Normally you may feel that your massage therapy business is doing well and has a good number of clients. Even so there are frequent times in our massage therapy business life when client numbers could be better and we get that familiar sense that our wonderfully fulfilling massage therapy business could work a lot better.

You’ve heard me talking about how your thinking can change your massage therapy experience, and business. But how is this done? How can you turn around a massage therapy business from ok to doing well?

For most massage therapists it simply isn’t that easy. The fact of the matter is that we all have times when clients don’t come as we’d like them to and there is room for improvement. When examine our massage therapy businesses, we can really see that our client numbers are not as high and even getting our most regular clients to refer friends can feel like a battle. In this case, what is needed is some techniques to combat this and cut of falling client numbers. And all massage therapy businesses need this; not just the starting up ones.

In this case what we need to do to bring client numbers up for our massage therapy business is to examine where the clients you do have, have come from. Go over your client records again and do a quick search on what sources you have got them from.

Look at your records and you will find that perhaps out of 100 people that 10 have come from the dance club up the road, 15 have come from the office block in the city, and that the rest have come from signs and advertising. What you are trying to do is establish a pattern and find where the flow is coming from.

What will happen then is that you realise that not all client numbers have to drop in your massage business just because of unforeseen circumstances, sometimes the reason client numbers drop is because you have not followed up on marketing for a while, not contacted people in the community who have referred you business or created new, positive contacts who could be possible candidates for giving you business.

In any massage therapy business, writing down a basic graph or report for yourself will help you keep on top of any potential falling client numbers and hopefully put a stop to it before it happens.

Amy Roberts
www.massagetherapysuccess.com

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Massage Therapy Research is becoming a new part of the massage profession. There are new research studies coming out quite often. Research can help promote the massage profession and help the public to understand more about what it is that we do.

But research is confusing for the most part. The studies are hard to understand and knowing if it really is good research is a challenge for massage therapists. Learning about research methods and what to look for can help you decipher massage research and start referring to research as a way to promote your own practice.

The way to read a research study is to take a look at the massage protocol - how the massage was done and by who. Was it done by a licensed massage therapists or a nurse with no massage training? What is the ‘dose’? What was the length of the session, # of sessions, how much pressure was used and how often were the massages given? What massage techniques were used? What was the sample size- the number of participants? The more participants the better but most studies are usually small because of funding issues. Was there a control or comparison group? This will tell you if they got better because of the massage or would they just have gotten better anyway over time?

These are some of the things to start looking for. As more research becomes available there will hopefully be people helping us to analyze and interpret the results.

The thing about research is that there just isn’t enough of it so that we can say without a doubt “massage can help low back pain” or whatever ailment clients present with.

What it can do is bring us to a place where we can say something like ‘evidence is starting to show that massage can help alleviate low back pain”.

For more information see my site www.thebodyworker.com’s massage therapy research section.

Julio Onofrio
Founder of www.thebodyworker.com

Benefits

Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with your clients. Sending a regular newsletter reminds people about your existence, and encourages them to call up for that long overdue treatment. Even better, a newsletter can also educate people about what conditions you treat. You’ll be amazed at how few of your clients know and understand the full scope of your work. As well as repeat bookings, a piece in your newsletter might result in a client booking for relief from headaches (as well as their usual relaxation massage); or they might recommend you to a friend with sciatica.

Planning your newsletter

So you’re convinced - a newsletter sounds like a great idea! Let’s take a few minutes to think about what you hope to achieve, and how you might do it.

• What are you hoping to achieve by sending a newsletter? Are you looking for repeat business, new clients, more referrals, or something else? The content of your newsletter will be guided by your aims. If you start out with clear goals then you can measure how well it is performing, and take steps to improve performance later if you need to.
• How often can you commit to creating and sending your newsletter? Monthly is probably ideal, but quarterly is more realistic for many of us.
• Do you have the time and writing ability to create educational pieces in each newsletter? (If not, there are other options - I’ll be covering these in my next post.)
• Do you want to include special offers and news of upcoming events etc?
• What format will you use? Do most of your clients have email, or would a traditional paper based newsletter be more appropriate? Do you have time to address and mail a traditional newsletter?
• Do you want to use photos, graphics or fancy formatting? For paper formats, you need to consider whether your word processing software can handle it, or will you need to buy a desktop publishing package? With an email newsletter, you’ll need to send what’s known as HTML format if you want to include anything other than just plain text.
• How much money do you want to spend? For a paper newsletter you need to consider the paper itself, ink (plus a printer of course!), envelopes and postage. Email newsletters are usually cheaper than paper formats depending on how many people you have subscribing. It’s also possible to send email newsletters for free using your own email program if you don’t mind a bare bones solution.

