Marketing Your Massage like a Gambler, Instead of an Investor

When creating a massage business there are very high reward marketing efforts, very low reward efforts, and even destructive marketing efforts.

Unfortunately, therapists in all stages of creating a massage business spend most of their marketing money and time on low value and destructive marketing methods.

I really mean destructive. What do you think happens to your confidence and goals when you fail repeatedly at your marketing attempts, or just get minimal results? You will start wondering what is wrong. You may start to believe that the marketing type itself does not work. It may lead you down a mistaken road of excuses, that there is too much competition in your area, that you are bad at marketing, or any number of other attitudes that are destructive to creating a massage business.

You see, most therapists when creating a massage business have not taken the time and care to learn basic marketing principles. And without these principles, they have no tools for evaluating what marketing efforts are worth pursuing or not.

It is kind of like a massage student working on a muscle, but does not yet know what the muscle does, where it's attachment points are, or what tripper points may be related. Until they study the anatomy, they will not be very successful at working with it.

When you make a marketing decision without learning the anatomy of marketing (what I call the massage marketing bones on my home page), you are constantly taking risks. This is gambling. You make marketing decisions based on guesses and hope that you will get a little something back. The odds are against you, but you give it a shot anyways.

Now contrast gambling with an investor. A wise investor learns as much as they can, and does not take action unless they are sure that 75-85% of the odds are stacked in their favor. With those types of odds, once in awhile they will fail, but with three to five attempts, the majority of the time they will succeed.

Please stack the odds in your favor when creating a massage business, and stop being a gambler.

In the October 2005 New Tips Newsletter I talked about the 80-20 rule, which closely relates to this subject. The rule is that 20% of your efforts will create 80% of your results, and that most people spend 80% of their time on low value efforts. (You can access that back issued newsletter when you sign up for the New Tips Newsletter New Tips Newsletter ).

Often when I talk with therapists about how they are creating a massage business I see that they are gambling with their marketing. They say things like, "I am just going to give it a shot and see what happens. I have no idea if it is going to work, but I have to try something."

For example a therapist who tells me they are going to pay for a booth at a craft fair, to provide free chair massage, in hopes of getting new clients for their office. After talking with them, I learn that this fair is not located close to their office, that the cost of the booth is somewhat high, and that this fair is focused mostly on activities that are generally not health or well-being focused.

Now, since I have very familiar with the Bones of marketing as they relate to creating a massage business, I can see that this will be of very low value marketing effort. One, since the fair grounds are not close to their office, there is a small chance that the people at the fair will come to the therapist’s office. With most clients, your location in relation to their home or business is very important. Two, after calculating how many new clients it would take just to break even on the cost of the booth; I realized it was going to be very hard for it to be profitable. Three, the kind of people at this fair may appreciate massage, but they are in no way a targeted group of people who has a higher likelihood of using massage.

You can learn to evaluate marketing ideas effectively, and improve your results.

How do you do it right? When creating a massage business, stack the odds in your favor.

Let us put as many of the odds in your favor as we can, right now.

Creating a Massage Business - Odds Stacking Tip #1

Learn the Massage Marketing Bones
In order to evaluate the odds of success of a new marketing opportunity, you must have the tools to do this. These tools are your eyes, without which you will be blind. And there are not just two eyes to see with, but multiple eyes, to see the situation from many angles. Develop a filter of decision-making tools through which you pass every new idea.

That is what the massage marketing bones pages on this site are all about (the first pages on the nav bar). Learn about how to focus on solving client problems. Learn to address client benefits. Understand who your ideal target market is. Based on the three ways to grow your business, see where the best places to put your efforts are. Learn how to evaluate if a marketing effort will be profitable or not. Discover the power of using headlines. Understand the risks clients have, and reduce or reverse them. Develop a unique business that stands out from the rest.

There is a hidden benefit for you of taking the time and effort to learning these bones. Not only will you be able to see low value efforts and avoid them, you will also suddenly see huge opportunities that you would have not have had the eyes to see before.

Creating a Massage Business - Odds Stacking Tip #2

Use Marketing Methods That Are Known To Work for Massage
Do not get overly creative. In some respects, good marketing is boring marketing, because it requires hard work, and doing the same things repeatedly.

The marketing techniques that work best for creating a massage business, are often hard for therapists to grasp for two reasons: the limiting belief that marketing is about advertising, and the incorrect belief that the best way to grow a business is to put most of your focus on getting new clients.

For example, the number one marketing method for growing a massage business steadily is to use a newsletter, yet so few therapists do this. Look into this, and see what is keeping you from doing it. Study the page about newsletters, after reading the bones, and think carefully about why they work.

Other best-known methods are covered in my massage marketing muscles pages: business cards, gift certificate sales, referral systems, web sites, and new client letters.

If you just focused on these things, and did not advertise at all, you would do fine (so long as you are professional and give a great massage.)

Creating a Massage Business - Odds Stacking Tip #3

Leverage Your Results into Higher Ground
Every time you are about to do some marketing, stop and ask yourself this question, “What could I do that would make this marketing work way better?” Then, go through the bones, and make sure you are applying all of those methods. See if you have missed any of the basics.

Strive for greatness. Do you know what it means to use leverage? It means a little person moving something that they should be able to move, achieving something that they should not be able to achieve, by using a lever to amplify their efforts.

• Just learning the massage marketing bones, is leveraging your efforts.

• A powerful way to develop leverage is to test and track different marketing methods, to steadily achieve greater results.

• A powerful leverage tool is to use other people’s brains and experience, just like you are doing right now. Get some business consultation.

• Another leverage technique is always to keep your eyes open for opportunity.

• Another way to leverage your business is to access another businesses client list that is an ideal target market for your business.

Whatever you are using marketing to create a massage business, think about how you can improve each part of it so that you have a much greater chance of stunning success.

Now, be careful. Strive for greatness, work for it, but be relaxed if you do not achieve everything you set out for. This is natural. Believe me; you will achieve much more striving for greatness, than if you don’t. In addition, you will learn much more along the way.

I like to think of great aspirations as stars. You use them guide your boat to where you want to go, but you are not trying to reach the star.

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