Marketing your massage / bodywork practice to your Ideal Clients will save both your sanity and your tooth enamel. Here’s why:
1. Ideal Clients Save You Money
You can spend $300 on a newspaper ad that might generate 10 responses. Or you can pay $50 to advertise in an event’s program, or a dentist’s newsletter, or a city’s parks department schedule.
Go where your Ideal Clients are and spend your money there. You’ll get a better response.
2. Ideal Clients Save You Effort
When you know who your Ideal Clients are, you know what they need, where you can find them and what they need to hear from you.
Rather than broadcasting a message about the general benefits of massage, you are able to speak directly to them using phrases they identify with. You’ll get a better return on your efforts.
3. Ideal Clients Make You Smarter
If you learn that working with headache sufferers is your gift, then that’s where you will focus your research efforts. That’s where you will focus your CEU classes. That’s where you will work on developing your professional circle; with dentists and PT/OTs and chronic pain managers.
You’ll discover new techniques within yourself. You’ll have at least one “Aha!” a month. You’ll start becoming known among clients, medicos and your peers as the go-to therapist for headache issues.
Soon you’ll be writing articles and teaching CEUs yourself. Next thing you know, you’ll be whisked away in a black limo to a heavily guarded hotel room in a swing state and find yourself saying, “Okay, Mr President, breathe through it.”
Hey, it could happen. But you’ll never know unless you focus. You’ll get an excellent reputation that will bring in more clients.
4. Ideal Clients De-clutter Your Life
Focusing your marketing efforts on one (or two or three) specific group makes marketing cleaner and more effective. You know who you are talking to, what they want to hear and when they want to hear it.
You toss all massage generalizations out the window when you’re talking to specific group. If runners are your focus, you can quit thinking about how massage helps with sleep issues or reduces stress. Your springtime message to runners will be only about massage [reducing the likelihood of injury].
You’ll get to breathe more freely.
In conclusion
I realize it’s tough in the beginning when all you want are Clients; Ideal or not. And maybe you don’t know who your Ideal Clients are yet. You’ll learn. You can change your mind. Maybe you are an established practitioner with a lot of Vampire Clients (nice people who suck the life force out of you). Focusing on your Ideal Clients eases out the energy suckers and opens the door for the clients you should be working with.
In the end every one is happier.
All my best,
Eileen
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2 users commented in " 4 Reasons to Focus on Ideal Clients: Marketing your massage practice to clients you want "
Terrific article, Eileen! I remember learning in massage school that “everyone who has muscles” can be our clients - but that’s, literally, EVERYONE! Goes back to that idea that if you try to be a “Jack of all trades,” you’ll be “master of none.” I wished they would have taught us more about this type of marketing idea - instead of insisting we try to reach EVERYONE. I learned the lesson pretty darn fast, though, and have been targeting my marketing for a while now, with a LOT more success. Thanks again for the article!
Thanks, Carrie.
Yeah, I was working with NTM for a while before I realized that our customers were killing themselves (and their love of bodywork) trying to reach EVERYONE. I’m slow. Since I’ve seen what’s been going on, I’ve been yakking up the whole Ideal Client thing.
So now I’m intrigued what you learned and when. What was your “AhHA” moment? And who do you focus on now?
Eileen
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