Even before experiencing a global crisis, float centers have had a hard time navigating social media, marketing, and just generally keeping their customers engaged. That struggle is even more real in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
We’ve spent the last two months (in between bathrobe interviews) putting together the Buoy Project, an ever-growing collection of marketing materials and content that will help you save time and bring in new customers.
Throughout the years, Float Tank Solutions has seen float centers evolve from ideas, to plans, to buildings, to destinations for healing, growth, and community. Hundreds of entrepreneurs from all around the world have worked with us to plan and build their centers – now, we want to help you to grow and thrive.
Coming up with fresh ideas and good content while also keeping abreast of the latest trends is not only challenging – it can be a full time job. Outsourcing is a common solution, but not everyone can afford to hire a marketing agency or someone to handle their social media, and our industry is so specific it’s hard for an outsider to produce truly good material.
The Buoy Project helps lighten the burden of social media, website, and newsletter content for float centers. This is an offer designed to amplify your current social media, whether you manage it yourself, have an employee run things, or have hired out a marketing company.
It’s a total social media toolkit designed specifically for float centers. As a monthly subscription, you get:
- 10+ Float Centric Social Media Posts
- 500-750 Word Blog Post w/ Images
- Customizable Email Newsletter
- Content Calendar Posting Schedule
- Access to All Historical Marketing Content
This content is designed to be adaptable. If you want to add a vector logo, host the blogs on your website, and change the template newsletter to include updates from your shop, we’re giving you all the tools to do that. This won’t replace your own marketing efforts, but it will give you a solid foundation and lift up what you’re already doing.
We’ve priced this to be accessible for everyone in the industry.
If you want to pay for the Buoy project on a month-to-month basis, it’s $225. If you’re able to commit to a full year, you’ll only be charged $150 each month, and you’ll get access to our growing archive of past blogs and images.
If you sign on before July 31st, you get the whole deal for only $75 a month for the first year. And, if that doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, but you think this could be helpful, let us know and we’ll work something out. We want this to be a useful resource for everyone who needs it.
We’ve also got more than just Marketing in mind…
We want to create an infrastructure that can carry floating forward and weather future storms, not just the one we’re in now. The Buoy Project will evolve with the needs and the desires of the industry, and we already have some things in the works.
While that’s very theoretical, we’ve got a lot of ideas we want to pursue, but only if you want to be a part of them! If you’d like to know more about our proposed timeline, or about more specifics for the project as a whole, check out the main page for The Buoy Project.
We’ve felt the community come together now more than ever, and we want to use this momentum to really help achieve something big for the industry. Check it out and see for yourself and let us know what you think.
The Construction Secret to Soundproofing: Storage Between Float Rooms
If you’ve ever taken a look at our construction materials or gotten advice on soundproofing, you’ve probably heard of the importance of including “air gaps” when building out your center. What that means and why it helps can be a bit of a technical question, and the practical implementation can seem daunting and unreasonable.
Float Conference 2017 Recap
Now that the salt has settled, I’m sharing some thoughts from “The Great Gathering of People Who Really Love Being Alone Sometimes in a Dark, Briny Room,” also known as The Float Conference.
The conference has always been an amazing opportunity to connect with the pulse of the broader float industry and, if this year’s gathering showed us anything, it’s that our collective heartbeat is as strong as ever.
2017 Float Conference Program Introduction
Every year, I have the great pleasure of writing the introduction for the Float Conference program, and every year we share it on our blog so that members of the industry who weren’t able to make the journey out to Portland are able to check it out. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
From all of us at Float Tank Solutions, where our time is measured as the space between two conferences, thank you again for a wonderful year!
– Graham Talley
What? Another Product Announcement? The New and Improved About Float Tanks Guide!
We’ve learned a lot since then, so has the industry and the rest of the world. Floating is no longer considered some obscure practice. The industry has become very well established the world over and is continuing to grow. As such, the About Float Tanks Guide in particular desperately needed updating.
There has been new research, new standards in manufacturing, and as an industry, we have a much better understanding of all things float tank.
Download the latest version today!
Announcing: The 2017 Float Tank Industry Report
In 2014 we started gathering answers to a survey that would eventually become the very first State of the Float Industry Report. We've released one every year since, and this year we (once again) have the most contributions that we've ever had. In total, 193 existing...
Working with a Landlord
If you’re planning on opening up a float center, it’s likely that you’ll end up renting and, therefore, working closely with a landlord. Like any business relationship, it takes communication, discernment, and openness to make a renter-landlord relationship feel truly comfortable.
Everyone involved is taking a risk and the reality is that, when it comes to floating, it’s probably more risk than your average small business – craft shop, bar, hair salon, law office, what-have-you.
This piece also includes a free download – a compilation of support letters from float center landlords!
Employees vs. Independent Contractors. Which is better when offering additional services?
Part of what makes all of this so confusing is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all set of actions that differentiates a standard employee from an independent contractor. Your State regulators, the federal Department of Labor, and the IRS all have their own criteria for what constitutes an “independent contractor”. Here, we’ll just be using the IRS definitions as a sort of jumping off point to the issue. If the status of employees is ever challenged, the IRS determines the status on a case-by-case basis over several criteria by a panel of judges, very similar to American Idol.
Basically it comes down to who is in control of the work. How much control does the company have over the type of job being done vs. how much control does the person providing the service. This manifests in different ways, but to fit the definition of an independent contractor, a service provider really does have to be independent. Beyond just using this guide, you should always consult an HR lawyer if you feel like there’s any confusion or ambiguity.
Basically, the rules fall into three main categories…
I’ll Give you a Float Tuesday for a Massage Today: Floating & Bartering
Whoever said that you can’t get something for Nothing obviously never ran a float center. At Float On, we’ve used bartering as a creative means to meet a wide range of goals and needs. Even as I’m writing this, I’m sipping on coffee that we traded from a shop across...
Financing Your Float Center with Investors
In addition to an increase in bank loans, more and more float centers have been using investors in recent years to finance their operations. Every center’s earning potential varies greatly — but a well-run center with no surprise buildout costs (or re-buildout costs) can do very well for itself.
As a result, people with means (or general interest) are increasingly likely to consider having a financial stake in the float industry without the glorious headache of actually running a shop.
Float Conference Interview
In the midst of all of our blog writing and party planning, I sat down with Ashkahn Jahromi, cofounder of The Float Conference, Float On, and Float Tank Solutions with a few questions about the upcoming Float Conference aka #FloatCon for you social media savvy kids in Twitterland.
