How to start up a massage therapy business with a blog as your main promo tool

From getting the necessary qualifications to marketing your services, understanding how to start up a massage therapy business involves several key steps. In this guide, we explore the process with a focus on using a blog as your main promotional tool

Promoting your massage therapy business is essential if you want it to grow. And a blog is one of the best marketing strategies you can use. An effective blog can help you:

We’ll look at how to set up a blog later on. First, here’s our guide on how to start up a massage therapy business. You’ll need to:

How to start up a massage therapy business

Get the relevant certifications and qualifications

Depending on which country you’re in, you may not need to have specific certifications to be a massage therapist. For example, 49 U.S. states and territories regulate the massage therapy industry, but it’s unregulated in the UK.

Even if your country’s laws don’t require certification, qualifications can help you ensure safe practices. Qualifications can also help you attract clients and establish your reputation as a professional massage therapist when starting up a massage therapy business.

Similarly, registering with an accredited body may not be legally required where you live. However, joining professional or industry bodies can help your massage therapy business operate more safely. It can also reassure potential clients and make your business more successful.

Although you may have fewer legal requirements to observe as a massage therapist, there are likely some specific workplace legalities you need to adhere to. Make sure you’re aware of the regulations you should comply with when starting up a massage therapy business.

Create a business plan

Like any new venture, you may find a business plan helpful for starting up a massage therapy business. There are various factors to consider when creating your business plan, such as:

What types of massage you’ll offer.
Your target audience.
What supplies and equipment you’ll need.
How much you should charge for your services.
Where you’ll find your first clients.
Whether you’ll need startup capital.

You can also calculate the approximate costs of starting up a massage therapy business in your plan. You may need to factor in the costs of:

Equipment and products.
A premises.
A vehicle.
Branding.
Staff.
Business insurance.
Advertising and marketing.

Marketing can become expensive quickly if you’re paying for traditional or digital advertising. That’s why we recommend you set up a blog as your primary marketing tool.

If you’re managing your blog yourself, you only need to commit a few hours a week. You can also use the blog posts as the basis for your entire marketing strategy. You can do this by turning your blog posts into email newsletters, social media posts, and other marketing content.

If you prefer the idea of hiring blogging experts while you focus on starting up your massage therapy business, check out our blog package.

Decide where you’ll run your massage therapy business

People often choose to start up a massage therapy business:

If you choose to start up a massage therapy business at home, consider whether you:

If you’d rather become a mobile massage therapist, you may need to think about factors like commuting costs, transport options, and portable equipment.

Build a brand for your massage therapy business

Building a clear brand identity will help you present your massage therapy business to the world in a way that resonates with your ideal clients.

A consistent brand strategy can also help you make important decisions about your business. By sticking to your strategy, you can align your goals with the message you want to communicate to prospective clients.

When developing a brand for your business, consider creating a visual identity with a website. Consider your colour palette, logo, and font choices. Do they echo your brand personality? You should also decide on a tone of voice for your website’s written content.

Deciding your brand tone of voice is especially important for blogging. You’ll want to consider the language you use, your writing style, and your emotional tone.

A style sheet can help you keep your tone of voice and style preferences consistent across your content.

Our Finer Blog Copy package clients receive a style sheet, along with three other awesome bonuses, to keep their brand voice on track.

Find clients and promote your massage therapy business

It can be tricky to find clients when starting up a massage therapy business, especially if your marketing budget is small. However, there are ways to gain exposure without launching a major advertising campaign.

You may know friends, family members, or former colleagues who could become your first clients and help spread the word about your services.

It’s important to ask clients to write positive reviews online or post about your treatments on social media. Good reviews can help you gain more customers and grow your business.

You could also develop good relationships with other massage therapists in your local area who can refer clients to you when they’re unavailable.

Or why not ask local businesses whether you can leave some flyers with your contact details or put a poster on a community notice board?

When it comes to digital marketing, you’ve got various options, including social media, email marketing, and blogging.

The effectiveness of blogging in digital marketing is clear. Blogs continue to drive many businesses’ marketing strategies, with 60% of people reading a blog at least once a week.

We recommend you launch a blog when you start up a massage therapy business. Unlike social media, where it’s unlikely people will see your posts after a few hours, blog posts have greater longevity. And unlike email marketing, you don’t need a list of subscribers to reach people online with a blog.

Once you’ve launched your blog, you can introduce other marketing channels as your business (and budget) grows.

