Often, the answers to those questions will transfer right back to your tan salon staff. If you take a look at your analytics and you see a particular block of customers that are really maxing out (in other words, they’re buying lotions and trying new tanning beds), then check if that trend is tied to any one of your sales people.

In this series, you’ll learn more about identifying and utilizing opportunities for profit growth in your tanning salon than any seminar or training course may have taught you.

Why? Because I’m going to use specific tanning salon examples that will show you exactly how you can boost your revenues and your profits.

Part 1 – Increase Revenue & Profits with Existing Customers

As a business owner, you should be constantly identifying opportunities for revenue and profit growth. Once you’ve done that, you have to target and utilize those profit opportunities that provide the most growth for the least amount of money.

Ah, the elusive “virgin tanner,” that pale-bottomed individual who has never set foot in a tanning bed. While your repeat customers are most certainly your bread-and-butter, it’s those mysterious virgin tanners that are going to build your business.

Not only does a new tanner have the potential of becoming a valuable repeat customer, but they’re also more likely to talk about their experience and share it with others. For example, a few weeks ago I went for my first-ever acupuncture appointment. I’ve since told the story to numerous friends and now shared it here.

Why? Because it was a new and unique experience.

Everyone in the tanning industry has been faced with the question “is tanning bad for you?” and it’s a tricky one that can leave many of us tongue-tied. If you struggle with this, remember that the best answer is the truth.

Tell your clients or potential clients the basic truth about tanning:

1. Tanning can give you a base tan and protect your skin against bad sunburns.

When discussing tanning, I often run into 5 tricky topics or, as I like to call them, myths. Here’s how I dispel them:

Myth: Indoor Tanning is 15 Times More Harmful than the Sun

Truth: According to the ITA (Indoor Tanning Association), one of the most incorrectly quoted statistics about tanning beds is that they are up to 15 times stronger than the sun’s UV rays. The truth is most beds are typically only about twice as strong as the sun.

It’s that strength that allows you to get a tan faster than you would outside. For example, a ten minute indoor tan might be equivalent to twenty minutes of direct, midday sunlight.

Glocalization is a marketing term that basically says a product is more likely to succeed when that product and its marketing are adapted for its local market.

Think about a massive international chain like McDonalds – they have fast-food restaurants all over the world and yet their menus and marketing vary from place to place. In Nova Scotia, Canada you can order a McLobster advertised by Ronald McDonald in a fishermen’s hat. In Delhi, it’s a paneer curry wrap. That is glocalization and you can make it work for your tanning business.

How Glocalization Can Work for Tanning Salons

Tanning salons are, by nature, a neighborhood business. Your clients likely either live or work within a 1-5 mile radius of your salon. That means you can really apply the concept of local marketing. Instead of wasting your advertising dollars covering an entire city, you can spend your money where it matters – locally.

I have a friend who recently opened a new tanning salon. She spent $1200 putting a color ad and welcome coupon in a local alt-weekly newspaper and $200 convincing a nearby gym to hand out coupons for her tanning salon at the reception desk. She saw 23 new customers thanks to her partnership with the neighborhood gym and not one of those newspaper coupons ever made it back to her. It was a hard lesson, but she learned the power of local marketing.

Satisfied and informed customers are your greatest resource for building a client base and for most tanning salons, our business is built on local referral business.

So, how do you build on that? How do you turn one customer into ten or twenty?

Here are 3 new marketing tips that will increase your client base and get those customers into your tanning beds: