10 Excellent Massage Therapy Marketing Ideas, Tips, and Strategies To Grow Your Business
January 5, 2023
Does your massage therapy business need a big boost of new clients? Is your online marketing delivering slightly more than zero leads? Here are some massage therapy marketing ideas that will get you noticed online and keep your hands busy with a steady flow of new clients.
#1. Build an awesome massage therapy website
The first thing you’ll need is a website that communicates the professionalism and value of your services.
Getting a professional design that loads quickly and is mobile friendly is no problem with today’s template designs.
At Marketing 360®, our business website templates can be customized to your business quickly and easily. These are clean designs that make it easy to convey your message fast and persuade people to act. Here is an example mock-up:
Your website is your first impression, and its content will often determine if someone schedules an appointment. Make sure your website looks modern, professional and trustworthy.
Pro tip: Go for clarity
When you design a website for your business, it’s easy to get caught up in the bells and whistles. If you do, you’ll end up with a website that you think is really cool but probably won’t convert effectively.
Before you fret over images, fonts and color schemes, remember to build essentials, like your contact info, services and location into your design.
Clear website content orients people so they know they’re in the right place and understand what action to take. If you don’t have the basics down, a fancy design won’t do much for you.
#2. Develop a unique value proposition
While design and functionality of a website are now straightforward, communicating a persuasive message that gives someone a clear reason they should choose your massage therapy services is not.
Many small business websites suffer from messaging problems. In fact, they often fail to clearly convey where the business is, how to contact them or even exactly what they do.
The most important thing you need to do for your massage therapy marketing is to develop a crisp value proposition.
This is a statement that keys in on what you do to solve your clients’ problems, how you’re unique,and why someone should choose you instead of another massage therapist. For example:
This simple statement states what the offer is, how it can solve my pain problems as an athlete and that this massage therapist specializes in sports massage.
Don’t assume people will understand what you do or why they should choose you. State those things implicitly at the top of your homepage.
A dialed-in value proposition will be central to all your marketing material. Test this content and hone in on what gets the most response from people. A strong unique value proposition is what separates successful marketing from the also-rans.
#3. Develop a social media management strategy
At this point, you can safely assume that a vast majority of your target audience spends a lot of their online time on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat.
By developing an effective social media management strategy, you can create brand awareness, drive traffic to your website and build a strong reputation for your business.
To get started with content ideas, think about why you got into massage therapy (as opposed to what you do or how you do it).
Social media is all about connecting with people on a personal level, and the best way to do that is to tell a kind of story. The theme of that story is why you got into massage in the first place.
Here is an example of this from a Facebook post:
This post does many things you want to see from social media. It’s customer-generated content that tells a story that goes beyond just getting a massage. It shows why; it shows the result. It’s interesting, real and non-promotional — the type of content that gets shared.
Use this as a theme that runs through your social media posts. Give advice, share useful articles, show videos that help people stay fit.
Social media is also the perfect place to network with businesses that have similar interests and cross-promote. Also, encourage your clients to tag you in posts, share their experience and leave you reviews (on Facebook).
Here are more social media tips to help you get started with content creation, scheduling and tracking.
Pro tip: use Facebook Messenger
If someone visits your Facebook business page, there is a good chance they’re looking to schedule an appointment. Many massage therapists have success getting people to ask for availability directly through Facebook Messenger.
For this to be effective, you’ll need to be responsive — within an hour is best.
#4. Use paid social media marketing
Marketers today are acknowledging that organic reach on social media is increasingly difficult. Business content often fails to get the necessary engagement needed to boost ranking and exposure to targeted audiences.
The solution is to use the paid platforms that are designed for advertising campaigns. Facebook and Twitter, for example, have robust software that lets you target demographics, life events and interests with amazing accuracy.
For example, say you offered a special postpartum massage for new moms. You can go on Facebook and specifically target women who are expecting a child in the next six months — it’s that accurate!
You can also target health problems, injuries, people who have an interest in related topics. like chiropractic, or anything that might be a precursor to needing a massage.
