Touch ambassadors?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Eric

It’s great to see David Palmer actively writing again and I’m thoroughly enjoying his TouchPro blog. It was about 18 years ago that I first met David Palmer, the “Father of Chair Massage” at a marketing workshop in Toronto. (Note: Although I’m very much associated with developing chair massage in Canada, I didn’t come up with the concept. I’m just the “Son of Chair Massage.”)

That meeting had a profound impact on the way I looked at my role as a massage therapist and in a broader way on my life’s path. There were a couple of ideas in particular that he communicated that changed my thinking about massage and caused me to make a 180 degree turn in my professional life:

1. An important distinction: The difference between massage being acceptable vs. massage being accessible.

In the early 90′s I was fully engaged in the trend to “medicalize” massage in an effort to gain some acceptance by the mainstream. At that time I had taught well over a 1,000 therapists in 2,200 hour massage training programs and was writing a research-based textbook for a large American publisher. I was on a mission to see massage become more accepted by other health professionals, but making that distinction stopped me in my tracks.

As service professionals, we’re not here to serve health professionals or even insurance providers for that matter. We’re here to serve humanity. And the simple fact was (and still is) that massage as it is widely practiced today will never achieve widespread utilization by the public. David Palmer suggests that only 3% of the American public receives regular massage. Therapists can’t believe the number and get upset by it, but he’s right. Having taken considerable time over the years to analyze the numbers from major association surveys, I think he’s probably even a little generous with his estimations.

Bottom line: People need the touch that massage provides. We need to focus less on being accepted by the medical community and insurance providers and focused on making our services more accessible to the mainstream public – creating a grassroots revolution of sorts.

2. Touch as a positive social value

One of the reasons that massage has never achieved a high level of popularity is because of the negative associations with touch. Besides the obvious associations with sex in our culture, it is also associated in a more negative way with abuse, coercion, power and danger, thus creating a touch-phobic culture. As a result, we have a situations where teachers are fearful of comforting young students in any kind of physical way and touching is increasing being banned in schools even between students.

It’s proven beyond a doubt that we need touch as much as we need food and sleep. So we need to transform perceptions around touch and make touch a positive social value.

These two goals, making touch a positive social value and making massage more accessible, have been a driving force in my career much to the dismay of my colleagues.

I have popularized chair massage in Canada and have been responsible for tens of thousands of people who would not normally have massage trying it for the first time
I support organizations like Peaceful Touch and Massage in Schools that help establish positive attitudes towards touch at an early age
I support the valuable research done by the Touch Research Institute even though they do not always use massage therapists in their protocols
I get actively involved in events like Free Hug Day and Campaign for Free Hugs

At the risk of sounding preachy, I have to say that as massage therapists we are uniquely positioned to be ambassadors for positive touch. We have the ability to go far beyond helping a strained hamstring and have the power to change people’s lives in very profound ways through touch.

I encourage you to think about how you can contribute to the cause. What can we do as massage professionals to change attitudes towards touch and make massage more accessible to every man, woman and child? Are you ready to start a touch revolution?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue. Tell me what you think by posting your comments below.

6 Steps to Build a Better Practice

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Eric

I’m happy to announce that I have the feature story for the November/December issue of Massage & Bodywork Magazine. It’s not my first cover story, but I have to say it’s a darn good article and I’m quite proud of it. You can view the digital edition here: http://massagebodywork.idigitaledition.com/issues/21/34

For more practice building resources from Eric Brown and a free subscription to the BodyworkBiz Marketing Tips newsletter, go to: http://www.bodyworkbiz.com

Binge Marketing

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Eric

What Is Binge Marketing and Why You Should Never Fall Victim to It…

Don’t do it!

Don’t do binge marketing. I see this all too often where therapists suddenly find that their appointment book is looking a little light and figure they had better do some marketing. It was illustrated in an email I received today where the therapist mentioned that “Marketing may be important to me in a FEW WEEKS.”

