The easy way to build a massage business – is there really one? I think so. I have tried many things through the years – sending flyers out throughout the offices nearby, sending newsletters out, sending Christmas cards, doing free chair massage open houses and I can honestly say none of those things really did much for building my practice.
The main things that have kept me busy for the last 24 years is being able to bill insurance for massage and having an search engine optimized and content rich website that works to get me clients every week.
Right out of massage school, I was able to start billing insurance for car accidents and for work related injuries. That was on 250 hours of initial training in massage school. It did take a bit of learning and lots of frustration dealing with insurance companies and lawyers, but in the long run it has been worth it keeping me out of having to be the eternal marketer and always looking for something new to be doing to get clients.
My business has been a combination of insurance work and having regular weekly cash clients. In the beginning, the cash clients came from the health club where I had my office – location, location, location. People were already interested in health! I didn’t have to do much to get clients. They are still my clients today coming once a week or once every few weeks. When you have regular clients coming in you don’t have to keep marketing yourself. They also do it for you.
In about 2002 or so, I was taught the concept of having “Ideal Clients”. That is really taking a look at working with people who fit your vision of health and massage. My ideal client already understands the value of massage making it easier to become a regular weekly client. I don’t have to do sales pitches. I do talk to people when I am working on them to make them aware of the changes in their body as we work and do talk to them about tension, stress and pain. But back to the ideal client – it is a process of learning what people you want to work with and that often happens by working with people that you don’t want to work with – those that drain you. Because this is all closely tied with being able to make a living, it can be a challenge to turn away less than ideal clients. I am still learning about it! The more I focus on working with my ideal client, the more successful I become and the less work it takes to market and build my practice.
The other thing that I have is a very search engine optimized website meaning it is on the first page at the top or near the top of the page for my main keywords – downtown Seattle massage. My keyword isn’t Seattle massage although it does rank highly for that too. My website is full of content -about 100 pages and it informs people of what I do and what I do with massage. I get about 100 people a day visiting the site but most of them are for other keywords related to massage so they aren’t all potential clients. I also have the site set up with a Twitter feed that announces my last minute openings. It always works to fill them. I just post each day or on Mondays my openings for the week and make sure to call people back right away.
I rent a space from another massage therapist so my overhead has never been very high. I also charge more than most massage therapists because of all the extra training I have had through the years and because of the added expense of having an office downtown. I also think being in such a highly populated area helps! I can walk down the street and basically think – who is my next new regular client?
I don’t work weekends and don’t go in before 11 am. I don’t spend my time marketing or calling doctors or people. I do still have slow periods but it is usually because of my health and not feeling up to working or some other stress in my life. All I do is work through that and then get back on board of thinking about my ideal clients. It is almost like magic.
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Hi Julie, I’m interested in hearing more about how you integrate Twitter into marketing your practice? I like that you take advantage of updating last minute openings. Do you have it linked up to your phone, then just post it between clients? About how many people respond to the last minute tweets and come in as clients? Thanks for the great blog postings! Kind regards, Alexa from Northwest Academy for the Healing Arts (a small private Massage School in West Seattle)
This is great advice. I think it is common for right brained business owners to avoid this type of thing but it makes good business sense to access these types of clients as well!
You can get a twitter feed created and place the code for it on your website. Then all you have to do is update the feed. I usually do it from home on Mondays or in the mornings. I do have it on my phone but it just takes longer to do that way. Yes I almost always fill last min appointments but you need to have a lot of traffic on your website each day to make it work. I have about 150 people a day visiting my site so it works.