I am often talking about marketing your massage business on the internet as the way for massage therapists to gain that competitive edge. And I still believe this, but that does not mean that chair massage marketing should be left out, in your marketing efforts.

I was very fortunate that the massage school that I went to gave us a rebate upon graduating for $1200 which I used to buy a massage table and chair. I actually had to pay a little extra because I got both the massage chair and table. The massage chair was well worth it.

Marketing my massage services through the use of a massage chair has been essential for me, especially when I was first starting out. Chair massage allows for you to “get out in the field” and share your massage education to anyone who is willing to spend 5 -15 minutes in a chair. Bringing massage to the customer instead of the customer having to come to you, is a power marketing move.

Roman Paradigm Massage uses a massage chair

Even now with our brick and mortar massage business, Rpm Therapy still brings a massage chair and massage table when doing events at health fairs, Art and Wine festival and sporting events. It is simply the single most effective means for getting that potential massage client to experience your touch.

Out in field you will have an easier time fighting negative perspectives surrounding massage, when you use a massage chair for your marketing. Potential client attitudes towards massage is quickly dissolved when someone who has never received a massage, can get one without spending allot of money, they don’t have to look for you in the “yellow pages” and is done fully clothed.

Here are some of chair massage marketing strategies that I have implemented in the past.

1. Have a professional look- a nice massage chair, professional business cards (with a call to action) and shirts with your company name on it. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone out in the field and saw massage therapists with ugly tri-color massage chairs that were unmaintained, had no business cards or were cheaply made with beat up tennis shoes on. This is not the look of a professional.

Use the law of attraction here if you want upscale clients who are professionals then you need to attract that individual with professional attire and presentation.

2. Have a sign-up sheet- requiring everyone to sign in before receiving their massage is important so that you can follow up with them later. Be sure to get name phone number and email address; make sure that their information is legible. And if you are going to include them in your monthly newsletter, please be sure to let them know this before hand, or another alternative you can do is call or email them after the event, let them know where you met them and then “ask” them if it would be alright to include them in your monthly massage newsletter.

3. Offer a free drawing- You can offer a free 1 hour massage drawing when participates drop their business cards. Another way of getting a great response is to have a local nail shop or restaurant donate a gift certificate that you can give away; this is a win-win situation for both you and for the business, as they will be getting free advertisement from your chair marketing efforts. Again, you can follow up with potential clients after the event and request permission to put their email address in your monthly newsletter.

4. Have Professional Brochures- Have professional brochures with you that explain in descriptive detail what your massage services are all about. Be sure to use a lot of “you” statements here, do not use “us” or “we”, when talking about your massage services. Be sure not to forget your contact information, address, phone and website.

5. Have good hygiene- Remember to bring hands wipes, disposable face-covers, drinking water and breath mints.

6. Wireless credit card machine- Chair massage events are for the most part, all marketing, getting your services out to the public. But that does not mean that you should not have a few special event offers, in the form of massage gift certificates on you, just in case you can make some sales. Don’t give your massage customer any excuse why they cannot make a purchase with you, take cash, checks and credit cards.

Accepting credit cards will also make your company look more professional. Think about it, if you accept credit cards but your competitor doesn’t, who do you think will look more trustworthy and professional as a business? Most people understand that to accept credit cards you need to have a merchant bank account.

7. Arrive early- Give everyone who is working a booth a free 5 or 10 minute massage, if you do well on them they will continuously talk about that great massage you gave them. And also find out who is working the microphone for the event and tell him to announce your presence and if he has time offer him a free 5 to 10 minute massage from you as well, he or she may even paraphrase and talk about your massage business more upon making announcements throughout the day, do a great job on this person.

8. Get a manicure- I know that as a male massage therapist, I will probably catch some slack on this. But my hands are my money makers, so I take care of my hands as what they really are, your assets. As a male massage therapist, I did find this very uncomfortable at first but I quickly got over it.

Tip: This is mostly for the guys as females will probably get their nails polished, find a nail shop that will “buff” your nails out. This will give your nails a natural shinning look without a polish or a top coat being used on your nails, which will chip off after a couple of days and make your nails look ugly.

