Organic Massage

Well, it would be a stretch to say that there is such a thing as Organic Massage, and there are of course organic massage oils such as Certified Organic Sunflower Oil, Certified Organic Safflower Oil, Certified Organic Olive Oil,Certified Jojoba Oil, and non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) Vitamin E,  but this is a column about organic eating and organic massage marketing.

In the last couple of years, more of our local Smith’s grocery Store in Jackson Hole has been given over to organic fruits and vegetables. This could be in direct response to therecent opening of a huge new Jackson Whole Grocer just up the street. Or it could be Safeway taking a genuine interest in their customers’ health and responding to market forces. But every time I go into a store and see the word ‘Organic’ I become the skeptic and remember the discussion in Michael Pollan’s book: ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma”. He says that far too many food companies are getting on the ‘organic’ bandwagon – just to increase profits (markups on anything that says ‘organic’ are  many more times than non-organic) – when in fact there isn’t really that much of an organic nature to these foods. It’s a bit like ‘green-washing’ – when a company that pours millions of gallons of toxic waste into our rivers gets a ‘green’ award because it recycles its office paper!

Then there’s another kind of organic – which is how we’re growing our business at Massage Professionals of Jackson Hole. So maybe we’re getting closer to Organic Massage.

There’s organic in the way Massage Professionals of Jackson Hole is gaining positioning in the search engine rankings, and there’s organic in the way we’re slowly increasing our customer base. That is: we’re not spending money on link farms, buying Facebook ‘Likes’ or Twitter followers and so on. Those things can bring in vast numbers but it’s not a good way to go and is detected by the search engine crawlers as ‘underhanded’ and will cost  more than money in the end. It will cost of massage business credibility. Search engine rankings are being increased in three ways: 1) Rochelle is working hard (she started with one to two hours every day) participating in lively SM correspondence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus.  2) Our new web site www.massageprofessionalsJacksonHole.com is totally dialed-in, with ‘responsive’ capabilities to show up on mobile devices, and  3) The blog – such as this post. It’s important to keep it rich in keyword phrases and content – although you won’t see the word ‘Massage’ or ‘Jackson Hole’ written up too much in this week’s post. Another way we’re doing it organically is simply by growing the business slowly. We recently turned down the opportunity to take over an established massage business in Jackson Hole. There are beautiful premises with four nicely decorated rooms, inexpensive rent, a customer base and a very advanced responsive web site. We turned it down because we’d rather grow into that kind of positioning than purchase it all. It just seemed like the better way to go. We’ll grow by reputation one customer at a time – and that’s organic. And then, who knows, maybe one day we’ll discover Organic Massage as well – but if we do, it will be slowly – and organically.

Be well,

Hamish and Rochelle