Don’t Use Coupon Or Daily Deal Websites… Do This Instead

Many, many years ago (before I was wise enough to know better) I was talked into running a deal with a very famous discount voucher website.

You’ve probably heard of them. In fact, you most certainly would have.

You may have even been persuaded into running an offer with them yourself; or at least considered it.

(You know, the ones with the green website).

“You’ll get loads of new customers”, they said.

“Okay…”

“You’ll get tremendous brand exposure”, they reasoned.

“Right…”

“You’ll get people coming back time and time again”, they proposed.

It seemed at the time like it might work for us.

And our diaries were certainly empty at the time, so we were keen to try anything.

(Oh, how naive we really were looking back. Still, hindsight is a wonderful thing.)

So they helpfully packaged up a deal for us and we were convinced into running it.

It was for a facial using the products we stocked at the time – a high end skin care brand – and with a mini treatment too.

After they took their cut, and the VAT was also subtracted, we were left with a highly unprofitable £11.

That was £11 to pay our staff, pay for the product costs, contribute toward our overheads…

You don’t need to be Carol Vorderman to work out that’s not great.

To impact things even further this was back in the day when not many deals were listed and the ones which were sold like the proverbial hot cakes…

We sold 810.

Yup, 810 unprofitable deals.

Not great business.

Still, we were buoyed because all these new customers would be coming back every week, right?

And bringing their friends too no doubt!

And paying full price the next time!

Except, they didn’t.

Because discount site customers are largely loyal to the discount sites, and not to you.

Fair to say that we learned that one the hard (and expensive) way.

And there were more problems.

It turns out that many of these customers weren’t exactly our dream client.

They all wanted something for nothing.

They were bargain hunters through and through and wanted as much as they could for as little as possible.

And boy were they ever vocal about it, too!

Not only did many of them leave incredibly harsh and unjustified reviews online (which I can never help but take personally – not sure if you’re the same?) but they then viewed us as a discount ‘bargain basement’ type outfit.

They wanted cheap deals all the time and so did their friends!

So was running this hugely discounted deal a total disaster for my business?

Well, not entirely…

You see it forced me to consider how I could make this work for me.

Not for the voucher site who only cared about their own interests.

But for me and my business.

My baby.

It certainly made me and my team sit down and think long and hard about whether there was something in theory that could work for us.

And after lots of coffee, lots of brainstorming and lots of chatting (heck, there may even have been a few chocolate digestives in the mix somewhere too) we came up with something.

Something which in the last twelve months alone has pocketed my business an additional £76,427 in sales and generated 1,417 happy clients.

And just to be absolutely clear, they are additional sales.

On top of all of our normal treatments and product sales.

Not bad, eh?

Want to know how I did it?

Well read on, as there’s gold in this post I promise you!

So, how could I attract people into my beauty business month after month without offering cut price deals which cheapened my brand and sent out the wrong message?

Well, I believe those 810 people who snapped up the vouchers weren’t only interested because of the low price.

Of course, some were, but there was more to it than that.

One of the key factors, I believe, was that the discount site voucher was only available for a very short period of time.

People had to grab one right there and then or they’d never be able to again.

It’s what psychologists call ‘the fear of missing out’. Many people would have seen how many were being sold, saw that it was a limited time offer and panicked that they might not get in when everyone else would.

It’s a powerful sales tool which we’d stumbled across by chance.

The problem was how to leverage this to my own advantage more regularly.

We wanted to

• Attract new clients and also bring existing ones back with increased regularity
• Wanted to attract clients who were loyal to us and not the deal sites
• Wanted to ensure that the treatments being offered were actually profitable for us

And that became the basis for the Magical Monthly Full Diary Formula.

A way of filling your empty diary slots every month.

But not with giveaway deals.

With packages and treatments that your clients love and which make you money.

It’s a win-win.

So you’re probably now expecting me to let you know how amazing this was and how quickly our empty diary space filled up.

Well, not exactly. It wasn’t all unicorns, glitter and rainbows to begin with.

Our first few attempts were a complete disaster.

We got it all wrong.

I mean there were lots of mistakes, but some of them included;

• Looking a bit desperate
• Not choosing the right treatments or products
• Not doing a good enough job of the numbers to work out if we were actually making a decent profit or not (clue; we weren’t)
• Not having a proper system in place to actually sell them when people wanted to buy them
• Not getting the message of what we were doing out to enough people in time

Yeah, so that wasn’t great.

But with a little practice, tenacity, listening to our clients and a sprinkle of help I’ve cracked it.

And here are the last 12 months sales figures to prove it.

Remember these are all additional sales on top of our normal business.

We actually don’t even do it at Christmas as we have so many other events on.

So that income is really over just 11 months of the year.

Fancy an additional £6,947.90 into your business every month?!

Okay, so that was probably a silly question.

But I’m telling you it’s possible, as I’ve done it.

And what’s more this can work for pretty much any business.

Including, but not limited to;

• beauty salons
• hair salons
• nail bars
• holistic businesses
• mobile hair and beauty

If you have a menu of products and services then this can work for you.

It can also work for you if you have one location or multiple, if you work from the High Street or from home and if you have a team of fifty or none!

You can adapt everything so that it works for you and your business.

I’ve put together a nifty little guide (well, pretty comprehensive one, actually!) to break down all of the intricacies for you.

Why make the mistakes which I did when you can just copy my now proven formula?

Not only have I broken this all down for you, but I’ve also included some rather nifty added extras to make this as simple as possible for you. Including;

• Treatment Menu Profit Tracker (so that you know you’re making money every time you make a sale)
• Planning worksheets so you can brainstorm your ideas
• Name idea cheatsheets
• Package inspiration cheatsheets

Oh, and if all of that wasn’t enough it’s available for you right now for about the price of a cinema ticket.

For one.

Enjoy.

You can grab it all now by clicking here.

To your success,

Hollie x