Magazine editors, TV segment producers, and our industry editors probably receive 50 times your volume … at least.  Giant attachment files on your pitch news release email are often not appreciated.

If your pitch and news release has a photo or a video included (and it should), include it via a link to a large enough JPG file for them to get a good look at it (and a download link).

If they’re interested, you’ll hear back from them and they will ask for a larger magazine-print size (300 dpi copy) as an attachment.  If you’re unclear on image sizes and dots per inch (DPI) vs. pixels per inch (PPI) you can learn more here.

Other Options to Help Get Your News Release Read …

Social Media Release (SMR) Services

An SMR service such as pitchengine, or MyPRGenie) is a  an excellent alternative to attached Word documents.  The SMR becomes your place to put all your news releases on the web … well search optimized.

They publish to search engines, offer analytics, social media capabilities, links, tags, image, video, and an excellent and easy download capability for large images and videos.

It’s all neatly organized and many editors are familiar with looking at releases there.

Costs for a full-featured news release service you want range from $19 – $500 depending on services you want.

Pitchengine’s  $39 a month and MyPRGenie’s $19 or $40 packages should fit the average business’ pocketbook and needs.

We do not recommend the ‘free’ accounts offered as enticements.  Big drawback … other people’s ‘related pitches’ on your release page (ugh).

Set Up an Online Sharing Service

You can also use a sharing Service like dropbox.com and box.com to hold your large files for download by the editor with a link included in the emailed release. Not quite the penache of an SMR, but still easy to download from.

The post Salon PR Tip – Respect Editor’s Inboxes appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

Freedom of Speech?  Sure! It’s a free country.  Post whatever you want. But, there are consequences.

Google, Bing, Yahoo, and MSN are voracious eaters. They digest and spit out whatever they find associated with your name. What you say (and do) online comes home to roost where you probably don’t want it.

When you (or a friend) post ‘uncomplimentary’ photos, political and religious zeal, use foul language, etc., it lives on-line for a very long time. Prospective clients, employers, co-workers, and friends you never intended to see those posts may not share your thoughts, beliefs, and personal passions.

Having opinions and religious beliefs is our constitutional right, but how (and where) we share them can have unintended consequences.

”You Only Get One Chance To Make a First Impression.”

Over a billion people use Facebook.  Friends of friends can be a large audience for your comments and shared posts.

Add Google, Bing, Yahoo, and MSN searches to the mix and unless you’ve locked down your security settings on Facebook  and elsewhere, The words you write, and the photos you post are not only visible on Facebook … They’re plastered all over the search engines and discovered with a simple name search.

Take Your On-line Reputation ‘Pulse’

• Review your ‘wall’ and check your posts and the posts of others.
• Check your profile picture.  Is that how you want ‘friends of friends’ and those searching for you on the web to see you?
• Google, Bing, Yahoo, and MSN your name. What are your first and second page listings? What photos of yours do you find?
• What Facebook or other social media listings do you see? Are you surprised? Happy?
• Check who is posting about your salon or spa on Google Local Business Listings, Yelp, Yahoo! Local Listings, Citysearch, MerchantCircle, and Insider Pages.

Online reputation management is every bit as important as the money you spend on advertising, promotion, and PR.

Want to dig deeper?  Read Online Reputation Management Guide.  It’s an excellent resource.

Other Resources:

• Google ‘Manage your online reputation’
• Google ‘Remove a page or site from Google’s search results’
• Google ‘Me on the web’

What Do You Do to Keep Yourself Safe?

The post How Scary Is Your On-Line Reputation? appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

With New York Fashion Week (Feb. 7-11) upon us, and nail fashion coverage sharing the media spotlight, what better time to pay tribute to our talented nail peers and pioneers. They are the Naileratti (my term) … those who have turned the heads and earned the respect of the world’s leading fashion designers and media.

It all happened for one very good reason; nail artists began to regard themselves first as fashion ‘designers’ … and then, skilled nail ‘technicians’. They were on top of the trends as well as the technology and never let us forget either side of their artistry.

Fashion acceptance and recognition on the retail runway for any pro beauty category filters right down to service demand at the salon level. Just take a look at hair color and extensions!  Once they finally caught on with fashion designers on the runway and red carpet, all our fashion-aware clients ‘wanted it’.

This is a lesson we can all learn from: No matter what our role in the salon or spa, we are all ‘fashion designers’ at the end of the day!

