Marketing, Promotion And Advertising

Salon Marketing

Often a misunderstood term, marketing in its broadest definition encompasses every facet of running a business. Marketing includes choosing your location, deciding on type of services, interior decorating, buying equipment and products, hiring employees, setting prices and planning advertising. In short, a marketing plan is everything that goes into providing a tanning service to your customers.

When you decided to go into business, you undoubtedly believed that your salon could provide a needed or desired service to the community. In exchange for this service, you expected that the community would pay a reasonable price. All of the principles of marketing rise from this simple scenario.

Simple marketing procedures are inherent in the basics of operating any business, including an indoor tanning salon. However, to make a business boom, you need to pay particular attention to the entire marketing scheme. You must be aware of what you are and aren’t doing to enhance the climate in which your tanning services are performed.

In order to have a prosperous year, a salon owner must be prepared with a creative, well-organized marketing strategy and an advertising budget large enough to accommodate the entire year’s plans.

Many times, salon owners mistakenly assume they can be successful by focusing on either their marketing or their advertising. However, the most successful businesses realize the two go hand-in-hand, and are not just interchangeable elements.

Marketing—By definition, marketing is the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market; the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service; an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer.

Advertising—By definition advertising is to make something known to; to make publicly and generally known; to announce publicly especially by a printed notice or a broadcast; to call public attention to especially by emphasizing desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy or patronize; to promote.

The first step in planning marketing strategies for the year ahead is for the owner and staff to assess the previous tactics used during 2006 and decide which were the most successful. In trying to determine the success of a specific promotion or advertisement, make sure to evaluate its ability to attract new customers, drive sales and increase profits.