The TanWall Blog

As I write this post, there are various tanning industry groups all over the country campaigning to repeal the tan tax.

Reasons cited for abolishing the tan tax include:

• The tax unfairly targets the tanning industry, playing favoritism to the big money dermatological and cosmetic interests.  
• The terms of the tax are confusing and vague. Tanning business owners aren’t sure how to collect the tax.
•  The tax won’t bring in nearly as much as originally projected (2.7 billion in 10 years), whereas the original planned tax on cosmetic surgeries was expected to bring in much more.
• The tax will hurt many small businesses.

Tanning industry groups around the country are partaking in “grassroots” campaigns in order to fight the tax. What is a grassroots campaign? A grassroots campaign is a campaign in which members from local communities organize in order to advocate a certain cause.

Grassroots campaigns (or at least the use of the term “grassroots”) have regained popularity recently (the grassroots campaign started to become mentioned in the early 1900’s) due to the democratic ideals they embody. Basically, instead of a movement being orchestrated by a central power, a grassroots movement is orchestrated by the community. The idea is for community members to have more of a say in legislation.

More and more people are realizing that if they band together in their communities and organize effectively, they can get their opinions heard and possibly see more effective legislative action than just simply sitting around, waiting for their representatives to do the work for them. This is why grassroots campaigns are getting popular again.

With the help of organizations like the ITA, tanning salon business owners in states such as Nebraska, New York, Michigan, and New Hampshire are organizing themselves into rallies to get their opinions on the tan tax heard. They are writing to their representatives and senators advocating the abolition of the tan tax. The word is these representatives and senators are listening!

If you are feeling the hurt of the tan tax on your business and want to do something about it, consider organizing with local business owners in your area. Contact the ITA. People like you are rising up all over the country and expressing their opinions. They’re getting their voices heard.

Nurture and maintain your brand for years to come.

So you’ve learned how to build your brand. However, anyone can come up with a brand name and some fancy themes and logos, so how do you get your brand to work the magic that those bigger brand names achieve? The key to developing a great brand is not only in the marketing, but the actual results and customer service your tanning salon can offer. Great, lasting brand names take years to accumulate all of the positive images and expectations that a consumer associates with the brand name. This article will offer some suggestions as to how you can start crafting a lasting brand that consumers will know and trust for their tanning needs.

Your salon:

The first step in shaping the associations behind your brand is providing a good, dependable service for your customers. You want your salon itself to represent all of the good intentions you have for your customers.

You probably developed a theme for your brand name, so make your salon  interior reflect that theme. You want a solid, consistent appearance when it comes to the face of your brand and the inside of your salon. Consistency will make it possible for customers to form an idea of what your brand is and keep it in their heads. Make the interior of your salon comfortable and atmospheric, but also keep in mind what sort of visual theme you want to represent your brand.

Always keep the interior of your salon clean and presentable. Make sure you have enough booths to be able to accommodate the customers that come in. Some of our suggestions in our previous post about establishing the face of your salon come into play here.   

Get to know your customers. Tailor your services to suit your customers’ individual needs and you will form an impression of distinguished services that your customer will remember about your brand and communicate to others about your brand as well.  

Marketing:

When you have a quality service to offer your customers that stands out, market that service! Emphasize the best things that your salon does when it comes to the industry as a whole.

Above all, be truthful about your salon. Emphasize what you do well, not what you claim to do well. If there are any discrepancies between what you claim and what the reality is, your brand is going to suffer a terrible blow.

With today’s social media outlets, this rule is more true than ever. Customers will report their experiences with your salon, which will spread fast on the internet. Company transparency is more important than ever in this information age, so be truthful about your claims.

Internal branding:

Internal branding is a big deal in modern branding strategy. Internal branding has to do with how your brand is perceived by your employees.

It is one thing to be able to deliver your services and market your ability to deliver those services, but if your employees aren’t on board with your brand, it is just as bad as having a salon full of dirty, malfunctioning tanning beds.

Your customers will deal with your employees just as much as they deal with your tanning booths. Your employees represent your salon brand to the same extent that the quality of your services and the attitude of your marketing represent your brand.

