The 10 Keys to Branding Your Massage Therapy Business
Do you struggle to attract and retain the right clients for you? Do you yearn to have word-of-mouth renown? In an increasingly challenging market flooded with talented therapists and extremely savvy consumers, discover 10 Keys to developing a brand full of integrity that will inspire you, attract loyal customers, and make promoting your practice effortless.
1. Identify your values: This is the most critical step and yet, the one most massage therapists overlook. Do some soul searching and get a crystal clear idea of what matters most to you as an individual first and then as a company. Your values form the base of your business and should influence every decision, from what kind of logo you print on your business cards to the business partners you seek.
2. Identify your mission: Once you clearly identify your values, take the time to write a mission statement. Ask, why does my practice exist? What do I aim to accomplish? Write in simple language that a 12-year old can understand using, ideally, 8 words or less. If you are stuck, do a search on the internet for “mission statements” and use the most compelling ones as templates. Your statement should energize and inspire you morning, noon, and night.
3. Identify your ideal client: Again, an incredibly critical step. Looking at your mission statement, ask, “Who do I love working with most? With whom do I have the most success?” Although you might be reluctant to narrow down the potential pool of clients, the biggest mistake you can make is trying to please everyone. This dilutes your service and identity so much that you fail to strike a nerve with anyone. Even though you will turn some people off, you will attract others who will bond with you for life. And the best part about identifying your ideal client is knowing where to find them.
4. Create an emotional connection: Every potential customer wants to know one thing, “What’s in it for me?” In order to compel someone to purchase a session with you vs. any other therapist, you need to connect with her in an emotional way. How can make her life better? What pain will your service potentially reduce or eliminate? What problems do your clients face? How will hiring you solve those problems? What will his life be like afterwards? Think in terms of the benefits your client will receive instead of the features of what you offer (see Key #5).
5. Identify the benefits vs. the features: Know your services and/or products inside and out. But instead of simply listing the features of the various methods you offer, describe your menu in terms of how the client will benefit. So instead of simply listing “shiatsu massage,” describe it as “a relaxing and soothing experience that will erase the knots and twinges of your stressful environment.” Remember, it’s all about creating that emotional connection with your ideal client and telling them how you can make their life better.
6. Create an experience: Why should your potential client hire you as opposed to any one of your competitors? What makes you unique? Successful companies understand that they are in the business of creating experiences that enrich lives. Starbucks does not just sell coffee. From the music they play (and sell) to the comfortable furniture and inviting d
It’s All About Marketing
Promoting your CD to radio takes a lot of organization and time management skills. Let me help organize your process. First you need to find radio stations that are willing to accept submissions from independent artists (Contact names, addresses, phone and email for radio stations across the globe are listed in “The Indie Guide To Music, Marketing and Money” ISBN 978-0-9746229-4-1 and The Indie Contact Guide – it’s companion book.).
You have to decide whether you are going to local and regional stations (which are a good recommendation if you don’t have a lot of money to work with and you aren’t worried about charting.), or if you are going after national stations, which is only a good idea if you are already established locally and are seeking national exposure and a chance to chart.
As with all submissions, always get permission ahead of time before you submit your music. There are two easy ways to find radio station information. The first is to log onto the internet and search the radio station databases available. This method is free, but will take some time. The best resources I have found are “MIT Radio Stations on the Web” and “BRS Radio.
Most sites list the stations by genre (style of music), state, etc. You should bookmark these sites in your Internet browser. You will find yourself going back to these sites often.
The major advantage the internet offers is the ability to download information into a spreadsheet or word processing document to make labels and save data for your follow-up files.
However, if you decide looking for information on the internet takes too much time, an alternative is to purchase books that already have all the information for radio stations listed in them.
When finding radio stations to submit to, it’s best to start with college radio first, especially if you are a new act without a track record. It will be easier for you to get added on college stations, which are usually “free format” and are more likely to air something new and exciting.
