Consistency in Marketing
By Jon Lumsden at www.MassageMarketing.com
An effective marketing plan is vital to your success. No matter how great your massage techniques are, if nobody knows about your services, you’re not going to book many appointments. Making sure that you’ve included the most important steps in your marketing plan can be the difference between the success or failure of your practice. Before we look at marketing, let’s compare your massage results to marketing results.
Any therapist who has been working for a while has seen the better gains made by clients who get regular massages over those who only receive massage a few times a year. You know that regular massages help a person to function better and maintain a better level of overall health. And those clients who combine their regular massage sessions with a healthy lifestyle (good diet, adequate rest and exercise, etc.) tend to get the best gains of all from their massages.
Although the above is obvious to you, it must not be that obvious to a lot of people, because so few clients make regular massage a high priority. One big difference between regular and occasional clients is that the regular clients have realized how important regular massage is to their health. So, doesn’t it make sense to make it part of your marketing plan to educate all your clients on the many life-changing benefits your services can offer them?
This education factor is more important than ever with the media constantly reporting the likelihood of an economic slowdown. In this economic climate, people will cut back on their spending on whatever they consider to be “luxuries.” You need to make sure they understand that massage is much more than a luxury.
So what is the important step to include in your marketing plans? Consistency! Just like your clients can maintain a better overall health through consistent massages, the health of your practice can really benefit from consistent marketing. By staying in touch with your clients on a regular basis, you keep your services in the front of their minds and increase the likelihood that more clients will book appointments regularly.
Of the many ways you can reach out to your clients (and potential clients) on a regular basis, my favorite marketing tool is the educational client newsletter (and/or e-newsletter). What do you want your marketing efforts to accomplish? You want to remind your clients that you have valuable services that will improve the quality of their lives and get them to call you for their next appointment. Further, you want them to get that warm, fuzzy feeling when they hear from you and understand that you really care about them.
Just about everybody thinks of newsletters as positive, feel-good communications. That means they are more likely to be read (and shared) than many other marketing tools—and more likely to get your message delivered and acted upon.
You can write your own newsletters or purchase ready-to-use issues from a service like ours at Massage Marketing, depending on your needs, your writing and design talents, and your available time. The important thing is to use a newsletter that looks professional and feels right to you. Much more can be learned online. You can use Google, Yahoo, etc. to search for phrases like “massage marketing” or “massage newsletters” to learn more, or visit our site at www.MassageMarketing.com.
You can get a lot of mileage from a newsletter—and it’s a very cost-effective marketing tool. You can mail them to existing clients; leave them as handouts in your waiting area, neighboring businesses, health food stores, chiropractors’ offices, etc.; and use them instead of business cards, to name a few ideas. Collecting your clients’ email addresses and sending them regular e-newsletters will save you even more by eliminating the postage expense.
If you want more information about how to market your practice successfully, please feel free to contact me.
Jon Lumsden
www.MassageMarketing.com
info@massagenewsletters.com
877.634.1010 (US/Canada)
417.264.7662