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…