Diversity Leads To Stability

You've been listening for a while. You're trying to figure out how to make this work for brick-and-mortar business. This is the episode that you really want to listen to. Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. This episode is with Bill Glazer and Brian Marovich, and Brian is going to explain to us how he uses specifically information marketing inside of his then-successful salon chains. So this is going to be a full-on strategy overview of all the marketing that you know to get your business working. You can make this work offline, you can make this work online. And this is how you implement a lot of the different strategies that Dan Kennedy talks about into your business, each one step at a time. Now, if you're not a brick-and-mortar business, and you've been trying to figure out how do I use this, a lot of these things are mentioned a lot. Think of yourself as if you had to actually open a physical business, you have to walk in every single day, you have to open up the doors. What are the things that you would normally be doing in your digital business or aren't doing in your digital business that you should, that you would obviously be doing in your brick and mortar. So we're going to be going through all the different strategies that Dan Kennedy talks about, how to create a personality-driven direct response marketing process. How do you use mailings appropriately, upsells, newsletters, advertising, surveys, all the different pieces that are going to be able to help bring your customers to you and make them customers for life, no matter what platform you choose to build on. Let's listen in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. Hello, Glazer Kennedy Insider Circle members. This is Bill Glazer bringing you another one of our monthly gold CDs. And this month, I think you're going to find this CD to be pure gold. Because this is one of the types of calls that I conduct throughout the year that I really enjoy conducting, but more importantly, that I find that our members really get the most out of because they can really identify with the sort of the subject of this call, which in this particular case, today I'm interviewing one of our Gold Luxury members, Brian Maravich. That is pronounced the same as Pistol Pete Maravich, right? So Brian, how you doing?

I'm doing excellent, thanks.

Just to tell all of our members a little bit about you from the information that I received, you hold a degree in economics from San Francisco State University, but you were quick to point out not to hold that against you. Right. And you had a short stint as a professional drummer and insurance salesman when you were in your 20s, and then you realized that your real passion was for marketing, which congratulations, it took me a little longer to realize that than my 20s, so you're ahead of me. So you resulted in a career as an information marketer, copywriter, and a business owner. Specifically, we're going to talk mostly about your business today because you and your wife Angie you own and operate a very successful salon chain called Royal Tan and Spa. This is in Petaluma and San Rosa, California. I hope I pronounced Petaluma correct.

Close enough, yes.

You also do something that we see a lot of, which is the husband is sort of in charge of one aspect of the business and the wife of the other. In this particular case, I got to tell you, you got the better half of the deal because you're in charge of the marketing and your wife is in the managing of the business where she handles the daily operations and stamp trading. And Brian, I guess you would agree with me, but don't let your wife know this, that the marketing is a lot more fun than in doing managing and stamp trading. So you guys, as I said, you got the better end of that deal.

That's right, yeah. I won't let her hear this.

Right, right. So let's sort of dig into this because I think our members, are really going to get a lot out of this because they're going to see the evolution of how you really became a very, very good marketer and you applied that to your business. Very similar story that I had in my menswear business when I discovered marketing and I became really the marketer of that business and my business became one of the top 10 most successful menswear stores in the world. Yours is certainly amongst one of the top in your field. First of all, how did you get into the salon and spa business after you were this great drummer and insurance salesperson?

Well, a friend of mine who lives in San Diego had been in the business for a couple of years. He wasn't real serious about it for the first couple of years because he primarily got into it to, well, meet girls. Then he got serious about it because he invited a consultant to go into his business and say, "What can I do here?" get better in my business because he was just breaking even. So anyway, he just did a few quick changes and he said, "Hey, Brian, you might want to consider doing this because I'm doing really well with a few changes, blah, blah, blah." And my wife was looking for a transition out of what she was doing, which she was selling high-tech equipment, phone systems, and so basically we I got into it that way.

So you very early on when getting into it, you already had an understanding and a passion for our kind of marketing, what we call Glazer Kennedy Marketing. But let's talk about not what you implemented first. Let's talk about first what the typical advertising strategy is for tanning salons and spas. Let's first show almost the before, not that I'm saying that this applied to what you ever did, but what most people do. Then we'll talk about how you take Glazer Kennedy marketing and make it extraordinary. What's a typical spa or tanning salon do?

They do a lot of the branding type advertising. I must say how we got our business was using Glazer Kennedy style marketing. I targeted the businesses we wanted to buy basically and then sent them a letter with a grabber on it and we got a 50% response rate, so I was blown away by that. But the typical advertising strategy would be an image-oriented advertisement with maybe a beautiful woman on it, for example, or they would have the name of their business as the headline, which we see a lot of. The offers in very competitive markets are Sometimes pretty good. They use the word free a lot, but the problem with that is they will stick with that. If one salon, for example, in San Diego where it is very competitive, they will offer a free tan or a free body wrap and then the competitor will offer 2 and then another competitor will offer 3 and then it just gets out of control. Secondly, it is very price driven so you've got a lot of things kind of going against you in my opinion because you've got an image-oriented ad and then your offer is basically the same as everybody else. Secondly, there's not a whole lot of personality in the advertising, so as a result of my background, I was able to familiarize myself with the weaknesses in the market and go from there.

