Podcast

Katherine Parker of Yomassage™ visits the podcast to talk about effective use of Facebook Ads for massage therapists.

See ABMP’s Yomassage™ feature here.

See Katherine’s companion blog post with video here.

Sponsored by Yomassage™. Find a Yomassage™ Therapist Training near you and be a part of the next big thing. Use the code BLUEPRINT for $50 off your training. Visit massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage for more info.

Transcript:

Sponsor message Is something missing from your massage practice? Are you interested in sharing your passion for self-care and body wisdom with a wider audience? With Yomassage, you can use light to medium touch, gentle stretch, and mindfulness to serve up to ten clients in one affordable session. Yomassage allows you to make more money in less time by using an innovative new modality that is easy on your body and allows you to bring therapeutic touch to more clients. Yomassage is conducting trainings all over the U.S. in 2019. Find a Yomassage therapist training near you and be part of the next big thing. Visit massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage and use the code BLUEPRINT for $50 off your training. That’s massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage.

Allissa Haines Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we discuss the business side of massage therapy. I am Allissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds And I’m Michael Reynolds.

AH And we are here with our guest today, Katherine Parker. Hello, Katherine.

Katherine Parker Hi.

AH And let me tell you all a little bit about Katherine first. She is a Yomassage co-founder, a graduate of the University of Texas with a degree in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies, she moved to Portland with plans to attend law school, decided to not do that, and instead opened up a yoga studio. About a year after that, she acquired an even larger yoga studio nearby and is now the owner of Studio PDX. Through the yoga studio, Katherine met Tiffany Ryan, and they co-founded this Yomassage thing in 2018.

Katherine, does that cover it? What did I miss?

KP That covers it, yeah.

AH I think you are probably the second person outside of myself, so the third person I know of, who started off thinking they were going to get into law and then just trashed that pretty quick before —

MR (Laughter)

KP I know. Yeah, I’ve met so many people like that. (Laughter)

AH I didn’t even get so far as to study for the LSAT, so good on you.

MR Congratulations. (Laughter)

KP (Laughter) Yeah, I took it too far.

AH We love to kind of pop through and learn a little bit about the person that’s visiting our podcast, so I would love to find out a little bit more about you, and specifically and first, how did you get into yoga? You were 22 fresh out of college when you started a studio. So how long had you been doing yoga before that?

KP So actually right after college — I graduated a little bit early, and I went back — I went to teach Arabic at another university. And I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and studying for the LSAT, and I had some more time on my hands, and I saw — I started taking yoga classes at the university, and they had a little yoga teacher training program. So I decided to do that as well, and I did the program, I started teaching some classes at the university, and it was just kind of a hobby. And then whenever I moved to Portland, I was pretty much just looking for a way to do something else other than go to law school or, you know, work at the law firm because I was absolutely hating it. And so I was like, well, why don’t I open up a yoga studio since that’s the other skill that I have right now. So that’s how I got into it.

AH And so well, you kind of already answered my next question, which is what is the evolution of your career been like. But you just bounced right into it. (Laughter) That is amazing.

KP Yeah.

AH So what is your day to day like now?

KP Okay, so my day to day is pretty crazy right now. I usually teach about one yoga class a day at the studio. I’ll do some kind of admin work that I need to do for the studio just responding to emails or scheduling teachers. But I have about ten yoga teachers that teach classes at the studio, and most of my time is focused on Yomassage. And we’re — we’re not even a year into Yomassage and it’s growing like crazy. So we’re just doing everything we can to, you know, keep it — keep it moving. And it’s — pretty much most of my day is spent working on Yomassage stuff.

AH That’s exciting. How many classes have you taught so far of the Yomassage?

KP So we’ve taught classes — like, at the studio, we’ve taught — we’ve been doing classes for over a year at the studio. But as far as trainings go, we’ve done a training — a couple — we’ve done three trainings in Portland now; one in Seattle; one in Spokane, Washington; one in Austin; one in Bend, Oregon; and one in L.A. And we’re traveling to the east coast for the next couple months, and then we’ll take it — we’re all over. For the rest of the year, I think we have like two or three trainings a month for the rest of the year. So it’s getting pretty crazy.

AH Well, sweet. So I feel like this is like a silly — this is such a silly question being that you guys are so at the beginning of your career in so many ways, and I — it’s so exciting to see how much you’ve accomplished so quickly. But what — what’s your fantasy gig here? Like if you didn’t have to work for money tomorrow, what would you do with the gajillion dollars that someone hands you?