9. Learn trigger point therapy- Learning Trigger Point Therapy will boost your conversions (potential clients becoming clients); because you are working on potential clients fully clothed, you will primarily be using trigger point therapy for your massage technique. Shiatsu massage is also very powerful here, explain to your potential clients that this is only a shortened version of your massage work and that you can ONLY do trigger point therapy on them now. If you hit the points good enough, your client will be thinking damn, “if he is this good through clothes, I can only imagine what a full session will be like”, and that is EXACTLY what you want your massage chair customers to think.

Chair massage marketing is the ultimate lead generator, I often told myself, “all I need to do is touch them and that’s it; they will become a massage client”. Also during the summer months when the weather is nice, working art and wine crafts fairs was almost too good of an experience to be true.

Sun, wine, and great food, what more can you ask for? Offer the first 5 minutes for free if you are not busy, to get someone on your chair. From my experiences, when others see you massaging, this will attract others as they see that person you are working on get a massage, they will want one too. Try this and look at the people walking by, looking at you, almost like clock here you see them move their shoulders or their bodies in a way that says they could use a good massage right now.

Corporate health fairs and sporting events, also great targets to hit, I never passed up an opportunity to share my gift of massage and creating a ton of fans. You gotta love working on people or a massage profession is not you.

I would to hear your marketing tips, please respond with your favorite strategy if I missed one.

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Massage marketing lessons learned 101

My partner and I have over 20 years of combined massage marketing experience with our massage business, RPM Therapy, and she would be the first to tell you that we have made allot of mistakes during that time. But I am not here to bother you with our failures, as we are sure that you have your own long list of failures.

Your massage business will directly be affected, by how successful your marketing campaigns are. In addition to that, how well you treat your clients. Remember no marketing campaign in the world, will save your massage business from bad or poor quality service or a lack of professionalism within your business.

So with said, this list, that I am providing here for you, is my experiences being a massage therapist, I have over 11 years of trial and error, successes and failures, that you can take from and learn. It is my hope that this will save you much time, energy and money on the things, that will not work in your massage practice. Most of the items that I listed here will be easy to complete, some of it will require a little work and research on your part.

Do the things below and I guarantee you that you will be successful in your massage business whether you work for yourself or for a spa, it does not matter. Marketing yourself is constant.

My top 10 ways to market your massage business is…

1. Always provide 5 star quality massage service. Even if means to lose money. If you have an client that was unhappy with their massage session for whatever reason, the pressure was not deep enough, you forgot to turn off your cell phone and it went off during the session, whatever the reason if they were not happy with your massage service, do not charge them for that session. Give it to them for free or discount the session.

Providing a 5 star service, also means going out beyond the call of duty, give your clients the energy they deserve, do not just go through the motions during your massage, if you cannot do this for your clients you should not be working on them. All personal matters go away before you lay your hands on that client. Give them an extra 10 minutes, but be sure to “ask them” for their permission before doing so, just in case they have an appointment to keep right after. But chances are you will just be hinting to them about the “extra” attention they are receiving from you, at “no charge”.

2. Your massage clients are paying you for an “experience” not your service. The massage customer has many massage therapists to choose from, what makes them come back is how you made your client felt, emotionally from your work. Not because you have a special offer or some discounted service that you have or how many years you have been a massage therapist. Provide an “experience” for your clients and watch your business grow.

3. Get testimonials. What others say about your massage business or service is more powerful than what you can say about your massage business. So get testimonials, plenty of them, what I recommend here is for you to put testimonials on all your marketing pieces and your website. Opening up a yelp.com acct. and getting your top massage clients to say something about your services is highly recommended. Last month alone we had 30 new clients from yelp.

4. Come up with 20 to 30 keywords and keyword phrases for your massage business. This where you will do a little research, I listed www.goodkeywords.com and www.tools.seobook.com and https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal as good resources to start with. You want to look for keywords and keyword phrases that relate to your massage business and target clients that you want to work with. These powerful tools will also give you search volume as well as how competitive these words are. Once you have your keywords, these keywords will form the basis for all your marketing literature, articles writing and your market segment that you choose to target your massage services to, start a blog.