Consumer Nail Editorial Has Come A Long Way!

Nails have gone from a non-factor to the hottest fashion accessory on the runway. Knowing how much pavement-pounding the ‘Naileratti’ had to do to make this a reality, it does my heart good to see Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Lucky,  Elle, NY Times, etc. so often talking up the fashion of nails … right there with the news on the season’s new cuts/styles, hair color trends, make-up tips and complexion care.

From nail color, art, care, shape, texture and type to technology and techniques, consumer nail editorial coverage has come a long way from reading those scary ‘fungus-related’ nail stories of yesteryear … to making nails all about fashion and an integral part of the total look on runways and red carpets!

This is the stuff that sends clients into your salon.  This is the stuff of brilliant strategic marketing – building the category toward the one goal that would increase the demand and revenue of the nail artist, the salon, the service and the category:  Fashion designer endorsement.

Who Led the Way?

Who had all these thoughts first?  Who first took the nail category by storm with early and tireless leg work and lab work that propelled ‘nail fashion’ into ‘total ‘fashion’.  It was Jan Arnold (photo at right: beautylish.com) .

There was a time (the 1980’s) when nails were even less than an after-thought in fashion — much less an accessory. They really weren’t thought of at all — until artist, entrepreneur, and educator Jan Arnold as head of Creative Nail Design came along to turn the nail category upside down and inside out!

She did it with a drive, a spirit and a passion about nail artists, nail products, nail education and yes, the fashion and fun of nails that no editor or educator she reached out to could ignore.  She pounded the global pavement until finally, the fashion designers listened and launched their collections with nails in mind … specifically with Creative Nail Design’s acrylic nails and shades that sculpted the  fashion category to what it is today from the nails perspective. Jan…always the champion of the nail artist…has paved the golden way for the ‘Naileratti’.

A Long Process

It took some heavy PR lifting before the fashion recognition actually began to show itself.  But designer by designer… celebrity by celebrity… magazine by magazine — it did all happen — and the rest is nail fashion PR history!

Jan’s Creative Nail Design company (now branded as CND) was at the techno-cutting edge of nail product innovation, but Jan’s strategic celebrity and fashion positioning for the professional nail category as well as her brand deserves a  huge ‘shout out’ from artists in all industry categories.

Her PR solution

Jan consistently met with leading consumer magazine editors to help them learn more about the fashion, ease and yes, safety of having beautiful nails. While she worked incredibly hard around the world to educate and enlighten nail artists and our own industry media, she worked just as hard educate the consumer media — so they could educate their readers … your salon clients. Her laser-focused marketing and PR outreach to fashion designers bore fruit … and nails started coming down the runway in designer collections.

Jan has received many awards and had amazing editorial coverage over the years, but I’m not sure many realize her particular role as the nail industry’s ‘designer original’ who ended the nail fashion disconnect with haute couture as we view it today.

In so doing, she has paved the way for all of us who followed – and put another category and craft on the map. In my humble opinion, Jan Arnold is to nail couture what Vidal Sassoon is to hair design … Leslie Blanchard is to hair color … Yves St. Laurent to pure couture … Avril Lavigne to music and Anna Wintour to Vogue.

The Ultimate Compliment to Nails as Fashion – The Fashion Designers Own Signature Lines!

You knew, of course that Yves St. Laurent has a La Lacque nail lacquer line … and that Avril Lavigne has created a range of edgy nail appliques for the Sally Hansen nail company.

It’s also interesting to note that designer Tom Ford markets a nail line under Tom Ford Beauty Nail Lacquer.

And designers like Donna Karan and countless others are now having nail colors custom-formulated for their collections.   Nail fashion has evolved to this incredible designer ‘statement’ level.

Check out the incredibly popular nail fashion colors of Priti NYC … or the inspirations of nail industry dynamo Deborah Lippmann who works with fashion designers and also custom-creates signature nail lacquer shades  ‘with’ celebrities like Cher, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mary J. Blige and supermodels like Drew Hemingway and Lara Stone.

And, as we all know, other industry nail leaders like fashion-influential OPI are incredible ‘strategic marketers’ of showcasing nails and nail artists as part of fashion. Their color collections are often globally-inspired and their iconic celebrity affiliations with their products help to shine that media and fashion spotlight right on the professional nail category.  Have you seen the ‘8 Chart-Smashing Shades’ from ‘Maria Carey by OPI’?