Then retarget people with social ads. For example, I visited a personal trainer website, and this post appeared in my News Feed soon after:
When you see a “sponsored” post, it’s an interest-based or retargeting ad from a business.
To get the most out of your social media, try some paid ads to well-targeted audiences.
Read our Facebook Ads guide.
#5. Master search engines
To drive traffic to your website, you’ll want to show up for massage therapy related searches in your area on Google and Bing. There are three ways to dominate search results.
The first is pay-per-click advertising. These ads are run through auction-based systems, like Google Adwords and Bing Ads.
The main advantage here is that you show in the top positions (reserved for paid ads) and that you can control the ad copy and landing page.
For example, you might want to run an advertisement for your postpartum massage. Your ad and the page it goes to on your website can match that offer.
Next, you need to set-up and rank for Google My Business. This is the maps listing and review platform Google uses for geo-targeted searches. It’s a free listing you can optimize with your descriptions, and you can increase your visibility by getting customer reviews.
Then you have organic website listings. These are also free clicks, with ranking gained by optimizing your website for keywords, gaining links, getting social media traffic and adding content to your blog.
If you do it right, you can show up in three spots on page one:
Pro tip: In many markets, no massage therapists are using PPC advertising. This gives you a golden opportunity to appear at the top of the search results page with nobody competing on bids. PPC is particularly vital on mobile searches. Take advantage of it.
Pro tip: Yelp and other review platforms dominate organic results for massage in many markets. Work hard on your website optimization, social media and blog to try and outrank them in your area.
#6. Manage your reputation
Word of mouth referrals are essential for massage therapy marketing. But today, many of those types of referrals are happening online.
You will get reviews online from clients. They’ll appear on Yelp, Top Rated Local, Google Places, Facebook etc., and they influence the decision making of new clients.
Go the extra mile to really please your clients, then make a concerted effort to ask them for positive online reviews. You can do this in person at your office, or via an email follow-up.
Keep in mind just how powerful review content is today — it can make or break a business. Monitor what’s said about you online, including on social media, and do what you can to get customers to generate positive comments.
If you get saddled with a lot of negative reviews, think about hiring a reputation management firm to clean it up for you.
Reviews are here to stay because consumers like and trust them. Work hard to get this content working in your favor.
#7. Use video
Video is an underused marketing tactic in the massage industry. It’s also the perfect way to introduce your massage therapists and facility to prospective clients.
Optimize your video for YouTube search, and add other self-help videos to your channel. You can share this content on social media as well.
Make sure your value proposition is clear in your video script. You can get more information across in a shorter time with video than any other medium. It’s great for online marketing.
#8. Retain your best clients
If you want to control your marketing costs, the best thing you can do is retain your existing clients. It’s far cheaper to retain clients than it is to constantly earn new ones.
Be aware that even your best clients are not as loyal as you think they are. You have to remind them that you care about their business, keep them informed with health tips and offer them occasional specials.
Use an email newsletter, your social media and CRM software to keep in contact with clients. Keep your name in front of them, and update them on new massage techniques and other salon offerings.
Keep in mind that there is always some new competition just around the corner, ready to advertise aggressively and tempt your clients with special offers and discount prices. Stay a step ahead or you’ll find loyal clients jumping to the competition.
#9. Consider your massage marketing options
Hey, let’s face it. The message in your massage marketing can get confusing:
As you take into account the tactics listed in this post, you need to make a choice.
You can try to handle all these marketing tactics yourself. That can be difficult without time, training and experience.
Or you can hire a series of freelancers to handle each tactic for you. That can be confusing and costly.
A cheaper, more effective option is to use a solution, like Marketing 360® that offers everything you need to manage and grow your massage therapy business from a singular platform.
This is a robust solution that evolves with the constant changes in online marketing. Best of all, it’s backed by a team of marketing professionals that you can turn to any time to help you get it right, and that you can utilize as much or as little as you need!
Originally published on 7/14/19
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