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Marketing Plan for a Massage Therapist

Know your Customers...Know your Competition...Write your Marketing Plan!

There are many questions that you need to answer when writing a marketing plan for a massage therapist business like who are your customers and who is your competition. After all, if you don't know who you are marketing to you and who you are competing with, you won't get very far. You need to find out how large your potential market actually is and how many people are already competing for their business.

Know your Competition

Evaluating your competition is an important aspect of developing your marketing plan. What services do competing businesses offer? How much do they charge for them? Do they have enough business to keep them occupied full time? Do they work from home or have they set up their business elsewhere? If the latter, how much of their business is the result of being in a high traffic area? As you can see, discovering the answers to these questions is going to take some time but it is very important.

If your massage marketing plan is for a new business, setting up your business in an area that is already saturated could be courting failure so identifying this risk is well worth your while. Another important benefit of analyzing your competition is that you will be able to identify niche services that are not offered or only offered by some of your competitors and which you may realistically be able to offer.

If you are already in business and wish to implement a massage marketing strategy to increase your profits, analyzing your competition can help you identify needed services that are not currently being offered by many therapists and which could give you a competitive advantage. Furthermore, looking closely at what your competition are doing can provide you with a lot of valuable and free marketing ideas that you can implement in your own business.

Know your Customers

Another aspect of a marketing plan for a massage therapist is to ask the question: Who are my customers? You have identified your competitors and now it is time to identify your customers. Are you marketing your massage services to busy working people who just need the kinks rubbed out of them? Or, are you working in conjunction with alternative health providers to improve the health of your clients (circulation, lymphatic drainage, pain management etc)?

Are your clients predominately in any particular age range or in a particular earnings bracket? If you are a woman, would you prefer to target female clients or are you comfortable with a mixed client base? Would the additional services you plan to offer or include as a part of your business be wanted or needed by your target market? Do you have the qualifications and skills to offer aromatherapy, Bach flowers or kinesiology as additional services to massage?

Know your Location

Once you have answered these questions and identified your market and the likely demand of this market, you are in a good position to decide whether to proceed with your new business in your planned location to look for an alternative that offers better prospects. Alternatively, if you are already in business they can help you reevaluate your current location, customer base as well as service and product mix. These preparatory steps in preparing a marketing plan for a massage therapist may seem to be unnecessarily time consuming but they can save you from making decisions that cost you a lot of money.

Writing the Massage Marketing Plan

Once you know your location, your market and your competitors, you are ready to write your marketing plan.  You have defined your customer, identified your competitors and now it is time to describe and differentiate your massage service from the rest of the crowd. You need to clearly brand yourself in your marketing plan for a massage therapist. Who are you, what is distinct and special about your service and what benefits do you offer that your target customers need. Are you differentiating on price and targeting customers on a budget? Or are you differentiating on quality and charging premium prices? You need to decide how to brand your services and be consistent in how you market them.

The Difference between Marketing and Advertising

Massage marketing is far more than advertising. Advertising is directly communicating your sales pitch to a broad audience via media such as newspapers, radio, television or through direct marketing strategies such as leaflets or flyers. Your marketing plan for a massage therapist should not only include an advertising strategy but other ways to attract customers such as loyalty programs, press releases, complementary relationships with related businesses and prizes offered to local newspapers or for fundraisers to get your name in front of people. There are a number of wonderful online marketing resources which can give you a range of free marketing ideas you may not have considered. Some of these may well be worth including in your marketing plan.

Goals, Action Plans, and Measured Success

Setting goals, creating an action plan and then measuring your results are integral aspects of a good marketing plan. Your goals need to be specific and have a deadline. Without a deadline, goals are just wishful thinking. Your goals need to reflect your vision and purpose. In creating your goals, you need to identify where you are now and decide where you want to be across a range of business areas.

Once you have done this, you can create an action plan to achieve your goals. An action plan is really just a list of activities that if accomplished will help you achieve your goals. It is important to include a mechanism of evaluation in your marketing plan so that you can review your own performance at least every six months. If something isn't working, you need to make adjustments in order to continue towards your goal. You need to be a bit brutal in the monitoring and evaluating process and be willing to be accountable. The whole purpose of a marketing plan for a massage therapist is to create a strategy that will help you to achieve your goals. If something isn't working you need to be prepared to face it and be willing to address the causes of the failure.

Size Doesn't Matter

Small business marketing plans do not need to be massive affairs. They should include a medium to long term strategy which fits in with your business plan and your vision for your business. However, most of your massage marketing plan should focus on the next twelve months. You need to take your time getting the detail right. All aspects of your marketing plan for a massage therapist need to be priced accurately so that you are not prevented from following it because you can't afford it. You also need to be flexible. If something in your plan is proven to be a mistake, be willing to change it. Never throw good money after bad.

The Payoff from a Good Marketing Plan

Marketing success is dependent upon your ability to remain focused on working your plan and not being talked into campaigns and strategies that you haven't planned for. A hit and miss approach to marketing rarely works. So take the time to develop a well considered marketing plan for a massage therapist and then apply the strategies in your plan in a disciplined manner. Massage therapy is a growing service area. As people become increasingly pressured, they will look for ways to alleviate stress. If you take the time to define your business, identify your customers and differentiate your services from your competitors, you will be well on your way to providing a valued and profitable massage service.

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