Comments on: Advertising a Health Or Beauty Business While Making the Most of a Small Budget http://rebeccakepple.com/blog/2009/02/small-marketing-budget-beauty-salon/ "Business Marketing Blog of Author, Speaker, and Consultant Rebecca Kepple" Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:03:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Mathilda Dimare http://rebeccakepple.com/blog/2009/02/small-marketing-budget-beauty-salon/#comment-5051 Mathilda Dimare Wed, 12 May 2010 18:45:39 +0000 http://rebeccakepple.com/blog/?p=121#comment-5051 I am normally not one to write my opinion on other's blog posts, but for your article I simply needed to do it. I have been searching through your blog a lot recently and I'm super impressed, I think you could potentially become a main voices for your niche. Not sure what your schedule is like in life, but if you started devoting more time to posting here, I would guess you would start getting a bunch of visitors eventually. With affiliate stuff, it could emerge as a sweet second income stream. Just something to think about. Good luck! I am normally not one to write my opinion on other’s blog posts, but for your article I simply needed to do it. I have been searching through your blog a lot recently and I’m super impressed, I think you could potentially become a main voices for your niche. Not sure what your schedule is like in life, but if you started devoting more time to posting here, I would guess you would start getting a bunch of visitors eventually. With affiliate stuff, it could emerge as a sweet second income stream. Just something to think about. Good luck!

]]> By: Dionne http://rebeccakepple.com/blog/2009/02/small-marketing-budget-beauty-salon/#comment-862 Dionne Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:50:27 +0000 http://rebeccakepple.com/blog/?p=121#comment-862 Thanks for this article Rebecca. It certainly helps to get these things into perspective, as the financial crisis deepens (or so they say). My experiences of setting a marketing budget for our Hair Salon business has been a bit hit and miss over the 2 years we've been running. When we first set up I did set aside £1000 within our start up costs for marketing/advertising. Throughout the first year we produced our own flyers/business cards and website, doing the design work myself to reduce costs. However when it came to buying advertising space in local newspapers, magazines and directories, I found the costs were ridiculous for the size of advert spaces that would be clearly visible to the reader, and we had no guarantee of a page position. Most of our budget went on this area, however with little return. After 5 failed attempts at advertising and a lot of wasted money, we gave up on adverts and decided to have a feature written in a local community magazine instead. This gave us a chance to tell people who we are, our background in hairdressing, what we do differently and why they should come to us, along with some nice photos of our salon to make it a bit more inviting. This cost £199 for a 2-page spread and included an additional half page advert. We won 5 new clients from this so it well paid for itself. We also decided to produce a newsletter and send it out to our current and lapsed clients (twice a year, and I print on my home printer to reduce costs). This has proved successful in reminding people we are still here, and that its time to treat their hair again (its amazing how many people forget about maintaining their hair). We also spend out christmas and birthday cards with a £5 voucher for the next service (again printed on my home printer). We have just reached two full years in business, and after recently spending nearly £1000 for a small advert in the yellow pages directory, we simply can't afford to do anymore advertising this year. So for the reminder of this year I plan to create as many different promotional ideas I can think of that won't cost me a penny (well may be a little bit for printing), and make more use of the internet to attract new clients by revamping our website. I'm hoping that on as small a budget as ours we will still be able to attract new clients and keep our current ones happy, as the down-turn is affecting our client spending, and also our finances. Thanks for keeping me inspired. Dionne (Silk Trends Hair Salon) Thanks for this article Rebecca. It certainly helps to get these things into perspective, as the financial crisis deepens (or so they say).

My experiences of setting a marketing budget for our Hair Salon business has been a bit hit and miss over the 2 years we’ve been running.

When we first set up I did set aside £1000 within our start up costs for marketing/advertising. Throughout the first year we produced our own flyers/business cards and website, doing the design work myself to reduce costs. However when it came to buying advertising space in local newspapers, magazines and directories, I found the costs were ridiculous for the size of advert spaces that would be clearly visible to the reader, and we had no guarantee of a page position. Most of our budget went on this area, however with little return.

After 5 failed attempts at advertising and a lot of wasted money, we gave up on adverts and decided to have a feature written in a local community magazine instead. This gave us a chance to tell people who we are, our background in hairdressing, what we do differently and why they should come to us, along with some nice photos of our salon to make it a bit more inviting. This cost £199 for a 2-page spread and included an additional half page advert. We won 5 new clients from this so it well paid for itself.

We also decided to produce a newsletter and send it out to our current and lapsed clients (twice a year, and I print on my home printer to reduce costs). This has proved successful in reminding people we are still here, and that its time to treat their hair again (its amazing how many people forget about maintaining their hair). We also spend out christmas and birthday cards with a £5 voucher for the next service (again printed on my home printer).

We have just reached two full years in business, and after recently spending nearly £1000 for a small advert in the yellow pages directory, we simply can’t afford to do anymore advertising this year. So for the reminder of this year I plan to create as many different promotional ideas I can think of that won’t cost me a penny (well may be a little bit for printing), and make more use of the internet to attract new clients by revamping our website.

I’m hoping that on as small a budget as ours we will still be able to attract new clients and keep our current ones happy, as the down-turn is affecting our client spending, and also our finances.

Thanks for keeping me inspired.

Dionne (Silk Trends Hair Salon)

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