I agree with word of mouth, by far my best advertising. When I purchased my salon the previous owners did not do much advertising. My husband and I passed out postcards, which we got from Vista. We did not put them on cars, we would just walk up to people at the mall in, shopping centers, grocery stores,basically where ever people were. We would shake their hand and give them a free tan card. Our response on this has been wonderful. We get around 5-10 new customers every day. And at least 80% of them return. We offer them a big discount when they come in and most people buy a package.
You do get the people that only want the free tan, and then you never see them again. Another thing I did to promote our sunless sprays, I made cards with 1/2 off a
spray tan passed them out to hair and nail salons. Not to the customers but to the stylist and nail techs. My reason for this was the client would then say" wow your tan is amazing, did you go on vacation or something" Then the stylist would say " no I got sprayed at xyz tanning salon" From one nail place alone I booked 5 sprays.