Attracting New Customers
Planning And Persistence Pay Off
by Matt Morgan
New customers aren’t a given—they’re earned. Aside from the traditional channels of advertising—print, TV and radio—there are inexpensive ways to get prospective tanners through the doors. They require careful planning and conviction, and a little fine-tuning along the way. The effort may produce a small boost in business now, and lead the way to large long-term gains.
“The very first step needs to be a marketing plan, and that’s an involved process,” says Jane Smith of Smith Management Consultants in Lafayette, Ind. A marketing plan consists of three steps:
1) Determine the current situation within the company and the market. This includes looking at current customers, assessing sales costs, gross profits and competition, and analyzing the salon’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, she says. Through this process, a salon owner can identify how many customers are wanted or needed.
2) Prioritize objectives to determine where the company wants to go. “You could say, ‘We have this many clients now,’” Smith says. “‘We’d like to increase it to—’ whatever number you want.”
3) Develop action plans to obtain the objectives. “You can’t just pick out gimmicky little ways to bring in customers without being organized about it at the outset—otherwise you won’t accomplish your goals,” she says.
“Keep the prospect list on the front burner at all times,” she says. “Keep thinking about how you can add to your list of prospects.”
Taking care of existing customers is an important component to attracting new ones. A good customer experience will lead to happy customers, and those happy customers will advertise the salon by word of mouth.
Salon staff also can ask for referrals. “Ask current customers who their friends are who might be interested, and get their approval to approach their friends,” Smith says. “Following that, reward the customer for the referral.”
Charlie Dixon, president of Beaumont, Texas-based Bronze Body Tanning Centers, agrees that salon owners need to reward the loyalty of existing tanners. However, relying solely on current customers to spread the word is a mistake, he says.
“You’ve got to get out there and do the small things that might not seem worth the effort—that’s how you get the new customers,” he says. “You can’t rely on word of mouth from taking care of your existing customers alone. It’s getting awfully competitive.”
Psychology
Salon owners who understand what may be going through a potential client’s mind can tailor their marketing approach accordingly.
“If a prospective customer is at work or home, they’re in their usual habits,” says Guy Downing, president of Downing Consulting in Mountain View, Calif. “They’re very comfortable with what they’re doing. They have to go a little out of their comfort zone: get in their car, find parking, find your location, go in. There might be some reluctance doing anything new. I encourage my clients to design a way of directing prospective customers in such a way that it makes it very easy for them to get off their couch and come to your store.”
There are a number of inexpensive ways a salon can drum up new customers. Among them are distribution of fliers or coupons, and cross-promotion.
Fliers or brochures can make a nice advertising piece— if they’re sent to the correct target market. That’s where the planning stage pays off.
“In their promotional materials, they need to promote benefits rather than features, and that requires finding out what it is their customers really want from tanning,” Smith says.
Downing prefers a coupon—about the size of a business card—with the company’s information included. This business card/coupon is small enough for a person to tuck away and save, and could contain an offer that compels a person to visit the salon. Since tanning is one of the lowest costs associated with running a salon, it makes sense for that offer to be free tanning. It enables a person to try the tanning experience at no financial obligation, which is a big motivating factor, Downing says.
“Give away your first tan for free,” Dixon says. “That’s real controversial, I know. Your nicer salons probably don’t want to do that. But if you’re a new salon, and it’s a real competitive market, that’s an angle: ‘First tan free for anyone who wants to come try the store.’”
Of course, the salon should have a system that tracks new customers’ information to prevent them from abusing the offer, Downing says.
Coupons or other distributed material should include the salon’s Web address. Prospective clients who may be interested but not yet willing to get up and go to the salon can learn about store hours, available tanning equipment and retail items, and other tanning facts.
Sometimes, spending some cash to add a new service can attract new and different customers. “By bringing in spray booths into my salons, I brought in a new demographic, a new clientele,” Dixon says. “I’ve been able to convert a lot of them over to be UV tanners. You’ll be opening the door to a new batch of people.”
Get Out There
Many salon owners might place their Yellow Pages ad or hope for referrals, and then sit and wait for the customers to stroll through the doors with cash in hand. This passive attitude is the wrong approach, Dixon says. Salon owners must be willing to roll up their sleeves.
“You’ve got to get out there and step outside the doors of your salon and go to these other businesses and get involved in these different events and organizations, and don’t just think that you’re going to run an ad and you’re going to be getting all the business now,” he says.
Dixon recommends sponsoring fund-raisers and other charity events such as golf tournaments or food drives, as well as Little League teams or walkathons. “By sponsoring things like that, you’re getting out in the community and you’re helping the community— and people notice that,” he says. “You’ll touch people who normally you wouldn’t just by your regular salon advertising and marketing.”
Downing has retail and business clients who have formed what he calls “very casual person-to-person alliances” with owners of like businesses in the area. For tanning, these could be health clubs, gyms or hair and nail salons.
“I’d invite the owner to come,” he says. “I wouldn’t give him one free session, I’d give him half a dozen. Maybe I’d give him free sessions whenever he wanted. Maybe I’d give all of his employees free sessions.”
If the owner and/or employees of the related businesses have a good experience at the salon, they will be more inclined to recommend it. If they’re tan and have the salon’s business card/coupons to hand out, the recommendation becomes more powerful, he says.
Even a small response rate can pay off in huge long-term dividends.
“You may call on 10 people, and one comes in,” Downing says. “You haven’t really spent much money, but that one who comes in may then refer you a person every couple weeks for the next 10 years.”
They may be few and far between, but some dermatologists recommend indoor tanning to help treat certain skin conditions. Perhaps a local doctor would be willing to refer patients. Salons could hand the dermatologist a stack of business cards that include wording such as “This is good for one free session.” Downing suggests marking each card with the doctor’s name to track how many customers he or she refers.
“You have to be persistent, and you have to experiment,” he continues. “You might find that doctors just will not do it, and that the small health clubs will but the big health clubs won’t. Or you may find out that hair stylists and cosmetics people don’t work—or maybe cosmetics people would be very interested.”
Obviously, the “cross” in cross-promotion demands that the salon owner do his or her part to talk up the other business.
“You can phone these people from time to time,” Downing says. “You can make a point of frequenting their service. You should definitely make a point of collecting their business cards and maybe feature them in your own salon—it would have to be done very tastefully. But there might be a place where you’re doing some reciprocal marketing.”
Cultivating new customers requires planning, persistence and follow-through from salon owners and employees. In many cases the cost isn’t in dollars but blood, sweat and tears. Professionals concede that the process takes an effort, but also that the reward— even a small increase in traffic—is well worth it.