The unfortunate part is this is an attitude that is widely shared. It’s not an isolated occurrence.

Where I see Binge Marketing in a big way is immediately before holidays like Christmas. I get panicked emails from BodyworkBiz newsletters subscribers asking, “How can I sell lots of gift certificates?” or “What can I do for a promotion for this holiday?”

The thing is, marketing is not something you just do in a few weeks to fix a slow practice. That’s like pulling out a Band Aid from the medicine cabinet to fix a gushing chest wound.

If your practice is not at the level you want it to be, I can almost guarantee that it’s not a techniques issue. You are probably very talented. Your massage does not suck. Taking another techniques class as a way to help your practice is a mistake.

If your practice is not at the level you want it to be, I can almost guarantee that it’s a marketing issue. You didn’t get 500 hours of practical business training in massage school. Your marketing probably sucks. Learning simple ways to incorporate ongoing marketing activities into your practice is the smart thing to do.

I’m not trying to insult anyone. I’m just tired of seeing talented therapists barely scraping by. I’m tired of seeing fantastic therapists leaving the profession because they can’t make a go at it. It’s painful for me to watch great therapists hit the ground, kamikaze style.

So I beg of you, don’t fall into to binge marketing mindset. Binge marketing might keep your business alive, but in the long term it just is not the answer for a satisfying and sustainable practice.

So what’s a therapist to do?

Start by learning more about marketing. If you do not have a highly successful business, then invest at least twice as much time, money and energy in your marketing education as you do in advancing your massage skills.

You can study with me or you can study with someone who you resonate more strongly with. Whatever you decide, make sure that the marketing person you work with is highly experienced and has not just personal success, but is able to translate that success to others with a proven marketing strategy.

For example, before I released the 60 Clients in 60 Days program, I tested the ideas on groups of massage therapists to make sure the strategy worked on a broad range of practices. It allowed me to create pretty much a foolproof strategy. You can read about the successes of the participants here. This is just one of many pages of success stories illustrating what happens when things are done right.

More recently, I’ve turned my attention to web marketing because it’s an important area, but one where most therapists are extremely weak. I have a great deal of expertise to share. Not only do I do large scale web projects like World Massage Conference, the largest event in the history of massage, but I’ve personally developed over 100 websites for massage therapists of which over 95% ended up on the first page of Google within weeks.

For this reason, I developed the Web Marketing MBA program that will pretty much allow someone to learn how to master web marketing. It’s not a binge marketing solution. In fact, the ten sessions are spread over almost a five month period to help encourage sustainability in your practice. I’d like to see you helping people through your hands on skills for the long run. I want you to be successful by taking regular action over the long term in a way that’s practical and doable. I welcome you to take advantage of this valuable and low cost resource:

http://www.bodyworkbiz.com/webmarketing

Whether you decide to join me or not, I want to do whatever I can to discourage you from doing any more binge marketing. Don’t do it. Learn some solid strategies that work and incorporate them into your daily practice to develop a strong sustainable practice that will allow you to benefit increasing numbers of people.

That’s all my ranting for today,

Eric Brown, Grand Massage Poobah
http://www.bodyworkbiz.com

Do you believe that more therapists need to avoid binge marketing. Vote “yes” by clicking the Like button below.

Press Release Power Guide – Only $7 Bucks!

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Eric

How do you establish your expertise, increase your credibility and get people talking about you?

Get press coverage!

I’m a big fan of leveraging the press and have done it very successfully, getting coverage for my massage practice in major daily and national newspapers, radio and television.

I’ve produced a comprehensive course about it called “Press Release Profits” that’s available at BodyworkBiz. It takes you step by step through the process of getting media coverage. That course is well worth the investment, but it might seem a little expensive for you right now.

So when I came across a manual called “Press Release Power” by Paul Clifford a press release specialist with Rave Press, I contacted him and made arrangements to get it to you at a very special price.

