THE Four Ways To Make More Money In Your Massage Business

We are here to discuss four ways to make more money in your massage therapy business!

In this article, we’ll review:

• How To Get New Clients as a Massage Therapist by Selling Gift Certificates and Using Google Business Profile
• And how you can make money as a massage therapist by increasing your spending per client and adding income streams to your massage therapy business.

There are many ways to do these things, but implementing these ideas into your massage business plan will increase your massage therapy income!

The first one is one that almost everyone who joins my Facebook group mentions:

How To Get Clients as a Massage Therapist.

I know many therapists are booked solid right now, but I also know many new massage therapists are still working to build their businesses and need new clients.

Most of us need new massage clients even if we've been in business for years and are incredibly successful because people’s lives change, they move away, and things happen. So we regularly need new clients coming in. Acquiring new massage clients is number one, and let's hope they're ideal clients.

We want to attract massage clients who are a good fit for our style and the kind of work we prefer to do.

There are almost endless ways to market a massage business!

My favorite way to get new massage clients is by selling gift certificates!

I love it because you're getting paid to see new clients instead of spending money on advertising your massage business. If you do your specials as I recommend, you might make more money from those gift certificate sales. So, gift certificates are one of my favorite ways to connect with new massage clients.

Another massage marketing strategy that I love is Google Business Profile.

It's free, and you don't even have to have a website to use it, although I highly recommend that you have a basic website for your massage business. Google Business Profile is a great way to get new massage clients in the door! By learning a few key things, you can optimize your Google business profile and stand out from your competition.

The second way to make more money in your massage therapy business is to increase client retention by rebooking and reactivating clients.

Anything you can do to increase the number of massage clients that come back, the number of times they come back, and the frequency in which clients return will increase your income.

You can do this without acquiring any new massage clients! Learning how to book clients for massage and rebook them is one of the most essential skills for a massage therapist and business owner.

How to book massage clients is not always covered in massage school, so classes like Perfectly Booked and Rev Up Your Rebooking are available in my Massage and Spa Success Shop!

Just like acquiring new clients, there are many ways to approach a rebooking conversation. You should do it in a way that feels good to you and your massage clients and isn't pushy.

Look at your current rebooking rate and what you ideally want it to be. Is there anywhere in your process where you might be dropping the ball with reactivating massage clients who last came in a while ago or not doing the steps to let clients know what you recommend?

We can make our recommendations from a high-level place where we're not worrying about their wallet—we're focused on their health and well-being. Then, the ball is in their court. They can do what they want with the information we give them, right?

The third way to make more money in your massage business is to increase the amount of money each massage client spends.

If you're seeing 15 clients a week, and they're paying $80 each now, and you increase that to $100, that's a $ 300-a-week raise you've given yourself. We can increase that average spend per massage client in many different ways. Raising your rates is one way to do that. Still, there are other ways, such as having retail for people to buy, offering different types of services, and upgrades massage clients can add to their service to make it a bit more special and more effective and to increase that average ticket price.

There are a lot of different directions you can go with that. Add-ons, enhancements, and upgrades are certainly an option, but there are other more therapeutic directions you can also go. Do some brainstorming around that. How could I increase my average spend per client?

Another example: If you see those 20 clients per week and 5 of them upgrade to 75 minutes or 90 minutes, that will give you a raise. Getting more comfortable making that recommendation for a longer service when it seems like it's needed can make a big difference.

You know your business best and what you want to offer. Consider spa enhancements, CBD oil, or Sombra Cream, taping, stretching, 15 minutes of scalp massage, or reflexology. You can do tons of stuff without ever having to do anything from the spa world. Although I love the spa world, I would do spa enhancements. 

Finally, add additional revenue streams to your massage therapy business plan.

Again, lots of choices, right? Another topic you could brainstorm is retail. You can also refer products to clients when they click on a link, and you make a commission for recommending a product. Other ideas include getting a sauna or different things for your massage clients that don’t use your hands-on time. You would have to think through how that's gonna work with your business model.

I'm a big fan of teaching classes, like a couples massage class or an infant massage class. I recommend making some videos and having those available for people to purchase if they're interested. It could be a self-care class or stretching, whatever your area of expertise is. You could sell your online classes beyond just your client base.

If you want to learn more about marketing your massage business and/or increasing your income, here are some recommended articles from Massage Magazine, also by me, Gael Wood 🤗:

• Multiple Income Streams
• The Compact Guide To Marketing Spa
• MT's Ask: How Can I Generate Non-Massage Supplemental Income

*About the Author:

Gael Wood has over 29 years of experience in the massage and spa industry. She now concentrates on training massage and spa therapists in business, spa services, and greater success. She regularly contributes to MASSAGE Magazine and is a World Massage Hall of Fame Inductee, Massage Magazine All-Star, and American Massage Championship Judge.