Selling Massage Gift Certificates Online Has Been Such A Nightmare For Us At Roman Paradigm Massage With PayPal.

With all the technology available these days, you would think that selling gift certificates for spa or massage services would be so easy. And for the most part it is. You have so many different options available to you that just choosing from one company or another can be a task in itself. Take our word for it, you need to research these companies before you decide.

Just about any company will be willing to take online sales of gift certificates and offer a system of sending that gift certificate to the recipient via email. Here are few companies that are willing to “help you out”:

• Paypal
• Appointment-Plus
• Mind Body Software
• Boomtime
• Gift Certificates Online

Paypal of all the companies that offer selling gift certificates online, they are the LEAST of the desired companies to go with. Paypal being a large and known brand as they are, you would think that this would be the best solution for selling gift certificates online yet they are not. Of course, they make it real easy to accept payments online and will allow you to custom design your gift certificates with your logo and what not. And they will tell you that they have over 100 million users and that they are a well established and so forth…blah blah blah. This is just a Sales Tactic!

What they won’t tell you is that when you make a “buy gift certificate” button and embed it on your website or blog, Paypal will “hold” your funds until that massage or spa gift certificate is redeemed. And if that gift certificate is not redeemed, Paypal holds onto your money for 18 months.  I repeat, a buyer will purchase a gift certificate for a friend or family member and pay for it BUT it is put into a “PENDING” status for 18 months until redeemed.

Cash flow to a small business like ours is essential, especially in this economy. Currently Paypal is “holding” over $2,300 from us due to their system, that we cannot touch. And let’s not forget who is collecting the interest on that $2,300… (hint it is not us.)

In our last conversation with PayPal which lasted an average of one hour per call, they stated the following; if the recipient’s email address is not registered with PayPal, they will have to register their email address with them, wait  couple of days to get it activated, THEN redeem their gift certificate with us.  When a client is ready for their massage, they do not want to wait 2 days to redeem it which is why the gift certificate are PAID for by their friends and family prior to their appointment.

Appointment Plus after researching different options, appointment plus is the company that Roman Paradigm Massage is going with. We already use appointment plus for their online massage scheduling system, our clients love this feature. Appointment Plus charges only $10 a month to sale gift certificates online, branded with your logo and sent to the recipient via 4 different options. They do not take a commission on each massage gift certificate sold, you can use your own merchant account or Paypal.

Paypal for collecting money online is ok, just do not use them for selling gift certificates “buy gift certificate” button, you want to use their “buy now or pay now” buttons, yes there is a BIG difference. I may write another blog post on this at a later time.

Mind Body Software is a great company that offers many different features and options that we loved, but they were expensive over the course of 3 years ( this was researched by our good friend Jeff Sloan). Mind Body also takes a commission on each gift certificate sold as well as charging you a monthly fee. Some of the major Spa and Massage companies out there use this brand, but Roman Paradigm Massage decided not to, again based on research by Jeff Sloan.

Boomtime and Gift certificates Online both look very good to use, especially if you are first starting out. Both companies offer the same services and features and I have included them both for you to research for yourself. I am not going to talk much about these two companies due to us not having any previous experiences with them.

But here is a list of some of their benefits…

• You pay only when you sell — just 5% of online sales!
• No long-term commitment, no cancellation fees.
• Real Time e-commerce
• Secure web interface
• Your funds go directly into your account, via Paypal or authorize.net gateways
• Customized to your website’s look and feel

I know that there are allot more companies that offer selling Spa and Massage gift certificates online, and if you have some recommendations please share them with us. I am writing these blog posting to share with you our recommendations and to warn you of Paypal’s unfriendly and in my opinion un-ethical ways..

Appointment Plus has been very user friendly to us at Roman Paradigm Massage not to mention very reasonable as well. We use them for our online massage appointment scheduling and we love their reporting system, their reporting system allows to see exactly what marketing efforts are paying off and which marketing efforts are not. We never play phone tag with our customers and our current and potential customers can book 24/7/365 days a year.

I wrote a blog post early last year detailing some of the great benefits that we have seen using their services, so if you like to find out more, just click this link titled “appointment plus our choice for online massage scheduling and gift certificate sales”

[where: 3097 Moorpark Avenue San Jose, California 95128]

[where: 95128]

Yelp.com is an online review site has a love it or hate it relationship with small business owners. And for good reason too. Yelp.com has had their fair share of negative comments about their business practices since this San Francisco based company started up in 2004.

