Massage Advertising and Marketing Plan
Here’s dozens of great ideas to build your practice by using massage advertising in a cohesive massage therapy marketing plan:
Need Help Growing Your Massage Practice? Get the Free eBook.
The yellow pages used to be the first place that a prospective client would let their “fingers do the walking”. With the massage advertising opportunities of the internet, the yellow pages might still be a good place to advertise, though this is not where you will get most of your patients. Most of your patients will come from other patients or professional referrals. The size of an ad in the yellow pages probably does not make much difference. Prospective clients will either go to the largest ad or just proceed alphabetically, or perhaps they are going to pick the closest therapist to either home or work. Do not spend a lot of money on a yellow page ad, the return on investment is poor.
Save your money for a good answering service or a cell phone. A single or double line ad in bold will serve most needs for yellow page advertising. Remember, your yellow page massage advertising representative works for the company that profits from your advertising, they like to encourage larger ads.
Your well designed and eye catching business card is one of your most important pieces of advertising. Think of your business card as a massage advertisement that people keep! Cards can easily be placed or left in a large variety of locations. Your business card should be simple and contain only the information that pertains to your professional credentials and how to reach you.
Eye-catching artwork or photographs are a good idea. Your business card should list your degrees and association memberships.
Are you a member of your state massage association, or one of the top level massage organizations like NCBTMB, CPEP®, IPI, AMBP? If so, be certain to list them. These show the potential client that you are involved with respected organizations – an important aspect of your massage therapy marketing plan.
Another great idea is to brainstorm massage therapy slogans or statement like, “your health is our concern”. In some states where massage is not a licensed profession statements or claims regarding treatment or cure can be a legal problem. Be sure to know your local law as it pertains to massage advertising restrictions.
Leave your business card (massage therapy ads) with:
- Health care professionals
- Fitness and nutritional professionals
- Health clubs
- Health food stores
- Associations that service patient populations you treat
- Medical clinics
- Dental clinics
- Chiropractic clinics
- Psychology clinics
- Gyms
- Group athletic events
- Health fairs
- Public bulletin boards
- The waitress that served your lunch
- Service clubs and organizations
- Support groups
- Businesses you frequent, hair salon, dry cleaner, etc.
The locations mentioned above are also the contacts that you want to develop as referral sources.
Word of mouth is critical to your massage therapy marketing plan. For example, health food stores see a lot of health conscious people in a single day. If you offered to provide discounted massage therapy treatment to health food store staff, the staff in turn would probably not hesitate to refer patients to you.
Dentists often inflict dental trauma while providing dental care. Dentists normally care for hundreds of patients, a single dentist referring to you could provide you with many patient visits.
Psychologists see many patients who are experiencing various levels of stress and who experience muscle spasm, pain and/or headaches or other health care problems. Psychologists are a good source to market, they frequently practice in groups and you could offer them discounted care in order to educate them regarding your services.
Some weekly newspapers are a good source for inexpensive massage therapist advertising. It is not the size of the ad that is important, but rather, consistency in advertising. In other words place a small inexpensive ad and leave it in place for weeks or months. A single ad or a short term ad is usually not very effective.
The best buy in most small newspapers is the classified ad section, it is usually very inexpensive and in a small weekly paper it is usually read about as well as the rest of the paper. A one or two inch massage advertisement is usually a good purchase and once again in a small paper still gets the attention of most readers.
If after an ad has run for two or three months no one seems to have seen it, find yourself another paper. If you live in a small area with only one paper then every one will see your massage therapy ads. If you live in a larger area then find out which paper has the best readership and use that one.
Using Digital Media for Massage Therapy Advertising
As important as your business name, business card and quick-draw answering of the phone is – your practice visibility on the internet is crucial! An increasing number of people go to the internet to search out a massage therapist, and are hit by a barrage of massage therapy ads. Your ad should stand out.
- Develop a clean, easy to navigate website, with massage services, pricing, location, phone number, and hours clearly stated.
- Create a facebook page and ‘like’ local businesses.
- Become a part of public health campaigns like Posture Month.
- Create a twitter account and follow local people, businesses and other healthcare professionals.
- Get listed in online directories like Posture Practice Pro Locator
- Get listed in app directories like the free posture assessment app PostureZone
- Many professional organizations list their members online to help with massage advertising; NCBTMB, CPEP® Posture Specialist Certification, IPI, AMBP
The keys to a successful massage therapy marketing plan:
- Keep your message simple.
- Use a bold headline or attention statement and then a simple, short message.
- Be consistent, leave massage advertising in place for weeks.
