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One of the challenges of being a massage therapist is that you have to wear many hats. You are the massage therapist, the website designer, the bookkeeper, the janitor, the marketing and networking supervisor. You have to combine all of these skills and create a successful massage business.

One of the things I see a lot of and am even guilty of myself are websites or other marketing material that is supposed to be promoting your services and it turns out it is really all about you - you have this degree, credential, skill, experience or whatever it is. You offer this service, you do this… The vital thing that is missing is connecting with the reader (potential client). What they want to know is what is in it for them! People are only interested in themselves and how it will affect their lives or solve the problem that they are having.

Most people don’t really know the difference between swedish massage or cranio-sacral therapy. They don’t care how long you have been doing massage. They don’t know what the names of all the muscles are and don’t care if it is their splenius that is causing their neck pain or not. They only care about how it will help them feel better.

So how do you take what you do - massage- and what you know ( from massage school as well as life experiences) and create sales copy that doesn’t sound like a used car sales man but gets you what you want - new clients!

The first step as outlined in this free Ebook “Make Your words Sell” by Ken Evoy is is to get into the shoes of your reader/target. Who are they? What do they want for themselves? What do they value most? And here is the part that massage therapists cringe over- who can afford your services? Massage therapists in general want to just be able to provide massage for everyone and even seem to be drawn to people who can’t afford massage. The best way to be able to provide massage to this population is to focus on finding those who can afford you and make enough money so that you can do something like set up a clinic for low income families. Trying to work on these people without having your basic needs - enough money to pay the bills, take the vacations that you want, save for retirement - is a sure way to end up in burnout.

Another thing to become aware of is learning to talk about the benefits of massage in a way that people understand. How does ‘increasing circulation’ apply to someone who is in pain or has a herniated disc? Massage relaxes muscles but who really cares - how does a tight muscle cause pain?

These are just a few of the many things you can do for your website and brochures.  In order to create effective marketing materials you need to either hire a sales/marketing person to write your ads or website for you or study and learn about it.  One of the best sources are the Free Ebooks from Site Build it!  You don’t need to have a SBI! website even and all of the principles can really be applied to any marketing pieces.  You can learn more in the free Ebook “Make Your words Sell” by Ken Evoy.   I am just reading it now so will be sharing more as I get through it. It is a few hundred pages and it used to cost $30 but it is now free for anyone to learn from.

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One of my pet peeves in the massage profession has been this whole idea that medical massage is the future of the massage profession and that the massage profession should get involved with working with doctors and insurance companies as contracted providers. I am referring to working with HMO’s and PPO’s as a regular contracted provider and also some auto insurance companies who have joined networks. Medical Massage is not being defined by the massage profession itself so the insurance companies are doing it for us. Being in WA State where we are allowed to become contracted providers with insurance companies, I have been privileged to witness the demise of insurance billing in a few short years. This is what is happening here in WA and some reasons why we need to think twice about wanting to work with insurance companies.

1. The insurance companies are constantly reducing the allowable fee (what they pay you and that you accept when under contract with insurance companies.) When I first started in about 2000 accepting insurance one company paid me about $90 an hour which was a very acceptable rate. Within a few years they reduced that rate to less than $70 and it continued to be that same rate until this year when they gave us a $.40 raise - yes that is forty cents when the price of gas is sure to go over $4.00 a gallon.
2. The insurance companies are also constantly reducing their benefits in their policies with people. For example - one company who used to allow 45 sessions of massage and PT combined a year now only allows 14 sessions a year.
3. The insurance companies are constantly making it harder to get paid. One company in particular will ask that we prove medical necessity after 4-6 sessions of massage and then deny any further treatment no matter what it seems.
4. The insurance companies set the allowable fees and usually send out a rate chart in the beginning of the year or when you first contract with them. Although it hasn’t happened to me yet as a massage therapist, I have heard from a few chiropractors and an acupuncturist that they change their mind in the middle of the year and say they are paying too much and reduce the rates and MAKE YOU PAY BACK THE DIFFERENCE - yes I am yelling- and there is nothing that can be done except to pay them back or they will take it out of future payments. I do know of one Naturopath who almost went out of business because of it.
5. Out of network providers may often get paid more than in network providers- yes this is a fact too. There is one company doing just that. If you are out of network they only pay a percentage of the bill usually, but they pay contracted providers so poorly that even the percentage of the full bill which usually is about $132 (UCR) works out to be more than they pay contracted providers
6. One such health network includes a list of auto insurance companies who are using provider networks and rules to pay for services rendered. This means that you have to accept a reduced rate of pay.
7. Most of the companies have not increased their allowable fees since I started with them in 2000. So no raise for a contracted provider -not even to reflect a cost of living increase.
8. Insurance companies are also creating educational requirements for credentialing meaning they are saying what training and education is required to become a member with them. It doesn’t matter that we are licensed by the State Board of Health. The insurance profession is defining the massage profession.
9. Affinity networks are discount networks that some massage therapists unknowingly join thinking that they will get more clients not understanding that they are also taking a big cut in fees.

So does that make you still want to join a provider network and be able to bill insurance companies for your massage services?

See also the Insurance Billing Section on www.thebodyworker.com

2005 Guest editorial in Massage Magazine

Issues and Ethics in Billing Insurance Companies

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My clinic site is also moving up quickly in the search engines since I started working on it more a few months ago when I became more committed to getting out of working with insurance companies.  There is a guy who I know locally who always was in the top listings who was a programmer in his past career and now my site is right up there on the first page of google results.  I am also writing more content for that site to help educate readers about just what it is that massage does.  I had a new client last week who never had a massage before in her life who came in and said after reading my website, I was the one she wanted for her first session!  My focus is about writing more than just the standard benefits of massage - which by the way I just found out - the big basic benefit that can be found on most everyone’s website or brochure - ‘Massage increases circulation’  - is not a scientifically proven benefit!  There is no research that supports that claim as I learned from Tracy Walton who is a prominent massage researcher. This makes having a website even more essential so that you can start talking about what massage really does and how it affects your clients and what you think it is that massage really does.  By providing more content about these things you can create a regular following of clients.  If you are unsure what to write about just start thinking about what you tell people on the phone or on the table about what that ‘knot’ is in their back or how that muscle contraction affects their posture and over all health.

My focus since last fall has just been creating content, getting links, adding to the look and feel of the site, using Content 2.0 to get readers to help me create pages and it has all paid off.  I now am being found for the keywords ‘massage therapy’ and ‘massage therapist’ right up there with massagetherapy.com (ABMP’s website)  I am getting an average of 400 visitors a day who are making on average 750 visits - which means people keep coming back.

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For massage therapists it is a great way to create a website for your massage practice and get a second site to develop into an online business where you can supplement your massage income so you don’t have to always feel so much pressure.  It can free you up to do what you do best- doing massage.

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