Recently, my sister lost her job. She was going to school and working. A few days ago, she finished her state boards, and is now a licensed skincare specialist. This gave me an idea to start a mobile business for her.
I started Palm Beach Spray Tan, LLC. It is a mobile spray tanning company, which services Palm Beach County, Florida. This new business is also a new marketing challenge. Since it is a mobile business, the current overhead is minimal. I was fortunate to connect with a company called SouthSeas Skincare for discounted equipment and products.
First, I set up the business name and bank accounts. I spoke with my accountant to make sure everything goes smoothly for tax time. Then, I purchased the domain PalmBeachSprayTan.com. I checked the Google Keyword Tool for traffic on that exact term. There is not much traffic, but there are searches.
I went through a few templates on WordPress. Some were very nice, but not SEO friendly. I ended up choosing a very plain template, which I can add more photos to spruce it up. I tried to add as many informative pages with original content.
I went to a few local businesses listing websites, where I posted the information on the business. I noticed all the local listing websites are nofollow links. I will work on my link building strategy, but limit how much I explain here. I love competition, but it does make it difficult when my plans are laid out for them.
My keywords will mostly be geotargeted. This is a new obstacle. Most the websites that I have worked on are all online based. Therefore, it was not necessary for me to focus on specific locations.
I have noted all my competition and their keywords. I even found certain places they have placed for online advertising. Some of them have excellent plans and others have not focused so much for online marketing. Those companies with poor marketing, I will definitely have the upper hand on.
For my other marketing (offline, oh my!), I have business cards, flyers and other promotional methods. I started spreading the flyers out today. We will see how this goes. I am keeping track of each medium and the responses. This will give me more of an insight on where my marketing efforts should be focused.
Target Market
I assumed that most the appointments would be women. When researching, most forums have spoke about women in late 20s to early 30s. Personally, I would have not set that age group exactly, but it has been completely wrong so far. All phone calls for appointments have been men.
Other stats that I have found online are the ages of 18 to 44. They would have an average of $50,000 household income, and living within a three-mile radius. Since we are a mobile business, the radius would not be as important to the client as it would be for us.
It goes on to say the female to male ratio is 70:30. The male percentage is increasing and not to neglect them in advertising. I had already planned to make sure the ads were not gender specific.
This is mostly where I am at with the company. I try to do a little each day when I get home. I have a few other plans for the business. However, I will limit what is discussed online.
In my opinion, a successful business begins with a lot of research. That is exactly what I am doing.