If you decide on the college route, make sure you have verified they have a format for your music. Most college stations have a variety of music styles and Music Directors.
Rock, Jazz, and Alternative Music tend to be the main stay for college stations. Country acts will have a more difficult time on college stations and there are many that have Folk Music programs. For Country acts you’ll have a better opportunity at stations that play Country Music specifically and/or those that play Americana.
Once you conquer the college charts, you will have a solid base and track record to promote yourself to the larger stations. It’s like a snowball that rolls down the mountain. The more it rolls, the larger it gets. Make sure when approaching larger stations that you ask specifically if they play independent artists.
If they tell you they occasionally give an independent artist an opportunity, and you have the extra resources, go ahead and submit your CD to them. You never know, they may play it.
But if you hear: ‘No. We only play major-label releases, or artists that are in the top 50 of the Billboard charts, but why don’t you go ahead and send it along anyway.’ Think long and hard about it before sending your CD. You’re better off to be patient, record the comment on your spreadsheet and wait until you chart before contacting that station again.
If the goal for your music is charting you will need to make sure that all of the radio stations you submit to, report to the same charts. This will help ensure that all of your “spins” count. (Spins are the amount of times a song is played.)
If the radio stations don’t report to any charts, or the charts they do report to are not consistent with those you already have, you may want to think about passing on them until you have more resources. It would be like sending an unsolicited press kit to a management firm that doesn’t accept them. It’s a waste of time, energy and press kits.
If you are only looking for exposure, then by all means send it to every radio station you get permission from as long as your budget allows. However, try to stay in one local/regional area so it’s saturated with your music. It will give you a much better chance at lining up a distributor as well as selling more CD’s.
It is easier to get added to a play list on stations that don’t report, than do. The competition is not as fierce. Remember: air time is an important commodity to a radio station. Each station only has so many hours and slots they can play songs. If you can get your song charted, you will have a better chance of getting into one of those precious slots. You have to decide which route you want to take.
Once you have found the radio stations you plan to submit to, and you have entered that information into a database, you are ready to send the press kit out (assuming your CD is ready).
At this time, make sure to call the radio stations again and verify that all the information you’ve gathered is still the same. The industry is very volatile. Stations get bought and sold very quickly, and there is an extremely high turnover rate for personnel. You don’t want to send your Heavy Metal CD to a station that is now a Smooth Jazz station. And you don’t want to send something out with the words “Material Requested” on it, to someone who no longer works there.
You’ll need a cover letter for your press kit, make sure to suggest the tracks you think radio personnel will like, and the ones you think are more commercial. Give them an opportunity to listen to several tracks, but don’t ask them to listen to the entire CD. It’s not professional. Radio promoters push one track at a time.
Pushing only one track will show them you know what you are doing and are respectful of their time. To push a track means to tell the radio personnel which track you are suggesting at this time for airplay. Tell them it’s the first release off your new CD.
In order to chart you must have a substantial amount of “spins”. Here’s another major reason to push only one spin: If you have a lot of tracks that are being played, but no stations are playing similar tracks, your chances of charting for a particular song are very slim. While you really don’t have a choice of what is played, you can help it along by constantly suggesting the same track.
Most Program Directors (PD’s) and Music Directors (MD’s) have specific call times, on specific days, every week. You can only call them on these days or they will not take your calls. Once you have sent your press kit out, wait approximately two weeks, then call and confirm that your CD has arrived safely.
If the CD has not arrived, wait one more week and call again. If at that point the CD has still not arrived, tell the PD or MD that you will send another package and then send it. Wait another week and then follow up again.
The life of one song is anywhere from 4 – 6 weeks. You can’t just assume that at the end of 6 weeks the radio station is going to automatically play another track from your CD. It’s up to you to suggest it.
