Marketing massage and your practice isn’t as hard as you may think. Learn more about how to regularly attract new clients and how to get them on your massage table.

The services you provide as a massage therapist are always welcomed, appreciated, and looked forward to by all of your diverse customers ~ no matter what their reason for coming to you initially. Unlike scheduling a dental appointment, no one dreads making an appointment with a message therapist. In fact, often times your customers will ask how soon they can be seen and if someone should cancel, can you squeeze them in?! While you want to continue to accommodate and grow the loyal client base that drives to your location, there’s an entirely unique service that you can provide outside of the list of services you offer at your physical location. What’s this marketing strategy that you can easily embrace today that will increase your client base exponentially?

The chair massage – a great way to market your massage practice

How many times have you been at a party, a family celebration, or out with friends and someone in your circle asked you for a massage? Probably more often than you care to remember! The fact that individuals would readily accept a professional back, neck, arm, or leg massage while lounging at the beach, sitting at a backyard BBQ brouhaha, or while watching a movie affirms that people love, yearn for, and would welcome massages wherever they are.

Marketing massage in your community by providing chair massage services:

Sporting Events

Since you’ve established your massage therapy practice in your community and since most of your clients are residents or business owners in your company’s neighborhood, it makes sense to contact all the local sporting organizations in town. From providing chair massage services to the parents at little league games to helping the aching adults playing weekend soccer, brand yourself as the local professional massage therapist who supports, shows up at, and provides his/her professional services from the bench (or bleachers).  Whether it’s a golf outing, a track meet, or a karate championship, your expertise and professional services can help either the athletes themselves and/or the spectators. Marketing massage and your massage practice can be done wherever you are.

Expos, Shows and Conventions

Seasonal, holiday, and interest-group expos, shows, and conventions are filled not only with attendees spending hours walking around and perusing the wares and services of the vendors, but also the workers themselves ~ who are standing on their feet for shifts at a time. From spirit-lifting home and garden expos in the middle of winter and health and wellness fairs to auto shows, professional conventions, and home improvement events, the opportunities to provide your services abound. You can offer your services at these events in three ways:

• Secure a vendor booth yourself, enabling those walking around to sign up for your services every 20 minutes

• Walk around and provide your chair massages at the booths of the other vendors

• A combination of both

Since so many people attend and work at these events over a weekend or week-long time period, you’ll want to schedule your team to work at the event with you to help schedule appointments and distribute your marketing collateral.

Business Offices

Perhaps one of the simplest places to provide your chair massage services, business offices in your community give you the opportunity to work indoors, have a set number of potential clients to work with, and the ability to call on several businesses within one office building at a time. Many office workers feel tied to their computers and seats most of their work day. Providing professional chair massages during break intervals or lunchtimes would be a welcomed respite. If you’re thinking of calling on  individual businesses that operate in their own, separate buildings, contact the Human Resources Department and offer your chair therapy sessions to that team of workers first. If you want to work in an office building where multiple, diverse businesses operate, once you secure the “ok” from one business, you can easily use that as leverage to be welcomed into the neighboring business down the hall.

Ways to accept payment:

Per the Event Organizer

You can establish a fee and a set amount of time that you will provide chair massage services at an event. For example, if it’s a special event in the community, you might tell the organizer that for $200, you’ll provide 10-minute to 15-minute chair massage therapy services for 2 hours on a first come, first served basis.

Per the Individual Client

Perhaps you’ll set up a designated space at an event and simply charge each client ~ $15 for 10 minutes; $20 for 20 minutes. You can process credit card or debit card payments via MassageBook for those that don’t want to pay in cash.

Per Business

If the owner of a business has given you the “ok” to come in and provide your services during lunchtime, perhaps they’ll foot the bill as part of a wellness program at their organization.

Think of chair massages as a great way to get your talents in front of the masses. Not only can you make a few bucks during chair massage events, but you know what happens once you lay your hands on people, many will come back and become long term clients!

Marketing massage is about consistently putting yourself in front of potential new clients in various creative ways. Above are but a few ideas to get you started. We hope to see you out there soon showing the world the great benefits of massage and marketing yourself.

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