Marketing Massage Business Using Your Clinical Knowledge

Why Clinical Knowledge = Muscle for Marketing Massage Business

This mindset seems to be quite common among therapists: there's the client-facing hands-on aspect of our work (the bit we all love and want to do). Then there's the professional development aspect - all those exciting and stimulating new skills and techniques to discover and master; and then there's the admin, bookkeeping, and dreaded marketing side of things - essential, but a bit of a chore, and not at all what we want to spend our time doing. These three aspects of our practice are usually kept in completely separate mental compartments.

However, I think it's vital to take a different, more holistic, view of this trinity of activities. We know that mind-body-spirit are not separate, compartmentalized aspects of the whole person but that each one is fully connected and interdependent on the others. What happens to any one of these three elements will in turn affect the whole being.

It's exactly the same with marketing massage business. Having a holistic view of the interdependence between the different aspects of our practice is a vital key to success.

This mindset enables us, among other things, to always be conscious of what I call the intrinsic marketing activities that we are engaged in day in and day out. It's intrinsic marketing because essentially it's what we do, and how we do it, each and every day. We are selling ourselves each minute of the time we spend with clients or potential clients. These interactions provide immensely valuable marketing opportunities if used wisely and carefully.

By expanding our clinical knowledge and skills (massage theory as well as hands-on techniques), we are making ourselves ever-more marketable, and at the same time increasing our ability in marketing massage business. This is how:

• Our increased knowledge and advanced skills give us an expanded toolbox to help with a wider range of client problems. One of the cardinal rules of practice-building is that client problems solved = satisfied clients = increased number of repeat booking and referrals.
• It increases our capacity for client education - an essential and vital component of our rebooking and referral skills.
• It demonstrates our commitment to growth, development, and excellence; clients always recognize and appreciate quality. It doesn't necessarily mean continually branching out into new areas of work if we are happy with where we are, but we do need to make sure we continually strive for excellence in whichever field we choose to work.
• It keeps us fresh, energized, and enthusiastic. Our genuine passion and enthusiasm for our work will communicate itself to our clients in all our interactions with them. This is in contrast to therapists who have stopped learning and growing, the result of which is usually a practitioner who is going through the motions on the surface, but underneath feels stale, bored, depleted, and possibly even cynical and burned out. Any lack of congruence between what we say and do, and how we are really feeling, will always communicate itself to our clients on some level, to the long-term detriment of our business.
• It improves our confidence in our own abilities and enables us to talk about our experience and expertise with confidence. This helps enormously when it comes to issues like setting fees and increasing our prices. The investment of time, money, and energy that we make in expanding our knowledge and skills is an investment in our business for the benefit of our clients; it is only right, therefore, that this investment is reflected in our fees.

As well as courses and workshops, which should definitely be part of any therapist's professional development program, you can find many excellent resources, often online, providing top-quality information and education on massage, bodywork, anatomy and physiology, pathology, and associated subjects.

So in addition to attending certified courses and workshops, how about setting aside an hour a week dedicated to "Research & Development" for your massage practice? You are guaranteed to reap the rewards in obvious, and not so obvious, ways.

About the Author

Helen Hunter has been a massage therapist for 17 years, and also a massage teacher, workshop leader, and mentor. She set up Mentoring for Massage Success in response to the many stories she heard from therapists struggling to build their massage practices, particularly in the first year or so after leaving college.

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