- Don’t think that you have to spend a lot of money, you don’t.
- Develop a massage therapy marketing plan of regular consistent advertising exposure.
- Spend time every day marketing your practice.
- Look for free and easy opportunities to educate people regarding your practice.
- Remember the most important education and marketing is done in the office and during the patient visit.
- Your practice will grow mostly from referrals and not from advertising.
Successful Practice Building:
First of all, here are guaranteed ways to fail in practice:
- Do not answer your telephone on a consistent basis.
- Use an answering machine.
- Do not establish regular office hours.
- Do not spend time daily planning your practice growth and development.
- Do not think about your practice.
- Do not tell people about your practice.
- Do not educate your patients.
- Let your patients determine treatment plans and return visits for treatment.
- Do not ask for massage referrals.
- Do not educate your patients in the office.
- Do not work full time at building your practice.
- Make sure that you are not available for urgent calls or emergencies.
- Create a “bankers hours” schedule. Never work evenings or weekends.
- Practice like everybody else.
- Fail to invest in additional training to expand your services.
- Over charge for your services.
- Act like you don’t care.
- Do not act or dress in a professional manner.
- Do not return phone calls promptly, within twenty minutes, or at all.
- Do not visualize or pray for your personal success.
- Do not join any professional massage or health organizations.
Most massage therapists fail in practice, and statistically most do fail, primarily because they simply cannot be reached by prospective clients. When we surveyed massage therapists in one Mid West city on a Monday morning at 11 AM we could not reach one out of forty massage therapists telephoned! Using an answering machine to run your office is a guaranteed way to assure your failure in practice.
People want to reach a real human being and not a machine. In this age of advanced telecommunications, digital media, cell phones, you have so many communications options. The best method of handling incoming calls is with a cell phone that you personally answer ten to twelve hours per day. The second best method is an answering service with a live operator answering your telephone and then paging you with the message, then you return the call within twenty minutes.
Patient retention and practice building begin the moment the patient enters your office. Therefore, patient education should be viewed as an important step in a massage therapy marketing plan. Patient education should be provided while the patient is still on your table and during treatment. This educational process serves several important functions, but the most important thing that it does, from the perspective of this guideline on practice building, is it increases patient retention and rescheduling. An educated patient is more likely to seek continued treatment.
If you want a successful massage practice you must behave and conduct yourself like a health care professional at all times:
- You must have regular and convenient practice hours, this should include one or two evenings per week. Some patients need early morning appointments, you should accommodate the needs of your patients.
- You should be either in your office doing paperwork or making marketing phone calls, or out doing practice building activities outside of the office.
- You should attempt to schedule one or two contact lunches with either other professionals or services organizations per week.
- You should always be available by telephone or email, and you should follow the twenty minute rule, return all telephone calls within twenty minutes.
- You should be available immediately to schedule any urgent appointment, and your answering service should be able to reach you at any time.
- You should establish a reasonable massage fee schedule that describes both the services that you provide and the fees you charge for each service. As a massage therapist these fees should be based on seeing multiple patients per hour.
Stand out in your community. What’s your niche? What makes your massage services stand out above others in the area? Specializing is a good way to get noticed. Enroll in the CPEP® Posture Specialist certification, in addition to learning key assessment and posture correction protocols, you’ll get essential tools to keep clients engaged – and coming back – and CPEP® helps with your marketing strategy too. Imagine having a system for assessing posture, providing massage therapy, giving a take home exercise – and on a future visit providing a follow up assessment. Clients who understand the value of the service you provide keep their appointments and refer others to their “posture expert”.
Both engaging and effective, the program offers step-by-step protocols, patient education and exercise handouts, referrals, as well as marketing strategies for wellness and corporate programs. Click for the CPEP® info packet.
Rescheduling is part of your massage marketing plan. The patient should be rescheduled for massage therapy in your office after you have educated the patient regarding the findings, the treatment to be provided, the cost of the treatment, and results you expect to achieve. Once you have ascertained that the patient understands all of this then reschedule the patient while they are still on the table.
Lower cost care allows more patients to access treatment and enables the operation of a cash practice.
The Essential Rules for Massage Practice Success:
- Be professional at all times.
- Develop a realistic and affordable fee schedule.
- Be responsive, available, and in communication at all times.
- Educate and reschedule the patient on the table.
- Look like a professional.
- Keep regular hours.
- Promote yourself and your practice every day.
- Give referrals and seek referrals.
- Specialize to stand out in your community.
- Go out of your way to serve the needs of your clients and other health care professionals.
- Put service ahead of profit.
Read more on Massage Therapy Marketing