All right, so good. So let's talk about the go from there. So before you got into the market, you already sort of understood direct response marketing, so you immediately applied that to your— business. You told everybody what others do, so what do you do that's different?

Well, I apply direct response marketing, and I know you like to use the word personality or personality-driven direct response. I have found that when I use the rules of direct response marketing and apply personality to them, I always get a really good response rate. The language I use is results-driven. For example, in the tanning aspect of our business, most salons would say we have this type of bed with this many bulbs, meaning the bulbs are what tan you. But I would focus on the results. You know, you'll get a deep dark tan that your friends will envy, or for example, you'll get a gorgeous exotic-looking tan that will turn heads up and down the street, that kind of language and in addition to that I'll add personality for some of the marketing pieces that I hope we get to go through which adds kind of an extra ingredient to the mix. But on the spa aspect of our business for example, you'll see a lot of spas using features for example skin rejuvenation. You know, what does that mean? Well, I would say it makes your skin look and feel 10 years younger for example. That's the benefit of skin rejuvenation.. But in the spa business particularly, they'll just focus on the features and the tanning. So those are really basic direct response principles that I've applied to the marketing and it's done very well.

I want to go back for a second to something you said. Make sure our members really understand this, which is you said, you know, use a lot of what we like to call personality-driven direct response marketing. So can you like expand on that? How are you using personality in your marketing? What are some of the things you're doing?

We're doing so many. The first one that comes off the top of my head is this month we have our newsletter going out and it's my son's second birthday on the 30th of this month so I did a combination newsletter sort of advertisement and Internet where I've got a picture of my wife and our son. And the idea here is that for every month that he's been with us, that we're blessed to have him, we'll give you 1% off of whatever you want to buy. There's no limitation. But in addition to that, I asked them to please write a note to Ryder below, underneath. Maybe I can show it to you later, but I have a space for them to write in a little note to Ryder saying happy birthday or whatever because we want to show it to him either on his birthday and/or when he's older in his baby book. So that's actually worked really well and that's the newest thing we're doing and that's I think a good example of using personality and some other aspects of psychology and marketing. But we really do want to show it to him and put it in a baby book so that's another thing. I'm not just doing it to make money, but I want to incorporate it in our lives because our business is a big part of our lives. I think that's a good example of personality. If you want another one, I can give you another one.

Well, let me just make a comment about that, and then afterwards if you want to give another one. That's a great example of sort of not just making an offer, but it's also getting people to increase readership because people really are more interested in what's going on in your own life and they like learning about what's going on in your own life. One of the things I always like to say is they like to live their life through you. For example, in the No BS Marketing Letter, Dan openly reveals a lot about his life. He's a diabetic. He was a former alcoholic. Formerly bankrupt. He is a driver in harness racing. I mean, our members know a lot about what goes on in his life, which is the same thing that you just did. By the way, there's a great program available on this at the Glaser Kennedy Web Store. It's called Customers for Life, which Dan really teaches how to put personality into your copy. That's a resource for everybody if they're interested. Yeah, go ahead. Give everybody another example if you have one.

Okay, well, I think one of my favorites was when we incorporated our dog into our marketing. I mean, it's just, it's so contrary to what's going on in the tanning and spa industry. I mean, to incorporate your dog in a marketing piece would be so far from people's minds. It boggles them sometimes when I show it to them. For Christmas, Christmas is coming up and we wanted to get a promotion going so that we could drive sales up in the winter, which is actually pretty much our deadest part of the season. It's a very seasonal business, the tanning aspect of it. And so what I did was I took a picture of our dog with a Santa hat on her and the idea was to put I need your help as the headline and basically she's asking people to basically come in and use this postcard as money to buy stuff so that she will get her soup bone at Christmas. So basically we're implying that if basically we don't get people to use the postcard that she's not going to get her soup bone. And that was a huge hit in the deadest part of the season. As a matter of fact, people were telling us they were putting this postcard up on their corkboard and on their refrigerator, but in addition to that, the sales for that week were the best they had ever been. So I think that's a really good example of personality in marketing. Plus I was only giving 15% off, so I mean that wasn't even a big deal in terms of—

Well, it's a great example and I'm sure that you had, like you said, when you start adding this into your marketing, people start actually talking about it. I'm sure people ask you, if your dog got the bone, you know. And see, the whole idea behind this is to increase readership because it doesn't matter how great the offer is. If it doesn't get read, it never gets responded to. So by adding this into your marketing, it significantly increases readership and continued readership where they look forward to getting your marketing pieces from you. So let's dig into a little bit of some of the extraordinary things that you're doing. I want to tell all of our members that I got from Brian, I got a book that's on top of it. It's a booklet of his work and it says strictly confidential for Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy's eyes only. So I'm not going to show it to any of our members, although the work's great, but we're going to talk about some of these, okay? Because I think you'd be willing to share sort of some of your strategy. And the first thing that I want you to talk about is something that I'm going to be talking about in great depth at the upcoming Info Summit, which is the whole notion of survey, surveying members and prospects. Talk about what you've done in your spa in terms of the survey.