KP So I would continue to do Yomassage. I really love it. I think that it’s going to be huge. I think that it’s — it’s really allowing massage therapists to serve people that wouldn’t normally be able to get massages because it allows them — since it’s in a group setting, it allows them to reach people who don’t have the money to pay for a one-hour massage. And it can reach different populations like people who are recovering from trauma, people — children even because it’s in a clothed environment in a group setting. And I’m — Tiffany and I are just super, super passionate about Yomassage, and I think that both of us would answer the question the say way that if we didn’t have to work and have another job, we would put everything we have into Yomassage.

Sponsor message And this episode is sponsored by Yomassage. If you fee like there is something from your massage practice, if you are interested in sharing your passion for self-care and body wisdom with a wider audience, you should think about Yomassage. With Yomassage, you can use light to medium touch, gentle stretch, and mindfulness to serve up to ten clients in one affordable session. Yomassage allows you to make more money in less time by using an innovative new modality. It is easy on your body, and allows you to bring therapeutic touch to more clients. Yomassage is conducting training all over the U.S. — like you heard — this year, 2019. You can find a Yomassage therapist training near you by visiting the website. You can visit massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage and you can use the code BLUEPRINT for $50 off your training. And again, you can visit massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage. And we’re excited because Katherine can tell us a little bit about what Yomassage really is.

KP So I’ll paint the picture for you. Basically, you’ll walk in and you’ll have — all of the yoga mats will be set up for you. So each person has a few different props: you have a yoga mat; two bolsters, which are basically like pillows; and two blankets; and two blocks.

So you go and you go to your mat and there’s probably going to be about five to eight people in the class. There could be less; there could be more. But it’s typically around five to eight people. And you’ll start off class with a breathing or meditation mindfulness exercise for about five minutes — just something to kind of get you in the present moment, to start to get in tune with your body.

And then you’ll move through a series of different restorative postures. So these are inspired by restorative yoga postures, but you’re in these poses for about five to ten minutes, so they’re super relaxing, and it’s basically like naptime yoga. Whenever people hear “yoga,” I think they generally think of like sweating and Hatha and Vinyasa and moving. But these are like naptime poses. You’re basically supported with pillows and blankets, and you could fall asleep there. And while you’re in this super relaxing, like, really gentle stretch, the massage therapist will come around and massage each person for about 60 to 90 seconds. Then you’ll switch to a different pose, get massage for 60 to 90 seconds. Some classes even have a supporter who’s a yoga instructor that will not do any tissue manipulation, but they’ll do some really light, kind of like petting touches or some yoga adjustments to add that extra touch and hands-on time.

AH That sounds amazing.

KP Yeah.

AH And everyone, I’m also going to include in the show notes, ABMP Massage and Bodywork magazine did a beautiful spread, and they had the cover, too. Yomassage was on the cover of the last issue that I will totally put in the show notes. Everybody can read it for free. It’s just beautifully done, and you get to see pictures and you get to, like, learn a lot about Yomassage as well, as well as at the Yomassage website. It was really, really impressive.

I had heard about it because Linda, one of our premium members, is actually one of your instructors. So I’d heard about it a little bit through her for the last several months. I know she’s on the cover. And I’m just — it just — it’s a beautiful photo shoot, first of all. And second, it just looks so interesting and so — it seems like the restorative yoga classes I have been to only 100 times better.

KP Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like, yeah. And we’re so happy with that feature. Thank you so much for mentioning that, and I hope everyone gets a chance to check it out.

AH Now, and part of the reason we brought Katherine on is to just geek out, people. You’re going to hear way less from me and probably more from Michael this next bit because Katherine is actually — aside from all of the things she’s already doing — a bit of a Facebook advertising specialist and expert. So Katherine has prepared a whole bunch of great information for us about massage therapists using Facebook ads to promote their own practices. And it applies for yoga as well; that’s Katherine’s background. But it’s really — it’s hard to find Facebook advertising information that’s super relevant to our micro businesses, and I was so delighted when we talked to you and you really got it. You got our type of business and what we need. So I’m going to be quiet; I’m going to turn it over to you. Teach us. Teach us, Obi-Wan.

KP Yeah, so I’ll just preface this by saying that this is going to be a lot of information. So we are following it up with a blog post that you can find on Massage Business Blueprint blog. And it’s basically going to have all this information, so don’t feel like you have to memorize everything that I’m saying. We’re also — so I’m going to be taking you through exactly how to set up a Facebook ad and giving you some different ideas. And we’ll start with this one template, and then over on the Yomassage blog, I’ll give you a couple other templates that you can use. But I think this is a really good place to start, and I wanted to keep it really simple and easy for you guys to follow.

So that being said, we are going to be talking about Facebook ads to help you promote your local massage business. So Facebook ads are really great for this because you can get really specific with your audience and whom you’re targeting. So you can target people that are in a 1 to 50 mile radius of your business depending on what, you know, your target market is.