Launching your blog as you start up a massage therapy business

Done right, a blog can work magic for your massage therapy business. By committing just a few hours of your time each week, you can create blog posts that:

Get your business seen in search engine results pages.
Build your reputation as a trustworthy industry expert.
Continue attracting leads for years to come.
Convert leads into real clients.
Serve as the basis for your wider content marketing plan.

Let’s look at six basic steps that will help you launch a blog when starting up a massage therapy business:

1. Identify the audience for your blog

This first step in our guide to blogging should be easy if you’ve already decided on your target audience for your massage therapy business. If you haven’t, now is the time!

It’s so important to know who your ideal client is when you’re writing your blog posts. Understanding exactly who your services help allows you to tailor your content towards topics these people will want to read.

2. Choose where to blog

Most business owners blog on their websites. (You’re currently reading this blog post on our WordPress site, which is a great option for scaling your blog.) However, there are other options, such as blogging on Medium.

If you’re interested in building a powerful website for your massage therapy business or getting a blog set up on your site, we recommend contacting MageRage for advice.

3. Create a content calendar to stay on track

With so many tasks on your to-do list when starting up a massage therapy business, blogging can quickly fall by the wayside. Enter: the content calendar. A content calendar is an important tool you can use to stay on track with blogging.

Before you write anything, dedicate a few hours to planning topics for your blog. The goal is to generate as many subjects related to your business as you can.

Once you’ve created at least a few weeks’ worth of ideas, you can put them into a content calendar. This doesn’t have to be fancy: a spreadsheet or list on a piece of paper will do.

With a schedule of pre-planned topics, you’ll never get stuck for ideas when the time comes to write a new blog post. Plan first: write later. Your future self will thank you.

4. Upload a new blog post each week

There’s a lot of information on the internet about how often you should blog. We’ll keep it simple by suggesting you upload one blog post a week to start with.

This is the very minimum amount of blogging you can do and still see results. Any less than once a week, and your growth will be painfully slow (harsh but true).

You’re welcome to increase your blogging frequency if your time allows. In general, the more posts you can upload the better (as long as you don’t compromise quality for quantity).

Starting a massage therapy business can involve a lot of time and energy. If you know you’ll struggle to carve out time each week to blog, writing in batches could be an ideal approach.

We suggest you dedicate a day or two each month to generate enough posts to cover you for the month ahead. If you’ve taken our advice about blogging weekly, that’s four shiny new blog posts you can schedule straightaway.

5. Optimise your blog posts for search engines

Many people turn to Google when they want answers. In fact, 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.

If you want your blog to appear in search engine results pages, you’ll need to optimise your posts. There are several ways you can do this:

Include keywords in your blog posts. Some basic keyword research can help you discover the relevant phrases your ideal clients are Googling. By including these keywords in your blog posts in the right amount, you stand a better chance of appearing in search results.
Include headings and subheadings in your blog and tag them as h1, h2, h3, h4, and h5 headings.
Include a focus keyword in the meta title, meta description, and slug of your blog post. You can update these in the back end of your website. These three SEO details tell Google what info to show when listing your blog posts in search results.
Include internal links to your other blog posts or web pages and external links to authoritative sites.

These are just some of the steps you can take to make sure your blog posts are search engine optimised.

Start up a massage therapy business with effective blogging

We could go on for ages about blogging best practices when starting up a massage therapy business. If you want all the juicy details, we’ve created a comprehensive guide for launching a holistic blog.

As blogging is a long-term marketing strategy, you’ll want to begin as soon as possible. The average page in the top 10 search engine results is over two years old. But your business can benefit from blogging much sooner than that.

We would always suggest squeezing every last drop out of your blog campaign by repurposing your blog posts into other marketing content. We have a free guide on how to do that in our Finer Library.

Supercharge your blog with Finer Blog Copy

Starting up a massage therapy business involves a strategic approach. Remember that incorporating a blog into your promotional toolkit can significantly contribute to your business’ growth.

You may struggle to find time to blog when starting up your massage therapy business. Or maybe you don’t think you have the blogging skills to represent your business in the best light.

If you’d prefer to hand the blogging over to someone else, our blog package is the ideal solution. The Finer Blog Copy package can help get your massage therapy business in front of your ideal clients in Google search results. (Our blog posts also continue to generate traffic long after the campaign has finished.)

About Finer Things Editorial

Finer Things Editorial writes for businesses that help others achieve abundance, whether in the form of profit, self-love, or physical health. Our content helps these businesses attract their dream clients, so they don’t have to chase them. Having taken businesses from 0 to 1,000+ primed-to-buy website visitors per day, we take businesses from unknown to really known.