Well, when we first got our first salon/spa, we— I knew that we had to do something to start making— more of a profit. I mean, we invest a lot of money, but I was very confident because I studied your work and Dan Kennedy, of course. But I know that the first thing that we need to do is get a survey out there and find out what was the business doing currently, how could we improve it. But at the same time, I wanted to make some money off of it. So what I did was I created a survey where people would basically tell us what they wanted, what they liked, what they didn't like, but then I would also ask them in the survey for their comments and then they would sign at the bottom if we could use their comments in our marketing. I wasn't expecting a big response in terms of that, but we did. I got more testimonials than I could handle, you know, so I could pick and choose the ones that I wanted to use. So that was huge for our marketing. I'm still using testimonials from the first survey we sent out. But in addition, we increased sales. At minimum, we broke even. Every time we do a mailing, such as this, we always increase our profits. I would say a lot of it isn't even measurable because maybe it reminds them to come in and that kind of thing. But in terms of the actual response rate of the survey, we more than broke even. We did make some money. And— but in addition, we got testimonials that we could use in our marketing. And we got feedback on our business that we could use to improve it. Which we did. So we found out, you know, what we could sell, what we shouldn't sell, and that kind of thing.

Well, and listen, the last piece that you said is probably the most instructive, which is with a survey you actually get information that's given to you that can really help you to now structure your business, give offers, and/or provide products or services to people that you know what they want. And if done correctly, and I don't know if you do this, Brian, but if done correctly, you actually reveal the results of your survey back to your customers to show them that this is what people are asking for because most people do not have confidence themselves in knowing what to ask for. And they are much more interested in what other people are asking for because they feel other people have better answers than they have, which is kind of funny. So the survey is very, very smart. It's very, very smart to do in the information marketing business. I'm going to be showing— Dave Zahala, who's in my VIP group, is going to be showing the results of the survey that he did in his information marketing business. Dan and I recently did some consulting with NATMA, which is the National Association of Professional Martial Artists, and we also used the survey there. It's very, very helpful. In business. So now let's move on to the next thing, which is something that most people do a terrible job of, and you actually figured this thing out, which is the whole idea of referral marketing. What have you done in your salon/spa to get referrals from existing clients?

Well, the first thing we did was we rewarded for referrals. When somebody signs up with us, they have to fill out a form and we, on that form, we get additional information from like who referred them to our business and when somebody puts down a name and they're in our database, they're more than likely in our database, we instantly send them a thank you for your referral letter with $5 they can use any way they want in our salon and so in conjunction with the thank you letter which we send out like clockwork. I mean, that's one of the workhorse systems we have in place. It's just a powerful little mini— I call them little mini marketing systems because we've got like our mini thank you letter system, the referral system, the survey, blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on. So we reward for referrals and it's very simple. I mean, there's nothing more to it than that really. In addition, you know, we have it on our business card. It's just a standard looking business card, but on the back we say we basically reward for referrals. You can have $5 to use on anything you want. I'm going to boost that up to actually $10 and see how that works, but that's what we're doing. Instead of investing a lot of money on getting new customers from a cold list, which we do a little bit of, I'm really investing in our customer base and trying to milk that for everything we can. I'm just getting started as far as I'm concerned. But that's how we do our referral system.

How are you— clients that are in the spa, how are you asking them for referrals? Or maybe I should say how and when are you asking them for referrals?

Well, we're doing it in a newsletter. I'm actually— before I was on this call, I was constructing the next newsletter and I'm going to tell them we reward for referrals and I'm going to probably boost it to $10. $5 per referral. So it's a letter that says thank you for your referral. It actually says thank you, thank you. I think I included the letter in this material I sent you, but it says thank you, thank you. Our business is— the lifeblood of our business is customers like yourselves and your referrals. To reward you for that, we'd like to give you $5 to spend any way you want. It's a little coupon at the bottom. So they cut it out. It's amazing how much effort people go to cut out the coupons at the bottom. And then they'll turn it in. So some people may know this and it's in the system under their account that they've got $5 to use and it starts accruing. And we know some people are referring more than others, so we're going to use that in our marketing as well to target those people. Does that explain it? I hope that does.

Pardon me?

Does that explain—

Yeah, that's true. First of all, most people make a big mistake in their business. They think referrals happen automatically, that when people do business with you they automatically want to refer their friends and family members and coworkers to you. The truth of the matter is it's not that they don't, it's just that they forget to. So it's our job to constantly remind them to do that. Everybody who's a customer or client of yours refers one person, you just doubled your business. A couple of little things you might want to look at thinking about, by the way, Brian, is testing is looking at asking for referrals when the client is in the spa as opposed to after they left. We found in our menswear store that after they finished paying for their merchandise, we would ask people for referrals right then and there. That was like the sweet spot for us. The other thing you might want to test is instead of giving them $10 off, is get like 2 or 3 premiums that cost you about $10, but they have a perceived value of $30, $40, $50, and let them choose which one of the gifts they want as opposed to just offering them one gift, which now gets them involved with going and thinking about which one of these would I like to have. And that works very, very well in referrals. But the fact that—

I didn't think about the multiple offer.

