most businesses actually LOSE money in acquiring a new client. In other words, they make less money on the initial sale than it cost to make the sale in the first place, assuming the client will stay on and keep spending. you get from your letters - overnight!
So it's almost criminally negligent to let those clients simply drift away. And if you want to spend less money on up-front advertising for NEW clients, then you simply must get some of those former clients back for more.
Yes they will!
Example:
Lets say you have 100 'names and addresses' of clients you haven't seen for between 3 and 6 months. If each 'regular' client is worth say, $2,000 a year to you, and you can get even TEN of those 'missing in action' clients back for another 12 months of treatments/products... that's no less than $20,000 in takings over the next 12 months!
BUT...just like our series of sales letters for getting New Clients to re-book for more, you have to write to them with a compelling offer, an attention-grabbing HEADLINE - NOT the name of your salon...and preferably a strong GUARANTEE. (I'll talk more about guarantees in Step #6.)
In other words, you need to use what we call
'SALESMANSHIP IN PRINT'
Remember, the true definition of marketing is 'any activity which brings clients to you with a pre-disposition to buy from you alone, at the price you wish to charge.' So, the better your marketing letter, the more response you'll get, and the less you have to sell when you do get them on the phone.
Your letters need to be written as if your former client was standing there in front of you, while you gave them your 'pitch'. And that's the problem for most salon owners. After all, you're not trained as marketers or copywriters, are you...nope, mainly you've been trained in the beauty business, which is not necessarily the marketing business.
THE CRUCIAL SALES LETTERS THAT'LL GET YOUR 'LOST' CLIENTS BACK
Nobody, but nobody, actually enjoys sitting down at the keyboard and grinding out letters to clients. So, two years ago, I wrote a series of sales letters designed specifically for salons and day spas to use to get their old clients back in for more treatments.These letters are proven to get back between 9% and 25% of clients you haven't seen for up to 6 months.
What if you could have those very letters?... our 'Raise the Dead' series of linked, sequenced sales letters, specifically written for Members of the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle, right there in your hands, right now?
By tomorrow afternoon, you could have Letter #1 out in the mail to some of your former clients
By the afternoon of the following day, you'd be getting phone calls from some of those clients, delighted to have heard from you, amazed at the offer you've made them to come back in.
Within ten days, you could have Letter #2 in the mail, to those former clients who hadn't responded to Letter #1...and a day or two after that, MORE phone calls from some of those clients, wanting to book in again and re-kindle their relationship with you...
IF you qualify as a 30-day Trial Member, you can get the entire Toolkit (for beauty salons and day spas) or the Super Kit (for hair salons) to 'test drive' for 30 days - for nothing more than $97 postage and handling.
"I am so excited about the Toolkit. So far we have had a great response. We have made nearly $10,000A in 4 weeks with our facial course."
Marilyn Klein, Boudoir Tokyo
By now you've probably 'got' the importance of both getting new clients to keep coming back to you, and getting former clients back to you.
BUT...you still need to advertise, simply because it's impossible to plug ALL the leaks in your business 'bucket'.
FACT: "ALL businesses lose 10-15% of clients every year."
But there's advertising, and there's advertising...and most business owners are 'advertising victims', suckered into spending heaps of $$$s on ads and never knowing if they're working or not.
In Lesson #4, I'm going to reveal another SHOCKING TRUTH -
"What you THINK you're selling has nothing to do with what your clients actually want...how to instantly re-invent what you're selling - and instantly make 20% more profit!"
That's in Lesson #4...
Continue to Lesson 4
Good marketing!
Greg Milner
CEO Worldwide Salon Marketing