So what are Facebook ads? They’re shown on Facebook, obviously, but they’re shown in a lot of — there are a lot of different placements that they have on Facebook: in the newsfeed, there’s Facebook stories, there’s like that — there’s the sidebars on Facebook, there’s a lot of different places that you can show them within Facebook. Facebook also owns Instagram, so you can have your ads be shown on people’s Instagram feeds, Instagram stories. And then Facebook also has publishing partners. These are different news and media outlets that your Facebook ads will be show on as well. So it’s not just Facebook. It’s also Instagram and then other news and media outlets.

And like I said, they’re so awesome for local businesses because you can get super specific and it’s kind of creepy specific how — what you can do with the audiences. So for example, you could target moms with children ages five to eight who have just bought a house in a certain neighborhood. Or you can target women who have friends who were recently engaged. Like, you can get really kind of creepy-specific. It’s fun, but it’s also kind of weird. (Laughter) And then you can target different interests and purchasing behavior. So we’ll talk about what my recommendations are for that depending on what your niche it. And I know that you guys are really — you always talk about finding your niche, so I’ll talk about that whenever we’re creating the audience as well.

AH Thank you. You’re geeking out on a whole other level with us.

KP (Laughter) All right, so what you need to do to get started is you need to have a Facebook account, obviously. And not only just a Facebook account, you have to have a business account. So we’ll provide a link in the blog post that just shows you how to set up a Facebook business account if you don’t. It’s not like a separate account; it’s just kind of adding the business account on to your Facebook —

MR And by “account,” you mean business page, specifically.

KP Yeah, business page and then you’ll have like an ad — you’ll have an ad manager account after that that will be just attached to your normal Facebook page. So hopefully that makes sense, but there’ll be a link to that.

AH It sounds weird, but it will totally make sense when there’s a link and people understand it. It’s just another layer of admin-ing your page.

KP Right, exactly. All right, and then I would definitely recommend having a website too. You can run Facebook ads without having a website, but it’s just going to be so much better to have a website to take them to. And then you can even start to track the people that go to your website from the Facebook ads and retarget them later. So it’s not 100 percent necessary. If you don’t have a website, you can still do Facebook ads, but I would recommend, you know, having a website eventually.

All right, and then the first thing we want to set up after you have your business page is setting up your Facebook pixel within your website. This is another thing that it’s not 100 percent necessary, but I do think that it’s something that will just take you ten minutes, and it will really help you long term. So basically a Facebook pixel is just something that you put into your website — it’s just a little bit of code that you’ll put into your website and it’ll help you track people that come to your website through the Facebook ad so then you can retarget them later. So if someone comes to your website, but they don’t purchase something, you could run a different ad in the future that’s re-targeting the people who didn’t purchase. So that’s something that’s really cool. It’s a little bit more advanced than what we’re talking about today, but I just wanted you to keep that mind for the future.

All right, and then before we create an ad, I want you guys to think of a goal that you have in mind for this ad. So I know it seems kind of, you know, simple, but it’s really important to have clear goals whenever you’re making your ad so that you can figure out if it’s working or not. So some goals — three of the main things that you guys will probably consider is getting new clients. So this can be a goal. It’s more of a short-term goal to have with your Facebook ad. So maybe you’re running a special and you’re just trying to get a bunch of people into your business. So that’s one type of goal that you could have. And then another type of goal, which more long-term, is brand recognition. So just trying to get your name out there. So it might not translate directly into making a sale; however, in the future, if these people are wanting to get a massage, they’ll recognize you as that person to think about and go to whenever they want to get a massage. So if you’re just looking for clients right now and you want — you want to make some sales, then the brand recognition one might not be as glamorous, but I do think that it’s really important.

But today we are going to be talking about the ad for getting new clients and just getting — running a special for them. The third type of ad would be a retargeting ad, so you’re retargeting people who have come to your website. But like I said, we’ll talk about the getting new clients as our goal.

All right. So — do you guys have any input on, like, those different types of goals, like for brand recognition, getting new clients, and the retargeting existing, you know, people who’ve come to your website?

MR Yeah, I think it’s laid out very well. I just — I love the fact that you are kind of encouraging people not to just think about the transaction, but to think about building a community and building an audience of people that know about you before you try to ask for the booking.

KP Right.

MR So I think it’s really important that we don’t get too hung up on just hey, transaction, book now, book now. It’s more about let’s try building a relationship first.

KP Right. And as you’ll see — we’ll talk about later — but Facebook ads are not that expensive, so really, running a brand recognition ad is not going to cost you a lot of money and it will help long-term with your business.

