Hello,

Below I will tell a little about my company and myself.

For starters the massage business is my girlfriend´s business and I am 50% owner of the Fantasy Art business and my girlfriend the other 50%.

I am 22, currently a little more than part-time poker player and I plan to eventually switch to full-time. Meaning I can do promotional work and manage financing. I will leave her in charge of production.

She currently has roughly 5 massage clients as it is relatively new (6 months) with little to no promotional work. Our prices are well beyond fair in comparison to everyone else (charging roughly €30-€35 per hour pending the massage) and we are roughly 10 minutes out of the city (so our location is fair). In what way can we start to pick up clients without risking too much money to promote. We are starting a website through wix, what is the best way to go about getting main publicity through google, other search engines, etc..?

Also we have a fantasy art business where we design things from painted wine glasses, pot coasters, bird houses/feeders, fairy wings, custom vases, etc.. We are looking to promote that business as well, what is the best way to do so? We have a facebook page with over 180 likes (currently running a promotion where we randomly select a person who has liked our page after X amount of likes and they will receive a one of a kind item of ours).

Anything else I missed covering or asking feel free to inform us and share your knowledge.

Thanks in advance.

A few random thoughts about your massage business:

- Charge the going rate for a massage, or more. People are morons and many equate price with quality for some reason. I've seen this so many times across so many service businesses. Grandfather in your regulars so your current business keeps going.
- Get a logo, good name, etc professionally designed. People are morons and branding sticks most firmly in their mind.

In terms of promotion, it's pretty simple. There are thousands of people looking for massages every day in your area. Figure out how they go about it (i.e. google search? yellow pages?) and get your ad where they're searching.

Your fantasy art business is a tough one, I'm not going near that.

It is a standard business model that has been successfully done thousands of times all over the US. Research and figure out how other similar massage places get their clients and do the same thing. Once you start doing the same thing, you can tinker with the process and test variations and improvements. Basically; don't try to reinvent the wheel. The wheel is working fine for everyone else already.

I constantly see Groupon/etc deals and I would think that it's a pretty decent way to acquire clients considering the margins.

For most local businesses, the "online strategy" is a waste of time and money. You better make sure you know exactly how those Facebook likes translate to actual business and actual revenue. Don't do things that you can't quantify. The big thing is to be on Yelp, Google business listing, maybe Craigslist, and make sure you keep up with what is going on with your reviews.

Check out getting a Massage Envy franchise. Their membership pricing model seems to work very well. In general, the massage business is very difficult without being attached to a spa, health club or docs office.

My wife is a massage therapist. She has been doing it 4 years. She's worked out of spas, out of a wellness center, and out of the home. Overall, it can be tough to build up clients. It's tough to line up a lot of work on your own. She has seen the most success through word of mouth and fliers. We dropped off a few hundred fliers in our neighborhood and she managed to convert a few of those to regular clients. The convenience factor was huge here. She's had a few come in from her website (which we have done absolutely nothing to promote or optimize). The rest are word of mouth or friends. Word of mouth is tricky since it's not something that comes up in conversation that much and I'd assume most people who would talk about massage with others either already go to someone else or aren't that interested in massage. You basically need one of three things to happen - you be more convenient, get an excellent review from the friend and be quite good (even that is tricky to convince others), or have them need to find a new person for whatever reason.

I agree that lowballing on price won't get you anywhere. You don't want to be too absurd, but I'd definitely suggest on the higher end of what your area supports. She's filled up most of her schedule recently with as much as she wants to do, but if we wanted to get more business, I would try to fix up the website and optimize SEO and try the direct flier method again. I was shocked how well they did. Probably a 2-3% conversion rate, with many regular customers from it. 1000 fliers that were glossy and high quality cost in the $2-300 range, and it's generated thousands of dollars from it.

Another tip that has worked well is rebooking immediately at the end of the massage rather than trying to wait and get them to come back. That has increased business a lot.

Agree with everything so far. I would offer to go to clients houses for a premium. It seems that convenience is a huge thing here. I would also try to sell packages at a discount. Say one massage every two weeks and get 20% off or something.

Totally agree with this. A friend of mine was a masseur and I helped him drop a few thousand fliers in mail boxes one day. The business he got from it kept him very busy. I was pretty surprised, I never read junk mail.

While this seems like a good idea, personal safety is an issue. It's bad enough in your own premises, with creepy old men making sexual advances, but at least people are on their guard because it's not their place. Once you start going into people's houses it's a matter of time before you end up in ugly situation. If she's in her 30s it might be OK but if she's as young as OP sounds, it's probably not a good idea.

Well yea, I would assume you could get around that. I mean at least offer it to clients that you're comfortable with. Wouldn't even have to advertise it or anything. Or maybe there's a third party location (like a gym?) near them where she could go.

Did you make thoughts on having a webshop as well?

The first is fairly common but you get a lot of creeps wanting this as well. It's a bit tricky.

The package deal, we thought that would be a good deal, it never really made any difference. The one part similar to that I would consider is a subscription plan. Pay a slightly discounted rate and get 1 massage per month. There is place my wife used to work that uses this model and it's a good way to get guaranteed repeat business. They are bigger and can use an auto-draft so people have to cancel it and it requires more effort for them and usually gets people in the door.

The discount model after 5 massages was absolutely worthless. Also worthless was offering discounts to people with referrals. Instead, she switched to using a "free bonus service for a referral". Facial scrub or something like this that isn't much extra effort.

I think the main advantage here is just getting the attention for something people might actually want, and how it's convenient. You don't need a huge conversion rate here. Getting them out before Mother's Day would be huge too, that's a good time for a lot of gift certificates.

This is actually fairly common, and you probably want to only consider this with people you have a history with. The only client my wife does this for regularly is a good friend of a neighbor, and even that first time was a bit iffy, but he lives really far and was willing to pay a good premium, so it was worth it. Plus it's easier for me to watch the kids at home than have to leave with them for a while.

There's also risk in having an in-home massage with creepers, they know where you live, etc..., but is less likely to be an issue. Sometimes there are places that just rent out studio space where you could set up for independent contractor types like hair stylists, etc...

Dealing with creeps and perverts is definitely one of the big problems with massage. I think one of my wife's more distant relatives was giving "extra services" for money because she was broke and had trouble saying no or something. Fortunately my wife has never been in one of those situations. She has been able to weed most of them out on the phone. They will ask for undraped massage or some other code words to see if you are giving extra services or not.