You’ve mastered one of the coolest and most important professions in the medical field. You’ve got your certification, membership in the AMTA and you love what you do. Now you’re running a business though, and that’s different.
I am a huge fan of massage therapy (more on why that is at the bottom of this article), and from the folks I have talked to, in or out of session, the challenge of re-aligning a rib cage (like my situation) is more appealing than the financial and business side of their practice.
Using your data, though, can pave the way for profit and make the business-side of your practice a lot easier. I promise! In this post, we will review 5 important KPIs for massage therapists.
Starting simple
If you’re just getting started tracking metrics, pick something that you know matters a lot to you – and something that you may roughly know off hand!
For example, if you know that your average customer spends $500 in 6 months, then you can say that they’ll spend $1,000 in a year. If you want to bring in $100k in revenue for the year, then you’ll need 100 clients.
Whether you’re trying to make an entire corporate budget, or simply seeing what you can pay yourself in your solo practice, a simple exercise like that can pave the way and get you off to a great start!
Top KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for Massage Therapists
1. Average Client Spend
As I mentioned above, this is a great metric that can set the tone for a lot of others.
Don’t worry about knowing the lifetime value of a client just yet – that is important but it can come later. Just gather some data over a 6 month time period.
To calculate this, simply gather your revenue and the number of clients you saw during that time period. Then, divide Revenue / Number of Clients and you have your Average Client Spend!
From there, you can project out your future revenue, back into how many clients you need to pay yourself what you want, and if you invest in a marketing avenue, you’ll know how many clients you need to get from that to make it a success!
2. Repeat Visit Rate
This can be tied to the Average Client Spend KPI. This is answering the question “how often do client come in for a session?” The true metric would be taking an average of everyone so you know that when you get a new client, you can have an expectation set. If they come in more regularly, excellent! If they come in less frequently, it’s okay because, statistically, the next new client will come in more regularly
The math behind this metric is Number of Sessions / Number of Clients over a certain time period. It might get a little messy when you’re factoring in new clients vs existing ones, and you can account for that by only looking at existing, but that simple average will give you enough to base an expectation off of.
3. Hourly Rate
Your time is your inventory! Except for the things like sheets, lotions, etc., your time is your inventory. I know most sessions are booked with a time component to them, but knowing your hourly rate is important.
Once you factor in tips, extended sessions (even an extra 5 minutes), non-revenue generating time (like emails), etc. the numbers can get a little fuzzy to know off hand. Track your time and your revenue to get a true hourly rate and you’ll have the confidence to know that every hour you put into your business, you’re getting a return.
4. Customer Acquisition Cost
From a marketing perspective, how efficient are your activities? This metric can help with that. Gather up all of the money you spend on marketing activities (including referral discounts/bonuses) and see how many clients you got from them. Dividing Marketing Spend / New Clients gives you Customer Acquisition Cost and the more effective you are, then lower than number goes.
5. Customer Satisfaction
This could be the buzzword “net promoter score” where clients give you feedback on a 1 – 10 scale based on how likely they are to refer you, but there are other ways too. I’m not discounting NPS (Net Promoter Score) as there is a place for it, but there are a lot of new ways you can get a similar reading too.
The goal of this is to see how you’re doing so you can always be improving, but also to show it off to new potential clients. You could send out surveys with the NPS question, 3 emoji faces ranging from happy to sad, ask for a Google review, or any other way you can get this feedback. Your clients are your best sales folks and it’s important to know what they think about you!
If you’re able to stay on top of one of these metrics, you’ll immediately start seeing the benefits. If you can stay on top of all 5 massage therapy KPIs, your business will be a well-oiled machine and you can focus on taking care of clients!
About Jack Tompkins and Pineapple Consulting Firm
Pineapple Consulting Firm is a data analytics company that helps small businesses become more data-driven. We create small business KPI dashboards for clients and analyze the results to help clients visualize, know, and build a strategy from their numbers.
Jack Tompkins is the owner of Pineapple Consulting Firm and has been going to massage therapy since high school. He had a chronic rib issue that impacted his breathing daily. When doctors couldn’t find a reason for it and he couldn’t exercise for a month, one massage therapy session had him playing in a hockey game that same night. He’s been going to massage therapy ever since!
Author: Jack Tompkins
I'm the managing partner and founder of Pineapple Consulting Firm, based in Charlotte, NC and I love helping small businesses with data driven decisions from their custom dashboards!