Episode 7 / PLACE: A is for Activity

Nobody wakes up thinking "I'm experiencing thoracic tension and need a massage therapist." They wake up thinking "I spent all weekend in the garden and now I can't turn my head."

That's the gap this episode closes. In Episode 7 of Two Miles Away, we're back in the PLACE framework covering A - Activity: the thing your client was doing when the pain started, or the thing they're missing out on because of it.

We break down why "massage for back pain" falls flat compared to "your back hurts every time you spend Saturday morning in the garden", and how that shift in language is the difference between generic content and content that makes someone stop scrolling because they recognize their own life in it.

Inside this episode:

• Why Activity is some of the easiest PLACE content to find - your clients are already handing it to you at every appointment
• The real story behind "you got rear-ended and felt fine, then three weeks later you couldn't turn your neck", and why leading with a diagnosis ("I treat whiplash") kills the connection a specific story creates
• Why being specific doesn't narrow your audience, it creates a moment of recognition for the right person, who then sticks around to discover everything else you do
• The two sides of Activity content: what caused the problem, and what your client wants to get back to
• This week's One Thing: write down your last 10 clients' activities…what they were doing before it started hurting, what they do every week, what they want back

Next episode, we move to C - Complaint, where we start stealing our clients' exact words for what's actually bothering them.

Grab the free guide, Post Like a Local, which walks through the full PLACE framework. link below, or comment TWOMILES on Instagram and it'll land straight in your DMs.

