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One of the biggest problems a massage therapist faces is staying busy. You work hard to get through school and training then pass your license and certification exams. Then what do you do? Many new therapists think that they will simply find a place to start massaging and magically have all kinds of friends and family come for massages. I'm sorry but in most cases this never happens. The truth is that most people prefer to find someone they are not directly related to or deal with on a regular social basis to be their therapist. You will find that total strangers are your best source of new clients. Some friends and family can be helpful when recommending your services, but don't count on them being your main source of income. So how do you stay busy? There are many different ideas about how to market your services. I have tried many of them throughout the years and finally have found what works best for me. I don't spend hundreds or thousands on radio ads, television or billboards. I have found that those can quickly run you into bankruptcy when you are earning $40.00 an hour for massage and paying hundreds for one of those types of advertisements. With almost every type of advertisement you have to reach hundreds of people to get a single response. That is why I feel they just aren't economically sound ways to advertise for new clients.

Stop and figure out how many hours of massage you would have to give in order to pay for any type of advertising before investing your hard earned money into it. Many of these advertisers stop in my clinic to make me an "on the spot offer" to make me rich with a way to get a ton of new clients. If you simply ask them for a few referrals that you can call and ask how well it worked for them, you will seldom get any or more often get the excuse that they don't give out that information. It is a great idea to check with other therapists about any type of advertising before making a large investment. What I have found that works for me to keep new clients coming in is to simply talk to people everywhere you go about massage, hand out business cards everywhere you go, Talk about Your training, a recent class you took, how you helped someone relieve a specific condition, offer seminars to speak to groups about massage, join a local networking group of businessmen that share referrals with each other. I don't have a huge advertising budget and even if I did I don't think it would make very much difference. The things that I have found work the best for me is to have a good sign in front of your business. If you don't have a huge sign try a more inexpensive sign and add some balloons around it or lights to help get it some attention. Add small signs out front of your business along the road, a banner or a sandwich type sign if possible. Sometimes building up many smaller sings over time with your budget can be more effective than one huge sign.

I ask my clients for email addresses and physical addresses with permission to send them newsletters and special offers. Email is a very inexpensive way to keep in contact. I used to send out newsletters by regular mail to hundreds of clients all at once. This is expensive if you have very many clients and if you work alone. You may end up getting tons of calls for appointments all at once that you can't handle. This is good but you may lose people or anger them if you can't get them in right away. I now send out about 20-30 letters per week starting with all of the clients in my A and B files then the following week jump to my C and D files and send 20-30 of those and so on. This keeps those letters going to people that have seen me within the past year and I know they are going to people who are actually interested in what I have to offer. I can also handle the responses in a timely manner by having the time open to get them in for the appointment that I was trying to get in the first place. In your newsletters ask for referrals to friends and family of theirs. Be sure to thank your clients for the business they have given you in the past. These are your bread and butter so be sure to treat them well. A good decal on the back window of your vehicle is also a very good way to advertise inexpensively. Their are some really good ones available on ebay. npsigns is a nice ebay store to get them at. I recently read an article about newspaper advertising and found that you MUST have something creative and new to offer in your specials. Either a new or different service or a new or diffirent type of special offer.

When I first started in waterloo I did some research on the internet and found that offering packages of 3 massages for a discounted price would help keep people coming for repeat visits. No one in my area was offering that at all. I advertised it in my newsletters and in the newspaper and got a huge response. Now 3 years later it isn't as effective because many of the other therapists locally have started doing the same type of advertisement. Now people read the paper and just see "another on of those massage ads." It gets old when everyone is doing it. So come up with new ideas, give something away as a gift. Change it up and keep things interesting. Websites are also very effective if they are done correctly. I recently started using google adwords for advertising my website pages. You can set a budget as little as .50 cents a day and create an add that has specific keywords that have to be searched for it to appear on google. You can select how much you are willing to pay per click for the ad when someone finds and clicks on it. This really helps focus and maximize the power of your website and pages. I build websites and webmember pages for therapists and chiropractors quite often. for as little as $60.00 a year you can have a page made for your services. Then take and advertise it locally on google. Around the holidays I get many calls from people who found me on the internet that want to buy gift certificates for someone they know in Waterloo Iowa. I get them from people live in Florida or Germany that want to buy a massage for someone they know in Waterloo Iowa. I specialize in helping therapists set this type of advertising up on the internet, so please let me know if I can be of assistance to you. I hope this information has been helpful to you. It takes work to keep a steady flow of appointments coming in. Never slack off and think that people will just keep coming back on their won. You have to keep doing these things and work at it in order to stay busy.

Sincerely, Dwayne Crandall, LMT