Other fashion-forward nail companies like Essie among others in our industry picked up the ball and now share a key role in making nail news ‘fashion news’ on the runway.What industry are you really in?  Think about it.  Own it. It will influence all that you do – including your PR efforts — in this wonderful and fashionable New Year!

For Your Own PR and Clients, Remember:

• PR is a process – develop your strategy and stay with it.
• Think like a fashion designer … you are first, designers and artists in the total fashion business and are ‘finally’ being better recognized (and needed) for what you bring to the newest ‘looks’.
• Don’t just follow Fashion Week anymore … .you ‘are’ Fashion Week’, working in context and cohesion with those fabulous couturiers who now welcome you.
• Be consistent in your message to your target audiences.
• Be a fashion authority within your field; create news that is in context with fashion whenever possible.
• Be well read and prepared to be a valuable information, education and trend resource within your field of expertise.
• Be well-versed in and on top of current and coming fashion trends. Relate your skills and service to these trends with clients, media, and your influential contacts.

Remember, when you’re in the business of beauty, you are in the business of fashion.

Sharon Note: As a columnist, author, and now blogger in the beauty/ fashion industry, I’m long overdue in crediting the nail industry for turning the heads of the most respected fashion designers — and now a vital part of their runway collections … part of the trendsetting.

The nail artist has become the new darling of Fashion Week’s designer collections.  One look at the media coverage tells you that nail artists, colors and companies are sharing the trendsetting headlines with the fashion designer.  We read about the clothes, the hair, the make-up, and FINALLY, the nails trends debuting on the runway.  It took time, but we can all now thank our nail industry counterparts for also helping to pave the way for all of we ‘creators of pure couture’.

The post A Shout-Out to our NAILERATTI as Fashion Trailblazers appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

What looks fine on a computer screen is often totally unusable for print publication.  We recommend you invest the time to learn about DPI (dots per inch)  vs. PPI (Pixel density), screen size (pixels) vs. print size (inches), image file types (strengths and shortcomings), etc.

It’s annoying (and time-wasting) when an editor asks for a print-ready image and you send a 72 DPI, web-ready image with JPEG artifacts and stretching (ugh).  What they really could use is a high-resolution TIFF, PNG or low-compression JPG.  If you don’t understand what I am talking about, you need to, the same as you need to understand the chemistry of hair color.

Either take a class, or spend time reading up on the topic.  Here are several web resources that may help you with what you ‘need’ to know.

• All About Digital Photos – Two sections are a must read here – ‘Changing DPI’ and ‘The Myth of DPI’.
• DPI and PPI Explained
• Image File Types I
• Image File Types II

 But I Don’t Have Photoshop!

Two excellent, easy to use, and free programs for image handling we can recommend are Xnview and Irfanview.  Personally, we use Xnview.

Download your choice and keep it handy.

Do You Have Any Salon PR Photo Stories to Share?

The post Salon PR Tip – Understand Editorial Media Requirements appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

Normally I only post about stuff that’s important to you.  Today I post selfishly about something that is very important to me.  A good number of you who subscribe here know us so I thought you’d enjoy this personal sharing.  It is a large piece of who we are.

Sharon and I have been together as partners in life for 31 years and partners in business for over 20.

Those of you who know Sharon well know how amazingly fortunate I was to have met her back in the crazy days at Clairol and then to have her decide to keep me around for all these years.

Sharon was, and is, a life-changer … not only for me, but for everyone in her life that she has touched and spent time with.

I love you, my darling Sharon, with all my heart. If I had a photo of me on one knee proposing I would post it here, but I didn’t have a camera handy when that moment happened. Happy Anniversary!

P.S. There’s still time to send wedding gifts

The post Sharing a Beautiful Day- Our Anniversary! appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

Many salon pros (and businesses) are using their Facebook personal profile for their professional side.

You may have originally chosen to use your personal profile because:

• You could send ‘friend requests’ to anyone you wish (who will friend you back).
• You could comment on your ‘friends’ wall (if their wall allows it).
• You could send personal ‘messages’ to your ‘friends’..
• You just didn’t know better.

That may not be the best answer for you in the long run.  Here’s why.