So for this ad, we’re going to start with a campaign to get new clients and keep them long-term. So like, Groupon, you know, you can run a really awesome special and probably get tons of clients, but those aren’t the right types of clients for your business that are going to stay with you long-term. So I think the best type of deal that you could give in a Facebook ad to think about having these long-term clients is probably like a bundle. So I’m thinking like a three-massage bundle, so you know that these people are going to be committed to come to you at least three times instead of just one inexpensive massage, you know, that they’re just trying to do for a discount and they’re probably not going to come back. They might, but I think three is a good starting place. Maybe even five. But I would price this between $150 and $200 depending on your area. What do you guys think about that price?

MR Yeah, the number one question that we always get is how much should I spend? And yeah, that’s a good ballpark.

KP Yeah. Yeah, I think the — well, pricing the three-massage bundle at like $150 or up to 200 —

MR Oh, I’m sorry. I totally misunderstood. You were talking about actually pricing your massage services.

KP Yeah.

MR Gotha. Sorry. I was totally was — I was thinking budgeting and how much do you spend on it. So —

AH I was just about to correct you.

MR Allissa will jump in and give her feedback because she’s more qualified to answer that question.

KP (Laughter)

AH I think that you don’t want to bring in too many discount seekers —

KP Right.

AH — so I absolutely agree that you want to price it so it’s a deal, but not a crazy deal.

KP Yeah.

AH I would say come up — whatever your treatment is for three — for three of your services, for three visits, I would say take that total amount and maybe for this introduction package of three, charge like 75% of that — between 60 and 75%, maybe, depending on how deep of a discount you want to do.

KP Right.

AH But again, this is a higher-ticket item, so it’s okay to deeply discount. You just want to do it in a way that isn’t so low you get one-off seekers. And that won’t happen as much when you have a package for three treatments. So for me, my treatments are $100 each so I would probably price a package of three at like 210 or something, 220, but I have very particular like no tipping and pricing policies and stuff. You know, if your treatments are usually $60 or $70 each — let’s say 70 so that’s like $210 for three, then a buck 60, a buck 75 would totally make sense for that. So I say go between like 60 and 75% of what your full price would be for three treatments. That was long-winded, sorry.

KP Yeah, and that’s such a good deal, I think. If I saw that on a Facebook ad, I would jump on that. It’s a good deal even though you are — you’re not selling something that’s $5 or $50, but you’re getting three massages for probably around $200. I think that you’ll find a lot of interest with that. So I don’t — you might not get a lot of new customers if you’re doing three massages for like $500, but if you’re, I think, around the $200 mark, you’re still going to find a lot of people who are interested.

AH I absolutely — yeah, I absolutely agree. And you want it to be, you know, enough of a deal that people who appreciate bodywork get it, get that it’s a deal, but not so much that you get people who aren’t interested in regular bodywork. And I think that higher price and that package really does that. So I agree.

KP Okay, so now on to the landing page. So if you don’t know what this means, that’s okay. The landing page is somewhere that they will go after they click on the ad. So you’ll have, whenever you’re setting up the ad, the opportunity to put a link to your website or your scheduling page. And this part is really important because if you’re offering them this deal and they click on it and then it just takes them to the homepage of your website, they’re not going to be able — they’re not going to know what to do or where to go and they’re probably just going to click out. So it’s really important for this to be seamless for the potential new client to get to your website, to get to the offer, to purchase it, and then to schedule.

MR So I kind of want to argue with you on this a little bit.

KP Oh, really? Okay.

MR Can I argue with you?

KP Yeah, of course.

MR So you are right. Having a landing page in some cases can make a lot of sense. In other cases, though, I find it can confuse people. So I would argue that if your website is designed in such a way that it’s really easy to find the online booking, then it should do its job. Now, if you’re doing a very specific offer that’s unique to this ad and it’s not easy to find on your website, it’s kind of hidden or something, yeah, that makes sense. But I also don’t want to discourage people from using the homepage of their website because if it’s a generalize ad and the offer is maybe listed on the homepage or something, people might want to actually look around on your website and get to know you before actually booking. And going straight to a landing page can sometimes bypass that ease of getting to know you. So I just want to kind of argue a little bit on that point.

KP Maybe we can compromise here a little bit and say that you put some information on the landing page that gets people to, like, know about you, but there’s also a clear way for them to purchase the offer. I also think that with the Facebook ads, it’s good to have this offer only available to the people who saw it on Facebook so that not just anyone who goes to your website can purchase this offer, just so you can track it a little bit better and know that okay, I know that everyone who purchased this came from Facebook, so I know this Facebook ad is working. That might be a little bit difficult with the massage scheduling software, but I think that that’s important.

AH I actually — I’m a fan of the landing page if your landing page is well designed so that it still has the regular header and menus and all that of your website.