Yeah, multiple premiums will significantly outperform a single premium or multiple offers in this particular case, gifts will outperform a single gift. And usually with $10 you can buy a very nice premium that has a higher perceived value than the $10 itself has.

All right, let's talk about——

some other things that you're doing. Let's talk about Yellow Page advertising because I find that a lot of our members are getting away from Yellow Page advertising. They don't think that it's effective anymore. Obviously, you found it to work for you. It can still work in most business applications when you know how to do it properly. What are you doing with the Yellow Pages?

I think it's a big mistake not to be doing Yellow Pages advertising. We, for the last, well, since we owned the salon up until this year, we've had an all ad copy ad. It was the advertorial format, which again goes totally against everything in the tanning and spa business because everyone else is having the picture of their system, you know, maybe a bed or a woman, that kind of thing. It's just one big advertorial and actually we dominate the Yellow Pages ads. I know for a fact that we do because some people have pulled out of it. They are spending all their money on color and stuff like that and making the ads smaller when we are actually getting the ad bigger, have no color except maybe one color for the red to highlight free and gorgeous which is in the headline. So I think that's a big mistake. In addition, The internet is just booming in terms of local searches, so when you get your Yellow Pages ad, they're going to include it in their Yellow Pages directory online, so you can get a deal there. There's other things in there that might— we can cover later, but I think it's a mistake not to do it because they're starting to incorporate the two together, online and offline directories.

Yeah, and listen, the fact that more and more people are jumping out of the Yellow Pages makes it— once you learn how to do it properly, it makes it even more valuable because there's less competition, so there's less clutter in there. It's a very, very smart media to be using, and I find that most businesses, again, when they learn how to do it correctly, they can get a very good response. But you're right, if your ad looks like everybody else's ad, you look like everybody else. The fact that you're using advertising approach to it is very, very smart.

Right, we get a big response on our Yellow Pages ad and we're just testing a picture of my wife for the first time this year and the results are very good. So yeah, you definitely have to do Yellow Pages advertising because a lot of people just want to pick up the directory instead of turning their computer on, logging in and they've got to do a search or something like that, which a lot of people are doing more of, but with the Yellow Pages right there on their desk, or whatever, they're just going to turn it to what they want, and they're looking for something. So when they turn to the page that they're looking for and you've got a good ad that stands out that basically draws all the attention, you're going to get all the business.

Hey, as I'm going through this Strictly Confidential book that you sent me, I stumbled upon a page here that says, Christmas or Thanksgiving, what's the better holiday for mailing? Now you're really speaking to the choir here now, you know. So why don't you discuss a little bit about what you're doing about with your Thanksgiving mailing and how that's worked for you.

The Thanksgiving mailing is working really well. Every year it works better actually because we use a— we kind of follow a traditional format with The front of it is just a big picture of Thanksgiving type situation, but on the back we have an offer. So it's— I forget the terminology, but it basically interrupts all the other kind of advertising that we're doing, which is mostly ad copy intensive with a lot of personality. This one is totally the opposite except for the offer. So on the one you're looking at, we— It's actually one of the most responsive pieces we've done, and I think it has a lot to do with the time of year we're mailing in addition to the fact that I just mentioned that it's different from the other pieces that we mailed out. It looks kind of like a greeting card from a friend or something.

Sure, and you know, listen, I've been— I used it for 11 consecutive years in my menswear store and been teaching it to others now for, geez, since 1999, I guess. So we're approaching 10 years on teaching it. It really makes so much sense to send out a Thanksgiving greeting card instead of a Christmas card because, like you said, very few people are sending out Thanksgiving cards. It cuts through the clutter, and what better time to thank your clients for being clients than the time of being thankful.

If I didn't study what you taught, I wouldn't have done that. I would have just waited until the whole my whole holiday season ended. But thanks to you, I was able to do that and I'm grateful for that.

Well, I love seeing what happens when our students get great results, so you're welcome.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say I wanted to point one thing out on the offer for Thanksgiving. The 11 stands out. If it was 10, I'm not sure it would stand out as well. It's an $11 off. Offer. So we found that 11 and 7 is working a bit better, plus some other things that we can cover later.

Well, I think, Brian, the real answer to that question is that odd numbers outperform even numbers. So like when there's unusual numbers like 11 and 7, people look at that and they respond to that better because it looks like somebody has really gone through a lot of effort to come up with a precise number that has some real meaning. So I would venture to say that 11 will outperform 15, for example, because again it's just an unusual number. So that's a nice tip for all of our members who are listening here. Let's move on. We got a lot to cover, so I'm going to keep moving you fast, but let's move on.

I can cover another unusual number one that people can use right away. Okay, go ahead. Last year for the New Year 2008, this is really simple reason why, we sent a similar offer meaning it was just a picture on the front of a beach that says 2008. So we gave people 20.08% off for 2008. So that actually worked phenomenally well.

