The key to marketing your massage business is quite simple. Do something.  Anything.  Test it. See if it works. If it doesn’t change something and do it again until it does work. Try something else. Test it. See if it works and if it does keep doing it.
You have to be doing something every day but it has to be something that is in tune with your vision and mission for building a practice. Your vision should include a picture of what your “Ideal Massage Client” (that I talk more about in my first post here) looks like so you can know who to market to and which clients to take. Yes you can choose which clients you take. I recommend that you take clients that are nurturing to you – that is they show up on time, pay the full fee, they value massage and your time. I had a massage teacher tell me that a long time ago and it took me more than 12 years to really get it and do it. I was burned out at about 12 years but now at 20 years of being a massage therapist I can say that he gave good advice.
Clients who are draining to you in whatever way are not a good match for your businesses success.  At first when massage therapists realize they don’t have to take every client that calls they either are relieved or respond with yes but I can’t afford to turn people away. In some ways you can’t really afford to take them all either.
There are so many different ideas for marketing your business and the possiblities are endless. I am creating a whole section on marketing massage on my website www.massage-career-guides.com where you can actually share your own ideas and read what others have done to get more ideas.
The part of doing something everyday is the hard part. We sabbotage ourselves like that by not doing the marketing we need to do to be successful because of the false beliefs we often carry about our own self worth and value. These beliefs were engrained in us early in life in our family of origin. You can begin to discover what your beliefs are by looking at what you have going on in your business (or don’t have going on in your business.)  You can tell what your beliefs are by tuning into your feelings about success, money and getting clients.  How do you feel when you say something like ” I have 15-20 clients a week? (or whatever your goal is).  Do you have little feelings like ‘oh no, I am going to have to do sales to get that or that just seems impossible?  Your feelings are what tell you what you believe. Since it is often difficult to actually see what the thought is because most of our thinking is unconscious we have our feelings to go on. The way to change your feelings is to start thinking differently. When those little voices pop up into your head or the feeling of dread hangs over you, start thinking of something that makes you happy. In the beginning it can be something as simple as puppies or babies – who doesn’t smile at the thought of those two things.  As you become more aware of your feelings and thought you can then choose to change them.
Actually that is my main method of marketing – just working with my thoughts. My practice sometimes slows down and it always seems to coincide with me being out of sync with my feelings. Like in Sept. I sold one of my websites which was a good thing yet very stressful – my practice plummeted. It was OK because I had the relief of a large sum of money coming in and it gave me time to build a new site and now I am wanting more clients again. All I started doing was to take the time to start thinking about what I wanted to happen. The phone is now ringing off the hook.  So it doesn’t really matter if you have a good marketing campaign if your thoughts aren’t matching up with your feelings. You good feelings are what motiveate you to take action!
So what actions are you going to take today?