Make sure your employees know what your brand stands for and what your customers expect of your brand and make sure they are courteous and patient in fulfilling these expectations. Bad customer service will destroy your brand name.

Wrapping it up:

So remember, your brand name is not only a pretty symbol with a catchy name, a smart slogan, and a bunch of nice colors. Your brand embodies all of the associations your customers make with your salon. Your brand will evoke impressions of your facilities, of your customer service, and of your market presence and marketing personality. You want to make sure to carefully tailor all of those elements to reflect your central aims in conducting a tanning salon business.

If you can craft a solid brand from the ground up that your customers can associate with and identify with, you will have a powerful market presence and huge advantage in this highly competitive market.

That is the end of this article series. Good luck with your branding!

How do I build my brand?

So maybe you’re convinced in the importance of building your brand. But maybe now you wonder how it is done. Below are several things you can do to start building your brand, or continue to improve on your existing brand. 

1. Develop your brand name.

Your brand name doesn’t have to be catchy, though that does help, it just needs to be unique and stand out. Try to come up with a unique name that suits the character of your tanning salon.

2. Think about your theme.

What’s the theme of your tanning salon? What colors are your customers going to associate with your salon? What sort of font could you use for your name? Again, your theme should be unique and stand out, but be appropriate to the character of your business.

3. Develop a symbol or sign.

Our Tan Wall brand features a sun behind the lettering. This makes our brand easy to recognize, even from a distance. Come up with a symbol to include next to your name to be associated with your business. Customers will start to recognize that symbol even when your name isn’t present.

4. Develop a slogan.

Think of what you want to say to your customers but keep it short! Make a slogan that says everything you want to convey to your customers and throw that out there whenever you mention your name. A good slogan will build even more familiarity with your brand.

After you have developed a brand name, symbol, and/or slogan, then you need to get it out there. Whenever you market your business, include your name in that specific font and throw in that symbol and slogan. Repetition will ingrain your brand into the minds of your customers.

The longer your brand is out there for people to see and the more frequent they see it, the more familiarity people will have with your brand. If your brand can be trusted when it comes to customer experience, people will be drawn to your salon because they know and trust your brand.

Next post, we will cover how to nurture your brand and how to equate it with associations such as good customer experience and favorable customer opinion of your company.

Why build a brand?

In this age of information, the average consumer is constantly overloaded with purchase choices and business solicitations. As more and more choices in different categories of product become present, the more and more the consumer requires those choices to be made easily and quickly. The businesses that win out in the long run are businesses that have a great message that can be delivered to the consumer profoundly in a matter of seconds.

Sounds sort of intimidating right? How do you actually achieve this? Well, that is where brands come in.  

A brand serves as a sort of sign post for a location in your memory where all of the associations you have acquired for a specific business have been stored over time. As soon as you are shown that brand name or sign, all of the impressions and ideas you have about that company are evoked at once. That is how a brand can deliver such a profound message in such a short time.

What do you think of when you see those golden arches of McDonald’s? You think of tasty fast food that’s cheap and quick to pick up and you start getting a bit hungry perhaps! How about the Starbucks seal? You think of coffee and your experiences at Starbucks and maybe you feel like going for a cup right this moment.

It takes years of careful marketing and painstaking image-building to achieve the brands that those companies have achieved, but it really pays off. Look how huge and universal those companies are in the global consciousness. And all of it is packed right into that little brand name of theirs!

The reality of today’s marketplace is this: the marketplace is overcrowded with all sorts of companies promising their own unique, advantageous products. All the big companies have brands and they are the ones grabbing customers, so if you want to compete for customers in this modern marketplace, you need a brand for your product.

So to summarize, building a brand with a name, symbols, and themes and then associating that brand with everything great your salon has to offer is necessary for establishing your salon as a lasting business. A good brand gets the idea of your business right into the consumer’s head and presents them with all the great things your business stands for in a simplified, succinct manner. If you have a good brand personality, your customers will be loyal to you and will actually associate themselves with you. You will keep more customers and attract more by word of mouth as well. This is key if you want a prospering salon business in today’s crowded marketplace.

Now you know why building a brand can be so effective. In the next post, we will offer some suggestions as to how you can build your own brand.