And people can use that for 2009. No doubt about it. Again, it's a very, very smart way to use a very precise unusual number. Or you could do instead of 20.08% off, you could be $20.08 off. You could be $200.80 depending on the transaction size that you're selling. So if you're selling a very expensive item, you could beef it up that way. It's smart to be using those things, plus it's also smart— what you did is you're entering the conversation that's already going on in their head. So they're already thinking about the New Year. So this is something that they're thinking about, so there's a nice tie-in to that, and holidays are one of the best ways to tie in, like New Year's, Thanksgiving, etc. I do want to talk about probably my favorite kind of marketing, which you have on your list that you do here. Which is upsells. The reason why it's one of my favorite kinds, if not my favorite kind, because of the fact that by increasing the transaction size, which is what you're doing with upsells, it's a way to increase your business without increasing your customer count. So you don't have to get any more customers to increase your business. You just sell to existing customers that you have more. You have on your list here that you do training for upsells, so explain what that's all about.

Well, we are very focused on training. The last year and a half, actually, we haven't done as much. It's still probably more than most people in our industry, and that's because we had our son and my wife is pregnant again. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Yeah, we're having a girl. The training aspect of it is we do a lot of role playing with the girls and what we found was, well, two things. One, we were throwing too much at them in some of these trainings. So we found that to keep it really simple, kind of do a cookie cutter, almost like a McDonald's approach works better than trying to get them to do sophisticated kind of upselling which you and I have done. In the past because most of our girls are anywhere from 18 to 22, so we want to keep it real simple. But it works like gangbusters. You know, the McDonald's upsell is, do you want to supersize that? Do you want a Coke with that? Do you want fries? That kind of thing. So whenever somebody comes into the salon and they buy a package, whether it's a body wrap or a tanning package, a sunless spray tan, they say, how are you doing on lotion? It's an open-ended question. So that's one way we get the conversation started and then the girls are excellent, just phenomenal at product knowledge because they love the products that we have. And so they start discussing why lotions are important, why they go with this type of situation, you know, whether it's a body wrap or a tanning package. So that one phrase alone has boosted our profits quite substantially because like you said, you know, it's at the point of sale and that's the best time to hit them for more money, for more product. I mean, they're already emotionally tied into the sale. They're going to get tan or they're going to lose weight or they're going to get pain management, that kind of thing with the body wraps. So why not make that experience even better for them by providing them with the product? And so we— that's kind of the psychology we instill in the girls is, It's good for the customers because sometimes they'll come back and think, well, we're just trying to sell them something. But once we kind of instill in them that no, you're not, you're actually helping them achieve what they want to achieve, that helps right away. But just to get back, I mean, it basically comes down to the McDonald's kind of upsell to make it real simple in our salon.

Just out of curiosity, and I don't know the answer to this question, but are you— are the people that are working in your salon on some kind of incentive program for the upsells?

Right, yes, absolutely. That's a good question. That actually goes back to one of the first things we did was before we took over, it was just an average salon and they were getting an hourly rate. But we have competitions every month. We give them commission. We give them these contests for lotions and stuff like that, which they really want. So yes, absolutely. Absolutely, we give them incentives like crazy. And if we didn't do that, we would have a major problem. I mean, that's a big reason why we're doing more upselling and selling more product, absolutely.

Yeah, again, I'm just moving back to my menswear days, same exact situation or scenario in order to— we would reward people for the higher transaction size and that made a very, very substantial difference.— in that. And again, I mean, I want to point this out to all of our members that are listening is that, you know, these are— increased transaction size is just gravy because it doesn't require you to get any additional customers, clients, or patients into your business. And so, I mean, so Brian is doing— and we're going to talk a little bit more about what Brian's doing, but he's doing some very smart things. He's got a referral program in place. He is He's doing marketing to the list. He's doing upsell selling. I mean, look at all the things he's doing, which I now want to move on to some of the other things he's doing. I'm going to save, by the way, Brian, I'm going to save the online website stuff to the end because I know you're very jazzed about that. I'll sort of save the big thing for the end. The next thing I want to talk to you about is your newsletters. Because you sent me some samples of them and you also mentioned the fact that you're putting personality into your newsletters. How often are you sending out a newsletter?