5. Start a blog, blogging allows for you to talk about your massage business to your current massage clients and to share with potential clients what you have to offer. And it will position you as an “expert” in your area of expertise whether you specialize in. Whether it be a Reiki massage, a sports massage, a deep tissue massage or reflexology. Use your keywords from step 4 to guide you on your blog writing. Blogger is the easiest way to get up and running with a blog but I recommend that you go with www.wordpress.org. It’s free and wordpress.org has many free upgrades and modifications that search engines like Google and Yahoo love.

*This will require you do some research as well but well worth the trouble if you are not technically savvy with html and coding, hire someone and let them do it for you. You can outsource the blog writing if you are not a writer but I would suggest for you to get out of your comfort zone and start writing about your massage work and experiences as being a bodyworker.

6. Open up a Merchantcircle.com account, I would do this whether you have a website or not. The reason being, first of all it is free, it can serve as a website (if you don’t have one) and it has a blogging platform as well, that is so easy to use. But most important it has great web traffic presence (high alexa rating), Google and Yahoo visits Merchantcircle.com often. Plus it targets local demographics, which you want, many times when I post a blog with my main keywords in the title and in the body content, I usually see my posting on the first or second page within a few days, this is powerful.

7. Bookmark your content and articles, wordpress.org blogs have many free plugins that you can add to your blog that will allow you to bookmark your content. Get your clients, friends and family members to bookmark your content and articles as well. Bookmarking your articles is something that you will have to learn but such websites like, www.squidoo.com, www.dig.com, www.mixx.com and www.stumbleupon.com are just some of the ones you can take a look at. MerchantCircle recently added bookmarking to their blogging platform; this is a very powerful way for getting a web presence and traffic.

8. Write articles and submit them to article directories. Article marketing is a very powerful free way to market your massage business. Use the keywords from step 4, you can write the articles yourself and submit them to directories like ezinearticles.com, searchwarp.com and goarticles.com. Article writing has many great benefits, it is great for positioning yourself as someone who knows their stuff and it can generate backlinks to your blog or website that will send a significant amount of web traffic to you. Traffic that has an interest in what you are writing about. But the content must be good and original, if you are not a writer outsource your article writing. Your article also can be used for your blog post and vice versa.

*Searchwarp.com is an excellent platform for your articles, you get a blog in your name that will host all your articles and it has bookmarking options for each article, this is also very powerful. If you find it in your heart to bookmark my articles, I would really appreciate it very much, thank you.

9. Get a professional website. Do not use a free template. Pay the extra money to get a professional design, this can also be applied to your blog, again there are many free blog templates but a professional designed one will serve you better. If you cannot afford to get a professionally designed one wait until you can then upgrade. Make sure that your website is done by a professional. You want someone who is knowledgeable about keywords, title tags, layout and design and search engine requirements. Outsourcing your website and blogging designs is so much easier with websites like www.elance.com and www.guru.com and it is fairly easy to find affordable options.

Also be sure to include an optin box on your website for list building. Giveaway a free report on the benefits of massage, have a monthly newsletter or offer an additional 15 minutes to be added to their next massage when they optin (give you their email address). This will help you to build a list of customers and people interested in receiving emails and updates from you. In your emails you can provide useful massage information, upcoming massage events that you are participating in and special promotional massage offers.

10. Purchase an email marketing service. We use constantcontact.com but they are many to choose from. If you decide to try constant contact be sure to let them know that I referred you, we will both get a $30 dollar credit towards your bill as well as mine. Statistics say that it usually takes someone 7 times to see your message before they will respond, having an email marketing system in place is powerful and makes for emailing your list very easy and highly responsive. Before you send your emails to your list, you must have permission to email them. Do not include email addresses to your list just because someone gave you their business card. Get permission from that individual before you add them to your email list. if you don’t have permission to email that person, it is spam and spam is not tolerated or legal.

*Bonus tip: Have an online scheduling system on your website or blog. This has been a big key for us, for having a successful marketing campaign. Not only will it schedule your clients for you 24/7. But it will also collect their physical address, email address (oh btw, if you have an online massage scheduler for your business then you do not need a optin box for your website, this system collects it for you), phone number and date of birth. We love this feature as we use it to email or send a card, to our clients celebrating a birthday, including a special offer for them on their next massage session with us.

