An Overview of Chair Massage Marketing

by | Oct 2, 2014 | Chair Massage, Marketing

An Overview of Chair Massage MarketingHere is a recent email from a massage student:

I will be graduating in December and have to write a business plan. I need to decide how chair massage will fit into the plan but don’t have much direction from school. I’m hoping you have some marketing advice or resources available to help my classmates and I know how we would move in the direction of chair massage.

 

In my reply, I first mentioned that there are some 26 articles about chair massage on this blog along with many others that have more generally to do with massage. Then I also sent her the following concise overview of the why’s and wherefore’s of chair massage marketing.

Options for including chair massage

There are three basic ways to integrate chair massage services into a professional practice:

  1. As a way to market your table practice. This typically means giving away free chair massage at events so that you can introduce people to your touch and your table work. Practitioners have done this successfully any place there is a group of people with time on their hands, e.g. queues on the sidewalk outside of popular restaurants or movies, church bazaars, charity events, health clubs, and waiting rooms of various stripes.This is a good option if your primary interest is in developing a table practice. After the practitioner has as many table customers as she wants, then the free chair massage tends to go by the wayside as the natural marketing momentum emerges from a well run table practice emerges.
  2. As a mix with your table practice. The difference from the first option is that here you are charging for your chair massage services in one or more of the three market segments described below. It still has the advantage of the first option in that you may also convert a certain portion of chair massage customers into table customers.Most practitioners use chair massage this way. In fact, I see a lot of experienced table practitioners adding chair massage to balance out their professional lives and raise their visibility in and connection to the community.
  3. As an exclusive chair massage practice. Some practitioners decide to focus
    exclusively on chair massage. There are many possible reasons including:
  • not wanting to deal with nudity,
  • feeling more comfortable with shorter customer interactions,
  • not wanting to work with oils or lotions,
  • wanting to reach more people who can’t afford a table massage,
  • not wanting to be restricted to four walls,
  • not wanting to be working on the same 20 or so people every week.

Three markets for chair massage

There are also three general market segments where all chair massage is found:

  1. Events. These are situations jobs where you typically see customers once and never again. The largest markets are conventions, conferences, trade shows and corporate health fairs. However, the list of potential one-time events is endless ranging from weddings, reunions, back stage at theater events, athletic events, car racing, RV rallies, equestrian events and on and on. There are many local, as well as large regional and national chair massage businesses that focus exclusively on these markets.
  2. Workplace. This has also been a rich vein to mine for chair massage customers. Unlike events, these tend to be ongoing relationships with companies and their employees. The frequency of visits could be a long as a year apart or, more often, quarterly, bi-monthly, bi-weekly or even weekly.
  3. Retail. Providing chair massage services in a retail setting has been the slowest of the three segments to get off the ground because it requires the most up-front investment. However, the growth in retail chair massage has started to accelerate in the past 5 years, primarily due to the influx of Mainland Chinese immigrants flooding through the Los Angeles basin and scattering to shopping malls all across the country.

Finally, I mentioned that we have assembled an eBook in PDF format that can be ordered from the TouchPro Store here. It assembles the relevant articles from the blog into one convenient place and affordable price. (more…)

The Leg Problem in Chair Massage

by | Jan 3, 2012 | Chair Massage, Videos

Steve Knobles called today from North Seattle Community Acupuncture clinic. He recently started seating patients in a massage chair because it allowed easy access to their necks, backs and arms for needling and was often more comfortable than lying on a table. However, some of the patients complained of tired shins after sitting in a massage chair for longer than 30 minutes and he wanted to know if there was any way to extend their comfort time.

This is a phenomenon noted soon after the first massage chair came on the market in 1986. While spreading the weight among the seat, leg rest, chest pad and face cradle is great for support, it is not great for fidgeting. And, despite what your 3rd grade teacher may have told you, humans are made to fidget and be in motion, not to “sit still.” Movement creates circulation and, as we all know, circulation is not optional, even when we are asleep. Just check out the nearest napping infant.

Thus, we have always recommended a maximum 30-minute length for a chair massage. Unlike a massage table where people can fidget to their hearts content, in a massage chair using the lower legs as a support prevents movement and having the knees bent can reduce circulation and create discomfort. While it is true that some people can tolerate longer periods in that position, since a significant percentage cannot, the 30-minute rule is the safest compromise.

However, there are a couple of ways to compensate if, for whatever reason, you want to do a longer massage. My suggestion to Steve was simple. Since he was using a Stronglite Ergo Pro massage chair, I told him to remove the leg rests and flatten the seat so that it was parallel to the floor. Voila! No leg rests, no problem. Customers can now squirm to their hearts content.

Removable leg rests are so essential on a massage chair that I am surprised all manufacturers don’t include them. Even if you are only doing short massages, you need them. I would guess that 5% of chair massage customers have knee or leg issues that make leg rests uncomfortable. While putting your legs straddling or in front of the knee rests is the solution used on other chairs, it is less than optimal or professional. [Full disclosure: I helped co-designed the Stronglite chair, of course…]

Another way we got around the 30-minute limit was developed in the TouchPro retail chair massage studio business model. There we offered up to 30-minutes of upper body massage and 10- or 20-minutes of lower leg/foot massage meaning people could receive up to 50-minutes of massage in a chair. However, the catch was that, before the foot massage, the customer had to get up and reverse themselves in the chair, which was adjusted for the massage.

If you want to see how it all works in action, click here to view a video demonstration.