A website is the best way to attract new clients to your
business. Now the power of using SiteBuildIt!,
google adsense program and google adwords, there is no way you can not
succeed. Learn how I did it with my websites.
A website is another tool
you can use to educate your clients and assist them in their healing process.
Here are some things you may want to include on your site.
KISS - Yes Keep it Simple! People are usually looking for
information and with limited time in our hectic lives, most people don't have
the patience for a flash movie of a massage.
Build Quality Content - This is the basis of the Sitebuildit! Motto.
Building content to attract clients is the key to building traffic, trust and
clients! Learn to write for the web and other marketing materials with
the free Netwriting
Masters Course and the Service Sellers Masters Course
Sitebuildit! comes with an amazing
newsletter set up. It also tracks the number of newsletters that are sent
successfully and the number of newsletters that are actually read!! No
other hosting site has that!
A FAQ page- Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) about your massage practice and treatments. People
want to know what is going to happen to them. Do they have to take
all their clothes off? What can they expect from a treatment, How long
will a treatment take? What will happen after a session? I had a
guy come in once who had never had a massage. His girlfriend had
given him a gift certificate. He brought a book with him because he thought
he would have time to read it during the session.
What kind of sessions do you
specialize in? Injury, relaxation, sports? People don't realize everything
that massage can be used for. Write about how massage can be applied to
the many situations to educate your clients.
Expand on the how and
why massage works in these different applications - not just the standard
benefits list that massage school teaches. Writing a website filled with great
content is essential in building a successful
practice.
You can sell gift certificates
through the website and take appointments. Put your website address on
all promotional material: business cards, stationery, flyers and brochures.
You can make flyers or brochures directed toward a certain group as in
business people under stress or athletes and refer them to the website
for more information.
Find affiliate (associate) programs
that may further support your work such as www.amazon.com -selling books
and music. There may be other massage tools, lotions, oils, herbs
etc. that may be appropriate to your practice. Affiliate programs
give you a percentage of the sale when you refer the person to their site.
Get specific about what bodywork/massage
can do for the client. Just listing the benefits such as "increases
circulation" don't mean much to most people. You have to let the
client know why they would want to increase their circulation. Tell
them how it can help their carpal tunnel, plantar fasciaitis or thoracic
outlet syndrome.
Make a list of the different
types of bodywork/massage to keep clients informed.
List your network of practitioners
that you recommend for other treatments: Acupuncturists, Naturopaths, other
therapists.
Put your forms on the website
that you use in business. Intake forms, referral forms etc. can be
downloaded prior to the appointment and filled out to save time.
Educate you clients through
your website. Put pictures or diagrams of your recommended stretches
that they can download and put as their wallpaper on their desktop.
List your credentials and classes
that you have taken along with other facts about yourself. How long
have you been in business? How long have you been practicing certain
techniques?
Submitting your site to search
engines is also necessary. Some search engines are charging to be
listed in their directories. www.searchenginewatch.com
has a list of search engine and how they work. You need to submit
every month or so and check to see if you can find your site. This
is not a guaranteed way to find practitioners. It is actually more
like a finding a needle in the haystack, but a few may find their way to
you through search engines. With SBI, you don't have to worry about any of
this. They do all of the work for you and let you know what other things
you can do.
Some things not to do on a website:
Don't Play Music- This is one of my peeves. I
absolutely resent people who put music playing on the homepage of their
website and it is further annoying if they don't have a control switch so I
can turn it off immediately. I am usually looking for information and
have 10 or more windows open to let pages download. If I get to a page
with music playing, I immediately start clicking to close pages and get back
to my peace and quiet. (if people want to hear music they can turn the radio
on)
Don't use flash or animated objects or cartoons. Sure
it's neat that we can do such things with computers. It is really a
waste of bandwidth and won't make the difference in getting a client.
Be selective with your link building. Even though
having many links is supposedly supposed to help build traffic, I think they
should be sites that you know and trust. If you don't know who they are, what kind
of work they are doing or if they are reputable people you may give the
impression that you lack integrity. Building traffic can be done in so
many other more efficient ways. I have created the ultimate massage link
directory to provide a method of linking everyone together.
17. Did you know that:
Websites come with programs that analyze traffic. They
can tell what country people are from, what browser they are using, what
pages they are viewing, how many people are visiting and when, what IP
address they are visiting from and much, much more!