What I love about the online scheduling system are the reports that you can generate from it. You cannot improve what you can’t measure or track. Tracking information is crucial to knowing if your marketing efforts are effective and also for tracking massage appointments. We are able to generate reports on how our clients heard about us, how many clients have come in for a given month, how often our clients come back to us etc, etc.

Well there it is, again, I sure hope that this information has been useful, if you have some of your own successful marketing strategies that I have not included here, please share them with us. And if you are local to San Jose, Ca. visit our massage website Rpm Therapy.

Our San Jose Massage Business just added a new sports massage minded therapist to our team. RPM Therapy is very happy to have her.

I am a very active individual and have seen how sports massage can help you become a better athlete, emotionally and physically. I am a college swimmer, Run Marathons, and just completed my first Triathlon in May. Sports massage is highly beneficial after a workout and I have seen personally how fast you can recover after a massage. Other activities I enjoy are backpacking, surfing, snowboarding, and mountain biking.

“No session is ever the same. My work is always changing. I use specific techniques for each muscle group, including deep tissue work, and stretching.”

I began my education in massage because I am a believer of holistic health. I believe the body can heal from within, and massage is a great way to help facilitate the healing process. I believe massage is a way to help rehabilitate the body back into homeostasis. In Western society we believe that rehabilitation consists of ‘Pill popping’ and surgeries. The healing process takes time, and pills are sometimes necessary, we often use this as a quick fix to get back to life as soon as possible. Even though massage is a wonderful, it’s undervalued. This is seen as a tool for enhancing wellness, I have always recognized it to be but one part of the total wellness equation.

I specialize in treatments that use MyoFascial Release. Myofascial Release is a very effective technique that provides sustained pressure on a specific muscle to eliminate pain and restore motion. Fascia is tissue that runs through the body then connects to our entire structure. When is at its normal state it’s able to move and stretch. When we experience physical trauma or injury this begin to tighten which causes a lot of pain and discomfort.

Andrea Naugle has been a Certified Massage Therapist Since June 2007. She completed a 750 Hour program and obtained a letter of excellence upon graduation. She has been a member of the American Massage Therapeutic Association since 2006.

Andrea completed her Bachelors of Arts in Liberal Studies, Minored in Psychology at Cal State Easy Bay in 2004. She was a sports teacher in San Francisco before she began her career in Massage Therapy.

You can book your massage session with Andrea online by visiting our online massage scheduler here. Andrea’s has devoted Sunday’s and Wednesday’s. As these days book up she will continue to add more days to her massage schedule, thank you.

Andrea’s Massage hours

Sunday 10am - 6pm

Wednesday 10am - 8pm

www.rpm-therapy.com

Our San Jose Massage Business, Roman Paradigm Massage has just opened a Facebook page.

The popularity of social media websites like Facebook has a viral effect that just seems to grow wings, and takes off like a jet airplane. Personally, I can’t make sense of it, but I do understand the power of it. So as part of our ongoing marketing efforts at Roman Paradigm Massage aka “RPM Therapy” we wanted to jump aboard and entice you to help us market our massage business to all your friends.

So, for the first 5 people to become a fan on our Facebook page and writes on our wall, we are going to offer you a savings of $20 off your next massage, whether you are new to our massage business or have seen us before. You can take advantage of this special offer. We have a new female massage therapist named Andrea starting this Sunday. She specializes in Sports massage and Myofascial Release.

Doreen Jattan and I, try very hard to keep you as our loyal clients, but don’t just take my word for it, go to yelp.com and  read our 5 star yelp reviews.

Here are just some of the things we do at RPM Therapy to make sure that not only is your money spent well here, but that your whole massage experience with us is worth every dollar.

1. We offer online scheduling- this alone has been a big favorite with our clients. You no longer have to play phone tag to get a massage appointment. And, by registering online and booking your massage appointment online, you do not have to fill out any paperwork when you come in.

2. We offer a 100% money back guarantee- if for any reason you are not satisfied with your massage session you pay nothing. This also applies to any massage gift certificates that you purchase from us. You are also given the choice to see another therapist if you prefer.

