Contents
- Step 1: Dive into Data-Driven Audience Insights
- Analyze Your Existing Client Records
- Leverage Online Tools
- Step 2: Research Local Market Trends
- Step 3: Conduct a Competitor Analysis
- Step 4: Explore Emerging Trends and Niches
- Step 5: Test and Validate Your Niche
- Conclusion: Research Is a Continuous Practice
Step 1: Dive into Data-Driven Audience Insights
You are probably starting with some assumptions about your audience and that’s okay! In fact, you may already have a pretty good idea of whom you serve.
Our goal here is to deepen your understanding of your potential audience through data, which is to say, gathering relevant information. This is a practice that’s useful to both the novice and the veteran.
Analyze Your Existing Client Records
If you’re already somewhat established, a good place to start is by analyzing your existing client base. Put your detective hat on for this one.
What we’re looking for is patterns in demographics, concerns, underlying issues, and goals. What are the common threads you see across your clients as you look into your records, notes, surveys, and testimonials?
If you come across any factors that seem to tie them together, this information could prove useful in getting your next clients.
Leverage Online Tools
Don’t worry if you’re not super internet savvy–these tools are fairly easy to use.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool that lets you explore current trending topics and get a good idea of what people are searching for. You can search for specific terms, keywords, or phrases that relate to your niche.
To use it, visit the Google Trends website, enter your niche keywords (such as “sports massage”), and then look at the search activity. You can adjust according to your state, the timeframe (between the past day and the past 5 years), the category, and search method.
You can also use it to compare multiple keywords or phrases at once. For example, you can compare how “sports massage” compares to “stress relief massage” in the United States in the past 12 months. At a glance, you can see that sports massage is much more popular. You’ll also be able to break down your results by region and see related search terms.
Keyword Planners
You could also take advantage of keyword planners, which provide a more in-depth look at keywords, trends, and how to position yourself for specific keywords and target markets. These may come free or with free trials, but most of the more prominent ones are paid.
If you want to get really specific and scientific, you can go this route, as you’ll get more detailed insights and actionable intelligence once you understand the platform. Your goal is to determine which keywords or phrases have high traffic but low competition so that you can hit that targeted sweet spot.
Social Media Insights
Make sure you’re using a business account if you’re on Facebook and Instagram. Business accounts uniquely have access to checking your audience demographics, post engagement, and follower growth.
This makes it easy to figure out which posts or topics get the most engagement. If you can understand what gets your audience interested in your niche, you can tailor your content and messaging accordingly.
You can also do hashtag research to see what content is popular in your niche. Then, simply note recurring themes, questions, points to discuss, and general topics. You can learn a lot from what people focus on and you can even use these topics to create your own content (with your own unique spin and viewpoint, of course).
If you can learn how to use these tools, you’ll have a powerful understanding of your audience, including what gets them engaged, what they care about, and what they’re looking for. This allows you to stay on top of (or even ahead of) trends and helps you build stronger connections with your audience.
Step 2: Research Local Market Trends
Massage practices are pretty location-dependent. To succeed, you need to understand the demographics and lifestyle trends that make up your local area.
What are the cultural hubs of your community? What industries or lifestyles best represent your location’s intricacies?
For example, are you surrounded by office buildings, and, therefore, busy office workers who need help destressing, focusing on their work, and getting back tension relief after sitting at their desk for hours at a time?
Are you close to a retirement community where you can help elderly clientele improve mobility, manage chronic pain, or enhance their quality of life?
Perhaps you’re smack in the middle of a thriving college town where you can help athletes recover from sports injuries or students manage the stress of juggling exams, studies, homework, classes, and trying to be involved in their community.
To take this a step further, you could do an online search of your local area to see what comes up. Maybe it’s a fitness center, or a theater, or an iron workers’ union. If you can figure out how to reach these communities and leverage your skillset, you might be able to tap into these opportunities and turn them into clients.
Still have your detective hat on? Check out your publicly available resources. Look into census data, local business reports, or local publications so you can stay up-to-date on what’s happening, and how you can best reach and serve your community.
Step 3: Conduct a Competitor Analysis
Now, it’s time to take a look at what other massage therapists and wellness providers are doing in your area.
