The two best ways to get the clients you need to keep your massage business booming are getting referrals from current clients, physicians and other health care providers and Search Engine Optimization for your website.
Getting referrals from others is about learning to ask for what you need. Lynn Grodzki of Private Practice Success speaks of it this way:
But in a small business, letting other people know about your business needs is a necessary interaction. As business people, we need a way to communicate our legitimate business needs, such as our need for referrals (the life blood of our business), in a way that matches our sensibilities and ethics.
The best way for people to find a massage therapist is to go on referrals from their friends, neighbors, coworkers, physicians and other health care providers – or just about anyone. There seems to be some hesitancy with massage therapists to ask for referrals from clients or others because they don’t want to be seen as being salesey or pushy yet they continue to say they don’t have enough clients to make ends meet. There are a few ways you can go about getting referrals from clients such as creating an incentive program for people to refer to you – like if they refer 3 people or something like that they would get a free half hour massage. I think that works for some, but I actually think the best way to get referrals for your massage business is to just do the best massage of your life with each client. When people go back to work or home or wherever they are off to and are feeling their best- it will show and they will be talking about how good they do feel. That is the best kind of referral.
Getting physicians or other health care providers to refer to you requires that you build a reputation for yourself. The best way is to actually find a someone that you would want to go to yourself or refer others to. You don’t just want any old person referring to you. You need to get referrals from people who understand and match your values and philosophy on healing otherwise there will be too many possibilities for misunderstandings. I used to get referrals from a chiropractor who wanted people to come in 2x a day -5 days a week. I just didn’t agree with this type of service. He only did it with people who were in car accidents who had insurance companies with open pockets waiting to pay him. I would tell people that they just have to go by what they feel and most would want to leave his care causing some difficulties between us. So it is important to find someone who works in a similar manner to you. Would you send your mother to this person or would you go yourself? That is the litmus test.
Also once you find someone you trust – go to them for care. This is the best way to find out more about what they do and tell them about what you do. Actually you may not even have to tell them anything more than you are a massage therapist down the street from them. This is the way I build most of my practice when I first started. I started seeing a chiropractor and the next thing I know his whole family was coming to me and then he started referring all his patients.
The key to asking for what you want is to build relationships with others just based on wanting to create a relationship -not just about asking for referrals.
The other way to get a constant stream of clients is by having a website that gets you new clients every week. That means you have to have one that search engines find and that people click on. To do this you need to create pages that are optimized for the search engines using the most popular keywords (most likely some variation of ‘massage, your city’). To create a page that is optimized you also have to know how to create file names with the keywords as well as metatags -descriptions and keywords. I have a page on my website about formatting pages to help you get an idea of what it is about.
Some other ways of getting your site found are to just create as many pages as you can writing about what you do. Have a separate page for each technique to explain it in detail and share your experiences with this technique or method. Share why you trained in it and what you feel you can do with it. The more content the better for search engines and your readers.
Getting others to link to your site also helps create traffic. There are many ways to do this but the first thing is to get health care providers that you refer to to link to your site by first giving a link to them! I have written more about creating links on my website www.workless-playmore.com
Keeping yourself focused on what you can do for yourself and your practice rather than just complaining that you don’t have enough clients is to keep focused on these two things. What can you do today to take one step towards getting a referral or building a website? If you don’t have the money for a website makes me wonder just how committed you are to being successful.
I of course use and recommend Site Build it! for webhosting because it is much more than just a webhost. It takes you through a process of thinking about your business and creating a plan for success. While I have talked about SBI! extensively in all of my websites and forums, it can be very overwhelming. It took me 2 years of hearing about it before I took the leap and created my first site. I did start out with a free webhost and then moved up to Front Page. It wasn’t as scary taking the leap to SBI! So even if you can’t start with an SBI! site start with what you can do. Create a free site or use another template driven site. Do whatever you have to do. You can start with this Free Manual from SBI! about taking your Service Business online and apply it in any way you can.
I also am available to help you create a website for your massage practice. I charge $600 for an 8 page website (in addition to the $299 hosting fee with SBI!)which is more than half of what you would be charged by a SBI! webmaster. The reason why I am charging so much less is that I know the massage business and I want massage therapists to be successful and be able to get the clients that they need.
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I am fortunate that because of the referral system I have in place, over 90% of my new clients come from other clients referrals … and I never have to ask! A few of my clients are physicians who refer patients to me for massage and CranioSacral Therapy, and I’ve never once asked them to do so.
You stated, “The key to asking for what you want is to build relationships with others just based on wanting to create a relationship -not just about asking for referrals.”
I believe that relationship marketing is THE most effective for people in the bodywork field. I honestly don’t know why more bodyworkers don’t see this.
Brian