Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue III, 2012 | Page 60

Guerrilla
Marketing

• Get an “air guy”—one of those big
inflatable wiggly creatures. “Mine says
‘Great Clips’ on one side and ‘Haircuts’ on
the other, so we can use it any time,” she
says. “We bought it and drag it between
our two stores. It’s not a very expensive
investment for the attention it attracts.”
• Have your employees paint their
car windows with “Go Tigers” or “Win
State” or with other timely, locally oriented slogans. “I give employees a free car
wash when it’s done—and paint is cheap.”
• Use an old reliable auto dealer’s
tactic: hang colorful triangular banners,
in this case from their outdoor signage
to the light pole in the parking lot. It
actually works, says Fryar.
• Hand out free beads with a coupon
stapled to them. She buys them in bulk
at party stores.
• Get a permit to put signs out along
the boulevard saying “I y Great Clips”
or “$2 Off Haircut” or “No Waiting.”
Others trumpet a special reduced price.
“We might put that out all day, or just
a few hours when it’s slow. If someone
comes in and says they saw it, we give

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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue III, 2012

them that price.”
• Approach a local Boy Scout group,
sports team, etc. and say, “I’ll donate $100
if you can get someone to hold a sign for
these hours on these days.” She says it’s
an easy way to get help, a good cause,
and gets the wider community involved.
“Getting the whole staff involved is
the key—not just me or the manager,”
she says. However, since everyone has a
different comfort level, be sure to check
with each employee. Some may love
dressing up in a costume and standing
and waving on the corner, while others
may not.
Beneath the flurry of activity, Fryar
has a slow-and-steady approach to in-

creasing her clientele. “It’s about getting
one more each day, which is 7 more per
week times 52 weeks times the average
person gets haircuts every 6 to 7 weeks,”
she says. “They’ve been putting off a
haircut, see this, and come in”—and, she
hopes, come back.
Does she track and measure the results of all these marketing maneuvers?
“Definitely. When I had the 10 salons
and started to do more of this—and
Great Clips was involved in getting us
started—we saw how much it increased
business, versus the same period of not
doing the guerilla marketing,” she says.
The first time she tried it was during
back-to-school season. “Sales increased
18 to 30 percent over those same weeks
from the year before,” she says. “I continue to see these same types of results.
Just this past month during our haircut
sale with the marketing things my staff,
managers, and we did, my two salons had
a customer count increase of 78 percent
and 90 percent over last year’s same week.”
From folding rags to
marketing whiz

Twenty-year-old Michael Silva-Nash’s
family bought the Greater Little Rock
Molly Maid franchise in 2005. “If you
were part of the family, you had to come
to work at Molly Maid, folding rags, filing,
weekends,” he says. Soon he was making customer phone calls and beginning
to take on marketing-related activities.
Now he’s appearing on a local television