If you’re at all like me, you’ve been paying close attention to the two presidential candidates and the promises each have been making.

Personally, I don’t watch much TV. But, when I do, it’s typically “Hannity and Colmes” or Glenn Beck or one of the other political news programs.

As a marketer, I’m not only interested in what they have to say about their policies and values for my family (and chiropractic), I’m also fascinated with how they campaign and position themselves to Americans. There’s a treasure trove of marketing and practice-promotional nuggets we can reap from even a cursory observation of what we see from both campaigns.

For example, one thing both campaigns attempt to do… often times quite poorly… is align their candidate’s message with the what American’s are thinking and feeling.

In other words, advisors behind both of the presidential parties understand that in order for their candidate to deliver a powerful and impactful message, its contents need to line up with what is already important and relevant to people.

This is a powerful persuasion idea that marketing legend, Robert Collier, coined years ago within the advertising world as “entering the conversation already going on in the mind of your target audience”.

It’s based on the simple idea that if you want to grab people’s attention, you need to start where they are, and only then lead them to where you want them to be.

In other words, the start of any marketing message should always flow right into what your prospective clients are thinking and talking about at that given time.

When done correctly, this radically improves the likelihood that your message will get the needed attention it requires, if it’s going to have any impact.

Unfortunately, this is completely foreign to the way most massage therapists go about crafting and distributing their marketing message.

When it comes to advertising or marketing, what most massage therapists do is focus on what they offer prospective clients in their practice. Period. Usually no more or less.

Not only, then, is the typical massage marketing message void of emotional benefit statements about what prospective clients can expect to receive from the therapist’s care, there’s almost always zero perceived relevance or timely importance within the message, and there’s no entrance into the conversation already going on in the mind of prospective patients right now.

And, because of this, the average massage marketing message is often viewed as nothing more than an irrelevant, unimportant, non-attention-deserving, intrusion or annoyance.

Because to the people who come across this kind of massage small space ad or postcard or free standing insert, it has nothing to do with what’s important to them or pertaining to what’s on their mind right now. Hence, to them… there’s no need to pay much attention to it or take it very seriously.

This is certainly no way to go about trying to capture and hold the attention of your target market… the first step in any massage marketing campaign.

So, how do you “enter into the conversation already going on in the mind of your target audience”, specifically with your massage marketing?

Well, you start by asking yourself what’s going on in the news or with certain trends that are likely to be on the mind of your patients and prospective clients.

Then, you think about how you can link these news items and events with the care you provide in your massage practice.

For instance, you can link what’s going on in the economy with an increase in stress levels, and hence the need for regular massage therapy to combat it.

You can link the choice people have between presidential candidates with the choice people have with their health and wellness approach.

You can link the corporate bailouts with massage in your practice, by talking about how bodywork can be their “health bailout” to rescue them from possibly years of physical health decline… just with a much lower cost.

You could even link your massage therapy marketing messages to big sports events, celebrities in the news, popular television shows, and so on. This is a great way to jump into the conversation going on in their minds.

The point is really pretty simple:

Always keep your massage marketing and advertising campaigns relevant to what’s going in your target market’s lives. Figure out what’s on their minds and what their talking about, and then link your marketing to those topics.

This is how you capture their attention and open the door to deliver your ultimate message about massage therapy with you, in your practice.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Massage Advertising, Massage Business, Massage Business-Building, Massage Marketing Articles, Massage Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.