Aloha Friends & Marketers of Massage!
In my last post I covered just how important massage testimonials are when it comes to marketing your business and attracting new clients.
But what it is that makes a great massage testimonial?
Well, other than talking about how professional, nice or wonderful you are, a great massage testimonial will ideally ‘prove’ how your massage effectively solved a ’specific’ problem for your clients.
Your testimonials should also address any specific ‘hesitations’ (if any) that your clients had prior to booking in with you, which we’re ultimately proved to be unfounded.
If you have a specific ‘target market’ that you are focusing on, then you should ideally have lots of great testimonials from people from within that market.
For example, when I used to practice massage from home, I would always target one primary market - stressed out, white collar professionals aged 35-55.
Want to know why I always target that particular market?
Well, other than the fact that their bodies are screaming for massage and I want to help them, they also have the disposable to income to ‘afford’ regular massage.
This makes your marketing that much easier, because if money is an issue for the people you are targeting than you will need to be all the more convincing in your message and your offers all the more appealing (value-added).
Plus, we usually always live in areas where ’stressed out, cashed up’ professionals are abundant.
{SIDENOTE: Take a drive, walk, ride around the area surrounding your practice. What kind of houses are there? What kind of cars are in the driveway? What kind of businesses surround you? This is your most easily accessible market, so you would do well to get to know it so you can tailor your marketing so that it speaks to them directly.}
Anyway, I had built up a number of regular clients from the ’stressed out, cashed up’ professionals market mainly by going into office buildings and asking if I could put my flyers up in the staffrooms, which worked beautifully.
However, one day it occurred to me that my clients we’re primarily male and I wanted to balance this out a bit by attracting more female clients from this market.
So I opened up my marketing file and took a closer look at my flyers, brochures, ads etc and I made an interesting discovery.
Every single testimonial I had used was from a male. No wonder I had been attracting primarily male clients.
I also felt that there may have been some reservations from potential female clients because I was a male massage therapist.
So I mailed out a card, a Feedback form, a $50 massage gift voucher and a self-addressed postage paid envelope to 5 of my female clients that I felt I had a good rapport/connection with.
In the card I asked if they would kindly fill in the Feedback Form and send it back to me.
Here are the 5 questions I asked them on the Feedback Form:
1) Did you have any hesitations at all about booking in for a massage with me?
If so, what we’re they?
(example: being a massaged by a male, or concerned that the massage might be not be firm enough etc)
2) How did you feel at the beginning of the massage?
Did you have any specific aches, pains, injury or discomfort?
(example: tight neck and shoulders, headache, sore legs etc)
3) How did you feel at the end of the massage?
Did you get what you needed from the massage?
(example: pain relief, relaxation, rejuvenation etc)
4) Was there anything about the massage you didn’t enjoy or that you feel I could improve?
5) What did you enjoy about the massage?
I then asked them if they could write me a testimonial that I could use in my marketing and that they could simply refer to the answers they gave to my 5 questions to help them write it.
I also gave them a few examples of testimonials I have received in the past.
{SIDENOTE: Asking these specific questions and also providing examples of past testimonials you have received actually ‘trains’ your clients to give you great testimonials. Provided you’ve actually given them a great massage treatment of course!}
So, within the week I had 4 out of the 5 ladies return their Feedback Forms / Testimonials to me and they we’re just fantastic.
I then called up each of the 4 ladies and thanked them and asked them when they would like to book in for their next treatment and use their $50 gift voucher.
{SIDENOTE: I only offered 90 minute massage treatments in those days at $100, so the $50 gift voucher was effectively a 50% discount, without calling it a discount. Promoting discounts to your clients and using the word ‘discount’ can be very damaging to your business, but that is a subject for another post.}
When they came in for their treatments, I kindly asked if I could take a small photo of them with my digital camera so I could include it with their testimonial and they all agreed without hesitation. Note: I emphasized that the photo would be small.
In less than 10 days I now had 4 really great testimonials, all from women in my target market.
One of which I’ve included below:
So let’s take a closer look at it and see why this is such a great testimonial…
If we take a look at the first paragraph we can see that Anna did in fact have reservations about being massaged by a male therapist, so my intuition was spot on there.
However, in the second paragraph she comments on how professional I was and how I made her feel ‘comfortable and safe’.
This is huge because other females within my target market will be able to relate to her initial reservations BUT at the same time they will see that I am a ‘good guy’.
If we look at the third paragraph we see that my massage effectively ’solved a problem’ for Anna.
Before the massage she felt stressed and tense in her neck and shoulders and afterwards her stresses had melted away and the tension had been completely dissolved.
Now this is very important because I know that pretty much everyone in my target market sits at a desk, works on a computer and usually has a heavy workload that must be completed by deadlines, so there are many other women in this market that are going to have this exact same stress and tension.
Anna’s comments in the third paragraph ‘prove’ that MY massage is an effective ’solution’ to this common ‘problem’.
In the last paragraph, she goes on to say that it was the best massage that she has ever had and that she highly recommends me to anyone wanting a truly excellent massage.
Now that is a powerful and convincing endorsement and a great way to finish the testimonial strongly.
If we look at the bottom you will see that I have included a photo of Anna, along with her full name, her age, her occupation and the suburb where she lives.
Including all of these details, makes your testimonial both credible and believable.
Some marketers will tell you that you should also include their phone number and email address for maximum impact. However, while this would definitely increase your testimonial’s ‘believability’, I have not found it to be necessary in the massage industry. Besides, I wouldn’t feel good about plastering my client’s private contact details all over the place.
Anyway, this post has ended up being much larger than expected so let me wrap up.
Once I had my 4 ‘you-beaut’ testimonials from women in my target market, I then updated all my marketing pieces (flyers, brochures etc) and included a 3 testimonials from my male clients and 3 testimonials from my female clients.
I then set about placing them in all the office staffrooms that allowed me to place them there.
Within just a couple of weeks, the number of female clients that booked in for treatments increased and within a couple of months my male/female client ratio was very close to 50/50. How’s that for ‘balance’.
When I asked each of my new female clients what made them decide to book in for a massage, every single one of them said that it was the testimonials from other women!
So this case study goes to show you just how much your testimonials can influence both ‘how many’ clients make contact and book in for a massage AND ‘what type’ of clients make contact and book in for a massage.
So if you have a specific ‘group’ of people that you target with your marketing, make sure that you use plenty of testimonials from people within that group. This will serve to attract and ‘persuade’ more of the same people to come and try out your services.
Anyway, I hope you found this information useful.
Keep doing the great massage work that you’re doing and be sure to keep gathering great testimonials for your marketing.
To your massage success,
James Thomas
Marketing Director
TOUCH OF ALOHA