Summary

A newsletter can be a great marketing tool for your practice, as long as you have the time and money to invest in it. If you can’t commit to writing and sending a newsletter regularly, then a newsletter is probably not for you, but if you do have the time to put into it, then a newsletter is well worth the effort.

In future posts, I’ll discuss who to send to, working out what to write, as well as how to set up an email newsletter.

You might also want to check out the sample massage newsletter that Alexander discussed before.

Catherine Doyle

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Founder, Soothed - web design & online marketing for natural therapists
Editor, natural bloom - sharing the inside story on holistic health

We’ve all had them. You can’t please them; they are always late then have the audacity to complain about your massage room, the oils, the curtains, your music, or whatever they can think about that doesn’t meet their standards of perfection. They’re never come for their appointment on time, they leave their money ‘at home’, they never refer anybody to you….the list goes on.

I had a client once who was always clinging on to her Asthma for an excuse for everything. After 20 minutes into the appointment she arrived late (couldn’t find her puffer), doesn’t apologise (why should she, she was an asthmatic) and still expected her hour treatment (because Asthmatics need a full hour) and then criticised me for not using X,Y,Z technique, after all her last massage therapist did it (she die of asthma if I didn’t and it would be my fault)….I wanted to strangle her. But I didn’t because I wanted her business.

Then one day she forgot her purse at home (her puffers made her do it) and said “I’ll be back in ten minutes with the money.” I didn’t see her again. By this time I was so sick of it that I wrote her a letter. I was polite yet assertive. In a nutshell I was sick of being walked on and treated without respect. After all her breathing had never been better like when she was seeing me…I don’t mean to big note myself but it was just a fact. I deserved better.

About a week later I wrote her a letter explaining that I felt disappointed and hurt that she didn’t pay me because it was like she did not value me or the good work I was doing and to please pay within 7 days of getting this letter otherwise I shall seek legal action. As any normal business person would.

Well you can imagine what her reaction was. Because I’d spoken to her in an assertive way she was very angry after all she could have had an Asthma attack and died. She accused me of being unfair and didn’t want to see me again. Phew! I was so glad. She sent me a cheque pretty quickly though. And that was all she had to do. Frankly I didn’t want her back. And I was not being aggressive, I was being assertive. (There is a huge difference.)

Question: What went wrong? Why did this person give me grief?

Answer: because I let them.

I just wanted to make my massage business to work and I thought I had to accept new clients just because they gave me business. I thought that a big part of making my massage business work was accepting clients that came my way…ANY clients.

But I learnt something very different (and extremely valuable) from that experience. That was to value myself as a person and a massage therapist. So I made the decision to never let another client treat me like that again. I would recognise the signs of a “difficult” client and nip it in the bud, so to speak and stop it from getting stressful. (After all the difficult client doesn’t feel stress; YOU DO!)

I devised a mental formula to prepare me to terminate difficult relationships without delay. As soon as a new client displayed any of the signs of being a difficult client, they were referred to someone else instantly. I had a mental checklist and used it actively. Since then I was able to recognise difficult clients and make the conscious choice of self value and my life would be so much better. After all who needs it for $70?

If you have had an experience like this then you know the headache they can cause you. So the first thing to bringing fabulous, regular, appreciative clients into your life and get rid of the difficult ones, or disconnect them from your life. To do this you need to recognise the signs of a difficult client.