MR Right.

AH I know sometimes I go to web — I go to landing pages and they’re not like the rest of the person’s website and I can’t navigate, and then I have to like look at the URL and remove some of the end of it and go to their original website and then find that landing page again. I think a well-designed landing page is priceless. So I agree with you and Michael is wrong.

KP (Laughter) I see what you mean with that because I’ve seen those landing pages that are created, like, on different websites. I don’t like those. I do not like those where it’s like a website that allows you to create a landing page, but it’s not actually a part of your website. If you do —

MR Yeah, I think I’m just fussy because I see too many bad examples and I’m like, stop it.

KP Yeah. (Laughter) Yeah, so make sure it’s good. Make sure your landing page is good. Make sure that it looks like part of your website and that you can get to other parts of your website easily through your landing page.

MR So hopefully it’s just a page on your website.

KP Yeah, exactly. That’s how I do landing pages. It’s just another — I just create another page on my website. But if you don’t know how to do that, it’s totally fine. Just — the bottom line here is make it easy for them to redeem this offer that you’re, you know, offering because if they don’t — if they can’t figure it out, they’re just going to click out and then they’re not going to purchase. So that’s the bottom line here.

All right. So creating your ad. Let’s pretend that we’re on the Facebook ads manager now, and you see the button that says create ad. So let’s start there. And I forgot to mention that there’s going to be a little video in this blog post that — I’ll walk you through it, so it’ll make more sense whenever you look at the video. But there’ll be a button to start off with that says create your ad. And then you’re going to pick what you’re going to optimize for. So I like to start off by optimizing for traffic, and this is because whatever you optimize for, it’s going to give you your — like, whenever you optimize for traffic, it’s going to show you how many links — how many link clicks that you get for your ad, and I think that that’s a better way than optimizing for, like, purchase. Because if you optimize for purchases, maybe not everyone who clicks the link is going to purchase, so it’s just going to be harder to visually see how well your ad is doing whenever you’re first starting off. So I would start by looking at traffic.

And then after you select traffic, name your ad. This is important so that you can keep your ads — if you run several different ads, you can keep them organized. So name your ad. And then the fun part is creating your audience.

So if you guys want to talk a little bit about niches because I know that you guys talk a lot about that. Almost all of your episodes, I hear you guys say something about it, but it really does make it so much easier to find clients whenever you have a niche, especially for Facebook ads because we can get super specific with targeting on Facebook ads. Do you guys have anything to add in about your niche?

MR (Laughter) I think we’ve exhausted our audience on niching.

AH We have. Let me do the briefest possible explanation in case we’ve got anybody new who haven’t listened to our niching podcast and webinar and all the ranting we do about that. We are big advocates of choosing a specialty. That’s all niche means is a specialty. Even if you will accept any client who calls you or schedules, a niche is a way to say — to really stick out in people’s mind to say I am a massage therapist and I specifically treat people with jaw and TMJD issues or people with knee pain or people who have rotator cuff injury or people who have migraine.

Or a niche can also be a modality like I strictly do guasha techniques, or I strictly do Yomassage, or I strictly do whatever — individual movement incorporated with massage. Whatever. So it can be a thing you treat, a particular pathology you teach — or you treat, pardon me, or a particular technique you use. There are some other ways to go with that, but that’s enough for us now. It is a way to direct your message so you are very clearly telling people who they should refer to you and if they should come to you themselves. That’s my schtick.

KP Yeah, awesome. So I think that if you don’t have a niche yet or maybe you have a couple of those things, it’s really important when you’re running an ad to only focus on one target demographic at a time because, sure, you can run an ad that says, you know, I have this special deal for massages and then you just run it to everyone in your location. You’re not going to get as much interest as you would if you run an ad that’s specifically targeted to runners or people struggling with sleep, and then you specifically talk about some of those things within that ad. You’re going to get more people than you would if you’re just doing a really broad demo and broad ad. So that’s another — that’s just an example of why it’s important to find a specialty.

All right, so let’s — for the purposes of this ad — and you can edit it, you know, to make it fit you. But I’m going to talk about — I’m going to pretend that this is a massage therapist in Portland, Oregon whose target demographic is runners and hikers. We have a lot of runners and hikers here, so I think that this is going to be a good population to target for this ad. And the way that we want to start off with is choosing our location. So the first thing that you’re going to do when you are picking your audience is choosing the location. So you can type in the location of your business and then you can open it up to a certain radius around your business. I think the smallest that you can do is a mile, and I think you can do up to 50 miles. For Portland, I personally wouldn’t drive more than three miles, I think, for a massage. So, you know, maybe opening up to like three or five miles. But in smaller cities or different cities you might do more or less. What do you guys think about that?

