Marketing A Massage Therapy Practice In The Caribbean

Read A Marketing Strategy That May Work For You

To be honest, awhile back I had come to the point of discontinuing my pursuit of this niche.  But as I delved deeper into the market, online and offline, I realized the Massage Therapists severely lacked marketing skills to grow their business offline or online.  

Most, and this can be validated by a quick Google search for Massage Therapists in Trinidad and Tobago or the Caribbean, are totally unaware of how to use the Internet to attract new clients. Only a small percentage has a web site, blog or social network page.  

Massage Therapist in the Caribbean need marketing guidance.  The potential for the massage therapy market is huge, therapist just need to come up with a strategy that will have clients calling them instead of they looking for clients.  

As a quick example, we all know that almost every island in the Caribbean is a tourist resort.  Massage Therapists can make contractual 

arrangements with hotels to service their guests.  Presented properly no hotelier will resist the opportunity to add another service to their menu of services and offered to guests.    

This simple strategy will have clients calling instead of the therapist searching every nook and cranny for a client.

That is exactly how it is for most new licensed Massage Therapists in the Caribbean.

The fact is that the term “Massage” in the Caribbean a few years ago conjured up scenes of what should rightly be known as “Sex Massage Parlors”.  Therapeutic massage in these places were not offered or wanted.  The word was used as a euphemism for prostitution.   It was tainted and some people still believe that’s all it is.  It puts professional therapists on the defensive of having to explain that a therapeutic massage has nothing to do with sex. 

Then there are the “village massagers”, individuals in various parts of Trinidad and maybe in other Caribbean countries, who make a living from snapping back dislocated joints, attending to muscle pains and administering potions to ease pain.   These individuals are not licensed therapists; in fact they would probably laugh at anyone who tried to check on their formal credentials.  They have built striving businesses with word of mouth advertising.  

  

Today, in the Caribbean, professional massage therapy is trending but in a peculiar sort of way.   For example, it Trinidad there is an established school that I mentioned in my last post Massage Therapy Niche in Trinidad and Tobago.   

That school is accredited to issue at least a hundred Massage Therapy certificates a year.  There are also a number of individuals who have become accredited to issue certificates.   As such, the trend is for Massage Therapists to train other individuals providing them with the basics art or massage. 

As a consequence, the market may soon reach the point to saturation with a number of non-practicing, licensed massage therapists.  Not one of the schools or Massage Therapy courses prepared them for the challenge of marketing their services.  

Only a small percentage of the general population knows the benefits of regular therapeutic massages.  

To educate the population is a very expensive marketing challenge.  The massage therapy industry has not evolved sufficiently where practitioners are able to form an association.  It therefore falls on the individual therapist to market his/her services in what ever way they could. 

Awareness brings growth and demand for particular services. Differentiate yourself, develop and adopt a strategy and go forward; the market is ripe for the picking.  

I have not kept a promise to you to share my experience offline with other massage therapist.  I will I just felt like sharing this post with you before.  And you know what?  I just did. 

Thanks for reading and stay blessed.