Advise Needed

Dublinlets

hey guys,
My girlfriend has just opened a beauticians and has a shoe string budget to advertise and get her name out there.
She has done the leaflet drops, add in windows etc clients are starting to come but she needs more.
i have read some of teh help you gave others and wondering if you could help me
thanks in advance

Nuttzz

in that business it is word of mouth, i'm involved with a hair & beauty business and leaftlets,local paper ads etc only have limited effect. Save your cash and build up a reputation. Also the mobile operator market (i.e. the black market) is making this particular sector very hard to compete in, in certain parts of the city

yellow

Look at getting up on some of the wedding websites these tend to generate good business and increase word of mouth. Check out weddingsonline.ie simplyweddings.com, there are alot out there but these two are pretty popular here in Ireland.

Also check out DebsBall.ie http://www.debsball.ie to tap into the lucrative Debs market.

Good luck!

one_two

Hi!
I agree with people that word of mouth is the best way to ad your service.

- Post your ad on board.ie
- Ask your customer to leave response about service, post some of them on walls/windows.
- Speshial offers.
- Extend your working hours! Why not to work on sundays!!? How many beauticians near work on Sundays?
- Offer cup of tea/coffe to your customers whith swaets
Give littel chocolat with receite. Women like chocolat!

WORD-OF-MOUTH!

What about kids? Imagine - mothers come to make manicure and at this time their kids don't crying/asking questions. Mothers don't have to seat at home and wait a nanny to visit you. All are happy!!!!
I think, nobody has tried this before!

BE DIFFERENT!

pjbrady1

I think if you follow my advice your business will boom.
Here is what ye do.
Ye're primary objective is to get as many people as possible to know about where your business is located and for them to form an opinion that it provides super beauty treatments at a good price.

In as prominent a location as possible, (pick the street, O'Connell street probably off limits - too tired to check regulations) you take the nice chairs that currently sit in the beauty parlour and set them up. Hire for the day two models one expensive model from the likes of Assets (you only need them from lets say 11am-3pm). Maybe another agency, hire in for the day a stunning looking Polish girl. You can also stop good looking girls with nice hair on the street and offer them free beauty treatments. The owner of the beauticians has a microphone and they are handing out 25% discount vouchers for beauty treatment. You would be suprised how inexpensive this marketing would be.

Another method is to target your audience better. The takeup rate on offers that people receive through the door is tiny. Lets be honest 90% of people through it straight in the bin (some even curse!).
Offer a service to three local childminder creches where you pick up the mother from the Creche (if she has no car) and the mother is offered a large discount on beauty treatments. Soon enough the childminder mothers will be talking to each other after dropping off their kids about the beauty treatment they had the night before and the great discount they got because of being a member of the creche. The creche will like it because the mothers will stay loyal to the creche. You can even bring in the creche on a cut of profits from beauty treatments from creche customers. Eg. mother who is member of creche gets treatments for total of 100 euro. Discount makes it 75, the creche gets five euro for the treatments. Leave the vouchers with the creche, you will find the creche will soon be your best sales agent. The whole idea works on the core principle that if you want to make money in sales you need to be making money for someone else. Also never limit a good salesmans (creche) ability to make money from volume of Sales. A large creche like "Giraffe" would soon appreciate the extra income. You could even offer discounts to creche members other family members.
One last idea for the creche, for the mothers that don't have a car. When you pick them up in a car, make sure its a plush very prominent vehicle. It will really grab peoples attention.

Thats two good ideas, I'll come back with more as I get inspired.

pjbrady1

Sometimes if you want to solve you own Sales problem a good idea is to solve someone else problem.
Here is my idea.
Dublin is full of staff that work in hotels, pubs, restaurants. Typically girls who work damn hard from Tuesday to Saturday/Sunday. Alot of staff are off on a Monday. Now a monday is a quietish day in a beauty salon as well. If you have too high of volume of sales on a saturday a customer might not have a good experience as they might end up having to wait an hour and a half. Go to all of the large, professional pubs, restaurants, hotels in your area and offer them the following deal. You will sell the hotel 10 beauty treatments a month at a large discount, lets say 30%. The hotel then give them to staff for free use increasing staff loyalty and morale. Upper management would even start to use them, soon enough you would find the hotel asking for 20 vouchers a month at the same 30% discount. The uptake by businesses of this idea would be suprising as HR Management are often women in their late 20's early thirties and they have really bought into the "reward staff, together stronger ethos". Crucially they also like free beauty treatments. When it really appears that the hotel are keen on the idea you offer the vouchers at a 40% discount. Now it costs the hotel even less to use your reward, however you give the extra discount on condition they will guarantee two years of using your vouchers. Bet you would soon find your premises flooded with staff from hotels.
To further sweeten the deal you give them vouchers for friends and family that give a 15% discount to friends and family. 10% might not sound like much, but lets think about two Eastern european girls living together. One of them is getting a free treatment, she naturally would prefer to have some company so they might even split the cost of the remaining 90% cost of one treatment.
Focus on businesses that are large and have a HR Manager. Put across the point that your vouchers will increase staff morale and loyalty. Talk the HR language. Be firm when looking for the two year deal, look them in the eye and tell them that your firm has gone out and set this up for the hotel, now they are offering a further reduction in cost, you now want to see some trust and reward in your direction.