It’s a solid little guidebook that covers all the basics around press releases and is written by someone that actually knows what they are talking about.

In this 59 page e-book, you’ll learn how to:

Write a Press Release that works for you and not against you
Have you website rank higher as a result of press release backlinks
Get your release gets syndicated across the web
Get maximum SEO juice from Google by avoiding one very common mistake
Save time thinking up topics (you will get a list from the guide)
Select the keywords that actually matter
Write Headlines that make your press release spread virally
and much more!

Paul sells the book on Amazon for $18.99 and you can go to Amazon to check it out…

However, I’ve purchased the rights to distribute it and you can get right now for just $7. That’s probably less than the cost of lunch at McDonalds (although I never eat there, so I wouldn’t really know.)

I still like my press coverage course better and it’s much more comprehensive, but if you are just exploring the idea and want to know what the benefits are and the basics of getting a press release written and published, this is a fantastic primer at a price that won’t eat through your wallet.

Click here to purchase “Press Release Power” for only $7

This is an ebook and you will have instant access. Like almost everything at BodyworkBiz, it’s covered by my 100% no questions asked money back guarantee. So you have nothing to risk by taking action now.

Instant Appointments…

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Eric

Here’s a strategy is incredibly simple and doesn’t take much explaining. I wrote about this in one of the BodyworkBiz Marketing Tips newsletters years ago, but I get so many people telling me how well this works that I think it deserves revisiting.

Here are the kinds of emails I get:

“I just did this today and within 2 minutes had taken appointments for two available slots!”

Or this one that came in from the UK:

“Within a half hour I had two appointments taken, first from a guy I did a chair massage for on a promotional day at his work place and the second from one of my very regular (twice a month) clients. So best of both worlds…one new client, and an increase in ‘spends’ from an existing client! I am very, very happy about this tip. Thank you sooooo much!”

Many therapists dismiss this strategy as being too simple. But some of the simplest tactics are often the most effective.

What did they do to get these instant appointments?

They used email.

They simply sent an email to a number of clients letting them know what openings they had available in the following week.

The first therapist who got two appointments within two minutes sent out this note:

“Feeling Stressed? Computer work got your neck in a kink? The week of October 6 – October 11 I have these appointment times open: Thursday Oct. 9 11:30 am, 12 pm, 12:30 pm, 1 pm, 1:30 pm, 2 pm, 2:30 pm and 3:00 pm Friday Oct. 10 11:30 am, 12:00 pm, 1 pm, 2 pm and 2:30 pm and 7 pm
I WILL GIVE $10 OFF TO THE FIRST 5 PEOPLE WHO RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL WITH AN APPOINTMENT TIME. I’m waiting for you…just make that call!”

The woman from the UK sent out a similar email with a comparable incentive. She didn’t need to send it out to 1,000 clients to get those appointments. She only sent it out to the 15 clients for whom she had email addresses!

Give it a try and report your results on the BodyworkBiz Facebook Page.

Watch the video: Last chance for e-Marketing for Massage Professionals 101

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Eric

The price is going to double tonight at midnight, so this is your last chance to get the e-Marketing for Massage Professionals 101 e-course for half price.

Click here to get the course for only $49.50 (Price doubles as of Sunday, May 1st at midnight)

There are not as many people as myself that know as much about marketing a massage practice on the web and this e-course will take you through the process step-by-step in a super easy to understand way.

There is no hype in the course. I won’t promise you the world. I’ll just show you what works and what doesn’t work so that you can use your time most effectively in getting clients and so you don’t waste your time and money in doing things that just plain don’t work.

You’ll be getting emails from me daily, Monday to Friday, for about five months. Each email is bite sized and can be read over your morning coffee. You can pause the course delivery anytime and pick it up when you have more time.

You can log into the BodyworkBiz Resource Center anytime to view the entire course archives if you want to accelerate your progress or get answers about specific questions. And if you ever need help, myself and the other participants are just a click away with a private course discussion board.

