How to Succeed with a Massage Therapy Business 1-2-3
Massage Business Marketing: Can Ignorance Cost You Clients?
Okay now here comes the honest truth. When it comes to advertising and marketing your massage business,
ignorance will kill the first chance of getting new clients. DO NOT let your own ignorance cost you all of the
above. I am going to tell you some facts which are harsh, brutal and 100% TRUE!
A small percentage of Massage Therapists who work for themselves suffer from thinking that what they think
is what should be marketed to their clients and nothing else. When it comes to advertising and marketing of
their massage business, choosing to allow their own beliefs and opinions as to what their clients want is
actually detrimental. Its pretty dumb really. And because Massage is about truly serving another human being,
by not marketing to their clients needs, they are only serving themselves. Not their clients.
Instead of making the effort to find out what their clients actually want by testing a couple of marketing
campaigns and asking their clients questions about the treatment, they sit back on their backsides and think "I
don't have to do marketing, Marketing and Advertising's not for Massage Therapists."
(Hey I was as a smarty pants like this too once, until the Universe took me gently in its hand and showed me
the threat of poverty and what failure would look like if I continued being cocky and arrogant. Its amazing how
things like that can be so humbling!)
Somehow they think making a good effort with marketing and advertising is ripping people off and just
being like a used car salesmen. Somewhere along the line it got into their heads that marketing is not for
them. This leaves them set in the firm thought that they are "too good" for marketing. They forget that
marketing is just an open form of comminucation into truly serving others. (What I want to know is how they
think that not doing marketing will give them clients!? Some can't see the wood from the trees, and I am not
afraid to say it.)
Basically, in a nutshell, it's all too easy to assume you know what your potential clients want but this is
just not the way to get clients.
WHY?
Because you are not your client! The problem is we as Massage Therapists have a habit of not bothering to
find out what our clients want directly. I hear too often the joke that advertising for a massage business
doesn't work. This is incorrect. Advertising for a massage business DOES work, and can work so well that you
don't know how you will fit in this huge flood of new clients in all in that week that they requested.
Its not just advertising you have to do. (You know the kind of advertising I mean. The
"shove-any-ole'-crap-in-the-paper" type advertising.) It's relevant, solution orientated advertising plastered
with benefits to your clients that you have to do. Advertising your qualifications and the school you graduated
from seems to be an ineffective way of advertising because it tells your clients nothing about why they should
come to you.
When you do your advertising and marketing, you have to get inside your clients hearts and minds and
find out exactly what they want. You will only be able to do this if you get direct information from the
clients themselves. This direct process will allow you to do this and give you a lot of fresh new clients at
the same time.
You see hardly any Massage Therapist has the gumption to go up to a client and say "So what IS the reason
you have massage with me once a month?" Some Massage Therapists, (and I'm not saying you personally, I'm just
saying "some") think that that is a sales pitch or a "tactic" and they are not like that. They prefer to stay
in their comfort zone with their denial that they are above all that business and marketing stuff.
Its now time we started changing our attitudes toward marketing and advertising as Massage Therapists. No
longer can we sit back and expect clients to just come and love us automatically. Your relationships with your
clients is like passing an exam, it has to be earned. And the beginning to earning that relationship starts
with your advertising.
About the Author: Amy Roberts | www.massagetherapymarketingsuccess.com
More Massage Therapy Business Articles:
Client Follow Up | How to Get More Clients |
Massage Business Success
2,000 Business Plans