Well, we were sending it out monthly and I'm embarrassed to say we stopped doing it. I'm not going to give you an excuse, but I will. We had our son and everything got kind of crazy, but we're doing it again now every month. Make sure that it gets done. To be honest with you, it was a big mistake. It was a huge mistake to stop doing the newsletter because in my opinion and based on results that I've seen, it really instills kind of an emotional connection to your business if you do it right. If you're not doing the standard really image-oriented, nameless, faceless kind of marketing but the personality in the newsletter, it works like crazy. Because people start talking about it. They literally come up to you and say, you know, when am I going to get my newsletter or my favorite article or favorite column is, and 9 out of 10 times it's a column by our dog called Kayla's Journal. So yes, to answer your question, we're doing it monthly and when people see the newsletter they open it up. We talk a little bit about us. We don't want to overdo it and then we get into some things that are happening in the salon and then we segue into articles on skincare and things like that. But in addition to that we do things that are totally out of the ordinary that have nothing to do with the industry. We'll do, we have a Bet You Didn't Know column where we give out totally random facts, Q&A kind of thing that people didn't know about. For some people that's their favorite column. In addition we help instill confidence in our salon as the place to go, kind of experts in the field by giving them information that they may not get anywhere else. So we have a column on that. For example, one of the columns is called what spas don't or what salons don't want you to know, part 1, part 2, part 3, blah, blah, blah. And on top of that we do employee profiles which is really important. That was actually one of the dark horses in the whole thing because the girls start wanting to know who is going to be in the newsletter. And it's a big deal because customers will come in and say, oh, I saw you in the newsletter. I didn't know you did this or that because we like to point out things in their personality and their lives that they may be shy to talk about, but we talk about them in the newsletter and kind of embarrass them, which furthers the relationship in my opinion. And then in addition to that, we have one ad usually on the front of the newsletter when they first get it. There will be an ad on the front. Sometimes we don't have one at all. So there are all kinds of things that we're doing with the newsletter and in the future with the newsletter we're going to do customer profiles. I'm thinking about expanding it and having actual advertising in the newsletter for business owners who are customers of ours because there are a lot of high-profile people in our database and just regular people like myself. So yeah, I mean the newsletter is huge and I'm glad we're starting to do it all over again because it's working like crazy. It also supplements our online stuff that we're doing. So when you're hitting them from all angles, you know, we're doing text messaging now, we're doing the online, we're doing the newsletter, we're doing the actual marketing whether it's a sales letter or postcard, and you're hitting them from different angles all over the place with really good, well, I want to say really good ad copy and information kind of educating on what you're doing and why they should come to your salon and putting personality into it, you just basically kind of slowly take over even in a slow economy. They don't want to lose that connection, in my opinion.

Well, listen, you're preaching to the choir again because I would say that if there's any one most important marketing tool that every business should be using is a monthly newsletter. But at the same time, I'm going to say— and I'm looking at yours right now. You sent me a couple of them. You need to do it the way you're doing it, which is not— see, the biggest mistake people make when they send out monthly newsletters is they send out newsletters that are boring. People send out newsletters like they're in the investment business and they talk all about investments, which is like, you know, I would rather be in a dental chair getting a nerve filled in my tooth than be reading about the investments. Stuff. But if I can— like in your case, you're writing about your dog and you're writing about your employee profiles and you probably write about some of your clients. I mean, that's interesting stuff and that builds what exactly you said, which is a connection between your spa and your clients. I mean, I shouldn't reveal this on the call, but this particular month— you and I are recording this at the end of August.. And in this particular month, our normal, very, very reliable fulfillment house accidentally did not send out 2,000 newsletters to a group of our members. And the way we found out about it was we had about 300 members call the office telling us that, hey, we got your gold CD this month, but we didn't get the newsletter mailing. That's when you know you're sending out a good newsletter is when you stop sending it out and people start calling you up asking you, "Where is it?" That's exactly that whole personality-driven newsletter that you were describing. Now, you mentioned something that I'd like you to talk about. I didn't realize you were doing it until now, but this text messaging. How are you using that?

That's brand new and I don't have any results except to to tell you that it's really inexpensive and well, we do have results. I mean, people use it probably once every 2 days at this point. I'm not— I haven't really done any marketing for it except online.

Well, what— how are you using it?

What are you sending out text messages of? Okay, so right now the only thing we're doing is on the online aspect of our business when people Basically we have people sign up to receive our coupon, which if we have time we can discuss, but I give them other options. So I realize based on listening to what our customers are saying that people don't all have printers at home. You know, they can't all print the coupon and other issues with online stuff. So I decided to give them an option to text the coupon, so they text a number to our salon our salon and what comes right back to their cell phone is a coupon they can use in the salon instead of printing it out. So this gives them another option. In addition, sometimes the girls will mention, hey, by the way, you can text us and you can get an additional blah, blah, blah off on this product or service, which is fine with me. I'm glad they're doing that because that builds our text messaging list and it's a really valuable list in my opinion. Opinion because in the future what we're going to do with that list is give them, for example, if it's a slow time of the week or a slow time of the day, we can boom, instant text message right away and say, you know, you come into the salon, we'll give you this, that, or the other, which hopefully will create a surge in business, which I think is a really smart strategy and I don't think anybody else is doing it. It's just another way to hit them. And other things we're going to do is a contest, you know, a text messaging contest to build our list. So in each of the rooms we have, we're going to put up a, poster that identifies what the text messaging contest is and that will boost our list dramatically, I'm sure.

Well, once again, it's very smart to use more— as much media as you can in your marketing. At Glaser Kennedy, we're using actually text messaging when people sign up for teleseminars. We give people an option to put in their phone number to send them a reminder that morning of the call of the call. We're getting a little bit under 30% of the people who sign up for teleseminars to put in their phone numbers and we send them a text message reminder. So there's a lot of smart application for it. I do like the way— I think it's very clever, by the way— how you're using it as an alternate form of response online for people who cannot print out the coupon. And which in and of itself is a good lesson to all of our members, which is to give people multiple ways to respond, not just one way to respond. That typically will increase response. So let's get in now to this idea of the website. And you wrote one here way later when you added it to your marketing and then next to it. In parentheses you said, "Big mistake." I'm assuming a big mistake that you waited too long to do it. Yeah, absolutely. So talk about your— you're using it predominantly as a new client acquisition strategy?

