a community of practitioners

An untapped market!

I live in city with about 200,000 people. There is almost no knowledge of what a sports massage is. My wife and I own a business together. She is a Naturopath and I am an LMT who specializes in Sports Massage. We have a website, we are on Facebook and on Twitter. We go to what ever race is in town (which may be one to two a month, and there may not be one every month) we also go to the few health events/fairs in town. We have also done some networking with other groups/business in town. My question to you all is: What marketing tools have you used to bring awareness to what you do? What types of hurdles have you come across?

Thanks for the help!

Michael

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Daniel Stroup on June 6, 2010 at 1:00pm

One thing I have been doing is giving gift certificates out at these events as prizes or raffle prizes depending on how the organizers feel they can best award them. I have come across two issues when doing this,
First, They are in the recipients hands for a period of time before they are used.
Second, I specialize in Equine massage and have discovered at least one of the trainers are holding them until one of their clients horses needs a massage, then sets up a massage session and charges their client for my work. So I may become a little more directing in who can receive the certificates. I don't mind doing a free massage when that is truly what is happening, but I find it irritating for others to take advantage in this fashion.

Permalink Reply by Michael on June 10, 2010 at 6:33pm

Daniel, thanks for your reply. We have done gift certificates but never at a race (what a novel idea). We will use your suggestion. Once again thank you and happy massaging!

Daniel Stroup said:

One thing I have been doing is giving gift certificates out at these events as prizes or raffle prizes depending on how the organizers feel they can best award them. I have come across two issues when doing this,
First, They are in the recipients hands for a period of time before they are used.
Second, I specialize in Equine massage and have discovered at least one of the trainers are holding them until one of their clients horses needs a massage, then sets up a massage session and charges their client for my work. So I may become a little more directing in who can receive the certificates. I don't mind doing a free massage when that is truly what is happening, but I find it irritating for others to take advantage in this fashion.