The TanWall Blog

Some salon owners we speak to are having a hard time driving additional traffic to their business.  I would like to share with you some ideas to increase the amount of revenue and customers to your salon.

There are several simple ways to drive additional traffic to your salon with little or no money.  In an earlier topic I spoke about understanding your market place.  There are a few ideas that you could push in your community to drive traffic and help the community.

Every community has a college of some sort or another.  All of them are looking for revenue streams to help them gain more money for their schools. First I would like to touch on a school that has a sports program.  If the schools have sports program they may also have a cheerleading squad, booster program, volleyball team, gymnastics program or other ancillary programs to their school. 

You could print coupon books right from your computer and revive them to each of these programs to sell.  In return you would pay them for each coupon sold. In addition, the top producer in sales of these coupons could receive $500.00 toward scholarship money or even an annual pass to your salon for free.

In doing this, there are several angles you can leverage in the media.  The first one would be the school newspaper.  Invite the school newspaper over to interview you on the new program.  This would provide exposure to you and your salon for free. The next step would be a local newspaper, TV station and other news organizations that you have in your town.  When you provide scholarship money for students or even an annual pass it will drive the sales.

Let’s walk through the math real quick.  If you normally charge $40 per month for monthly contract, you would be selling an annual contract for $480 per year. Therefore, you could give the school $5 for each month sold. If they sold an annual subscription they would receive $60.  That is big money for school and if they sold 200 annual subscriptions they would make $12,000 and you would make $84,000.00 in revenue.

In addition to schools, there are many other organizations that could benefit by selling your services to help them make money for themselves and you making even more money. There are some organizations such as Churches, Shiners, Glee clubs, marching bands, Country Clubs, and hundreds of other non profit organizations that could benefit.

During the holiday season, your salon could donate a toy to the toys for tots program for every annual contract in their name. People love to donate and that could provide you the edge to get new customers into your salon.

Remember, there are a million ways to drive business to your salon. The only thing holding you back is execution. That’s it….

One of the keys to marketing a successful business is to simply keep control.  I do not mean doing everything. What I’m trying to say is you should manage or at least keep track of all aspects of your marketing and, furthermore, you should not hesitate to give input where input is needed.

When it comes to marketing, a consistent message is fundamental to a successful business.  Many salon owners find it easier to delegate that responsibility to someone else or to an outside marketing firm.  Not to say any of these solutions are no good, but nobody truly knows or understands your customers, and your business, better than you. In order to sustain a consistent message that follows your business game plan, you must be involved in the focus of your marketing messages, the design of artwork, researching your customers in terms of their likes and dislikes, and continually monitor the progression and success of your marketing campaigns.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? That marketing firm is starting to look very appealing, isn’t it? Well, before you pull out your yellow pages or start running an online search, let me give you an example—a scenario—that just might help you understand the importance of control and how to easily maintain it when it comes to marketing your business. Read more…

Working the Smart Tan Trade show 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee was a great experience in learning.  Talking to Tanning salon owners from across the globe, there are many similarities but just as many differences. Demographics, styles, color ideas, marketing approaches, future business plans and many other topics.

This led me to write some of those differences and provide a different perspective in many of these areas.  Over the coming year, I will be blogging about those different types of perspectives from around the country.

With our knowledge and experience I believe we can provide a perspective on different areas that business owners need to pay attention to. Being in a successful business for more than 20 years I believe that we understand just a bit more than most.  Helping over 15,000 companies in our industry achieve their objectives over the years, I think we bring to the table a time of knowledge that we would love to share.

The entire world is made up of marketing messages all around us.  Some of which we buy into some we don’t.  Some of them we buy into so much that we think that it is reality.  Although no data or facts to back up the claims people believe them.  It’s been said that each person faces upwards of 30,000 marketing messages per day.  From television commercials to signs on the side of the road, everyone is trying to get their message across. With new social media, the messages are only increasing.

On the positive side, people can learn what ever they want whenever they want.  In our digital age we can be informed with a little extra effort become experts in just about anything.  I might want to caution you though, a lot of people claim expertise when in fact they don’t know much.  Just enough to spin their perspective and change you’re thinking of something.

There are many myths in the marketplace.  One of them which I always find fascinating and the tanning industry is airflow.  Movement of air can be extremely complex but in most cases it is just a matter of common sense.  I heard several times at the show that they would like an air gap underneath the wall to help the heat removal from a salon room and be more energy efficient.  Of course there are several people in the industry pushing that this is as real issue.

Common sense tells us how could that be?  Hot air or the molecules move up.  That does not mean that the air has any velocity and moving up caused by heat.  Without fans or other equipment to push the air out of the top of the room no pressure or back draft will be caused under the wall.  Obviously the reason for this is that some people in the Tanning industry make a product that stands off the ground.

I have heard more horror stories than success stories with having a gap underneath the wall.  There are currently more than 30,000 lawsuits per year in the United States attributed to privacy issues in retail locations.  This day and age with cell phone cameras and other spyware technology, a salon owner is putting themselves at risk by not providing the maximum amount of privacy to the consumer. As a matter a fact, I have not seen one energy study, heard one salon owner say after putting a gap under the wall they saved money on their electricity bill… If that is the case, why do people believe it? Marketing…

Many people have heard of the case of Erin Andrews, sports announcer who was photographed at her hotel room naked and posted on the Internet.  Most of the stories do not make front page news but they do end up in the courtroom causing thousands of lost dollars to salon owners trying to defend themselves from these cases. Yet, some companies are still insisting that energy efficiency in their salon is happening in the gap under the wall.

Let’s go ahead and say for argument sake, you were saving money or your power bill.  How much do you think that would be?  Doesn’t your air-conditioning systems still have to remove the same amount heat? I could get into a lot of technical beta to prove to you that it really doesn’t matter but it really comes down to common sense.  Even if you were to save $20 a month would the risk be worth it? I’ll let you be the judge.  Last time I checked attorneys were very expensive.