Due to increase complaints from business owners and negative publicity, Yelp is now allowing business owners to comment on reviews.

Yelp.com allows users to post reviews on businesses in an open forum where anyone can the read them.

The internet and social media websites like Yelp.com, Facebook, Twitter and blogs are now empowering individuals to speak their minds. For small business owners like me who are operating on a “small budget” embrace these technologies to spread “word-of-mouth” marketing virally. But this same technology is available, to everyone, including your competitors and to your unhappy customers.

Up until recently Yelp did not allow for your negative reviews left by unhappy customers to be deleted off even though they would take down positive reviews left by users weather they were legit or not. It was once rumored that Yelp sales reps were promising potential advertisers that they would remove negative reviews if they spent $150 a month contract locked for one year.

Because of these negative perceptions and others like this, Yelp was becoming less favorable to the most valuable customers (paid ones). So as a way to become more favorable and friendly to premium business owners to advertise with them, Yelp.com recently announced that they would even out the score and allow business owners to comment on both positive and negative reviews. This allows potential clients/customers to see how a business owner responds to their client’s reviews.

So does this help Yelp?

“As a small business owner, having Yelp add this new feature, does this help you in any way?” Last week, I asked this question on Facebook and most of you claim that it does NOT matter because Yelp has burned too many bridges with business owners.

I would agree with you but for our massage business in San Jose, it is hard to be mad at a company that produces average of 2 new clients a day. Here is a sample 30 day report on traffic coming in on direct links, from Yelp compared the 2nd most.

And these customers are coming in on direct links to our website from Yelp. This makes them highly responsive and targeted. Direct link web visitors are the most valuable of all web traffic because they are coming to your website based on number of other different websites competing for their attention.

Whether you are selling a service or product, leads from direct links are considered warm leads because they choose your website specially based on a recommendation or some other factors.

These are not large numbers but we convert about 25-30% of these Yelp visitors on average per month. And we could possibly even convert a higher percentage by sending all Yelp users to a “Yelp specific” landing page with a call to action. To really drill down your Yelp visitors, keep a separate email list for customers coming in from Yelp.com. I will go into the benefit of keeping this record in an upcoming article.

You can choose to use Yelp or to ignore it but your clients/customers will not stop writing good/bad reviews.

Roman Paradigm Massage & Therapy

[where: 3097 Moorpark Ave, San Jose, Ca, 95128]

[where: 95128]

Upgrading your Facebook Business Page has now been made easier, thanks to Hazel Grace of Socialbees.

Our business Roman Paradigm Massage, is truly thankful to Hazel Grace of Socialbees for her expertise on upgrading and utilizing Facebook for business. We are a small but growing massage business in San Jose and have grown this business by embracing internet technology and social media.

Marketing 101

If location, location, and location often is a determining factor for success, I can only say that this applies not only to your physical location but also where you are on the internet. You want to position your business where your customers are and with over 120 million users using Facebook, chances are your current and potential customers are part of that 120 million. By the way, this number surpasses Myspace.

But in order to be successful on Facebook or any other social media community, you have to understand their platform to get the best returns from your efforts. In most cases businesses who jump into social media do not understand social media and do not get any results from it. Often in many cases they hurt their businesses more than they help it. And there are many reasons why this could happen to you. So in order to avoid these mistakes and to get the best results from your social marketing efforts, you need to attend this workshop being offered by Hazel Grace and her company. By implementing the valuable information that Hazel Grace has shown us, we have upgraded our page and you can see it here…Roman Paradigm Massage Facebook.

Hazel Grace owner of Socialbees

“The Socialbees business model allows me to share my social internet knowledge with small businesses (my passion!) who may normally not be able to afford consulting. I’ve broken my services down into a cost effective a la carte menu that allows you to manage part of your social marketing project in house and we’ve created group workshops to keep training costs low.”

“The Socialbees mission is to make it possible for all small businesses to have the high quality social media presence previously reserved for big budgets.  Between now and next spring Socialbees will be focused solely on Facebook services. After carefully assessing all the major networks, we chose Facebook as our starter platform because they offer the best tools for the widest range of small businesses.”

