Those of you that read my blog on a daily basis or subscribe to my rss feed know that I am the founder and CEO of Extreme Tan and Smoothies, Inc., a family owned chain of indoor tanning salons with six locations in the Tampa Bay area. In addition to Extreme Tan and Smoothies, Inc. I am also the founder and CEO of Insane Limos, Inc., an exotic limousine business that includes “Andre” a monster Ford F-650 limo and a one of a kind Pink H2 Hummer limo.
Every once in a while here on Extreme John.com I take a break from my daily ramblings to post business tips and tips for business bloggers, today I wanted to do something a little different and take a look back at some of the marketing campaigns that we ran over the past week. Maybe a few struggling tanning salon owners or small business owners will find something I post here useful in their own business.
My Week in Business Marketing
One thing I would like to point out before I get in to each of the campaigns listed below, the list you see below is only a small example of the marketing that we did over the course of the week. Posting information about all of our advertising campaigns would not only take all day, it would be stupid on my part due to the fact that I have active competitors that read my blog on a daily basis.
Web Based Marketing Campaign
We wanted to do something fun for our Extreme Tan and Smoothies customers and friends and decided that Tan for Cash would be a blast, it’s always fun when someone can win $1000 doing something they enjoy doing. The Tan for Cash Giveaway is a web based and aimed at increasing our online interaction with our customers via the Extreme Tan and Smoothies Facebook Fan Page.
Many of our indoor tanning clients have responded to Tan for Cash, and the response has been excellent.
Print Advertising Campaign
I am pretty excited about this campaign simply based on the fact that it’s cool 
Haha, well it’s cool to me because it’s the first time we featured Insane Limos and Extreme Tan and Smoothies in the same publication. One of Florida’s fastest growing newspapers is Tampa’s very own TBT, we have been working with TBT and the St. Petersburg Times for almost six years now. TBT is on the newer side of things so it’s only been a few years there actually.
This ad campaign ran on Wednesday and Friday, we love running in the Friday edition because it has a longer shelf life due to the fact that TBT does not print on weekends, not to mention it has all of the fun weekend events. Anyway instead of me writing about the ads take a look at the ads yourself.
TBT Front Cover
TBT – Extreme Tan and Smoothies Coupons
Click to Enlarge
TBT – Insane Limos Coupons
Click to Enlarge
Twitter Marketing Campaign
There are a billion blogs out there that will try to sell you on ways to make money on Twitter, I’m the opposite… wait.. well kinda. Last Saturday we announced 5 days of giveaways on Twitter to let our indoor tanning blog readers and tanning clients know that we would be giving away free tanning, free tanning lotion and free spray tanning all week on twitter @etasflorida. We had so much fun connecting with everyone on Twitter that we decided to kick off another giveaway, except this week we are doing over $2500 in giveaways on the Extreme Tan and Smoothies Facebook Fan Page, don’t worry twitter lovers we will be doing random giveaways on Twitter as well.
Click for more information
O.K, that’s probably good enough for now. I would love some feedback from everyone on this post, I really never posted what we do in marketing here on my blog before and I’m curious if you found anything useful from the heap above, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
John, you absolutely rock man. You have no idea how helpful a post like this is to someone like me that helps small local business as a consultant and webmaster. Thank you for sharing it.
Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..5 Money Making Tips For Newbies
John, You are the master of using a blog for business. Thanks for all your great posts.
If you had to only do 1 of the marketing pieces that you mentioned above, which one would you do? Which one is the most cost effective with the best returns?
BruceMcc
BruceMcc´s last blog ..Internet Marketing Without A Website?
These are some great business marketing ideas. I’m glad they produced for you. I’m a huge marketing guy/fan and it’s always nice to pickup some fresh ideas. Thanks.
Matt@Atlanta Georgia Real Estate´s last blog ..Details on New Tax Credit Extension
Nice big ads in the paper. I’ve always been curious about whether to use the perforated-look dotted lines around our specials in our print ads. One one hand, the coupon look draws peoples’ eyes to the special; and on the other hand, rarely does a client come in with a tear-out of the paper.
@Will@laser hair removal,
A great book on advertising that goes over stuff like this is Bill Glazers – Outrageous Advertising
@brucemcc, Ah. Many thanks. I will have a look.
@brucemcc, hey Bruce thank you for sharing that, looks like it’s time to grab a new book.
@Will@laser hair removal, the redemption rate on “coupons” in newspapers is much lower than coupons in something like a Val-Pak or America’s Favorite Coupon Book. The reality is that the redemption rate on those has dropped big time as well. Welcome to the digital age I guess, huh”?
There is a vast amount of research that has been conducted recently regarding the consumers? chosen method of receiving marketing communication, is e-mail, despite the abundance of inquiry that all points towards email being the marketing method of choice for consumers, why do vendors continue to discount this?
@Hermelinda Neveu, I really should have added email to the list, it’s become the “norm” around here to the point that I didn’t even consider posting our email marketing.
Add to list above:
Email Marketing
We do Email marketing to all of our double opt-in email subscribers pretty much on a weekly basis. Bottom line like you mentioned above, it works.
hey John,
Sorry, I’m not commenting on your ads, but I did want to say that I see you do have a pink hummer! But unfortunately you are in Florida and I am in So Cal. Still, I’ll remember that pink hummer if and when I make it to Florida. Sweet!
Steve
PS. Ok, I took another look at your newspaper ads. They look good. I’ll be curious to see if you post how they work. I’ve always wondered about local ads. People keep doing them, so they must work. I can see that you pay attention to what you do because you recognize that running on Friday is a good move.
steve´s last blog ..Trade Show Outboarding
@steve, thanks for reading Steve I really appreciate it and you taking the time to comment as well.
As for the ads I would imagine every business has different results based on how they approach the marketing in the first place.
Some ads we place, we place for the sheer fact of staying relevant and keeping potential and existing clients informed of various promos we might be doing. Typically our promo ads do very well, not in every type of print ad but we do o.k with this one. That specific ad only has about 150k per day ad copy, much of which gets displayed outside of our immediate service area.
I love this. Really and truly.
Have you tried direct mail to existing customers? I bet that would sell like crazy.
Dave Doolin @ Website In A Weekend´s last blog ..Saturday Morning Surfing: How’s Your Blog Traffic Lately?
@Dave Doolin @ Website In A Weekend, we have actually. There was a time where we would pull up the client database list and have a group of us hand stamp and sign post cards. It became a bit much at some point.