What can massage therapists say about benefits in their marketing?
Claims about treating, curing or relieving conditions are constrained, and the rules vary by state and licensing board. Describing what a session involves and what the experience is like avoids the issue while still informing the reader.
This is the most consequential marketing constraint in the profession, and it varies by jurisdiction.
Claims about treating, curing, relieving or managing specific conditions are generally restricted, and the rules are set by state licensing boards and in some cases by broader advertising regulation. What one therapist may say in one state may not be permissible in another.
Confirm what you may state with your own licensing board before publishing service descriptions. This is not an area to work from general guidance, including this answer.
What is generally safer and, usefully, converts better anyway:
- Describe the experience of a session. Pressure, pacing, what areas are worked, what it feels like. This is what a prospective client is actually trying to picture.
- Describe the modality rather than its effects. What deep tissue work involves rather than what it fixes.
- Let clients describe their own goals in intake rather than claiming outcomes in advertising.
The practical upside is that experience-focused descriptions answer the first-time client's real question, which is what will this be like, rather than a question they were not asking.