Checklist to avoid:

• A ridiculously late arrival for the treatment without any apology or acknowledgment that they have inconvenienced you.
• Forgets their money or doesn’t have enough at the end of the massage treatment (let you get the whole massage through and then tells you they don’t have enough money on them).
• Criticizes you in some very subtle way (this is called ‘invalidation’ such as “are you still using that cheap massage oil?”)
• Always compares you to their other massage therapist out loud in conversation with you, implying they were better and they are just seeing you because the other person went out of business, town etc, etc
• Tells you that they would like to make an appointment but suggests that you give them half price because eventually they will tell people about you, which somehow qualifies them for a huge discount. (This really means they do not value you.)
• Rings five minutes before the appointment to cancel then gets annoyed because they can’t have an appointment on a time you don’t work (like 10pm Friday night.)

Believe it or not their behavior is not personal. These people are like this because they don’t like themselves and have a difficult time with self value and respect. This manifests into insecurity and a difficulty in relating to other people in an honest and respectable way. They have not learnt to show others respect. They are like this to everyone, you just have the unfortunate situation dealing with them right now.

If a client displays ANY of these things you can handle it effectively for yourself by making the decision to be assertive. My advice to you is that they are just not worth the stress or headache. You are a valuable person and a very important massage therapist who deserves the very best that clients can give you and should not take any less, consider yourself to accept anything less. You are here now, doing something incredibly good for humanity so value yourself for it.

And think of this; if you charge $70 per massage treatment then you are putting up with all of this for $70. Is it your happiness more to you than $70? If it is, tell these people to see someone else. You are worth more.

Best wishes,
Amy Roberts
www.massagetherapysuccess.com

You just graduated from massage school and are ready to go out into the world and find that wonderful job in massage that you were told about. You send out a few applications, go for interviews and you take the first job that you are offered only to find out later that it is the massage job from #^&*@! You are working long hours without breaks between sessions, the chiropractor is billing $120 an hour and you are only making $20 an hour, your massage office doesn’t have a real door but only a curtain dividing you from the hair salon, you can’t get a key to the office because of problems with past employees. These are actually stories that I have heard from massage therapists.

Finding a job in the massage profession that pays really well and can support you on your path to being a massage therapist is really about first creating an image of your Ideal Job in Massage.

1. What is your philosophy on healing and health?
2. What type of environment would you like to work in? With doctors, other medical professionals, at a spa, on a cruise ship?
3. How much would you like to get paid? What benefits do you want?
4. What hours do you want to work?
5. What incentives are there for you to get clients to come back or even bring in new clients?
6. Do you have complete control over the session or will someone be instructing you what to do and how to do it?

Once you get a list of places that you think you would like to work at and that would fit your idea of your ideal massage job, start doing some company research. Go and get a dozen massages there and see how you like the service and environment. Ask the massage therapist there what it is like to work there. Find out what the management and service is like first hand. Then you can decide if you want to be part of such an environment. You don’t have to take the first job that is offered to you. If you are desperate for a job and need to do that do it knowing that it will be a learning experience. It will be a stepping stone to finding out what you do want in a massage job. Sometimes when you are first out of school, you won’t really care. Expect to change jobs until you find your ideal job or have the patience to participate in whatever job you do take. While you may think that getting a job means that you don’t have to do much and that clients will just be directed to you - you will be much more successful if you treat it as if it were your own practice. Learn to work with clients and communicate and educate them as to what getting regular massage can do. Having repeat clients will show the management that you are good at what you do. It will give you leverage in asking for what you want.

To find out more about how to find or create your ideal massage job visit the job center at www.thebodyworker.com

Julio Onofrio
Founder www.thebodyworker.com

If you have just graduated as a Massage Therapist and want to start up your practice from home here are some ways you get started.

First of all, let me say that starting from home is an excellent way to keep overhead costs down, build up a solid client base in the control of your own environment and there are no traveling times to and from work.

Before I give you these important directions to follow lets look at this first, otherwise you won’t be able to do anything: The hardest thing about getting starting is developing momentum. This factor is so underestimated. It’s very easy to sit back and say “it’s all too hard” and rely on clients to come to you without any effort. It can be hard because you have to be very self motivated and be willing to put the time in to start this momentum.

So what are some ways to make this “gaining momentum” easier?

Write down in a special book (blank) that every day you will commit to a minimum of at least one hour dedicated to the pursuit of getting clients. If you work better with routine, then say to yourself “okay everyday, Monday to Friday, between 10 am and 11am I am going to work actively at getting clients.”