Take just a few minutes to watch this video to get an informal walkthrough of the course area so you can see what’s available to you. It’s quick and messy, but gives you a good sense of what to expect and how the e-course works:

Want a summary of what’s in the course. Here’s a table of contents:

1. Why the Web?

2. The Big Picture

3. Your Website: The Foundation

4. What To Do If You Don’t Have a Website

5. Getting a Date with Google: Search Engine Optimization

6. Google Checks You Out

7. Keywords are Key

8. A Domain of Your Own

9. If a Domain Falls in the Forest

10. Facebook

11. Editing your Facebook Profile

12. Protecting Your Privacy

13. Nobody Likes Lists (Except Smart Facebook Users)

14. The Writing on the Wall

15. Adding Friends

16. Back to Our Date with Google

17. Create Sexy URLs

18. Catching Google’s eye: Beautiful Page Titles

19. Getting to Know You: A Compelling Description

20. Writing for the Search Engines

21. Off page optimization: The Power of Links

22. Dress Up Naked Links: Anchor text

23. More Back Linking Basics

24. Make Your Site Shareable

25. Your First Directory

26. Review Sites

27. Bing Business Listing

28. Google Places

29. Yahoo Business Listing

30. Yelping for Clients

31. Analyzing Your Results

32. Other Review Sites of Note

33. Universal Business Listing

34. How To Find Local Review Sites

35. How to Get Reviews

36. Email: The Killer App

37. What’s an E-Zine

38. More EZine Tips

39. Maximizing Sign Ups, Opens and Click-Thrus

40. Social Bookmarking

41. Video Marketing

42. Create Your Script (Or Not)…

43. Create Your Video

44. Optimizing and Uploading Your Video to YouTube

45. “Rinse and Repeat” Your Video

46. Article Marketing Basics

47. How to Write and Article in 10 Minutes

48. Create Your Resource Box

49. Finding the Top Article Directories

50. Submitting Your Articles Online

Git ‘er Done week… Where we review lessons to date and take action

51. Social Bookmarking Continued.

52. OMG! I got a BAD Review

53. Twitter and Tweets

54. Get Linked In

55. Any Place for MySpace?

56. Facebook Pages: Fans and Groups

57. How to create your Facebook Fan Page

58. Growing Your Fan Base

59. Engaging Your Fans

60. Three Easy Ways to Promote Your Fan Page

61. What’s a blog and do you need one

62. Setting up your blog

63. Content for your blog

64. Promoting Your blog

65. Blog commenting

66. Getting Listed in Directories

67. Business Directories

68. Local Directories

69. Massage directories

70. Blog directories

71. Why press releases?

72. Writing your press release

73. Optimize

74. PR Distribution

75. Take it offline

76. Pay Per Click Advertising

77. Google Adwords

78. Setting Up Your Adwords Ads

79. Facebook Ads

80. How to set up your Facebook ad

81. Microsoft adCenter and other PPCs

82. Forums / discussion lists

83. What is Web 2.0?

84. Squidoo

85. Google Knol

86. Accepting electronic payments

87. The Power of Offline Promotion

88. Reciprocal Linking

89. Groupon and Social Discount Sites

90. Groupon continued…

91. Advanced Video Marketing Tactics 1

92. YouTube Subscriptions Directly from Your Site

93. Put Facebook and Twitter updates on auto pilot

94. Advanced Email Strategies

95. Automating posts to social media sites

96. Cross links and deep links

97. Facebook’s Secret Sauce

98. Advanced LinkedIn Strategies

99. Four Little Known Facebook Marketing Secrets

100. More Advanced Facebook Strategies

101. It’s not really the end…

It’s a lot of information, but it’s delivered in bite sized pieces over a five month period in an easy to understand way, even if you don’t know the difference between KFC and FTP.

