Here’s a common mistake I hear many massage therapists make: Not spending the right amount of money on marketing your business. This mistake can actually be split into two groups. I will discuss each one today and offer the one solution that help you, no matter which group you fall into.

The first group is the struggling therapists who are guilty of spending little or no money on marketing their businesses. Frequently, this is because they believe that they don’t have any money to spend on marketing their business. When I first started out, I also shared this mindset.

The second group is the massage therapists who spend too much money trying to promote their businesses. I’ve also made this mistake and the consequences were rough. Let me share with you a brief story.

The year was 2001. The local economy was red-hot and my massage therapy office’s sales were taking off. I had doubled sales the previous year and was looking to at least double sales again, if I could hit the local areas aggressively with the right combination of marketing and advertising. As I sat down in January of that year, I budgeted and committed to almost every form of advertising and marketing I could find. All told, I budgeted about 15-20% of current level sales to propel the business to the “next level” in size.

And then it happened. In February 2001, the U.S. economy dropped dramatically and the stock market plummeted. I saw my sales start dropping off as my client base felt the financial pinch too. I went from 10% of the client base coming in every month to 1% within a month.

Worse, I was over-committed on my advertising and marketing budgets. As an example, I had committed to running a large Yellow Page ad that would cost me over $3000 during the next 12 months and I couldn’t cancel it or change it to a smaller ad. I had thrown together that ad to meet the advertiser’s deadline and as a result, the ad bombed and created almost no response.

I wound up very quickly running up thousands of dollars in credit card debt, paying for advertising and marketing that wasn’t working until I learned about the 5 Percent Massage Marketing Rule.

As soon as I learn this crucial lesson, I slashed my expenses and eliminated the deadwood in my advertising and marketing plan.

Here’s An Easy Explanation of the 5 Percent Massage Marketing Rule:

“For every $100 in sales you make, commit to spending $5.00 on marketing and advertising your business”.

Most major corporations spend a maximum of 5% of their sales on marketing and advertising. Some of the huge companies like an IBM or Microsoft may only spend 2% or 3% of sales, because they generate billions of sales already.

Spend too little and you risk generating little or no growth in your massage practice. Spend too much and you risk running up your credit cards and digging a deep financial hole for yourself.

If you are generating $100 per month in sales from your massage practice, you spend a total of $5.00. If you generate $10,000 per month in sales, you can safely spend $500 per month promoting the growth of your massage practice.

Pick your marketing weapons based on your marketing budget.

If you only have $5.00 to spend and stay within your budget, you need to stick with no cost or low cost marketing methods. In Help Your MASSAGE Practice, Eric and I reveal dozens of different ways to generate more sales for your massage business, many of which cost nothing to do.

As an example, on a marketing budget of $5.00, here are five things you could do that I will mention very quickly:

§ Do public speaking
§ Use referral generating systems
§ Send postcards to your existing clients
§ Use free reports to generate new clients
§ Focus on getting your clients to reschedule with you more often

Take the time to write down what you are currently doing to promote your massage practice. Then figure out what you should be doing, based on a 5% marketing budget.

Congratulations! You are taking another step towards developing your own full-time massage practice.

About the author: Michael Humphreys is a nationally certified massage therapist and co-founder of HelpYourPractice.com