See how that feels already? Already you have formed a picture in your mind of yourself actually doing that. That picture can grow into reality and form into your life. That mental image is the basis of getting what you want. It’s very important.

The next thing to do is to have a very clear picture in your mind of what you want to be experiencing. In your special book (I call this my “inspiration book” its really a business planning book, but you can call it whatever name works to get you going) you can then ask yourself a question:

What are some of the ways I can start getting clients today?

Your response might be “contact the local Physical Therapy Center and introduce myself, and leave a brochure or flyer there.” It’s a small gesture but it might lead to something else later.

Make sure though, that the clients you want to treat actually go to the Physical Therapy Center. No point marketing yourself where your potential clients have no intention of going. I want to make that point as clear as the palm of your hand.

Follow-Up

The next thing to do is to make sure you follow up and follow up with these people or places you contact. It’s SO important to keep tabs on what your results are from your contact so that you know what’s getting you clients and what is not.

There is no point contacting a swimming center over and over again over a 4 month time frame, and leaving brochures there if you get absolutely no clients from that. There’s no sense “flogging a dead horse” as the saying goes.

This is why you must keep tabs. All you have to do for this is to write in your special book how many times you have contacted them over what period of time and whether you got any response from the swim center or not. If you did special offers and incentives to the swim center over a 6 month period, and gave your “all” and got absolutely nothing back, move on.

If you contacted the Physical Therapist a few times and had two clients from them and those clients came back and referred you other clients over a six month period, to compare, then you know that source is a good source to work on. Perhaps then you can contact the Therapist with a thank you card and some incentive for them to keep referring you their clients. It might be free massage, it might be something else. Whatever it is, make sure you do it and give them something they will like. There is no point rewarding them for the business they have given you with a nice bottle of white wine if they dislike alcohol! Just find out from their receptionist or colleague first. It’s just a bit of sneaky detective work that will go along way.

When do you stop your daily hour commitment to getting clients?

You never actually stop working on your massage business to get clients, you’ll always be doing it. That’s just business and if you’ve been in it for as long as I have (since 1994) or for twenty minutes you must realise that the act of marketing is just as important as the massage itself.

The more you build up the busier you will be and that time you spend may go from one hour a day to three hours a week, but whatever time it is, make should you do it and commit to it.

Don’t worry if you take a bit of time to actually gain this momentum, just make sure you commit to it and follow through. Because the thing about starting to take action like this is actually making a promise to yourself and, on a personal level, enhancing your self esteem as well.

My best wishes to you,

Amy Roberts
www.massagetherapymarketingsuccess.com

Hello to you. I’d like to extend a warm hello to you. I would like to provide you with some great articles about how you can get more clients in your massage business.

My best wishes to you,

Amy Roberts
www.massagetherapymarketingsuccess.com

Amy Roberts is a Massage Therapist and International Business Consultant for Massage Therapists. Amy has helped over 10,000 Massage Therapists world wide grow their massage businesses, and is also an international speaker on many issues that therapists face in their businesses. Travelling overseas to the UK, Amy was a guest speaker at the Bowen Therapy Association UK and then a guest speaker at the Therapeutic Massage Association of New Zealand.

Amy has a regular column with the American Massage Therapy Association. She also has been accredited by the AMTA’s continuing education program on stress management issues in a Massage practice. Amy has 6 eBooks that she sells online and coaches therapists in person and in groups. Amy’s website is www.massagetherapysuccess.com . She answers all emails personally.

One of the best ways to start and build a massage practice (besides using a website which I wrote about last week ) is to create a network of referrals.

All of your clients should be referring their friends, coworkers and family members to you. The way to actually get them to do this is to just kindly ask them. Most are more than willing to help. They will automatically refer people to you when they also feel like they have received a special session.

You can also set up a referral reward system like if they send you 3 new clients, you will give them a free half hour massage. I have heard of many massage therapists doing this but I actually have never really needed to do that. I think it just makes for a cleaner relationship if they refer people on their own because they want to.

Asking for referrals from others seems to bring up a lot of fears in massage therapists. They don’t want to seem like pushy sales people. They don’t want to be bothersome. They don’t want to be rejected or seem foolish. The thing is that people want to help you if you are helping them. Women in particular seem to be skeptical of asking for what they need. But in business, asking is how you create relationships and get what you want.

