(This video is by Casey Neistat. Simply put, he rocks. You should STUDY his videos. You can find them on YouTube.)

One of my friends owns a cool hair salon in my hometown. He did an amazing job renovating the space. His space is so cool that he hosts wine tastings and art shows with local artists. The last time I was in for a haircut he seemed kind of down. I asked how things were going and he shared that he had lost another hairstylist in his business.

He went on to explain that it has become very hard to keep good hairstylists. The reason why is most hairstylists don’t make very much money. And as we know, they don’t make enough money because they don’t know how to get new clients.

I decided to share my story with him about when I started my own brokerage. I had the same problem with my agents. They didn’t make enough money because they didn’t know how to get new clients. They eventually became frustrated and would leave the business. Different businesses with the exact same problem.

The only way to fix the problem in my business was for me to get new clients for my agents. This meant I had to create systems to generate and convert leads for them. Up until this realization my focus was on recruiting more agents to join my brokerage.  What good is a large brokerage full of agents who don’t know how to get new clients?

This shift in focus literally transformed my business and our home sales doubled within 12 months. This level of growth continued each year until I sold the business. The growth came from the marketing system.

After sharing my story, I asked him about his marketing. He said that he wasn’t doing much marketing lately because nothing seemed to work. In the past, he said he would send a letter offering a free haircut to new home buyers in our area. Here is the letter he used to send:

Welcome Letter(Click on the image to enlarge)

He would include a gift certificate for a free haircut with this letter. The letter worked for many years but stopped working and he hasn’t used it in some time.

I decided to help him and revised his letter. A draft of my new version is below:

New Makeover Letter(Click on the image to enlarge)

Here is the email I sent him with this new version:

I know it won’t seem like it, but this letter took some time to write! I ended up changing it several times. The idea is to get new clients in the door and to help with this I”m trying to make the value of what they get for free extremely attractive. I don’t know what your actual cost is in offering this service, but I’m hoping it isn’t significant. Or maybe you can have have your new hairstylists cover the cost of offering the service. You’ll be supplying them with new clients as a benefit to working in your salon. You pay for the mailing and they pay for the cost to provide the free makeover when the new person comes in for their free makeover.

I went with a new makeover because this is significantly better than trying to sell a free haircut. More people will want a free makeover (new style) vs. a free haircut. This way you won’t be competing with other “free haircut” offers by your competition. I got the idea from your letter – “Its the feeling you get when you look in the mirror…”

My guess on how the numbers might look would be as follows:

100 letters mailed
5-6 new makeover appoints scheduled
2-3 staying with you long-term after the appointment

If someone uses your services at an average price of $40 per month, 100 letters could turn into $960 annually (2 new clients at $40 per month) annually. This doesn’t count any profit on product sales you might generate. This is a rough guess based on my past experience marketing. Once this system is up and running, you will have the ability to bring in new clients every single month and this should help reduce your hair dresser turnover. 🙂

When anyone calls to schedule the appointment, you need to capture all of their info: Name, Phone, Email, and Address. You can then setup an email follow up plan and continue marketing to them!

I purposefully created scarcity for the appointments by limiting them to 5 per month. I initially had this at 3 per month but increased it to 5. This was to create a little urgency for the reader to schedule AND NOT CANCEL their appointment. Creating scarcity in free offers is extremely important and should help get more people in the door.

If you have any before and after photos with testimonials, you might want to include a separate page featuring these. If not, make sure you get these pictures from people who come in for the appointment. They’ll be very valuable for you going forward. You could send out an email newsletter each week and include a new transformation story along with their pictures.

There is ONE significant difference in my letter when compared to his letter that I didn’t discuss in my email to him. This difference is in who the letter can be mailed to. His letter was a welcome letter to families who recently bought a home in the area. My letter can be mailed to any home in the area and once it is tested and improved can be turned into a system designed to bring in a steady flow of new clients.

He could have his receptionist systematically send this letter to 20 addresses on different streets in the surrounding cities each morning.

20 letters mailed daily * 6 days a week = 480 letters mailed per month

If this letter converts at 2%, he’ll bring in around 10 new clients each and every month. Over a period of 12 months, this little marketing system could add an extra 120 new clients. This would solve his problem and double his business.

NOTE: I will be launching a new marketing service for real estate professionals this week. This new service will provide you with a new 8 to 12 page content report/newsletter each month. This content report will be a sales letter designed to convert prospects into appointments.  Even better, you’ll also receive several lead generation advertisements you can use to attract new leads for your business. You can get an idea of what this new service will be by studying the free content report I posted here.


    3 replies to "Case Study: How To Improve Your Marketing"

    • RichardCoake.com

      Is the one and only focus of the newsletter program investment property? As important as that is, the newsletter’s appeal for Realtors will be thereby sharply limited.

      The marketplace cries out for your matchless skills in creating engaging content for owner-occupy buyers and sellers as well, preferably in a format that subscribing Realtors can subdivide into a weekly blog message, complete with strong and plentiful visuals.

      Please reassure us on these points.

      • Robert Minton

        Rich there are various topics lined up for the monthly content reports. These topics will be engineered for buyers, sellers, and investors. However, they won’t be generic watered down stuff like… “5 Costly Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a Home.” This type of theme for a report, or newsletter, cannot be used to sell homes and will therefore be avoided because there is no leverage for your business.

        Instead each report will be designed as a specific sales tool with three goals:

        1. Attract new buyer, seller, or investor leads
        2. Convert buyer, seller, or investor prospects into appointments
        2. Sell a properties

        This means each report will have a strategy buried inside highlighting a purchase, sale, or an investment. I hope this helps clarify where things are headed in the upcoming months.

        I hope this helps clarify!

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