AH It is absolutely location specific. For me in my area and my suburb, I think I do seven — I do up to ten miles. And even that’s a bit much. I probably would prefer like five to seven depending on how much you can customize it.

KP Right.

AH But yeah, in larger, rural areas, it is — people are used to driving an hour to get to something, so to open it up to 25 miles isn’t a big deal. For me, to open up to 25 miles includes Boston, which is ridiculous because nobody’s battling that traffic down from Boston.

KP Right.

AH So it’s really regional specific. I agree.

KP Great, all right. So basically whenever you pick that area, it’s only going to show your ad to people who live or work within that area that you’ve selected. So that helps narrow down your audience. And by the way, narrowing your audience is good; it’s not bad; it’s really good. So we want to get as specific as we can here. And then the next thing it’s going to ask you to do is select your age range. You can also select male or female. So if you have more of a male or a female demographic, you can, you know, choose male or female. I usually just do all.

And then age range is — I would do maybe 18-55 just to start off with. And you can always refine this later. After you run your ad, it will show you what the ages that are working the best for you are, and it’s usually, for Facebook, around like 25-35 is the best age range that I’ve found, but it might be a little bit older for massage therapy clients. What do you guys think with the age range?

AH Again, just like you said, so niche specific. But yeah, I like your range.

KP Yeah, and then — these are all — this is just to start off for your first ad. We can narrow it down and get really specific after we see the results from this ad. And then for interest, which I think is the most fun part here, is you can really take some time and go through all the different interests and behaviors here. I would select running as an interest, hiking, outdoor activities, speed walking, anything in that — and you can just type in a bunch of different things and see what comes up. But sticking with the same theme here, you can also target different groups. So if there’s like a Portland running group, I think you can add — you can target those people too. So you can get really specific here. I would add maybe five to ten different interests until your audience gets to a good size for the interests. And then for these, I don’t think you really need to get as specific as finding moms with kids ages, you know, three to ten unless that’s your target demographic and that’s what the ad is specifically running to. But yeah, so that’s the same area that you can find those interests.

All right, and then next you’ll choose the recommended placement. So this is what we talked about at the beginning where this is where Facebook is showing your ad. So are you only wanting to show this in the Facebook news feed? Are you only wanting to show this on Instagram stories? So this is where you can pick that. I usually recommend just doing the — choosing Facebook recommended placement. So Facebook will just optimize for whatever’s working out best. It will send it to all of the different placements and if one is working better than the other, it will put more towards that placement. So unless you have a really specific ad that’s a specific picture that only works well with Instagram stories or Facebook stories, I would just submit everywhere and let Facebook optimize for you.

And then I recommend running this ad for five to seven days initially and spending about $5 a day just to test it out. So that’s not that much money; it’s like $30 to $35 that you will spend initially on this ad. So if you get even one person, like, you’re more than paying for the ad. And then after you’ve run it and see what works best for you, you can spend a lot more money as long as you know that this is an ad that’s working. If it’s not working, then we don’t want to spend a bunch of money on it.

All right, so now we’re getting into the copy and the photos. And this is kind of the template that I like to use for the copy for Facebook ads. The first thing that you’re going to do is grab the audience. So you’re going to say something that’s specific to the audience that you’re working with. So if it’s people located in Portland: Hi, Portland or Attention Portland. And then you’re going to state the pain point. So what is the thing that these people are struggling with that’s going to get them to want to come to your business? So if you’re working with runners and hikers, are you — you could start it off with Attention Portland, are you in search of a way to decrease your recovery time and prevent injuries? Next you’re going to state your solution. An example: massage helps the body pump more oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs helping your body heal and prevent future injuries.

After you state your solution, then sell your offer. So your business, let’s call it Healing Body Massage, is offering three massage for only $200 for the first twenty people to sign up. So that’s putting a time limit or an amount on it will help people take action sooner. So maybe saying this offer is only good for three days, or this offer is only good for the first 20 or 50 or 10 people who sign up. And then you’ll want to have a call to action, which is something that they can do in order to redeem this. So click the link to go to the website and sign up, or click the link to learn more. And I like using “learn more” more than “sign up” because it’s less of a commitment. They can learn more and they don’t have to know that they’re committing to sign up whenever they click the button.

And we want to just make sure that’s it’s really short, sweet, and to the point. So yeah, I would just use this template: grab the audience, pain point, solution, sell your offer, put a time limit on it, and then call to action.

