Groupon Massage Marketing

First off, if you haven't yet heard about this type of buying it works something like this:

Group buying sites like groupon.com and livingsocial.com and local.amazon.com create large mailing lists of people in your area. You offer your massage services at a greatly reduced rate - usually like 50% off and then pay the group buying service a fairly large percent of what you do make. Your massage business is put in front of a large population but you don't make much per person. Because of the large numbers of people that buy the offer, you will have to be able to accommodate them into your schedule and still provide top quality service. It is essential that you have a dynamic follow up program to convert those buyers into regular clients. In doing so, you can easily build your massage business. The thing to remember is that the money you are not making with each client is actually an investment in your business. You could do the same by spending a few thousand on creating a dynamic, search engine optimized website. You just decided to spend the money working with less than ideal clients and weeding through each client one by one to create an ideal client. You will not be making money when you work on those people so you will have to save up and prepare to provide such an offer or be able to limit the number of them that you do each week to make room for regular cash clients who pay your going rate.

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Share your own story or hints for using group buying programs

Many massage therapists seem to think that this low offer is de-valuing massage overall and creating a bad image for the massage profession. We don't really know that but part of the problem too is in the service that often gets compromised having to deal with such a large number of people at once. People are often willing to pay more when they do understand the value of the service. The value determines the price so even though you are doing a massage for almost nothing, the quality of the massage needs to be even more exceptional than usual to convert these people into regular clients. You can show them that you are worth more by having a very content rich website that addresses their questions and needs. You can do that by creating an info packet that they take home with them that will tell them all about massage and what it can really do. In the absence of information about value, potential clients will use price to make the decision for them. You have to be able to differentiate yourself from all of the other massage places out there offering low priced massage.

But here is the catch: It will challenge you in so many ways you have never dreamed. Many of the people taking your offer will be less than your ideal client so be prepared with some of the following:

A strong cancellation policy and the ability to enforce it. People coming in on discounts will be one of the firsts to cancel or not show up or give you some story about missing their appointments. Make it clear that they only get one chance to make an appointment and if they miss for any reason they lose.

A clear limit as to the number of clients you can handle for the offer and a limit to when they can come in - like they can only come in on your off hours during the middle of the afternoon or something like that.

A way to keep a large quantity of people informed as to scheduling times available and the rules around their appointments such as a cancellation policy. You can do that on your website or on your Facebook Page or by email.

A way to deal with the less than ideal clients who are just there looking for a discounted massage and are not serious about their health. It probably depends on the area you live in as to how many people like that you will attract.

Group buying can work if you get clear about your boundaries and make a stand to enforce them. It is also about knowing your vision of your ideal client and knowing that you will be getting some people who are not that ideal. You will need more energy to deal with them and more time so be prepared. There are other things you can do like creating your own group buying program but you will also need a group to draw from. You can do that by creating a website that gets found by searches when people type your main keyword (massage your city). When you have that you already have someone who is looking for massage which should be part of the profile of your ideal client.

See also: Groupon massage marketing or not to groupon marketing