8 Reasons Why You Probably Don’t Want To Do That

• Any angry ‘friend’ with a bone to pick, or annoyed by one too many business-related personal messages, can report your ‘fake’ profile to Facebook and jeopardize all your hard work growing your personal or company ‘brand’.  Maintaining a business page as a personal profile is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights & Responsibilities. They can (and have in the past) blow you, and all your hard-earned ‘friends’, photos, links, and lists right off the Facebook map.  Goodbye!
• There’s no easy to click ‘LIKE’ button.  Although you can send friend requests to others, most prospective clients/customers won’t take the time to send friend requests  to a  business … it interrupts their Facebook time and involves too much additional effort. Remember, on-line it’s click and go, ya’ know.
• There’s no ‘Facebook Analytics’ for personal profiles – You have absolutely no marketing data to help you more effectively reach out and grow your client/customer fans.
• You can’t run contests or other promotional activities.
• You have no way to override Facebook’s edge-rank algorithm using the ‘Promote’ feature to help you reach a much larger number of fans and their friends.
• There’s a 5,000 ‘friends’ limit. There’s no limit on page ‘Fans’.
• You can’t create ‘Admins’ to help you with page posts.  To do that you must give someone else your Facebook login L (gulp).
• Someday you may want a joint venture opportunity, investors, business partners, sales consultants, media opportunities, or to sell your business.   A professional (and secure) Facebook presence adds credibility and value.

‘Personal profiles’ are for people. ‘Pages’ are for business.

Given all that, if you did want to make the change from profile to page, how can you do that?  Here’s how.

How to Convert Your Profile to a Page

Read both the links that follow carefully before attempting to convert and you’ll have a good, clean conversion, and you’ll avoid losing any of your accumulated photos and friend’s data.

1. How to Convert Facebook Personal Profile to a Fan/Business Page by Lisa LIbutti
2. Facebook’s conversion help page

Questions?  Ask Away in Comments Below.

Photo: Alex E. Proimos

The post Salon Pro Facebook ‘Sins’ – Part I appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

There’s no shortage of salon professional hair photos in the beauty social media universe.

Thousands of stylists spend hours uploading their hair photos to salon pro websites hoping to attract new clients, and show friends their good work.

Sadly, with all that time and effort, most are just ‘posters on a wall’ with a 1-day lifespan … most often only a single post on Facebook, Bangstyle, SalonGalaxy, Hairbrained, Hairflix Society, etc. saying, “Joe Blow posted new photos to his wall” (or some such auto-post) accompanied by a bunch of ‘likes’ and a handful of comments from friends and clients, never to be seen again

Many of those hair photos are remarkable! But, even more are the ‘in-the-chair’ variety with lousy lighting … a poor illustration of what may be excellent work.

Our advice? If you aren’t up to taking top-notch ‘in-the-chair’ photos … don’t! It doesn’t serve you and show your work in the best light.

Point? All that photo posting is mostly unproductive time and effort. Seeing your own pictures on the web may be ego-satisfying, but it isn’t doing much for new business.

Note: Last thought on the single-post scenario.  If you posted a great hair photo, GO BACK AND USE IT AGAIN!  Occasionally review your existing on-line collection and re-use your ‘goodies’ in a new post on your blog, client emails, on-line newsletters, etc. … anywhere you regularly reach out to your clients.  Don’t let your good work disappear. 6 months or a year later (if your work is ‘classic’), it’s new all over again.

It’s Not Just the Photo — it’s the Story.

A photo without a ‘story’ (and some personality) is just a ‘poster on a wall’.

Each and every hair photo needs a story ‘caption’.  Prospective clients are interested in their needs, wishes and dreams. Your photos illustrate you have solutions.

Why did you choose that style?

What did it mean to that client?

A Story is Not a Novel.

It’s a warm, human, client need-focused sentence or two..

A couple of examples:

“Tired of her longer locks and marathon (hot and long) AM blow-drys L, Sharon wanted both easy-care and wash & wear style options.  Voila!”

“Brunette for years, Shirley dreamed ‘lighter’ … but nothing radical, please! Enter Balayage”

You get the idea.  Each of your hair photos illustrates the solution and the caption shares the client’s problem … all created by wonderful you.

It’s Theater.

As for the photos themselves, they need to be great! Often, the biggest hair photo faux-pas is poor lighting..

When you see a show on stage, the director doesn’t just leave the house lights on and bring out the actors.  Usually the house lights go out, they raise the curtain, and they control the lighting on the stage to match the mood and the positions of the actors.