Right, and to current customers, but mostly new client acquisition. I say it was too late because I'm embarrassed because I've been doing online stuff for a long time, even consulting work. I was just I guess I got lazy. I have no excuse, but the internet marketing is huge because if I can read this, this comes from a source called Nielsen NetSurvey Web Visible Surveys. They're a very well-known surveying company for online stuff. 86% of internet users search for local products and services online, up from 70% of internet users in 2007. So I mean, that alone should tell you that if you don't have a you don't have a good direct response orientated website up for your business, you're absolutely crazy. I've seen it myself. I've seen the growth not only on the pay-per-click and search engine clicks coming in and new customers as a result of that. It's been growing and growing, and the cost of acquisition of a new customer is lower. I mean, I wouldn't run my entire business on it, but it's certainly a dramatic thing that we're doing in terms of getting new customers from search engine tactics and pay-per-click advertising.

So you are— is that your two predominant ways to get traffic to your site is through pay-per-click and search engine optimization?

Right, and then also in salon, in store, it's not— that's actually a very small percentage, but that's just another— so it would be those three things, but The in-salon usage is minimal. It's all new customers coming in.

Right. So you're using—

I assume you're using Google for traffic? Right. So Google has a program called Google AdWords. It's their pay-per-click advertising program. So I have ads for that using Google AdWords. And I'm assuming— I don't know how deep you want to get into that because that's very complicated.

[Speaker:ADARIAN WILSON] Yeah, I don't want to get too deep, but I do want to make sure that our members hear one thing is that I'm assuming that you're buying traffic that's geographic to your salon. [Speaker:MALE SPEAKER 1] Right. [Speaker:ADARIAN WILSON] And that's a really important thing. I mean, to most people using Google, this is not going to be a new item, but for other of our Gold members who aren't using Google traffic right now and have a— a local business, you can buy just local traffic, which is I'm sure how you're doing it. And in most cases, by buying local traffic, you can buy it very affordable. And then you're also doing search engine optimization, so I assume you're making sure that your site is properly optimized in order— when there are people clicking on regular organic traffic, that you come up high as well, correct?

[Speaker:ADRIAN WILSON] That's correct. I have to mention the third thing which is actually really important is Google has a local business program that's free and you should go in and go to the Google Local Business Center and make sure they have your correct address and things like that because when you do a local search, for example in your area, the real estate, meaning the online real estate on Google, their local listings are on the prime spot on the page. And if you don't have a website listed there and if your contact information is wrong and you're not taking advantage of those local Google Local Business Center applications that you can feel free to check out, you're crazy. I mean, it's— because like I said, it's a growing medium for local searches for local products and services, but in addition, they're giving you prime real estate. So when you do that in addition to the regular search engine optimization and the pay-per-click, all three of those, that triangle there, you're going to do real well in your market.

Yeah, and actually in many cases, and I might regret saying this later and get people that will dispute this, but in many cases if you do have a local business, it's almost easier once you learn how to do this to get good traffic than it is in a global business because in a global arena you're competing with a lot of bigger players and people that are willing to bid up the traffic. Let's talk a little bit now. So the first thing that you're doing obviously, which most people who are not really online marketers don't realize, is the first thing you got to do is make sure you get traffic to your site. And then once you get traffic to your site, you've got to convert that traffic. Right. So what are you doing now at your site once the traffic comes there?

What is that strategy? Well, I have an ugly website which I'm proud of because it works. I think a lot of people are focused on making their website looking real pretty. You know, I've got a gorgeous picture on the front, but what you want to do is focus on getting them to Click on what you want them to click. I mean, for example, for us, I want to build my list. I want to get people to subscribe to the coupon program that we have, so I make that real obvious on our website. And, you know, other people should do that too. In addition, I give them other options like, as you know, the text messaging, but in addition I also have an educational mini-course on tanning and skincare that some people sign up for. I thought more people would do that, but more people are signing up for the coupon. Which was 3 times more as a matter of fact. So I found that really interesting, although I am giving coupons the primary real estate on the page, so that helps.

So I'm looking at these 2 pages right now. One of them is for the sign-up for the coupon. The other page is the sign-up for the mini-course. Are you alternating those pages or does one page lead to the next?

The ones I sent you are not actually the homepage. Those are actually the landing pages when they click on coupon or mini course. On the home page, I guess I should have sent you that.

I apologize. Actually though, I misspoke. I knew that they were landing pages and not home pages, but that's where you are grabbing the person's name and email address so that you can send them out their coupons and continue to market to them. Correct? Exactly, yes. And the 2 that you send me, are you alternating those or—

I'm not because the coupon list is our most profitable list and I want to build that. I'm not concerned about the mini-course, just to use it as added value, but when they do sign up for the coupon, not only do they get an email suggesting that they sign up for the mini-course because it is actually very good. Redirect them to the mini-course page and vice versa. If they sign up for the mini-course and they don't do the coupon, I do the same thing for the coupon. So I'm trying to do my best I can to build both lists. They're different. You've got to market to each one differently. I think a lot of people make that mistake. Like the coupon list, I have their blessing to send them offers. The mini-course list, not so much.