If you want to take advantage of the free and low cost opportunities the web offers you to grow your practice, click here and register now for only $49.50.

FYI There are quite a number of videos in the course already, but the plan is to add more instructional video in June and July and raise the price to $199. Even at that price, it would be a steal to have someone like myself help navigate you through what seems like a complicated web.

Take this therapist for example so you can see how expensive making the wrong choices can be. I showed her how she could build her website at no-cost and get found by the search engines. …

I paid big bucks a few years ago for the clinic website. It was pretty and completely wrong in the technical aspect; nobody could find it. Last year I got quote for over $3,000 to rewrite it and fix it! I was frustrated beyond words. I can’t believe I could make mine myself for free I am so grateful for inspiration and making time for us.
Gosia Pacyna

The web is here in a big way. It permeates every aspect of our lives. You can use it effectively to build your practice or you can get left behind in digital dust.

I would love to be able to lead you through the process of using it the right way and developing a strong Internet presence for your practice. Sign up today and get the e-Marketing for Massage Professionals e-course.

Take care,

Eric Brown, Director

www.bodyworkbiz.com

PS It comes with a full no questions asked money back guarantee. Take the full five months to go through the program. If you decide it has not helped you understand and use the web more effectively, drop me a note and I’ll be happy to issue a refund.

Share Your Website on Facebook

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Eric

How can you get customers and Friends to share your company website on Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account?

It’s simple!

Just send an email to your clients and friends and let them know that you’d like to let more people know about your business and ask them as a favor to share your site on Facebook.

Then give them this link to click:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=XXX

Be sure to replace the XXX with the URL of your website or a specific page of your website, i.e. http://bodyworkbiz.com/web.php. So your link will look like this:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://bodyworkbiz.com/newsletter.php

Click the link to see what happens. And if you want to follow the process through and share it you’ll see how it gets posted to your Facebook Profile (and I would be eternally grateful for you sharing with others.)

You can also put a share button directly on your web site. Use the image in this blog post and simply link it to the share URL that you’ve created.

Click this share button to see how I’ve linked it to my Facebook Page instead of my website…

It’s likely that most of your clients are already on Facebook. Why not get those happy clients to spread the word for you and refer you to others?

If you like this idea, click one of the sharing buttons below and share with your friends…

Adding links to your YouTube video

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Eric

YouTube has a great annotation feature that allows you to link to other YouTube videos, but how do you create a link that takes the viewer to a site beyond YouTube.

There are a number of online tools that allow you to do this. One free and easy to use tool is LinkedTube. By filling in a few fields you can add a link to your website right on your video.

This only works for videos that you embed on your site, however, and doesn’t work on videos played on YouTube directly.

Here’s a short tutorial and example of how this works:

http://howontheweb.com/how-to-make-links-in-your-youtube-videos/

If you like this tip, please click the Like button below.

Four Little Known Facebook Marketing Secrets

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Eric

Facebook is huge: 600,000,000 users and counting. Half the users are active which means that the equivalent on the entire population of the United States logs in regularly. Users spend on average 6.5 hours per week on Facebook. That translates into over eight weeks – a full two months – spent of Facebook every year! It’s mind boggling.

Why should you care?

Facebook is where your clients are. So if you want to connect with your clients and future clients, Facebook is the place to be.

Here are four ways to promote yourself on Facebook. These particular techniques require that you have a Fan Page for your business. They are all relatively easy to do, but a relatively unknown to most people that use Facebook to market their business. It’s very rare that I even see social media experts utilize these simple, but highly effective techniques.

Before we get look at these four techniques, I want to let you know that the e-Marketing for Massage Professionals e-course is available this week for just $49.50 (regularly $99). If you’ve ever wondered how to get your site found in Google or how to use Facebook to market your business, this is the course for you.

It’s comprehensive, but super simple to understand. Lessons are delivered to your inbox daily for five months and you can access the entire course contents anytime by logging into the participant area. Also be sure to sign up for the discussion board where I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have as they come up. Help is always just a keystroke away.