The Facebook Business page workshops

The Facebook 1.0 workshop is for users who are new to Facebook. We will teach them how to become a power-user and lay the groundwork for later leveraging the system for business.

Date: Saturday, 11/15
Time: 9:30am-11:30am

Here’s the link for details:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32201243255&ref=mf

The Facebook 2.0 workshop is for savvy users who are ready to learn the ins and outs of to Facebook for business. This class will cover the ENTIRE Facebook tool kit including how to market your page on and
off of Facebook. This class is best suited for very savvy users and those of you who already have business pages, but could use help optimizing them and improving your ads and other marketing techniques.

Date: Saturday, 11/15
Time: 12:30pm-4:30pm

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=44532703616&ref=mf

Some of us are forced into a career, others who are luckier get to choose the one they love, and yet others find the job of their dreams by accident. Whatever the case, every job comes with its own set of rules and ethics, some of them written and others tacitly understood. Being a massage therapist is akin to walking on a minefield – you have to watch each step with care or risk the charge of a sexual harassment suit and the loss of your professional massage license. This is one field where it doesn’t pay to be a male, because, as unfair as it seems, males are not averse to (in fact, they would prefer) receiving massages from female masseuses but women are wary when it comes to letting their bodies be touched, albeit professionally, by a male masseur.

Massages, especially the full body kind, require your clients to take off all, or at least most of their clothes. And this puts you in the position of having to earn their trust with your professionalism and expertise. Even the slightest mistake can turn an innocent massage session into a potential situation where your job and your reputation are on the line. As a professional masseuse, here’s what you can do to ensure that your business is on the up and up:

• Talk to your clients before a massage, and stay within the boundaries they set.
• Let them know that it’s ok to keep their underclothes on if they’re not comfortable with the idea of taking off all their clothes in the presence of a stranger.
• Give them some privacy so that they can undress and slip under the sheet on the massage table.
• Make them comfortable and secure a few minutes into the session by letting your professional hands do the talking.
• If there is a hint of inappropriate behavior, ignore it unless it becomes too overt to let slide.
• Refuse sexual favors firmly, but politely. If the client insists, terminate the session and refuse to see him or her again on a professional basis.
• Never date your client; besides the fact that it could get awkward, it’s also illegal in some states.
• Do not massage sexual organs.
• While some massages do require the breasts to be touched, most states ban this kind of therapy. And it’s always best to be upfront with your client about the limits of the massage.
• Always ensure that you apologize for an inadvertent touch that’s inappropriate.

A massage has numerous benefits for both physical and mental health, as long as it stays within the ethical perimeter. If not, it could end up being detrimental to your mental peace.

Article is contributed by…

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of massage therapy jobs. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com

I just bought a new Flip Video, so that our massage business can start creating massage videos on the fly.

Over the past year, I have tried many internet marketing strategies to build our online presence. And we have had great success utilizing article marketing, PPC, blogs and social media websites to name a few. Not until now, have I tried experimenting with videos.

Youtube, is the 3rd most visited website on the internet, according to Alexa. Google the #1 search engine owns Youtube. It becomes clear to me that you need to be using video to market your business on the internet. So I went on Amazon and bought the Flip video after researching it.

My Plan for using the Flip Video

I am not going to talk much about the features of the product, but what I can say is that after 3 days of playing with it, it is so easy to use. Because I have many different projects that I am working on and being technically challenged, I needed something that was easy and convenient to use without much technical know-how. Here are my ways of using video to market our Massage Business, Roman Paradigm Massage…

1. Shoot short 3-5 minute massage training videos
2. Video Bio pages of our massage staff
3. Video client testimonials
4. Video our massage rooms to show clients our professionalism
5. PPC video landing pages
6. SEO benefits
7. social media

As you can see there are many opportunities for using video to market your massage business or for any business. And if you are selling products, imagine how much more you can engage your potential customers with video. I will write a follow-up blog post about how I specifically will use these 7 outlined tips, but for now, enjoy the video below that I just created using the Flip Video. Please tell me what you think?

The video footage below is of our salt water tank, located in our lobby. If you are local to the San Jose Bay Area, here is my guy, Jeff for salt water tank set ups. Be sure tell him that Robert or Doreen sent you for a free consultation.

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.

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.

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 doing 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.

Zubio located in downtown San Francisco inside a mall, it just raised a second round of funding, according to VentureWire.

