Elicia Crook here from Fully Booked Without Burnout, I help Massage Therapists and Myotherapists get business - so that they understand how grow their business and impact more people with Massage

One of the reasons I started Coaching was because I saw so many great Therapists who totally rock at what they do but they don't know how to attract more of their ideal clients or have the confidence to promote what it is they do.

One of the big key factors to really growing your business quickly is a website.

When I first started Massaging in the early 2000’s, if you didn’t place your ad in the Yellow Pages, you didn’t have a business. Things have changed radically over the last 15 years and having a web presence is one of the most important factors to any successful Massage Business. Your website serves as your mothership – so to speak. It's where people go to find you. Think about your own behaviours, if you want to know a restaurant, you google it, hairdresser, map, doctor… It’s not just where we go to get a phone number, it’s where we research and investigate and it’s where we start to build trust with someone before we have even met them.

So what happens when you don’t have a website? You do have a few options like Facebook or even a true local listing.

But the real problem comes when you have a website but rather than being it being an amazing lead magnet, attracting clients left right and centre, it turns people away.

So here are 7 mistakes I see therapists making when it comes to their site:

1 – They talk about themselves and what they do rather than what their clients get out of it
This is common with lots of marketing, we can get so caught up in how awesome all our techniques are, how we offer Trigger Point Therapy and Remedial Massage or even Dry Needling but the interesting thing is that this is all about the ‘what’ it is that we do when actually we need to focus on ‘why’. Why do we do what we do? And then we can focus on ‘What’ the client get out of our treatment.

2 – They don’t have a clear call to action
You need to be super clear about what it is you want them to do when they come to your site IMMEDIATELY. On average most people spend 2-6 minutes looking at a web page. That’s all the time you have to get them to call or make an online booking. So you want your call to action to be either of those 2 things.

3 – They don’t think about the usability
Usability is all about how easy is it for your clients to navigate their way around your site? Think through what you want to communicate to them in a short amount of time and how can you be really clear and concise with that information?

4 – They don’t know who they are trying to attract
As a Massage Therapist or Myotherapist, we have the ability to treat lots of different conditions and people. While we can treat all of them, we need to get clear on who we really WANT to treat. This doesn’t have to be defined by age or gender, it could be a series of beliefs around self care or a sporting interest, or a wellness mindset. A great exercise you can do for this is to think of your perfect day – who are your favourite clients?Because they are who you need more of.

5 – Their branding is a mis-match to their target audience
Let's say your target audience is stay at home mums, the language and imagery you would use would be incredibly different to say someone who works with Marathon Runners. There might not be too much overlap there either. For example, the softer colours you might chose for a mum might be entirely different to the bolder reds for sports massage.

6 – They don’t use professional photos
Professional photos are a must. There are plenty of stock photos for massage on places like Istock and ShutterStock. However, as people need to build trust with you, you need to have a killer pic. I even recommend going all out and getting hair and makeup done. The difference between a selfie taken in bad lighting or a happy snap to a high res, good quality photo with great lighting and the right tones top, shirt or dress will make or break your whole site.

7 – They don’t make it mobile friendly
Over 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. If you’re not mobile friendly, people will struggle to read what you are saying and google will actually penalise your site in searches.

So when planning your website, what you need to consider is the call to action, be professional, know why you do what you do and who you do it for and make it totally dedicated to that group. If you already have a website, then tweak as needed. If you don’t have one yet – now you know what to ask for when you have one made.

As part of our course, Fully booked Without Burnout, one of our weeks is solely dedicated to creating a Massage specific website. Web designers in a way are like massage therapists, they can build a site for anyone, just like we can treat many things, but you want to make sure that the site you're getting is actually the one you need.
Having a specific website that is tailored to your clinic's needs will help you to become fully booked and build consistency into your business.

So remember, it's not just about the tech, it's about knowing what to put ON your site so that it will be the most effective tool you can possibly have for attracting your ideal clients.