Some massage therapists seem to attached or identified with their practice. They think if they ask for what they want, the rejection will be too much to bear. When you identify with your massage practice in such a way rather than see it as a business with needs, you limit your opportunities.

Your other referral source is doctors and other health care providers. The best way to create a referral network with this group of people is to get to know them first. Find out about their practice , their philosophies on health and healing. Would you go to them yourself or send your mother to them? If you respect them as a health care provider and start sending people to them or even going yourself, you increase your chances of them referring to you without even asking. If you wouldn’t go to them for care, why would you want to see people that they refer to you? Creating a relationship with people before you ask them for referrals increases your chance of getting them to refer to you without your even having to ask for referrals!

Some ways to ask for referrals are:

I have a few openings in my schedule on this and this day if you know of anyone who needs to come in.

I am building my business and would appreciate your referrals.

I prefer working on only people who have been referred to me by people I know and trust.

It takes time to build up a referral network but it is well worth the time and effort. If one person refers one person who comes once a week for a year - well you can figure out what that would mean for your massage practice.

Julie Onofrio
Founder www.thebodyworker.com

Recently I’ve been reading quite a lot about some highly regarded websites being penalised by Google. I can see why they want to keep the spammy sites out of their search results, but in many cases it seems like innocent businesses are being hit by this as well as the unscrupulous operators.

In fact my husband noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of his websites had been penalised and his visitor numbers from Google had dropped right off as a consequence. When we checked his site, we found that some of the sites he’d been linking to for years were now horrid spammy sites (rather than the reputable sites they were when he’d first linked to them). He’s now removed these and asked Google to reconsider, but you can see why you’d want to avoid getting on Google’s bad side in the first place!

If you’re doing any promotion of your web site yourself, it’s well worth reading and complying wit h Google’s quality guidelines on linking to other websites. If you’re linking to other sites, make sure the other sites are:

• relevant - e.g. they are on a similar subject
• provide quality content that you’re happy to recommend

A good rule of thumb is to link to a site only if you feel it’s genuinely useful to your visitors. Don’t be persuaded to exchange links just for the sake of a link back, and don’t buy links to enhance your rankings. Lastly, check your links occasionally - good sites can go bad, so make sure the sites that you’re linking to are still relevant and high quality sites.

Happy Marketing,
Catherine
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Founder, Soothed - web design & online marketing for natural therapists
Editor, natural bloom - sharing the inside story on holistic health

“There’s no easy way to bring it up.
It’s easy to bring up, “hey, where’d you get that ring tone?” because the ring tone just interrupted everyone. It’s a lot harder to bring up the fact that you just got a massage.”

That quote comes from Seth Godin’s Blog. It is one of the reasons he sees why word of mouth does not happen.

Does it mean, massage cannot generate word of mouth? No way, on the contrary, there are so many ways it can. What is one of the most talked about topics among friends? Health (or actually the lack of it).

People talk about how tired they are, how stressed they are, how their backs hurt. These things come up a lot more than cool ring tones. So, all you need to do to be talked about is change your identity from “I am a massage practitioner.” to “I give backs their strength back.” or “eliminating stress in 30 minutes”.

Hold that last statement in your head for a minute, I’ll come back to it.

The important thing is that people have you as someone in mind who does a really specific thing, a specialist. The specialist who can help beyond anything that others might hope for. And the better that specialty relates to what people are talking about, the more you will get word of mouth.

The Irresistible Offer

There are very few books, I read more than once. But if I do, I usually read them 5 or 10 times. One of my re-reads is called “The Irresistible Offer” by Mark Joyner. It teaches “how to sell your service in 3 seconds or less”.

How? By developing a “touchstone” that answers the four biggest questions people have when they evaluate a service (or product). After reading it, you will know why “I just got a massage” can never lead to successful word of mouth referrals and - more importantly - how you can develop an identity that will lead to lots of successful word of mouth.

Just imagine what “Eliminating stress in 30 minutes or less or it’s free” would do for you.

If you want to understand this example, you need to read the book.

You can get it at Amazon or you can download it here: The Irresistible Offer for free.