The director/lighting designer places light instruments to ‘highlight’ where actors are standing, minimizes other areas of the stage, and bring the audience’s eye to the places they want the attention.

You often don’t even notice differences, but it sure doesn’t work if they simply ‘wash’ the stage with overhead lighting. They also use colored gels over some lights to help ‘set the mood’ and reflect what they want you to feel … the same can work with lighting hair.

Get Educated

If you’re going to do ‘in-salon’ photos, ask the good hair photo pro you are hiring to shoot your next collection to show you a few tricks of their trade you can use with clients in the chair.  Make a hair photo lighting lesson for you an element of what you want as part of your next photo shoot.

Even better … get really educated!  Here are a couple of the industry’s often published pros offering some of the best photography education.

• Vivienne Mackinder’s Photoshoot Workshops
• Jean Sweet’s Camera Ready Hair

Note: We spent almost an hour Googling and were surprised by how few hair photo shoot classes and workshops we found beyond the ones we already knew about.  Both of the above schedule classes regularly.  Manufacturers offer hair shoot education from time to time (Eufora had one recently in May of 2012) but hair photo education classes are not that plentiful.

Update: January 11, 2012

Just got Mari Smith’s latest blog post on lighting tips for shooting video for social media use.  Seems very useful although I recall hair wants a ‘keylight’ to put the focus on the hair and add ‘brilliance’.   Hopefully some hair photographers will chime in here.

Thanks, Gary Lyons for your very helpful comment below.

Now go out and do it right.

What Suggestions Can You Share For Getting Good ‘In-Salon’ Photos? Comment below.

Photo Credit: possiiblymaybeenjoy

The post Hair Photos – Slapping Posters Up on Walls? appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

A talented salon owner/manager asked us:

“I think perhaps we are not doing things that are “press” worthy enough for our salon fundraisers. We want to do community salon fundraiser activities, but on a more personal level than just a walk-a-thon.  It has been difficult to find a cause to devote our time to, and one that our team really gets into, truly connects with, and cares about.  Then it’s about getting everyone on board, or just finding something they are willing it give up a day of their weekend, or an evening to do. Any suggestions on press worthy things we could do?  We may be doing some and not even realize it…

===============

Our Reply:

Good question Meg, Thanks for asking it.  Although you and I will be speaking shortly to discuss that free press release you won, I want to answer you here because so many others have the same dilemmas … a staff that needs to be motivated to get behind ‘something’, and finding  ‘something’ unique and different enough to pique the interest of the local press.

But First …

I would be remiss if I didn’t say it isn’t only about how ‘unique’ your event is, it is also about whether the local press already knows about you in some way … and what they know.

• What is their current perception of your salon?
• Do they know of you already?
• What do you believe in?
• What do you really know about style and fashion?
• What does your salon look like?
• What do you look like?

Until they know something about you through your regular news releases, find you credible and worth their reader’s attention, you are just another salon in town pitching a salon fundraiser.

Becoming newsworthy and earning a place in their consciousness is a process, not a happening with a cute name.  Part of every proposal we write to secure new clients discusses how important it is to be a ‘player’ in the minds of the local media.  That has to be earned over time with a gentle stream of good information.  Without good, foundational salon PR going, those lucky hits you might get are but a ‘flash in the pan’ happening that is soon over.

Get Creative … A Couple of Thoughts

OK, let’s assume you have already earned a place in their minds and experience.  Now, when your material crosses their desk/inbox, they are more interested in what you have to say.  Now that you’re being well read, let’s think about that ‘special event or charitable function.

Here are a couple of thoughts about ‘unusual’ salon events.

http://www.beautyprpro.com/ever-have-a-swishing-party/

http://www.beautyprpro.com/newsworthy-added-value-for-your-clients-the-total-look/

I think you get the gist.  Make your event more than a yawny cut-a-thon.

Finding That Special Non-Profit

It should be about more than PR for the salon.  Look around for something that truly moves and motivates you.  Sharon and I have special feelings about supporting developmentally disabled adults.  Our best friends feel strongly about children’s cancer, thus they support the area children’s hospital.  Supporting the military community is large in many areas.  Domestic Abuse is another important social ill that needs help (Look into your local ‘Cut it Out’ program).  Perhaps you have feelings about missing and exploited children.  The latter two charities address situations that are often in the news and on people’s minds.

