Advertising: Print vs. 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 the 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 newspapers. 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.

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.

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.