Dubbed as the potential “Starbucks of chair massage” The size of the new funding was not disclosed, but chief executive Sam Keller told VentureWire it was “not far off from” the $2 million to $5 million that he was targeting earlier. It comes from individual investors including Philip Schlein of U.S. Venture Partners, former Yoga Works co-chief executive Rob Wrubel, Gary Grace of Supercuts and Rob Wilson, president of Tiburon Research Group. Keller plans to go out for more funding to finish the round in June, and to open at least one more studio by the end of this year.

As someone who owns a massage therapy business as well, I am excited that companies like Zubio are not only succeeding but also attracting funding. Most might think that this kind of success from a competitor can’t help us as small business owners but it does, Zubio’s business model is different than what we have at RPM Therapy, so there is really no competition.

Plus Zubio’s primary business model is chair massage; this emphasis on doing chair massage helps our massage therapy industry as a whole, more than we think. You see chair massage as we all know, is one of the best ways to market your massage services, With this in mind, Zubio’s business model is reaching and marketing massages, to a group of individuals who might not have ever had a massage before. A massage chair and its convenience is enticing, especially if you had never had one before, being in in a public well-lighted atmosphere takes away why most individuals won’t get one. Mall goers need not to worry about getting un-dressed, having messy oils rubbed all over them or being too time consuming, as a regular table massage ranging 60 to 90 minutes, chair massage session on the other hand typically last only 10 -20 minutes in length.

Businesses like MassageEnvy (which btw I don’t agree with) and Zubio are paving the way for future massage businesses like RPM Therapy and yours to break into markets that ordinarily would be very time consuming and expensive. As they are already doing most of the leg work for us to follow in right behind them. They are getting pre-approvals and working out all the city licensing issues and requirements, not to mention all the marketing testing that these massage businesses are providing us. We should be applauding them, so that they can keep exposing more to people to massage, it is great for us a industry, even if they do a poor job at it (Massage Envy).

When Massage businesses like (massage envy) do not hold their own, in the market place, there will be room for another massage company with improvements and innovative services, to come in and take market share from Massage Envy. As Zig Ziglar quotes, “see you at the top”.

Giving your mom flowers on Mother’s Day is a such a beautiful idea, but what happens after 2 weeks? They die!

Candy on Mother’s Day is always such a sweet gift but what happens with all that sugar? If you want to know, here is some information on it, Leaky Gut Syndrome.

What about a massage gift certificate? A healthy idea!!

As a massage therapist, promoting massage gift certificates should be in your marketing plan this year, Mother’s day gift certificate sales, is second only to Valentine’s Day. According to Constant Contact’s Annual Mother’s Day Outlook survey, the majority of U.S. small business owners expect customers to spend $25 – $75 on a Mother’s Day gifts, making it fit squarely in the massage and bodywork category. And a spa or salon service is the second most popular gift for Mother’s Day, just after flowers.

“Consumers see Mother’s Day as a way to show the women in their lives how important they are,” said Tracy Mullin, President and CEO of the National Retail Federation. “While the types of gifts may vary, the intentions remain the same — to honor the special women who impact our lives all year long.”

“Impact Our Lives” As a massage therapist we know the answer to, “what better way to show that special someone who impacts our lives, than with a massage session?”. We know that there in no better way, so every massage therapist and bodyworker should be out there spreading the word on massage gift certificates and the healthy, stress relieving benefits that massage offers.

Flowers and greeting cards remain holiday favorites, with more than half of consumers polled planning to buy flowers (50.7%) and nearly three-fourths (73.6%) of them purchasing a Mother’s Day card. Moms will also be receiving more gift certificates this year, as more than a quarter (25.5%) of consumers plan to give gift certificates, up almost 10 percent from last year. I am challenging all massage therapists and bodyworkers to increase their marketing efforts this Mother’s Day Holiday. Spreading the awareness to individuals who yet do not know the benefits of massage therapy or reminding them of the healthy benefits that massage brings to our body’s.

Lets, change these statistics and make massage/spa gift certificates #1for Mother’s Day for next year. In my next blog post, I will outline some of our marketing methods that we use at RPM-Therapy for our clientele. But if you have any idea’s please share them with us and lets see how many ways we can come up with.

Buy Massage Gift Certificates Online Here