As the credit crunch turns to recession, even the optimistic forecasters are predicting that times are going to be tough for at least a year. So, how does a savvy salon owner change their marketing plan to survive the recession? Well, whatever else you do, remember the phrase “test and measure”!
If you want to Crack the Credit Crunch and Ride Out the Recession, you need to make sure that every penny (or cent) you spend on marketing is being spent effectively. In technical terms, you must maximise your ROI (Return on Investment). That means carefully monitoring the results of your marketing plan, so that you know how many clients each salon promotion generated, what treatments they booked, and how much they paid. That way you can cut-back on the marketing activities that are not generating a good profit, and focus your salon marketing plan on the promotions that generate the best return - once you know which they are!
A recent article at Bytestart - Steal the big boys’ methods of measuring marketing - has some useful tips to get you started. For example -
Every single piece of marketing activity you do must be closely monitored and its performance challenged. You can then test a new idea and check that it works before spending a significant sum on it.
This is something that large companies are very good at and small businesses tend to overlook…
It’s unlikely that you will have a large marketing team to help you do this in your business. But you can take the big boys’ concepts and apply them to your small business. Here are five easy steps to do just that:
1) Know where you are starting from
Before you do any piece of marketing, you must understand how your business normally performs. For example if you had a shop, you must see how a product sells for a few weeks at full price, before applying a discount and measuring sales again. This is a basic marketing step, but one that so many businesses ignore…
2) Measure the effectiveness of one piece of marketing at a time
3) Collect data from everywhere
4) Cross-reference data
5) Make it simple
We highly recommend reading the full article! And please take a moment to read about our new product, specially designed to help beauty salons, hair salons, and spas to improve their marketing, survive… and even thrive during this economic downturn - Crack the Credit Crunch, Ride Out the Recession
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