Get it now:

http://www.bodyworkbiz.com/web.php

1. Link personal Profile page to your Fan Page

It’s important to connect your personal Profile Page on Facebook with your Fan Page. You can place a link right at the very top of your profile like this…

Of course, this only applies if you have a Facebook Fan Page. To do this, click the “Edit Profile” button and then the “Education & Work” link.

Beside the employer field enter @[yourpagename]. (You need to use the @ sign and then type your custom Facebook Page name right after – no space and no brackets.)

You Facebook Page may or may not display in the list that appears. I’m not sure why some do and some don’t. If it does, lucky you! Simply select it from the list.

If your Page is not in the list, you can still add it, but it requires a little workaround. The process is a little involved, but is fully outlined in Lesson 99 of the e-Marketing for Massage Professionals course (currently on sale at half price).

2. Network as Your Page

Facebook has recently changed some of the functionality for Pages. They’ve added the ability for you to interact on Facebook as your Business instead of your Personal profile. You’ll see the link to “Use Facebook at [page-name]” on the right side of your Facebook Fan Page.

It’s a great feature if you really don’t like mixing the personal side of Facebook with the Business side.

This allows you to Like and Comment on other pages and displays your Fan Page as the poster or contributor, so when someone clicks on your image, they go to your Fan Page rather than your personal Profile Page. As always, when you interact and share your expertise and always be sure to add value to the conversations and interactions.

3. Build a Referral Ring

It’s likely that you have a group of professionals or business owners in your community who frequently refer back and forth with. It could be health care professionals, a colleague or local business owners.

You can make a similar arrangement on Facebook either with these people or with a handful of influential Facebook contacts.

Here’s an example of how you do that. You’ll see in this screen shot of my Facebook Fan Page that right below the profile image and image is a list of Pages that I Like and want to promote. You can list up to five Pages here. If you have more than five pages you want to display, you can simply have them rotate in the existing five spots.

To do this you need to Like your referral partner’s Page.

From your Facebook Fan Page, click the “Edit Page” button on the top right of the page. From the left hand navigation click “Featured” and you can add Pages to be featured on your Fan Page like the image above.

So the idea here is to contact business owners and let them know that you’d like to create a referral network on Facebook. Ask them to feature you on their Facebook Fan Page in the same way you feature them as a way of promoting each other’s businesses.

Be sure to post them on your Fan Page as a featured site before you contact them so they can see exactly what it looks like. Again, this is somewhat of a secret and very few people know how to do this. So if need be, forward this email to them so they know how to do it.

4. Add the Review App

Get the Facebook review app and add it to your page.

Go to http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6261817190. You can see what the reviews look like. Click the “Add to my page” link on the left hand side. Choose your Facebook Page from the list that comes up and you’re done. The tab will be automatically added to your Page.

Once you have it installed, make sure everyone knows about it. Every time you see a client, send them a thank you email and ask for a “Review” on your Facebook Page.

Anytime they post a review it gets put into their News Feed and displayed for all their Facebook Friends to see. It’s a fantastic credibility builder.

An invitation

I’ve been using a Facebook Group to communicate with “Fans”. However, Facebook completely changed the functionality of Groups a short while ago which stripped them of their effectiveness as a business tool.

So I’ve recently launched a Facebook Fan Page and I’d love for you to join me there. Over the coming months, I’ll post resources and specials for Fan Page members only. Go to:

http://www.facebook.com/bodyworkbiz

Just click the like button at the top of the Page to join and leave a brief message to introduce yourself or ask a question.

And once again, be sure to get the e-Marketing for Massage Professionals e-course while it’s only half price this week. It’s simply one of the most complete, up to date references on using the web to market your practice. And it’s written for you specifically as a massage professional.

It’s only $49.50 (regularly $99) and comes with a complete money back guarantee. Grab it now: