Advertising Appeal: Combine Print With Online

As a salon owner, you advertise to a variety of people categorized by gender, age, location and more. But have you ever considered where these categories of people are encountering your ads? Today, salon owners must reconcile the clients—and potential clients—who search in print with those who search electronically, and then devise a marketing strategy that uses both mediums to get the most out of their advertising dollars.

The Yellow Pages Association™ found that 73 percent of adults use the Yellow Pages on a weekly basis. That means that a salon has to have a listing in there somewhere. A common misconception is that only one directory exists; however, a major metropolitan area might have several delivered for free or in conjunction with local phone service. This generates the question of which directory to list your information in, as well as whether you should buy a listing, an ad or both.

If affordable, you should buy a listing in every possible directory and pick the one that is most widely read to house your ad. Though the number of categories is growing in most directories, the listing “tanning salons” makes the most sense regarding where to list your information. When creating a listing or ad, keep in mind that size isn’t as important as frequency—taking up huge chunks of one page isn’t necessary as long as the design is eye-catching and contains pertinent, customer-driven copy such as pricing, hours, credit cards accepted and slogan.

Don’t forget about newspapers, but be aware that metropolitan or large circulation—more than 100,000—papers will charge considerably more for an inch of space than a smaller paper. For salons serving a large metropolitan area, the free suburban papers are generally well-read and will sell much cheaper ads than the major dailies. The weekly entertainment papers will likely offer less-expensive rates, too.

The best way to decide which print publication to list in is to compute the cost per thousand, or CPM. In newspapers, CPM has a base of 1,000 viewers, so for a $200 advertisement in a newspaper with a circulation of 20,000, the CPM is $20. Most papers have these stats readily available.

New Media: Creating An Online Presence

If your salon doesn’t have an online presence—preferably a Web site but at least an online phone listing—you could be alienating a growing faction of tanners who do their business hunting exclusively online. Here are some of the basics to getting a Web ad campaign rolling.

Links

The goal of an online ad is to get people to visit a company’s online presence and ultimately use that company’s services. Before purchasing an ad, get as much free exposure on the Web sites of your industry allies by asking them to link to your site. (For those who don’t know, a link contains underlined text on a Web page that will allow the person reading the page to click on the words and navigate to another site.) Linking and online customer-sharing work best between places that share an audience but aren’t competitors. It won’t bring people in by the busload, but it’s free and a good place to start.

Pay-Per-Click

The Internet-savvy probably have noticed that search engines like Google or Yahoo! display a list of advertisements on the side of the page after a search is performed. The businesses featured in these ads use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, expecting that when searchers view the results for a word or phrase, like “tanning salons,” they might want to click on one of the ads that appear on the side of the page. Presumably, someone who clicks on a Web ad is more likely to buy services than someone perusing a print news page.

Creating a PPC ad—which usually is all text—is easy, and like an eBay auction, advertisers bid for high placement on the page. The highest bid—the amount you will pay per click— gets the most recognizable spot. Then, every time a user clicks on the advertisement and goes to your Web site, you owe the ad host—Google or Yahoo!—the bid amount. So, if you bid 5 cents per click and someone clicks on your ad, you owe the host 5 cents.

Keep in mind that the word or phrase you bid on has an effect on how much you will pay for the ad and the rate of response that you will get. For example, a franchise with locations all over the Denver metropolitan area might be tempted to bid on the word “tanning.” They’ll reach the broadest audience that way, but they’ll also have to pay a lot for high-page placement or suffer from being buried under other ads. A smarter bid would be on “Denver tanning,” where fewer competitors will be trying to advertise.

Cost-Per-Impression

Essentially, cost-per-impression (CPI) is like buying a newspaper ad for the Web, and it’s similarly tracked with CPM. It operates around the premise that the advertisers pay every time someone views an ad, not necessarily when they click on it. The bidding concept usually doesn’t exist here—instead, you make your own deal with the Web site and buy space.

Cost-Per-Action

Some Web sites might agree to sell a cost-per-action (CPA) ad, which means the advertiser has to pay only when someone uses the ad to complete a transaction. Often, this is the best kind of advertisement to buy when running a banner ad (an ad sprawling across the top of a Web page). It’s the safest investment, but exposure may be less than PPC or CPM and the cost is higher. Salons should experiment with all of these options and figure out which is the most profitable.

YellowPages.com

Unlike the print version, listings on YellowPages.com are free. Feature ads will cost you, though. Sign up for a free account at www.yellowpages.com to ensure that loyal Yellow Pages users who have converted to the Internet still find you.

The cardinal sin of online ads is to buy pop-up advertising. Though some say it works, it’s likely to irritate more people than it will attract. Also avoid e-mail spam, which clutters up people’s inboxes and can be illegal. A little extra exposure isn’t worth the risk for these tasteless tactics.

Instead, survey new customers. This is the most-effective way for salons to figure out how their customers heard about them; after finding out what works and what does not, you can focus on your advertising strengths.

Overall, splitting your advertising resources between the Internet and print mediums is the best way to guarantee that you are reaching the widest possible audience.