The JCTA Marketing for 2022/2023 season started on Oct 22 and ended May 31st. We decided to move a month ahead this year and end a month early. Tan Nation Facebook giveaways and ad boosts will continue throughout the summer. Sorry to say we had to adjust the marketing budget this year due to financial restraints.  The marketing team want above and beyond this year, with some amazing results with the budget they had to work with. We continued to spend most of the money on Google this year, which we’ve found gives us the  best results for the spend.

Google ads this year gave the industry 7.2 million impressions and drove 78 thousand Canadians to view the JCTA consumer website . As I’ve said in the past, these ads are designed to make Canadians rethink what they know about sunbeds and tanning. You always need to give consumers both sides of the debate on the benefits and risks of sunbathing. Then you let the consumer make up their own minds. The consumer website is full of information about responsible tanning, sunless tanning, and spa services that salon members offer. The biggest part of driving consumers to the website is they get to see the closest 3 salon members near them on every page. We are now tracking each time someone checks out a member salon on the website. We now know that Canadian are clicking on salon member locations to find the closest salon near them.

Website Traffic to TanResponsibly.ca

FYI, the reason for the ups and downs on the chart is our weekly budget was used up with limited funding.

We used Facebook as well to drive Canadians to TanResponsbily.ca with our Carousel ad on Tan Nation. The Carousel ad continues to be made up of four sections. 1 – pretanning for vacation/summer and how you need to start 30 days before you go on vacation. The reason we did this is because people sometime think they can go in for a couple of sessions and have a base tan. As we all know, this is not the case. It was time again to teach the public how to reduce their risk of sunburns by pretanning correctly. If you follow the exposure schedule on your equipment, it has a 4-week schedule for a reason. The second section is for Spray Tanning, whether it’s with booth or handheld. People still want to make sure they’re not going to turn orange. One day they’ll learn technology has changed, and you can get the perfect tan every time. The third section is promoting sunburn prevention by knowing your skin type, as we all know this is so essential for building a base tan without sunburning. The 4^th section is just driving anyone that wants information about having fun in the sun to the home page. As we do every year, we run lotion giveaways every 2 weeks to keep our follower engaged. We reached 138,000 Canadian consumer and maintained our 23,000 followers. This summer we’ll reduce the giveaway to one a month and increase the amount we spend on the boosting the carousel ad. The carousel ad with its limited budget of $100 per week every second week outperformed what it did last year – impressions hit 236,000 and added another 10,000 website visits. We continue to post articles and images to promote the benefits of sunlight, especially UVA and UVB. New to the website is all the new Hybrid equipment that includes red and blue light and LED facials to enhance the tan and improve the look of your skin. Red light therapy is helping sell tanning today, and it doesn’t have the negatives to it as UV does.

Remember, if we do not have your website linked to ours, we cannot help you with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The more we are all connected, the higher your rating is on Google and other search engines.

The JCTA Membership continues to grow in salon membership, but we lost some salons this year. We lost some Industry Advocate Members as well with takeovers. The salon growth has been due in part to the new pricing we got from our insurance provider, Brokerlink (Calgary). The number of salons on the program has given us negotiating power we’ve never had in the past. We’re able to cover more types of locations and equipment, old and new equipment, any type of spray booth, and cover it at replacement cost. I suggest to all salons in Canada, you get a quote and see if you get better coverage and pricing. Brokerlink is also introducing a new program for gyms with sunbeds. We need to get everyone following the JCTA Professional Standards.

Special thanks to all our Industry Advocate Members (suppliers, manufacturers, and insurer) that continued to support the Canadian sunbed community, it has been a tough few years for everyone.

Recovery is doing well this year, even with all the problems with travel. Salon that have diversified seem to be doing much better. Salons with EFT programs are growing and see the pretan season as gravy. The majority of salons I hear from had a slow start, but it took off in January and are pleased with the season. The biggest problem salons are having is staffing, as is every retail business. Hopefully this starts to settle out and owners can find good staff. As we all know this is key to our success. Wages are increasing as well, so it may be time to review your pricing and make some adjustments.

Yes, we are seeing inflation continue to rise and people concerned about having enough money to pay the bills, but we are considered a recession-proof business. I can’t tell you how many of these I’ve seen over the last 40years. Every time I’m surprised how well we do in an economic slowdown.

If you have a sunbed, come join the JCTA and help us grow the sunbed community!! Hope all have seen increases over the last year. Please have all your clients tan responsibly!

Steve Gilroy, Vice President of Smart Tan Canada and JCTA Executive Director