If you’re not yet using chair massage to boost your income or find more clients, you’re missing out.
The world of corporate massage is a growing industry that can increase your clientele and your earning abilities.
Working as a massage therapist in the corporate world isn’t just a great way to supplement your income or grow your business. By reaching new clients at their workplace, you’re able to provide care for people who might not otherwise seek out massage therapy.
This allows you to showcase what massage can do for someone while in an environment they’re comfortable with and without the client disrobing.
As the founder and CEO of a company that only provides workplace massage services, I’ve learned how a massage therapist can push their career forward using massage in corporate settings.
The Need for Corporate Massage
Business owners hire massage therapists as a way to boost morale, reduce employee stress or enhance their company’s wellness program. Companies may want massage therapists for one-time events, such as an employee appreciation day, or they may want an on-site massage service that happens on a regular basis.
In most cases, corporate massage is seated massage using the therapist’s massage chair, although some companies opt for clothed or unclothed table massage, if they have a private, secure room available.
Sometimes chair massage is just one activity going on during an office health fair, where there might be booths set up promoting other kinds of health and wellness services and products.
Other times, a company will want to reward their top-performing team members with a day of massage, or bring in a massage therapist as part of a holiday or summer party.
By far, the most lucrative gig you could have as a corporate massage therapist is to provide a regular, ongoing massage service to a company on a regular basis. That could be an arrangement where you provide massage to a company’s employees on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis.
So — how can you get there?
How Chair Massage Grows Your Business
As you begin developing your chair massage strategy, you’ll want to keep in mind what your primary goal is of doing chair massage. Is it to grow a business solely dedicated to chair massage? Or is it to entice new table massage clients for your private practice?
You might be working toward both, which can work well. But if that’s the case, you’ll want to make sure that one side of your business doesn’t interfere with the other side.
For example, if you have a company that wants you doing massage at their office every afternoon, but your most consistent table massage clients also prefer that time frame, you’ll have to make a choice between the two.
One way to start growing a corporate massage business is by gathering other massage therapists to join forces with you. For one thing, once you’re ready to start targeting larger companies, you’ll need to consider how many massage therapists they might need. Bigger companies mean more employees who will want massages.
If you’re running a one-person show, it may be too much to handle. Gathering a group of skilled massage therapists to work with you makes your corporate massage service more accessible to more companies who want to do business with you.
Starting Your Chair Massage Business
How will you decide which companies to target for your budding chair massage business? It’s always easiest to start small. That means finding one corporate massage gig that you can build from. This allows you to learn how much work you’ll be able to provide in a given week, before you over-promise and over-commit.
Talk to clients, friends, family and neighbors and offer to bring your massage chair to their office for a massage day. Or if there’s a local coffee shop, gift store or even the waiting room of your local tire center, you can offer to set up in a corner of their space.
Find the HR manager of a company you’d like to target. (If you can’t find this information on a company’s website, try researching on LinkedIn.) Ask if there is an upcoming health fair or similar event where they’d like to provide chair massage to their employees.
Even if they don’t have an upcoming event, you can still develop that business connection, and it’s more likely they’ll think of you for any future corporate massage needs.
Once you have some businesses in mind, it’s time to get your foot in the door.
First, consider offering a free sample of your services. At Incorporate Massage, we offer a free trial to companies that are considering hiring our team of therapists. This allows the company to get a sample of what it would be like to have massage in their office or at their event. It also provides an opportunity for the company to meet our massage therapists and try out their massage skills in a no-risk situation.
In most cases, after a company has had a free trial, they are more than happy to sign a contract to bring in our therapists for their massage day. Now let’s look at three additional, important steps on your corporate massage journey.
3 Keys to Marketing Your Corporate Massage Service
There are three main factors companies care about when looking for office massage. They’ll want to know why they should have massage at work (some clients are already believers; those are much easier to market to).
Your potential clients will also want to know who you are and why they should trust you. And finally, they’ll want to know one detail that could make or break the deal: cost. Let’s dive into each of these.
1. Convey the benefits of corporate massage. Your easiest clients to get will be those who already understand the benefits of massage, or who have a solid company wellness program already in place. If you’re starting from scratch with representatives of a company who haven’t thought about using massage at work, you’ll want to showcase why it’s a smart move.
You can do this by creating marketing materials to share with the people you talk to.
This could be in the form of a printed flyer or you could build a simple web page to share your workplace massage information. In those materials, cite studies about workplace stress and feature client testimonials on how massage makes them feel.
To find companies or businesses that already value employee wellness, do a little online research. Check out the websites of local companies and look for their careers or culture page. This is where businesses work on enticing new employees to their company.
From there, you can tell how important employee wellness is to the company. Are there photos of employees participating in a mud run, for example, or any mentions of gym membership benefits? If so, that’s a company that may be interested in massage at work.
2. Explain why the business should choose you. If a potential client is ready to bring massage to their office, they may be shopping around. You’ll want to highlight what the client will get when they pick you. Talk about your massage career and experience, including continuing education and other professional development you’ve done that relates to corporate massage.
Talk about why you want to provide corporate massage in the first place, but think of it from your client’s point of view. They won’t be moved to choose you if your main goal is just to grow your practice. While that may be part of your business plan, your marketing materials should show clients what’s in it for them.
Providing client testimonials, even from table massage or spa experience, will show that you’re reliable, trustworthy and can give a high-quality massage service.
3. Be transparent about costs. Don’t keep your prices a secret. When customers are shopping around for a service or product, cost is often an important factor in their decision-making. Why make their decision harder by hiding your prices?
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that people will call to find out your prices if you don’t have them listed anywhere. Unless your website or other marketing materials hook your potential clients so much that they don’t care what your prices are — which is very rare — you’d be wise to give at least a base dollar amount.
One final note about corporate massage rates: Being competitive on pricing doesn’t always mean being the lowest-priced service in your area. Your potential clients won’t always want to go with a service they feel is “cheap,” which can feel like the case with super-low prices.
You can charge on the higher end and still find customers happy and willing to pay it, as long as your service matches in quality. But don’t go crazy. You can certainly charge too much for your office massage service and turn customers off. Find a good median cost for services in your area.
Corporate Massage Can Grow Your Career
The beauty of mobile massage services is how versatile they are. There are so many ways a massage therapist can thrive professionally just by being strategic with their massage chair.
Whether you want to grow a corporate massage company like I did, use your chair as a marketing tool to find new table massage clients, or just earn extra income, offering on-site services can be an incredibly smart move.
About the Author
Amelia Wilcox is founder and CEO of Incorporate Massage, a national corporate massage company headquartered in Utah. She studied nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Utah and received her massage therapy training at the Utah College of Massage Therapy.