any inexpensive advertising ideas?

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Permalink Reply by Stephanie Duffield on October 7, 2009 at 4:57pm

Have you listed your business with google maps and other sites? Its free and fast and gets you more exposure. You could also try calling in at your favorite radio station song request line and talking to the DJ. If you play your cards right they may record your conversation and replay it on the air. Just make sure to work your business name and what your doing (massage related) into the conversation. Tell them what the song you're requesting does for you (get you pumped for your next massage-, etc.) and viola! more free advertising. Send thank you or happy autumn cards with a cupon to clients you haven't seen in a while. Chances are they just haven't thought about you and need a little nudge to rebook.
What about PR chair gigs. Offer free chair massage at a church, VFW, Moose Lodge, Little League etc, and pass out cards and coupons.
The clients are out there looking for you. Are you available or are you worrying about how you're slow right now? Worrying is probably your biggest problem. You've made it for 6 years already. Your business is going to continue to thrive as much as you're willing to allow it. Be easy about it. Its probably more about the time of year, school starting, seasons changing and all that. Take advantage of the down time and do a trade with someone, relax and inspiration will come more easily!
Hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Eeris Kallil CMT on October 7, 2009 at 10:13pm

Stephanie- You got some real good ideas! How do you list your business with google maps?

I send my clients periodic emails with "specials" and I find it very effective!

Stephanie Duffield said:

Have you listed your business with google maps and other sites? Its free and fast and gets you more exposure. You could also try calling in at your favorite radio station song request line and talking to the DJ. If you play your cards right they may record your conversation and replay it on the air. Just make sure to work your business name and what your doing (massage related) into the conversation. Tell them what the song you're requesting does for you (get you pumped for your next massage-, etc.) and viola! more free advertising. Send thank you or happy autumn cards with a cupon to clients you haven't seen in a while. Chances are they just haven't thought about you and need a little nudge to rebook.
What about PR chair gigs. Offer free chair massage at a church, VFW, Moose Lodge, Little League etc, and pass out cards and coupons.
The clients are out there looking for you. Are you available or are you worrying about how you're slow right now? Worrying is probably your biggest problem. You've made it for 6 years already. Your business is going to continue to thrive as much as you're willing to allow it. Be easy about it. Its probably more about the time of year, school starting, seasons changing and all that. Take advantage of the down time and do a trade with someone, relax and inspiration will come more easily!
Hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Stuart R Dole on October 7, 2009 at 10:32pm

We did an analysis (my wife and partner in our massage business was a marketing professional in a previous life) - we found that almost all our clients came by word of mouth - especially the ones that keep coming back.

Almost none came from Yellow Pages - and those that did didn't tend to come back, or were looking for the "other kind of massage". But people do check you out in the Yellow Pages - you have to be there I guess, but that's not how they find you.

So we reduced our YP ad size, and started an account with Google's AdWords. We spiffed up our web page a little (very simple, plain, hand-edited HTML - no fancy backgrounds or effects - I don't know how to do those!), and we've been getting a few "click-throughs". We have one new client from that so far, and he's rebooked, and we've only used $25 of the $100 credit Google gave us to start. Also, we get a lot of people landing on our site from ordinary Google and Yahoo searches - our hosting ISP has reports that show the search phrases people use to find us, and that's helping hone the Google AdWords and the text on our website. (More about that later.)

We're on Google Maps, and it's confusing to clean up your listing there, for sure! To get listed there, find your business on Google Maps, then there's a link to "claim" it as the business owner. Then you have to verify it (they call you or send a postcard), and you can input lots of details, pictures, videos, etc. I put a discount coupon there too, but no one has found it yet, so I don't think people normally get that far.

Another thing that really worked well was to send out postcards that offered a 20% discount. (You could offer anything you wanted.) We sent to our own list, using one of those services that will print and address and mail the cards for you - you upload the artwork (as a PDF) and the address list (as an Excel spreadsheet) and they do the rest. It's about 50 cents a card. The card says they can use the card themselves, or pass it on to a friend. (We tried a list of local addresses targeted for income and location and got zero response.)

And yes, email campaigns work well too.

Hope this helps too!

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Permalink Reply by Trevor Chisman on October 8, 2009 at 4:48pm

Hi

worth noting as I'm sure you are aware if you've been in business for 6 years is that business does seem to come in waves. So I'm sure another wave will be on it's way if things have been good till now.

I find the newsletter email I send out periodically is good at nudging those you haven't seen for a while.

I don't normally in the run of things offer discounts as I've noted over time that those people who come on a discount never seem to become regular clients.

Saying that I am just starting to experiment with using Twitter to fill last minute empty slots. Only just started this new marketing in the last couple of weeks so still to see if it's actually going to work. But the general idea is to get a large (ish) number of followers and then offer last minute discounted slots to fill upany dead space in the day. Firstly if your paying out rent it's better to have a discounted client in than no client and eventually when you have a good following of people you have a captive audience for anything else you want to market to them such as vouchers for Christmas presents.

Check out my Twitter at www.twitter.com/massageglasgow

Hope things pick up soon for you

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