It is quite funny how perceptions about success or failure in anything can be influenced by the wrong measuring criteria and inspires people to either keep doing the wrong thing or stopping what really works.
Here is the story of Jo Blogs (not real name) who I was coaching, a few months ago when he first joined Salus Wellness, about marketing his private practice in massage therapy. This kind of business coaching is one of the standard services that all practitioners working at Salus Wellness receive as part of their renting package. A typical starting point to assess the current situation of one’s marketing (or any business activity within a coaching session) is to ask what was done to date, listing what was working and what wasn’t.
At that early point in Jo’s practice, a few months back, he had tried just one off leafleting campaign and never repeated it because, according to him it did not work. The facts were simple:
- He designed, helped by a friend, a simple A5 leaflet using a free design tool in about 1 hour
- He had 500 of these leaflets professionally printed for about £25
- He distributed the leaflets himself in a small area around his home: that took him about one and half hours
- He got 3 enquiries and managed to see two clients; it’s important noticing that professional leaflet distribution companies consider standard an average response from leafleting campaigns between 3 and 5 per thousand leaflets when 5000+ are dropped in a single campaign
Digging a bit more into facts I found out that one of these clients came back two more times while the other passed a referral for another client. Total massages delivered from the campaign: 5; total income: £200. So for a cost of £25 and an extra couple of hours of extra work he managed to make a profit of £175 and his perception of this exercise was of not working.
Now when I questioned his opinion about the non working campaign he was initially puzzled but then he could just agree with me that every time you can transform a few hours of marketing work into £175 profits you should do it and keep doing it until you have enough clients referring you and coming back to ensure the self sustainability of your practice.
After Jo and I agreed that his marketing exercise was in fact a success I re-iterated some of the facts about average success of marketing campaigns and how, by simply asking a few questions I clarified his thinking and helped him to move forward. Jo is now a well established member of the Salus Wellness team and enjoys the success of his various marketing campaigns having built a busy and self sustaining practice.