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey, I'm Cindy Slack. I'm a licensed massage therapist of 27 years, the founder of Bodywork Media, and someone who spent way too long trying to figure out why perfectly good massage therapists were completely invisible online. This podcast is called Two Miles Away, and it's for solo massage therapists who are tired of posting generic wellness content that could have been written by anyone anywhere, and instead want to start attracting the clients who are already two miles away and looking for exactly what they offer. Short episodes, real talk, no influencer tactics, just what actually works when your clients live down the street. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Welcome back to Two Miles Away, the podcast where we're talking about how to get more of the right local people through your door for your massage practice. And today we're talking about the place framework again. So last week we talked about L for location, and we are not going in order, so we did not start with P. But today we are gonna cover A, which is for activity. And this because this is one of the easiest parts of the framework. You probably hear this every day when a client comes in. One of the first things they say is what they've been doing. Like I had a client just the other day who, as soon as she walked through the door, she's like, I've been working in the garden all weekend. And she said that in a way of she knew that that was telling me what she needed that day, you know? So it's about adding in the activities that your clients have been doing that have caused the complaint that they're coming in for, or that has caused, you know, what their body is feeling right now. But also it's about the activities that they're missing out on because of pain or whatever they're there to get your help with. So you probably look at it as back pain, neck pain, shoulder tension, headaches, stress, and those things are all important, but those are the complaints, and we want to think of it like our clients think about their problem, and they're not necessarily walking around or waking up thinking, Oh, I am experiencing thoracic tension and I need to find a massage therapist. They're thinking, Oh, I spent all weekend in the garden and now I can't even turn my head, or I've been sitting at the computer for 12 hours a day and my shoulders are killing me. So that is activity that we want to try and bring into our content to really connect with our clients, and that's where local marketing can get really interesting. Because your client's activity gives you a much more specific doorway into their world. So you want to think of it as um, what was this person doing? What were they doing when they noticed the problem? What do they do regularly that contributes to it? What activity is important for them to get back to that they're not able to do right now? What happened in their life that brought them into your treatment room? Oh, I got a hummingbird at my feeder. I love that. Because those deal uh those details are incredibly useful for your marketing. So think about the difference between these two messages. Massage for back pain and compare that with your back hurts every time you spend Saturday morning in the garden. So it feels very different and connects much more with your clients and exactly how they're feeling and what they're experiencing. Now you can picture the person that is experiencing that, and that's the point that specificity helps people recognize themselves in your content and is gonna make them feel seen and heard and understood by you. So your clients are already giving you this kind of content. You just probably haven't been writing it down or noticing it so much as content. You don't really need to sit down and like brainstorm 50 new ideas of for activities. You already have them, probably. Just think of your clients that you saw last week, and you probably can come up with several. So when a client comes in and you're like, So what's going on? How's your body feeling? And they tell you a story. I was gardening all weekend, I played pickleball for the first time in six months, I've been painting my house, my kids started hockey and I'm sitting in those terrible bleachers for four hours every Saturday. I've been training for a half marathon, I just moved, I started a new job and I'm at the computer all day. Those are all activities that we can easily bring into our content for our massage marketing. So pay attention to how your clients actually talk about the problem. The words that they give you, that raw material and that clear messaging, you want to use as much of their original language as possible. So instead of thinking, what should I post about this weekend, start asking, what have my clients been doing? And that will give you a good place to start with activity and specific to the season and the timing that we're in right now, too, because that's another way that ties in local content. Let me give you an example. One of my friends came in and client came in a couple weeks ago, and it turns out she had gotten rear-ended about a month before that. So she was sitting sitting at a stoplight, she got hit, and she felt okay at first, but then as time went on, she was more sore and stiff after the accident. So this was like a month later that she was seeing me. It just so happened to be her monthly massage appointment, and it had been the month, you know, before her appointment that she got hit. But anyway, there's a lot to that story. You could turn that into I treat whiplash. Of course, we don't diagnose, but that is more about a diagnosis than the activity. So you've taken this incredibly specific human experience and turned it into a clinical category if you're just coming at it from a I treat whiplash kind of angle. So instead you could start with the activity, something like you got rear-ended and you felt okay, and then things started feeling different afterward. Now you've got a story, you've got something that your audience can recognize. Maybe they're the person that experienced it, maybe it's their spouse or their teenager, maybe they're thinking about a friend who was in an accident. You're not trying to convince everyone that they have the exact same problem. You're giving the right person a moment of, oh wait, that's me. And that's what we're looking for in marketing. That's how we can connect with local clients and make them feel seen and heard and understood. Don't be afraid of being too specific. You might be thinking, if you're that specific, you're gonna be leaving everyone else out. But here's what I want you to remember you're not creating a brochure. You don't have to list every single person you can help in every single piece of content. Your job is to create moments of recognition. So if I'm a runner and I see, which by the way, I am not a runner. Tried that once, it wasn't great, not for me. Anyway, if you're a runner and and say I'm a runner and I see your calves are wrecked after your first long run of the season, I'm gonna stop because that's my life. I get that, that is exactly what I'm feeling right now. And once I've stopped, I can delve deeper into I can discover that you also work with people who sit at desks, gardeners, golfers, new moms, anyone else that you work with. But your content, if your content says massage therapy is for everyone, I don't have a reason to stop, me personally. So that clarity makes your content easier to recognize. And mentioning that you're you don't have to list every single person you can help in every single piece of content. What you really want to do is create one specific piece of content for the runner, one specific piece of content for the person who was in a car accident, you know, not listing it all in one post. Like if you're a runner and a pickleball player and or recovering from a car accident, here's how I can help you. You want to just pick one of those for the post and then expand into that. So if you open up your notes app on your phone and you can start to make a list, not a list of the problems that you're working with, but a list of the activities that your clients come in talking about. So what are they doing? Start with the obvious ones. Running, cycling, golf, gardening, parenting, working at a computer. You could go on and on, I'm sure. What are the activities that are specific to the people in your community? Maybe there's a huge cycling community where you live. Maybe everybody plays pickleball. Maybe you've got a lot of teachers in your area, maybe you're surrounded by farmers, or you're in a tourist town where people are constantly hiking and walking. Or maybe you work with a ton of commuters who spend an hour in their car every day. That kind of stuff is local marketing gold. Because now you're not just talking about massage, you're talking about the lives of the people who live around you. And that's a much more interesting place to build your marketing from. So let's turn one of those into some content. Let's say gardening. Rather than making a post of massage can help with back pain after gardening, make it sound like an actual person. Something like spent all weekend in the garden and now your back is mad at you. Or three things I wish every gardener knew before spending six hours bent over a garden bed. That is a good post. That's a hook that's gonna catch their attention. Or maybe you tell a client story like a client came in this week after spending the entire weekend getting her garden ready, and here's the thing she didn't realize about why she was so uncomfortable, and then go further into what is actually happening in her body from that activity. Now you're teaching, now you're telling a story, you're talking to a specific person, and you're using the exact kind of situation that your clients are actually living. That's what I mean by activity. And you can do this with any client. So let's say you have a client that is a runner, instead of massage for runners, you could try something like your first long run of the season felt great until you tried to walk downstairs the next morning. Or activity of sitting at a computer instead of massage for office workers, try something like if your shoulders are killing you from sitting at the computer for 10 hours straight while working from home for parents, parenting as the activity. Instead of massage for moms, try if you've spent the last three years carrying a child, a diaper bag, and approximately 17 random items everywhere you go. So, see, that's much more specific. We're not just describing a demographic, we're describing a life, and that's where people are gonna recognize their lives and your content. So, as I mentioned at the beginning, you also don't want to just talk about the activity that has caused the problem, but you also want to talk about activities that your client wants to get back to. Because that's so that's a different kind of content. Maybe your client doesn't care about having less shoulder tension, they care about playing 18 holes without their shoulder bothering them. Maybe they don't care about hip mobility, they care about getting back to running. Maybe they don't care about reducing back pain, they care about being able to garden for three hours on Saturday, and that is a much more meaningful outcome. And that connects back to the bigger messaging principle that we're not just describing the problem, we're helping someone picture the transformation that they want. So when you're listening to your clients, listen for both sides the activities that have caused the problems and the activities that they want to get back to that they've been missing out on because of the problem. So here's your one thing for this week. Think about your last 10 clients and write down what were they doing? What were they doing before they started hurting? What are they doing every week? What do they love doing? What do they want to get back to? And then take one of those activities and turn it into a sentence that sounds like something your client would actually say. That's where your content can get really interesting. Not when you talk more about massage, but when you start talking about their life. And that is a activity. Once you start seeing it, you're gonna notice it everywhere. The gardener, the runner, the golfer, the hockey parent, the desk worker, the new mom. So I'm sure you're already hearing these things and seeing these things in your practice. It's just a matter of taking them and turning them into content for your massage marketing. Alright, next time we're moving on to the C in place, which is complaint, because activity tells us what they were doing, complaint tells us what they actually say about the problem. And that's where we can start stealing their exact language, not from marketers, not marketing lingo or massage lingo, but from the people actually coming and getting on your table. I'll see you next time on Two Miles Away. If you haven't already, you can hop over to the show notes to grab your copy of the free guide Post Like a Local that goes in depth of the place framework that we're talking about here. So you can get that on bodyworkmedia.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.