At the end of your first 4 weeks of air time, continue to push the first track but also start suggesting the next track you plan to release. Start building a rapport with the PD’s and MD’s. Find out their likes, dislikes, and interests. You will get much farther if you are truly interested in who they are and what they do, than if you are only interested in what they can do for you.
Because Program and Music Directors have different call times and days, time management is essential. To help make your job a little easier, create a database to hold all your contact information and keep track of calls and call times. If you have succeeded in getting a station to add your music, here are some questions you should ask:
How To Boost Sales
We are all cluttered thinkers, our minds preoccupied with numerous thoughts, feelings, and unresolved information.
You can see that clearly as you walk down any city street.
Faces are contorted with angst, inner dialogues, and multilayered emotions. People even walk and move in an uncoordinated way.
Examine your own thinking, and you’ll see that hidden agendas, conflicts, and internal upsets constantly interfere with the clarity of your logic.
This is both an opportunity and an obstacle for salesmanship.
It is an opportunity because you can offer people something that they need to improve their lives, ease their pain, and end their confusion.
Your product may very well provide the relief that your customers need.
It may be a way for them to make more money following a specific technology.
It may be a way for them to develop will power and self confidence.
It may be something that makes their lives easier to organize, maintain, and evolve.
It may be a way for them to get rest, relief, and peace.
Or it may be a way for them to recuperate energy, health, and well-being.
Yet you also have an obstacle. They can’t see you, hear you, or even respond to you-again, because of their preoccupation.
As a psychologist this happens to me quite often.
People write to me about some difficulty they are having. I write back, proposing a simple, common-sense and highly-doable solution.
Then they write back repeating their complaint, completely ignoring the solution.
In other words, they weren’t even able to understand that they had been presented with a solution.
The way most marketers try to break through this preoccupation is to increase their marketing signal to break through the customer’s internal noise.
They amp up their marketing message-playing on the customer’s spectrum of desires with a hammer. It’s called hype.
In their desperation, customers often respond in the way that the marketer desired.
Encouraged, the marketer then rolls out the next pitch with the same tactics.
Eventually, however, even this does not work. The customer becomes numbed out, tone deaf, and utterly indifferent.
In addition, everybody else is assailing the customer’s sensibility, trying to attract their attention, with the same dramatic techniques.
A better approach is to tone down the customer’s inner noise, rather than raise your own marketing signal.
How do you do this?
You simplify and clarify your message at every point of contact.
Rather than hype things up, you present your information in an increasingly simple and direct way.
Whether you’re into internet marketing, network marketing, mail order or sales, you will always have a better response if you simplify your marketing message.
This is why USP’s, slogans, and other techniques are popular-they give a handle to the brand or product.
Sometimes even an unusual company, brand, or product name can awaken a whole train of familiar associations in the customer’s mind.
However, the principle is more important than the technique being used.
And the principle is keep it short and simple.
If your message is clear, it will be received and acted upon. Your sales will improve. And if you get really good at this, they will soar!
Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html
Branding Or Marketing? Same Or Different?
While marketing and branding are alike in some ways, they are also sometimes mistaken as the same business action. This is not true, but definitely understandable on the two can be misconstrued as the same.
There are several brand tools that can also fall into the marketing category. This is what makes the two concepts so closely related, but at the same time so much different. Brand tools can consist of several different components, all of which are useful. Brand tools such as positioning, or where to position a product, can be a very important and effective technique. These brand tools can also be lumped into the marketing aspect of a company’s effort. If a product is not positioned correctly, in other words if it is not placed in the appropriate market, you are not going to see a lot of return on investment. Another component that would fit into the brand tools category would be perception. The best way of identifying this is by conducting market research. Brand tools can become more effective if the company knows what the market is looking for. Therefore they can gear their efforts towards the appropriate party without losing out on time, money, and most importantly potential profits.
