Salon Tanning Marketing Ideas: How to Promote Your Business in 2024

Tanning salons have become more and more popular in the last few years. With technology evolving, you can now have your most desired tanned skin in just a few minutes without having to wait until next summer. Plus, in some cases, it can be even healthier to go to a tanning salon (for organic tanning) instead of being exposed to natural UV rays. 

According to statistics, ​​the tanning salon industry market size, measured by revenue, is $2.8 billion.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, then look no further! This blog post will list the best tanning salon marketing ideas in 2024. Stay ahead of the curve and start promoting your tanning salon business with these actionable tips.

10 Tanning Salon Marketing Ideas

1. Social media marketing is important

When you want to attract more clients to your tanning salon, social media is the main thing you need to focus on. Publishing high-value and informative content on your Facebook and Instagram pages can be tempting enough for your followers to learn more about your tanning techniques and to book an appointment with you. 

Social media is the best solution if you want to put into practice your tanning salon advertising ideas. You can create engaging paid posts and let people know about all your services, plans, and advantages of spray tanning or cabin tanning, or even about your discounts and special offers. 

In the following paragraph, I will explain why you should use social media for your tanning salon.

2. Educate your audience

Tanning salons are not something as familiar as beauty salons or spas. That’s why you need to educate people before actually having a broad customer base. 

The best thing you can do is to publish on social media informative content about spray tanning. For example, you can say how long spray tanning lasts, if and how it can damage or protect the skin, how to remove spray tanning uniformly. Also, if you have sunbeds, you can inform your audience about how to protect their skin before and after using a sunbed, how often they should get tanned in a tanning cabin, etc. 

Social media is a free tool that helps you educate your audience and attract them to try your services. Remember that if you provide valuable information, people will trust you, consider you a real professional, and will be more likely to come to your tanning salon and not to your competitors. 

As a best practice, you should research on the internet some tanning salon content ideas and you can create a document where to keep all your content ideas and a calendar for your posts. This way, you will never be out of ideas, and you will stay consistent and organized.

3. Highlight why you are unique

Every small business has something special, a unique selling proposition that makes a difference in their industry. And for sure, you have yours. 

If you provide spray tanning services, you can use as a unique selling proposition (USP) for your small business the fact that your tanning solutions are organic. According to Minetanbodyskin, in an organic spray tan, wrinkles, dry skin, irritation, and other skin problems are diminished. This technique binds the moisture in the skin and repairs skin cells that the harsh sun rays have damaged. 

Another USP you can use for your spray tanning salon is reaching a natural bronze tone with your products. Many ladies are worried that they will have an orange-spotted tan if they use spray tanning. If you use high-quality products and if you have spectacular, natural results, you can promote your tanning salon based on this idea. Remember that the best tanning salon marketing idea is promoting your results, so your before and after pictures will speak for yourself.

Also, if you use sunbeds and have collagen tubes, promote the advantages of collagen for skin and highlight in your advertising materials that you have tanning cabins with collagen that will protect the lady’s skin.

4. Use a tanning salon appointment software

As a spray tanning specialist, you are always busy and on the go, especially if you work at your client’s location. For that, you need to find a solution to keep your schedule organized. 

For example, Goldie is a tanning salon appointment software that allows you to keep track of your tanning appointments, quickly access essential information about your clients (such as skin allergies, availability, etc.), send automated reminders and marketing text messages, or export reports (total sales for day/week/month/year, top services, clients who generate the most revenue). 

You also have a web version of the app to manage your daily tanning appointments even better, directly on your desktop screen.

Goldie has a free plan, so you can give it a try by installing it from the App Store or Google Play right now. 

Below you’ll see even more functionalities you can access using Goldie. 

5. Set up your tanning salon online booking page

Have you been dreaming about a virtual assistant to do the admin job for you? Here’s this appointment scheduling app for tanning salons. With the Goldie free plan, you can set up your online booking page, generate a link, and connect your booking app with the Facebook and Instagram “Book Now” buttons. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

What’s the advantage? All the people landing on your profile can book an appointment with you in just a few taps. This feature is limited only to the apps that are official partners of Facebook and Instagram, and since we have this honor, I guess you’d like to take advantage of it. 🙂

6. Offer incentives to your clients

As a spray tanning specialist, your main clients are women; we all know that women love discounts. With this in mind, consider offering discounts on special occasions such as Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, and, why not, your client’s birthday. 

Also, a great tanning salon marketing idea you can practice is to reward your loyal clients. Provide some tanning salon loyalty cards and hand them to your recurring clients. With the loyalty card, they will benefit from a discount or a freebie (a free tanning session), and you will make sure to have a strong, loyal client base. 

7. Provide a wide variety of services 

If you want to attract more clients to your tanning salon and to increase your salon revenue, you should consider investing in offering a wider range of services. For example, a great tanning salon promotion idea would be to offer all kinds of tanning services. I’m referring here to spray tanning, sunbeds with and without collagen tubes, and self-tanners. 

When you have all the service variety covered and provide a unique customer experience, there’s no chance for women to go to another tanning salon than yours! 

8. Offer free additional products 

Tanning is a service mostly used when people attend a special event and want to have glowy chocolate skin. Being a not-so-usual service, you must find innovative solutions to keep clients coming constantly. 

You can partner with a brand and ask for free samples (self-tanners, body lotion, tanning remover, SPF, etc.). Offer those free samples to your clients after every tanning session, and make sure you explain to them how to use the products correctly. With some additional free products, your clients will keep you in mind for a more extended period of time, and they will be even more likely to come to your salon again.

9. Partner up with other beauty salons

Women are always present in beauty salons, and they are open to knowing more about additional services. That’s why you should partner up with businesses like hair salons, nail salons, or even spas in your area. This way, you will have the opportunity to attract new clients to your tanning salon, you’ll grow your customer base, and you can return your favor to your business partners by sending your existing clients to their salons. This is a great tanning salon marketing idea, as ladies are always open to investing in their beauty. What better way than having a trustworthy salon recommendation?

10. Client reviews are essential

As I already mentioned in this article, many people are skeptical about spray tanning salons, as there are many cases when the tan comes in an orange tone. To avoid uncertainty about your results, you can promote your before and after photos and post on social media your positive client reviews. Remember that word of mouth is the best tanning salon marketing idea, so encourage clients to give you feedback after every tanning session and spread the word about your results.