Start by making a list of who your competitors are. Find out what each one specializes in, how they position themselves, and what kind of audience they serve.
Check out their reviews–what does their client base have to say? Do their customers enjoy the service, environment, or their massage therapist’s expertise and guidance?
You might be able to pick up on a few things you can learn from. If something stands out to you in their client reviews, why does it catch your attention? Is it something you can learn from or something you aspire to hear from your clients?
What other information do you have access to? For example, what are their service offerings, how do they price their packages, and how do they talk on social media?
If they seem to be doing well, what is it they’re doing to differentiate themselves? If you can notice something, anything, that stands out to you, take note. Maybe it’s their environment and, according to their clients, the practice is clean, inviting, and smells good. Perhaps, before reading this competitor review, you really hadn’t thought about creating an “inviting” space for people.
By having a closer look at your competitors, you might notice that your competitors are missing something, or that there’s clearly a gap in their services. How can you come along and fill that gap so that you don’t make the same mistakes they do? How can you leverage your expertise to fill that gap like no one else can?
When all the therapists in your area are offering general relaxation massage, you can set yourself apart by focusing on injury recovery or mobility enhancement.
It doesn’t have to stop at competitors. You can apply this line of questioning and curiosity to professionals in complementary wellness services. The neat perk here is that you can build relationships and even set up mutually beneficial partnerships or collaborations. You might implement a referral system or create packages that include outside services.
The right partner could lead to a lot of future work for the both of you, so be open to starting these conversations. If you can find the right people to work with, you can also discuss their success, strategies, and tactics for growing their business so you can learn from them.
Step 4: Explore Emerging Trends and Niches
Let’s shift once again into a more familiar territory–massage trends and niches.
Even if you feel like you’ve learned everything there is to practically know about your specialty, it doesn’t hurt to stay informed. You should be keeping an eye on emerging trends in your field, what other therapists are doing, and the implications in your specific niche.
The most effective ways to do this are to research industry publications, blogs, and podcasts. Consume this content the way that suits you best. You might prefer to sit down and crack open a physical publication or to listen to a podcast on your morning walk or commute. You might just pick up on some nugget of information that is profitable to you, if you apply it right.
For example, if you notice a rising public interest in mental health, you might offer stress and anxiety management. If wearable tech spikes in the next year, you might tailor your niche to include athletic performance and recovery services. You might even incorporate your client’s wearable technology readings (if they’re inclined to share them) as part of your conversations with them as they try to reach their wellness goals.
With enough practice, you should be able to get really good at spotting and even predicting trends ahead of time. Use this newfound superpower to differentiate your niche, stand out as an expert in your field, and impress your clients!
Step 5: Test and Validate Your Niche
Take your findings, adjust your potential niche, and then see if it actually works in your local area.
To give these offerings a try, create package deals tied to your niche. If you want to make them extra enticing, use limited time offers or promotional deals to see if people bite.
This is how you can test and validate your niche. Once you’ve created your offer and let it run for a set time period, what are your results? If it’s nothing but crickets, it’s time to shift your niche or your offerings.
If you garner some interest, be sure to pay close attention to your client feedback. Learn, if you can, what drew them in, and what goals they were hoping to achieve. Use this feedback to figure out whether or not your niche is resonating with your ideal clients.
For example, if you set up packages for “desk worker recovery plans,” you can track how many people book them and how satisfied they are with your service, based on feedback.
Be prepared to adjust your approach based on what you learn. If you get a lot of bookings but lower satisfaction, there is likely some disconnect that you must address.
If you’re getting a lot of happy clients, but not a lot of bookings, you might want to tweak your messaging or your method of getting the word out. Of course, make sure you tell those happy clients to tell their friends about you!
Conclusion: Research Is a Continuous Practice
Just remember that researching is an ongoing process. Take comfort in knowing that you can always adjust your niche as you go.
Stay curious and informed, and you’ll be able to spot differentiators that you can apply to your own practice. As your clients’ needs and the market change over time, you’ll be seasoned enough to know how to confidently shift your approach to your niche.
If you can get good at this while making research a key part of your strategy, you’ll be able to create a sustainable, thriving massage business that truly stands out from the competition.
Want more insights on building your massage practice through strategies and actionable tips, check out our eBook "How to start a massage business - 10 steps to success"