Marketing materials
Building a Practise, Marketing and Advertising, Personal Development
Over the summer it is becoming clearer to me how I want to present myself as a shiatsu practitioner. The articles posted recently have been developing my own philosophy of shiatsu and I have the beginnings of a logo with real meaning for me and ties in with that developing outlook.
With the status of my final year still an unknown marketing seems premature but I am being recommended to clients and asked about shiatsu when I attend social events. I have some copies of Shiatsu Society leaflets that I hand out and can refer these potential clients to their website for more information. However, I am not sure that the Shiatsu Society website is the best medium to promote me and it is a bit of a cheek to rip off their leaflets! I feel the need to start building some marketing materials of my own.
I have registered a new web domain and can start building a site to support my practise soon. I will not be using ShiatsuBlogger as that promotional tool as that would restrict what I might write here. My practise and my blog are separate entities. But what I have written here, along with your comments, will feed the text that I do use on my leaflets and web site.
In particular I like that idea of the guide I discovered recently. If I want to say what shiatsu is to me then that analogy seems better than the musical and storytelling ones that I have also used. Testimonials seem to be a good idea and better than making panacea claims of my shiatsu.
Has anyone else developed a shiatsu brand or marketing strategy? If so, why not share your story on ShiatsuBlogger?
Tony Brown @ August 2, 2007
I have been away on vacation and have enjoyed catching up on your posts - your swift is lovely! I once “branded” my shiatsu “Mindful Monkey Shiatsu” but I must say it was a bust - the connotations surrounding monkey were not the ones I had intended [monkey is my Chinese zodiac and I am Asian, so the name suited me perfectly but it was not suitable for a shiatsu brand]. Just something to keep in mind as you develop your marketing materials — make sure the swift resonates with your intended target market and not just you.
Linda,
I hope you had a great vacation and thanks for taking the time to catch up with my posting.
I get what you mean about what the brand says to a market. Calling myself Swift Shiatsu might open me up to false advertising claims when a session goes over the hour!