How Much Do Hair Salons in YOUR Area Really Make?
Here’s One Legal “Hack” Even Marketing Professionals Don’t Use (with Screenshots).
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How Much Do Hair Salons in YOUR Area Make?
I want to help you to level up your self — awareness, and question any content you consume — even mine.
On the other hand, as they say, “don’t knock it till you try it.”
Here’s one way I decided to take my advice one day and did what I suggest you do.
It was fun practicing resourcefulness if nothing else.
…The definition of “resourceful”…
re·source·ful
having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.
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It’s Not All About Tweets, Shares, Likes & Snaps
Go “old school.”
Do traditional Direct Response Marketing.
Forget Social Media.
(Wait, what?)
In other words, do for yourself what the “advertising agencies” kept secret for so long.
(Yes, the advertising agencies you learn about on “Mad Men”)
Those “secrets” are all exposed online — legally.
They have been for some time — I only happened to stumble upon them recently.
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Here’s my #1 Resourcefulness tip and it has nothing to do with social media.
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And yes you could even use this if you’re just trying to reach new clientele and not necessarily looking for a salon change.
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OMG → INFOGROUP!
Back in 2014 I discovered a website called www.infogroup.com
(In Canada it’s → www.infocanada.ca )
I had heard about mailing lists before but Info Group…
…Info Group is something else =).
I had never learned nor heard about this website the entire time I was working behind the chair full-time.
(I know for sure none of the owners reformating even meant because they would’ve loved to find out about this).
Apparently, Infogroup.com is the digital version of all the mailing lists advertising and marketing agencies used to cherish and protect.
Now it’s all on the web, available for you to download for pennies on the dollar.
Within minutes of searching the website and finding what we were looking for, we received an email with a list of the TOP 20 highest earning SALONS in Toronto.
It’s what I had requested…
…A list with the name of the contact person, address, phone number, previous year’s business income — even how much the salon spent on advertising.
It was all there.
Read that again.
It wasn’t a mailing list for highest income CLIENTS in the area who you’re thinking about sending flyers to.
That would be a consumer list.
This, however, is a mailing list of all the highest income SALONS in your city.
You can request top 20 or top 200 — your choice.
So if you’re considering a change and you’re not sure which direction you want to take your salon career towards, working in a high income earning salon is what you’re after.
Even for the next little while — now you can zero in on specific high earning salons and have their contact info in your e-mail in under 5 minutes.
Take it from me.
I’ve been through some weird situations with salons that looked like they were profitable and the better the salon does on paper, the even better their actual cash flow part of the business is.
I learned that the hard way.
I won’t post the Toronto list out of sheer courtesy for the several salons, but I can say that the average Salon Business Income declared according to these government-backed mailing lists was between $1 Million and $2.5 Million per year in the Top 20 list.
Less than a handful of them were in the $2.5–5 Million range.
In Canada, the cost of the list comes out to about $1–2 per name on the list.
(Yes, this service is legal and backed by government data).
So a quick $50 investment today may save you a ton of headaches in the future.
I’ve attached some screenshots of where to click through to once on Info Group.
If there is enough interest out of this blog, then Ovi and I will create a step by step video tutorial (under 5 minutes) for how to better navigate the website…
…but it’s a pretty straight forward site.
Here are the shots.
If the website fails you, then you can call them directly and speak to a live person (which is what I had to do the second time) — the number is on their website on the top right.
→ → → → www.infogroup.com ←←←←
When you get there the website will look something like this, below…
→ On the “SMALL & MEDIUM BUSINESSES TAB — CLICk for Dropdown Menu
→ CLICK ON MAILING LIST from the dropdown menu
→ On this page either you want to create a business list (of prospect salons) or you want a list of clients in a given area.
→ On this page, click on GET STARTED and you can pick from the drop down list
You then get taken to a page where you can select based on a whole ton of filters.
You’ll pick it up pretty quick — you’ll feel like a kid in a candy store of information.
Ultimately you can go around asking for people’s opinions and go on hearsay or you can quickly find out which salons walk the walk and which one of them can afford to long term based on REAL NUMBERS AND DATA!
Then, at the very least, you can say you’ve made an “informed” decision as to which way you’ll go.
Get it? =)
Informed??
This is one way to do it — to do what others would love to know how to do then share it with everyone (within reason).
Here’s to resourcefulness, creativity, ability and everything in between.
Cheers and don’t forget to pay it forward.
Melissa.
As usual, you may reach me directly on Facebook.com/myhairstylisttribe or shoot me a quick e-mail to hairstylisttribe@gmail.com and tell me what you think.