So that kind of thing. Now once they sign up on either of these squeeze pages, what happens to them after that? Are they put in an autoresponder where you're continually communicating with them?

Right, exactly. The mini-course is a really long sequence. I'm slowly building up the coupon sequence, but that's really the coupon sequence is when we change something or have a new offer I just do a broadcast to on, for example, the writer birthday special. That was one of the ones we broadcast. It's not part of the sequence because his birthday is once a year. But yes, to answer your question, autoresponder is crucial. You have to have an autoresponder. If you don't have an autoresponder, I mean, there's no other way to contact them.

I guess the next thing I want to talk about, and then we're going to pretty much run out of time here, but I saw in the material that you sent me that you also— you have here a system for which— for lost customers. I guess that's customer reactivation, and talk about what you're doing there in order to reactivate lost customers.

We followed your advice once again to have a lost customer promotion and we do that. We're just starting to do that every 3 months. I should have done it. It's another thing I should have done sooner. We're doing so many things, that was my only excuse, but it was a silly one because the lost customer promotion was huge, especially right before the busy season. So we sent out the lost customer promotion right before the busy season hit and had a enormous response rate. I mean, people are coming in saying, "That was really creative and clever," you know, and at the same time they're handing us their credit card and stuff like that. So the response rates on that were so good we're going to do it again and again.

Well, you know, listen, I'm going to play it here, and I want to point out to all of our members that are listening the fact that, you know, you're hitting the top 3 opportunities in any business in order to grow your business. The first one is to existing customers and you're doing regular scheduled communication with them both online, offline, newsletters, special promotions, Thanksgiving, etc. The second best opportunity to grow your business is referrals. You have a whole referral strategy in place. The third one, which is probably— actually, the second and third are the ones people miss the most, referrals, and also the third one is reactivating lost customers. Most people treat lost customers like active customers, and that's a mistake. You should be actually— exactly what Brian said. You should be using a separate campaign to lost customers to reactivate them and basically let them know that you know that it's been too long since you've seen them. When you speak to them directly like that, they say, hey, this guy's really talking to me. I mean, it's obvious by listening to everything Brian is doing. It's obvious why he is so successful. He also, and I want to point out, he's following a principle that we teach at Glazer Kennedy, the principle of diversity leads to stability. It's very important that people understand this because Brian could have done just one thing and been a successful. He's got so many things happening right now and he's developed systems for all of those. He systematized his marketing that even if one thing doesn't start working as well as it did before, he's got so many other things constantly feeding the business that he still will have a very, very stable business. Brian, you sent me a ton of stuff to discuss with you and I try to highlight the things that I thought all of our members would get greatest value out of, but what else would you like to share with our members?

I mean, that's a big open question to you. Well, the online thing I think is really important because I think a lot of people put that on the back burner, and I know we covered a little bit about that, but I think it's something they should look into. Because looking at the growth of the local searches, and most of those people want to go into a local business and buy this stuff anyway, you just got to do that. I think another thing I'd like to bring up is going back to the lost customer promotion and a couple other things is that not only identify the fact that they are lost, that they need to come back, but I again put personality into it. Going back to the stuff that you taught me. For example, on the lost customer promotion, I've got a picture of my wife and my son looking in the hot tub for them. My wife is up in the tree looking out over Sonoma looking for them. So that's kind of the personality aspect of it. But the other thing is to also make certain you have the little things done properly. For example, on this one, the deadline date is in a cursive carrier font and it's kind of crooked so it looks real, you know, stuff like that. Make sure your headline has got the specifics in it, it's not real general. For example, this headline is, here's an $11.95 reward for your safe return, you know, when you can— and then it's got all ad copy and it's got a picture of my wife and my son looking for them, you know. They get involved in it and that was my hope and it worked. So I think just to look at the little things and the third thing I would say is, to once you get something done, like for example a lost customer promotion, your autoresponder sequence, it takes some work but you can go back to it again and again and again and improve on it. The next thing that we're going to do is get into the personalization thing which I know you're so good at that I'm going to start putting personalization in the headline and then the salutation and see if that boosts response and I think it will. It will.

I've got so many things I don't know what to tell you. The good news is that there is a lot to do and you don't have to be perfect. Dan always teaches this principle of "good is good enough." The stuff that you're doing right now is extraordinarily good. Any parting words, Brian?

I just want to say thank you because I've learned from yourself and Dan Kennedy so much. I just wanted to show you. That's it. Thank you so much and I look forward to more and more new stuff from you guys.

Well, keep up the good work and hopefully we'll get the chance to meet you one day at one of our Super Conferences or InfoSummits. I think that you will find that that will be a rewarding experience for you and others can also learn from you at those events.

Thanks and have a great day there.

All right, thanks. Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow, and the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever, designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. Now, this free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at NoBSLetter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month, one from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.