Think I'll open up a beauty parlour or maybe go into beauty parlour promotion

diamonds&cream

Good luck with the business. If you are looking for suppliers (wholesale) for health & beauty products, I am in the know. High quality all natural health & beauty products.

stepbar

Shoestring budget Pj, shoestring budget Pj.

Lets be honest the best way is word of mouth. Think of all the people you and your girlfriend know. Think of where they work. Get names, get phone numbers, make courtsey calls. Drop in leaflets to their places of work. "20% off for all Bank of Ireland staff". Advertise in the free papers (i.e the Polish Express, Northside and Southside People etc). Get business cards done up and hand them out at EVERY opportunity. People will come but its up to your girlfriend to make sure they come back.

pjbrady1

True enough, can't go too over board with promotions and not be able to pay wages, however I don't think any of above is too expensive. One model for the day is not killer, and a stunning looking amateur model is pretty cheap.
Then stopping good looking women passing by is free, your using your normal staff to do the promotional beauty treatments on the street.
Printing vouchers for Hotels/pubs are cheap. Microphone and speaker for owner for promotion on street can be borrowed/rented cheap.

MB74

Send in an invite to one of the late night or early morning radio talk show hosts to come along for a free makeover (in return for a plug) better reaction if it's one of the male members, perhaps FM104.

Sabre0001

Can't take credit for this idea but unfortunately can't remember the source but I think its an effective and cost-friendly way of promotion...

As people have said - WORD OF MOUTH, so get friendly with hairdressers - offer them sessions discounted or free (for bigger, chattier businesses). Do a good job and there should be referrals for future business.

carol@quovadis

Give a paper voucher offering a 20% discount to all existing clients who refer a new customer to you. New client bringing in the voucher gets a 5% discount. Get names & mobile no's when voucher is presented. This allows you to build of record of sales contacts who you subquentently target using text msg. e.g You've given us 3 contacts already so your next facial will have€30 off.

Don't know where the business is located but the Country enterprise boards can be a very useful cheap source of advice. For example Dun Laoghaire rathdown will provide a mentor who will meet with you one to one on your specific issues for a subsidised fee of €30.
these mentors are all very experienced and specialise in different areas

macfhi

Use internet & text bookings: most of your customers use the net and texting

www.youbookin.com from Limerick have an internet booking and salon management system that is reasonably priced and you can pay monthly without a long term contract.

IMarketed

Nowadays having a cool website which has high rankings in google seems to be one way of getting your business and products known but having a website is not always totally necessary. Marketing is the key to success but approaching it can be done in many ways. I use my own methods and they have proven to be very beneficial for my websites and products. I have already replied to a post in another thread but here it is again Quoted:

IMarketed wrote:

Hi Graffix,

I have been looking into this for the past 2 years. While everyone was rushing into the whole Google Adwords end of things I was staying at what I was developing for myself because it was working for me without any use of google tools on a website. From trying and changing my ideas for gaining traffic to my website I realised I had a lot of loyal visitors which triggered off the whole selling potential of other products I wasn't even advertising. there are certain fundemental neccesities for driving traffic to your website one of which I am writing about at the moment. I have found by trying to implement many different technical systems my website traffic was a lot less than when I was just concentrating on my methods. From spending almost 1 year searching and comparing and posting and chatting and informing myself about the available options for generating traffic to my website I gained most of my knowledge from trying too many times and failing, I payed out to SEO companies to get my rankings up but in the end they were using the whole adwords senario without the success I should have had for the money i was paying on a 6 month basis.

I plan to release my tried and tested findings in ebook form hopefully within the next month or so. While advising a friend on his website he convinced me to put pen to paper and write about my method which is responsible for my success in the past. graffix, if ur interested in a fr.ee transcript when ready then feel free to PM me or email me for an update when it's all ready. Please be patient because I have realised that while trying to make everything novice proof I am typing lots of text but this is very clear and to the point!. Basically If followed and shaped to your own needs it can be used for any business or website or organisation to generate traffic, customers and popularity.

Rgrds

bumchicawahwah

Use:
- referral systems (refer a friend get a beauty treatment for free - or similar)
- vouchers
- business cards with voucher on the back (check out www.thebusinesscardsfactory.com for free online design and cheap voucher printing or www.print4less.ie also has special deals for beauty salons)
- competitions
- special beauty treatment of the month (50% discount)