Do Your Homework First

When you believe you’ve found a good candidate cause (or two or three) that you feel strongly about go visit yourself and meet the Executive Director or Development Director (two non-profit organization decision-maker titles you want to ask for when starting out). Then when you think you are in the right place(s) …

Have the Staff Personally Visit

Set up a trip for your staff to go for a tour of the charitable organization.  There’s nothing like a personal experience to get people involved.  Or, you could bring in a special presenter from the charity to help you motivate your staff.  Many bring videos and make special group presentations.

Don’t Be Just Another ‘Cut-A-Thon’ (Yawn)

Call it a “Color Your Life” event to support XXXXXX.  Get creative with the name and make it a ‘sound-bite’ the newscaster would love to use.

Flash:

Here’s a cool event that just happened up in Everett, Washington. A salon owner designed an event supporting the return of enlisted sailors on the U.S.S. Nimitz getting ready to pull into port after a long tour of duty.  A little good writing in their media flash pulled both a local TV station and a local newspaper to their salon to cover the event.  Bravo Jesse Skittrall and the staff at Absolut Hair.

Those are just a few ideas.  Hope they started the old brain cells in some new directions.

Need an Experienced Hand?

Discover ‘PR a la carte’. Sometimes all you need is a good idea and a tool to help implement it.  Give us a call at 760-414-3370.

The post Die! Cut-A-Thon … Die! appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

PR is more than press releases, it’s very much how we interact with others. Getting people to remember us by making an impression is one of all our daily business challenges.  What is it that differentiates us?  What makes us ‘memorable’?

• How we look?
• How we speak?
• What we say?
• How we behave?
• What we do?

The answer of course is all of the above.

We had a couple of recent brief meeting experiences at Cosmoprof that made two people ‘memorable’ for us.  Perhaps you can use our experience to your benefit.

Tim Wilson Made Us Feel … Valued

Tim Wilson stood way out from the crowd because he said something that made us feel wonderful.  In a loud voice from across the aisle he said, “You changed my life!”

He then shared how several things we offered in one of our ‘PR Power’ programs at an American Board of Certified Haircolorists “Educational Summit” a few years back helped him change some things he was doing in his professional life and how that made a real difference for him.

He had our full attention.  He validated what we do. He made us feel valued.

How could we forget Tim?  He was among the first people we sent a Facebook friend request to when we returned home after the show.

Sherri Jessee Made Us Feel … Remembered

We were introduced to Sherri Jessee (here’s her blog) as we were leaving the press room at the show.  She was dressed well, looked beautiful, and was completely charming upon meeting.  As important as those things were, they didn’t quite ‘flip her over’ into the very memorable after the show category.

What made her totally stand out was what she did after the show.  Not long ago we wrote on the importance of doing this.

She sent a little handwritten note.  Nothing fancy, just a brief message:

“Dear Alexander,

So nice meeting you in Vegas.

Sincerely, Sherri”. 

We immediately sent her a friend request on Facebook and LinkedIn. We didn’t want to lose touch.

The Moral of This Little Story

It’s the simple things that most people don’t do that work the hardest to make you memorable.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD?

photo credit: milomingo via photo pin cc

The post Make an Impression That Sticks appeared first on BeautyPRpro.

It’s a sure-fire way to catch the attention of your local media.

Looking and feeling like a credit card, a salon VIP card is a ‘flexible’ discount device for salon or spa services and/or product purchases.  Although you will think of many other uses, our focus is on how you can use it to garner more local media awareness . . . without looking … moochy.

Although Salon VIP cards work well in any economic climate, no one is immune to a value. Value and savings opportunities are strong motivators, especially now. See our recent post ‘Good PR in a Bad Economy‘.

Newbie or Old-Timer

If you’re just getting started working with your local media, a Salon VIP card is an excellent tool to put in the hands of local newspaper and magazine editors, TV program segment producers, hotel concierges, etc.

Yes, it’s a shameless, transparent outreach to bring them into your salon or spa, but if offered tastefully and sincerely, expressing your desire to have the opportunity for them to experience the ‘special’ value and service you offer your clients, it will be perceived for what it is . . . good promotion, not bribery.

If you’ve been around for a while and the local media already know you, it is yet another good way to get ‘top of mind’ for them again, especially if accompanied by an invitation note tied into some ‘special event’ or charitable good work you are doing.  It’s simply an added incentive for them to focus on you again.