3. Buy massage gift certificates online- do you need a quick gift for someone, a friend, co–worker or family member? If you do, you can now go to our website and purchase a massage gift certificate and pay with your paypal account. We will send it to whomever you want, or you can send that person in for a “prepaid massage” paid by you. Also you have the option to prepay for your massage session before you come in.

4. Professional, certified, and insured massage therapists- all of our massage therapists are seasoned bodyworkers. We have massage therapists who specialize in certain backgrounds, massage techniques and knowledge. We will soon have a bio page for every massage therapist that works with us in order to help you better understand which therapist will be right for you. Until then you can visit our massage techniques page to read more.

We at RPM Therapy are trying to continually improve our massage business, if that’s even possible…lol. Our goal of course is helping you to understand the importance of taking care of your health and well-being. And by all means, we are not saying that massage will cure all of your ills. But a preventive maintenance stress-relieving program in place will able your body to fight the negative effects of stress much better.

So go to our Facebook page. Write on our wall and promote us to your friends and save $20 off your next massage, it is that easy. If you read this far and find this passage go to our page, write on our wall and still get this savings until 12/20/08

I remember when I first heard about Massage Envy on the internet, I was really excited, than I was mad and became frustrated.

Massage Envy was founded by John Leonesio in Scottsdale in 2002, Massage Envy is a membership-based and single-visit provider of massages and other body-oriented services. Currently Massage Envy operates 420 franchises in 36 states with another 350 under-development, pretty impressive in just 6 years.

Friend or Foe?

I came across Massage Envy right about the time I started working on my own idea’s of building a massage business franchise. As a massage therapist at that time for nearly 9 years, I knew right away what Massage Envy success meant for me as a small massage business owner. You see my time as a male massage therapist was constantly being questioned, why did I want to do massage, what kind of massage was I going to be doing, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. I also knew from experience how difficult it would be to get the approval from the city regulators and licensing officials. Massage Envy is literally helping to change all that for future massage businesses.

Massage Envy’s success is everyone’s success, if you have plans on opening up a massage facility of your own. They are literally deregulating (or I should say getting pre-approvals) from all the cities and counties licensing officials, cutting through all the red tape for anyone coming in behind them. Massage Envy is pre-approving other massage establishments that want to take up space around or near other Massage Envy businesses.

• Massage Envy is using their time and money for getting local cities and regulators approval for their license to open a massage business.

• Massage Envy is logging in hundreds of hours in various court rooms, fighting for city permits and licensing approvals, when they are being challenged. Massage Envy is paying good money in attorney fees to fight these challenges, less you have to pay.

• Massage Envy is doing all the test marketing for different regions and demographics across the United States that they occupy, which you won’t have to. All you would need to do is see what Massage Envy businesses are well and which are not doing so well it is easy as that.

• Massage Envy aggressive expansion is bringing more individuals to massage, who may not have gotten one before because of price and negative perceptions.

• Massage Envy is the experiment, from which you can look to and learn from.

With all this said, Massage Envy is Friend. But, for all that they are friend for, they are also my foe. Not only to me but to all professional massage therapists and bodyworkers out there.

• They pay less than industry standards, the average massage therapist makes about $15 - $18 per 50 minute massage. Exploiting massage therapists straight out of school and subjecting them to less than admirable working conditions and pay.

• Massage Envy’s aggressive expansion plans will decrease the value of getting a massage, not increase it. Massage customers will continue to expect to pay less not more for their massages and future competition will only see more drops in pricing structure. Unless you change that business model.

• Massage Envy’s failure to recognize, their unique opportunity. Massage Envy can introduce many first time massage goers and individuals who seek “spa massages” to a better quality massage that is more therapeutic in nature. I believe that this could raise our level of professionalism within the massage industry to higher standard, not less.

• No in-house training program for massage therapists to increase their knowledge base.

So I ask you, “Is Massage Envy Friend or Foe?”

One day when you decide to open up a massage business for yourself, make sure that it serves the massage therapists (your employee’s) as well as your clients.

Maybe with their latest buy out by Veria, things will get better at Massage Envy. But I don’t think so, Veria only bought them out so that would have a platform to market their own health related products to a already captured-ready-made audience.