All right, so after you’ve written your copy, you can pick out some photos. So I like to just start with — there’s lots of different things that you can do with Facebook ads. You can do photos, you can do videos, you can do a photo carousel that has, like, the multiple images on it. But whenever you’re first starting out, I would just start with the photo — the one photo option and then you’ll pick about — I think you can pick up to six different photos that you can use in the ad, and then Facebook will run all of the different ads with those different photos and then it will show you which one is performing the best and then you can turn off the other ones so that it’s just showing the one that is performing the best. Since you don’t know which photos are going to perform the best, I would try out three to five different photos to start off with. And, you know, this could change over time what people like to see or, you know, you might find something that’s working really well and you use it every time that you run an ad.

But for photos, I will say that stock photos don’t usually perform the best because people will notice that it’s a stock photo and they’ll think okay, this is an ad, and they’ll just glaze right over it. If that’s your only option — I know that a lot of massage therapists don’t have pictures of them actually working in their practice and that you use stock photos a lot. What — do you guys have a lot of photos of yourself working in your practice?

AH So I have a handful, but actually that’s something that we have realized is a problem. There aren’t great massage stock photos out there.

KP Right.

AH They’re all super generic-y and with no diversity or real style. So we have actually — for our Blueprint premium members, we actually have a library of stock photos from two separate photos shoots we’ve done over the last year that are a little more realistic and feature —

KP Oh, that’s awesome.

AH — all kinds of diversity in the models and in the — like in the client models and also the therapist models. So yeah, if you need some of those, become a premium member if you haven’t already. But you know it’s always ideal to use pictures of yourself —

KP Right.

AH — but in lieu of that, find the most realistic, down home kind of pictures you can.

KP Right. And I — that’s totally awesome. I would definitely check out those stock photos that they have because there really aren’t that many great massage photos out there, and if there are stock photos out there, they’re probably ones that are used on Groupon and lots of other websites like that where people are just going to recognize that it’s an add immediately and they’re not going to even look at it.

AH Yep.

KP So that’s really good. And so — all right, so I would pick about three to five different images, maybe one of a massage, maybe one of someone running since you’re talking about runners and might grab their attention, and then maybe one of yourself. Even if you don’t have one of yourself, like, actually doing massage, maybe you just have like a headshot that — sometimes those work really well. So I would just try it out and see. And if, you know, it might work; it might not. Who knows. But you’re not really wasting money because you’re just testing out a bunch of different ads, and you’re still spending $5 a day no matter what.

All right, so after you’ve picked your images, you’re going to add your URL. So whether that’s taking them to your landing page or your homepage, you’ll add that in. And then you can select what you want the button to say if you want it to say “sign up” or “learn more”. There’s a bunch of different options. I would just go with learn more. And then you’re going to review and confirm.

So I do want to mention one more thing about the stock photo stuff that we were just talking about. I don’t want anything to prevent you from doing the ad, like, right now. Like, I don’t want you to say oh, I’ll wait until I can take my own photos of myself or I’ll wait until I figure out my target demographic or until I get my website signed up. I wouldn’t wait. Just do it. Maybe it’s not going to be as effective as it could be if you had all this other stuff. But it’s still going to be effective and it’s still going to bring people into your practice and bring people to your website. So don’t let any of those things stop you from actually making this ad. You can do it today and it’s — will take you maybe 30 minutes to set up your first one, and then it will take you maybe 10 minutes after each time you do it after you get the hang of it.

MR Music to our ears. Our mantra is done is better than perfect.

KP (Laughter) Yeah, exactly. All right, so I wanted to mention something because with what you’re probably going to be promoting if you’re talking about certain types of pain or working with certain audiences, sometimes Facebook will not like that. They don’t like it if you’re — if you talk about back pain and you’re targeting people who are at an older age, it will sometimes — they have rules with their ads. And it might be even with the images that you’re using. So sometimes it will say your ad can’t be approved. And then it can be kind of hard to figure out why. So you might just edit your copy a little bit. I’m not saying this is going to happen, but if it does happen, I just want you to know that it’s normal. Sometimes the ads don’t get approved and you might have to edit the copy a little bit. You might have to take down a picture or switch a picture with something else. It doesn’t like pictures with text over it. You can do a little bit of text, but I wouldn’t do like, you know, a bunch of words on the picture. Facebook won’t approve that. And if it does approve it, it won’t show that photo as much as you want it to be shown. So just be aware that your ad might not be approved. It might take some times to edit it until it gets approved. But that’s okay. But I just wanted you guys to be aware of that.

And then after you run your ad, it’s approved, it’s going, I would check it maybe once a day. So you don’t have to check it every hour, every minute. Just check it once a day, see how it’s doing, check it again the next day. you’re going to run it for five to seven days initially. So you know, just make sure that it’s getting — if you’re getting 5 to 20 clicks a day, I’d say that’s good on $5 a day. If you’re getting like zero clicks, then I would start over. But if you’re getting, even 5 to 10 clicks a day, I think that’s pretty good for a $5 a day ad. And then if you are even getting one to two purchases after this week, I’d say that that’s successful and that you should put more money on that ad. If you’re not getting any purchases, you’re not getting hardly any clicks, then try out something else before you put more money on that ad.