For either group, a tastefully handled Salon VIP card in the pocket of someone from the media increases the likelihood you will see them again IF you’re done a good job on their first visit (See our posts on “How do Your Clients See You?” and “All the World’s a Stage“). Many long-term relationships with local anchor people, weather folk, segment producers, magazine writers, etc. have begun with an enjoyable ‘first visit‘.  Getting that first visit is the trick.

Note: Some press feel ‘guilty’ visiting another salon – It’s like they’re leaving their hairdresser! But, your Salon VIP Card gives them the option of just coming in to ‘try’ another service like a manicure, pedicure , massage or facial, etc. If they like what they experience, they will often opt for a new cut or color look sooner than later. Without your card, they may have never come in at all for any service!

There is no more powerful referral to have than members of the media! They not only tell all their endless contacts but are now familiar with your business when it comes time to do a story involving salons and spas.

What Does a Salon VIP Card Look Like?

The above image is a real world example of a card created by Suki of Donsuki Salon on Madison Avenue in New York. Should your design be flamboyant and easily identifiable, or more subtle and designer-ish? No rules. You can make a case for both, but it always should reflect your salon or spa’s image and message.

Our experience has shown a Salon VIP card works best, and is more flexible for multiple use, if it is designed with:

• An expiration date.
• A ‘write-in’ field for discount amount (based on use).
• Write-in’ fields for a choice of services, products or both.
• A non-transferable and recall statement.
• Contact information

In Suki’s case, she chose never to give product discounts, thus the printed copy on the card ‘for services only’ added. Dale elected ‘write-in’ space for both services and product discounts.  Your choice.

Be Inclusive – Invest in your Media ‘Newbies’.

Everyone was an ‘assistant’ or a ‘Jr.’ before they caught a break.  Include in your list of VIP candidates those individuals who are most often overlooked when “goodies” are sent to the media. Keep in mind that those lesser-titled individuals at the media today are the senior people of tomorrow.  In addition, they influence everyone around them.  You simply cannot evaluate someone’s sphere of influence or credibility factor until you get to know them better.  Treat them with the same respect and caring you would give to the Editor-in-Chief and you could make a supporter for life’ of your salon or spa.  Your Salon VIP card program is a long-term promotional investment.

Salon VIP Card To-Dos

1. Make Your Cards Substantial –Don’t ‘cheap’ on the look and feel of the card. Card stock or paper doesn’t send the right message. We recommend a plastic credit card stock and size. Figure printing cost at slightly over a buck apiece for a thousand.
2. Make Your Invitation Letter Sincere and Clear — Download the sample invitation letter to get an idea of how a good invitation avoids your offer looking blatantly ‘moochey’.
3. Inform your Front Desk and Staff –When a VIP card holder arrives at your salon/spa front desk you should be notified immediately upon arrival. You should be the one to welcome them and evaluate how you wish to handle their appointment.
4. Keep a Log –Keep a front desk log of VIP cards recipients using their privileges. You will know within a few months who is a ‘goody-grabber’ and who may be a helpful friend.
5. Expire All First-time Cards at 6 Months –You want to re-issue replacement cards every six months to have the option of dropping someone off the list as well as the opportunity of sending out replacement cards and new reminder invitation letters at six months. It’s a twice-a-year reminder that you are there and ready to serve.
6. Put Your Salon VIPs on Your Regular Mail/Email List — You’d be surprised how often this gets forgotten. Make sure all your VIP’s are kept updated and on your regular salon/spa mailing and e-mailing list.
7. Use Ink –Make your write-in entries on the card un-erasable.  I know, I know, it seems obvious, but one should never assume:-).

Sample Invitation Letter

Download sample-invite copy for your invitation letter. Change the general copy to suit your offering, discounts, services, etc.

Starting Here

We’re sure you can find several convenient local suppliers of credit card stock custom cards but for starters, here’s name of a supplier that has always done a good job for us. Form-Craft is a San Diego based business form and promotional supplier.

Form-Craft Business Systems
4952 Naples St.
San Diego, CA 92110
877-634-2141
619-275-1030 (local)
www.form-craft.com/

Here’s a link to the item in their catalog pages. Just for shopping purposes, here’s another potential supplier.

If you have any questions or comments, post below and we’ll get right back to you.

Good Fishing.

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The post Your Salon VIP Card – The Media Attractor Factor appeared first on BeautyPRpro.