Want hordes of new clients flocking to your salon for your latest, red-hot deals? Then “Google it”!
Nothing powers your marketing more than using one of the Internet’s most popular search engines, as one tanning salon owner has discovered. Roy Coronado – co-owner of Tan Las Vegas in Henderson, NV – has more than doubled his spray-tanning business by advertising it on Google. Since UV tanning represents 75 percent of his business, he decided to use Google to promote the custom airbrush tans provided by his wife, Nadene. “Before this, she was doing about six to eight spray-tans a day,” said Roy. “Now, she easily has more than 15 spray-tan sessions a day. When the weather gets warmer, we have a feeling that number will increase even more.”
Roy and other marketing-savvy salon owners use a Google feature called “ad words” to help build their businesses. It works like this – a salon owner chooses certain keywords that people are likely to use during Internet searches, then selects a geographic range to which the ad will be targeted. Once these factors are selected, a salon owner’s ad will be seen by everyone within the chosen area who uses those keywords in a search, and salon owners pay a small price for each person who clicks on their ad. “We chose terms such as ‘sunless spray tanning’, ‘tanning’ and ‘Las Vegas’, and set our ad to reach people within a 30-mile radius of Las Vegas,” Roy said. “There must be a lot of people in our area using Google to find a salon that offers custom airbrush tanning because a lot of our customers have said they saw our ad on Google.”
Tanners in Vegas who use Google will find a very attractive spray-tanning deal from Tan Las Vegas pop up in their browser. It provides three sessions for $75, which offers a $60 savings. “This gives us three chances to up-sell these tanners on UV sessions, products and our other services,” Roy said. “We’ve already converted many of these sunless tanners into UV tanners, while others have purchased our sunless EFT membership or continue to take advantage of this offer. Because our per-client airbrush session investment is $3.70 – $2.50 for pH-balancing products and sunless solutions, and $1.20 click-through cost – we’re more than getting our return on it. I would recommend this strategy to salon owners looking to increase any of their spa services; all you need are the right ad words and an attractive offer that you can build upon, and it should be successful!”
Roy and Nadene Coronado have owned and operated Tan Las Vegas in Henderson, NV for the past seven years, having purchased the business from previous owners. The salon has three levels of UV tanning, custom airbrush tanning and a sunless spray booth, as well as a variety of membership programs. Tan Las Vegas was recently chosen as the exclusive airbrush tan provider for the Miss Nevada United States beauty pageant.