But initially spending about $30 to test out the ad, if $30 gets you one to two to three clients, then that is awesome and you should put more money on that ad. And by more money, I think like $50 to $100 over a week’s time would be good.

All right. And then troubleshooting with the ads or things that you have, I think the first thing that you should do is just google it because everyone else has had these problems too. So just google it. I’m sure you’ll find something. YouTube can be really good, too, with videos. I like to go to YouTube because I like to watch people do the stuff that I’m trying to do.

Yeah, but I think that’s pretty much all that I have. What do you guys — do you guys have anything extra to share?

MR So I really — I agree with everything you’ve laid out. You really made it every easy to understand. And one thing I want to kind of give you a shout out on is something that I’m really bad at, which is you really simplified the process of tracking. It’s really obvious, but I didn’t think about it because I get so hung up in oh, the tracking pixel and the conversion tracking and make sure you put the tracking URL so you can see when they make a booking online, and it tracks the pixel and then it shows up in your Facebook —

KP Yeah.

MR I like to — I have this tech background, so I like to go in and make sure that my pixels register every conversion and every booking right in the Facebook interface so I can see the numbers there. But that’s kind of beyond what most people can do (indiscernible) system or their skill level.

KP Right.

MR And you have the obvious solution of yeah, just make an offer and a page that’s only for your Facebook ad people, and if it comes from that landing page and that particular product (indiscernible) service in the booking software, that was from the ad and that gives you your return on investment. So it’s so obvious. So thanks for simplifying something that I make too complicated sometimes.

KP Well, yeah, and I think that that’s awesome if you have the ability to do all that tracking or you have the ability to hire a company to do all that for you. But as someone who’s running their own business and is the primary person who is giving the massages, you don’t have time to do all that stuff. You just have time to make a basic ad, make it good enough so that it’s actually going to work, and you know, track it as best you can. But not spending hours and hours trying to refine and do all of the little tracking details that you can to make it perfect. If you have the money to spend, then just hire a company to do that. But we’re talking about doing ads for yourself for the business that you’re running and I don’t want Facebook ads to be something that takes up your whole day. It should take less than ten minutes a day for you to monitor these Facebook ads.

MR Love it.

KP Yeah, so I want to mention that I will do — I’ll talk about the brand recognition ad — I’ll do a sample brand recognition ad and a sample retargeting ad over on the Yomassage blog. And then on the Massage Business Blueprint blog, they’re going to have all of this information for you with links for setting up your pixel on different types of websites and everything I’ve talked about here. I’ll also take you through a little short video tutorial on how to do this, so don’t feel like this is the only information, you need to write all this down. Just go to that blog post and everything’s going to be there.

AH Word. Thank you for walking us through this. And I’m excited to connect this podcast to the blog and the video that you’ve created. And I think it will give people a good picture —

KP Yeah, I think so to.

AH — of how (indiscernible) it really is accessible. And it really is.

KP Yeah, it is. Anyone can do it. It’s easy. It might take some time to get the hang of it at first. But it’s effective too. And if you’re spending $30 and you get one person to buy a three massage bundle, that’s a success. That’s awesome. You’re still making money. You’re probably going to get this client long term, so yeah. It’s awesome.

AH All right, Michael, anything else before we wrap up?

MR No. I’m really impressed with how well Katherine laid this out simply for everybody and I’m grateful. You obviously know what you’re doing and thanks for sharing your knowledge.

KP Well thank you guys so much for having me. It’s really nice to meet you, and I know that a lot of our Yomassage therapists listen to your podcast, so if you’re listening, hi.

MR Shout out.

KP (Laughter) (indiscernible) check out our trainings and stuff.

AH Absolutely, and we’ll definitely be doing a lot with Yomassage in the future. So everyone remember you can go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage and you can use the code BLUEPRINT to get a $50 off your next Yomassage or your first Yomassage training. So you can check out their schedule there at the website. And we’ll have links to all of that in the show notes and the corresponding blog post and video.

For now, that wraps us up. Thank you, everybody, for listening. If you have a question you want us to answer or a guest you want us to interview, you can email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com and we will respond to your email. Even if you have a terrible idea, we will respond and tell you that in a gentle way.

MR (Laughter)

AH (Laughter) Although, I have not gotten an emails with any terrible ideas yet. So thanks again for listening, tell a friend about our podcast if you can do so, and have a wonderful, productive, delightful day.

MR Thanks everyone.

KP Thank you, bye.