Brand software is also a very effective way of saving you or your company time, money, and headaches. With brand software, sometime referred to as marketing software, a company or individual can track their efforts with ease, instead of guessing on how well a certain project or plan is performing. Without brand software companies would be left to speculate on how much money their product is making, or how their marketing efforts are doing. Some versions of brand software allows the tracking of marketing plans so that the user can see which plans are effective and which ones are not. If you know what is effective, then you will also know what you can discontinue, thus saving time and money and again maximizing profits!
Brand software can be bought in every major electronics store. Customizable software is also available through some software developing companies. These companies will design a specific program so that everything you need is customized right into your system. Do you need to track profit per sale? That can be done. How about which marketing plan performed best during the first and third quarter of last year? Yep, they can do that too. One thing to remember is to do your research and find a company that fits your needs. If you are new to brand software you may also want to try some of the free demo versions that are available through numerous internet sites. Just go to your favorite search engine and type in “brand software.” You will have several sites to choose from. Do your research, and then decide which one is best for you. You can then buy the full version knowing that you made the best decision for your company, making the profits grow and grow. Your company is like part of your own family and you want to see it succeed through everything that you do. That is now possible thanks to the brand software that is highly available.
Kevin Dark is an online marketer. You can find out more about his new project on http://www.targetz.info
Educate Your Customer to Make the Sale
If you’ve been on the internet for any length of time, you’ve probably seen thousands of ebooks, courses, and other types of tutorials on just about any topic that you can imagine.
The problem with a lot of these courses and ebooks businesses are giving away are junk. They don’t contain any real information. Many are nothing more than blatant sales pitches.
Although it may seem like a waste of time to create a course when this technique seems to be so overused, have you ever considered that this could be a way to sell more of your products and services?
Although the market seems to be flooded with courses, ebooks, and tutorials, there’s alway room for this material provided it’s high quality.
What is key is creating a course or ebook, or some other type of tutorial is to offer some real choice information nuggets your readers don’t know.
Although you can create a course, ebook, or tutorial out of others’ articles, this isn’t really a good idea unless you can find really valuable, and useful, content.
If you decide to go this route, you’ll need to do some research. There are plenty of top notch article directories where you can find articles to create your course:
Ezine Articles – http://www.ezinearticles.com
Go Articles – http://www.goarticles.com
Both of these article directories are general article directories and contain plenty of articles on just about any topic.
If you can’t find enough quality articles to create your course, then you may want to consider more specialized article directories.
You can find find article directories here:
Directory of Article Directories – http://www.directoryofarticledirectories.com/ – Although this is a fairly new directory, you’ll find quite a few niche article directories on a lot of different topics.
When selecting your articles, you should select at least seven. It takes an average of seven contacts with your reader to make the sale.
Send them out over a period of at least 30 days or more. One or two emails per week is plenty. Don’t bombard your reader with email. Include a short note to your reader, and make sure that you mention your product or service. Be subtle about it. No one likes to be sold.
The other alternative is to write your own course. Personally, this is a better choice because your content is original. You have an opportunity to give your reader a few choice nuggets they won’t know, and it’s an opportunity for you to really show your potential customers what you really know.
Tie these nuggets to your products and services and show what your products and services can do for your readers, and you have a winner.
When you’re ready to take your course to the next level, you need to publish it for wider distribution. Sites like Learno, http://www.learno.com, can help you publish your course, as well as turn your course into a real book for publication. This will allow you to leverage your work and share your knowledge and expertise more quickly.
By leveraging your work, you’ll brand yourself as an expert more quickly. Potential customers who are interested in your offers will seek you out. This will save you time and money on your internet marketing efforts. by driving targeted visitors to your site.
Although using courses, ebooks, and tutorials to promote your products and services has been overused, if you create quality content and offer your visitor something useful, you’ll increase your chance of making the sale.
Jinger Jarrett will show you how to get more traffic and sales with free marketing. Get her book, “1001 High Traffic Sites Where You Can Market for Free”, at http://www.jingerjarrett.com/.