A "life coach" once left a comment under a massage therapist's reel saying she'd never book with an MT who "posts about her clients personally." Cool story… except that's not even close to what was happening.

That mix-up is the perfect way into E in the PLACE framework: Emotion. This episode is about the difference between exploiting a client's story and simply understanding one - and why the second one is what actually gets your local content to land.

Takeaways

• Emotion means feeling, not diagnosis. You're not marketing the ache, you're marketing what it feels like to carry it.
• Specificity about an experience is not disclosure about a person. You can describe a feeling in vivid, exact language without ever naming who it belongs to.
• Pattern-recognition is your job. Psychoanalysis is not. This episode draws a clear scope-of-practice line: noticing what your clients' bodies and words tell you is within your lane. Prompting clients to process trauma or turning your table into a couch is not… that's out of scope for most massage therapists.
• "She gets it" is the whole strategy. When a caption makes someone think "wait, that's me," they're responding to feeling seen before they've ever met you. That's not a sales pitch. That's local marketing at its best.
• Privacy is non-negotiable. No identifying details, no traceable timelines, no "my client who just went through X" even softened. Speak to the pattern, never the person.

The Story

This episode centers on Jessica, a massage therapist who's been leaning hard into consistent, specific local content. Jessica posted a reel about something she does intentionally in her marketing: she uses her clients' own words (their language, not their names or stories) to describe what people are feeling when they walk through her door.

Her clients have told her, unprompted, that it's exactly why they booked. Some have repeated her own captions back to her almost word for word, because something she wrote described a feeling they hadn't been able to put into words themselves.

Here's the caption that sparked the whole episode:

"Massage is personal. That does not mean your personal business becomes my content.

My clients tell me all the time that they see themselves in what I post. Sometimes they repeat my own words back to me almost verbatim because something I said described exactly what they were feeling.

That is intentional.

I pay attention to people. I notice patterns. I speak to real experiences without sharing the private details that belong to someone else.

If you keep watching my content and thinking, 'She gets it,' you may already know who you need to book with."

The One Thing (Live Segment)

Think of a phrase…an actual sentence… you've heard from more than one client over the years. Not a diagnosis. A feeling sentence. Something like "I feel guilty even booking this for myself."

Strip out anything that ties it to one specific person, then hand the feeling back in a caption line:

"You are allowed to book something just for you. No milestone required. No permission slip needed."

No names. No timelines. Just the feeling, translated. That's Emotion in PLACE done in about fifteen seconds. Try it with your own phrase this week.

Up Next

We're closing out the series with P: Profession, the last letter in PLACE.

Ready to bring this whole series together? Comment TWO MILES on any of my Instagram posts and I'll send the free guide straight to your inbox.

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you

Your clients are already handing you your best content ideas…they're just doing it out loud, on your table, in their own words. In this episode of Two Miles Away, we're covering the C in the PLACE framework: Complaint, and why the exact language your clients use to describe their pain is more powerful marketing copy than anything you'd write yourself.

What's in this episode

• A quick recap of the PLACE framework (Profession, Location, Activity, Complaint, Emotion) and why you only need 2–3 elements per post, not all 5
• Why "complaint" doesn't mean diagnosis, it means the real, unfiltered way your clients describe what's bothering them
• How to start collecting complaint language directly from your sessions (hint: it starts with your Notes app)
• Real examples of turning a complaint into a post on its own, then pairing it with Activity, Profession, and Location to make it hyper-local and specific
• A first look at how Complaint sets up Emotion - the next piece of the framework, coming in Episode 9

The takeaway

Generic content sounds like a brochure: "improved circulation," "stress reduction," "self-care." True, but forgettable. Specific content sounds like a person: "my shoulders are killing me by 5pm." That second version is what makes someone stop scrolling and think, "she gets me"... and recognition is the first step toward booking, even if it's not today.

Try this: the One Thing

Open the Notes app on your phone right now and write down 10 actual complaints you've heard from clients recently. Not the clinical version, their exact words. Then pair each one with a second PLACE element (Profession, Location, Activity, or Emotion). That list is your next batch of content ideas.

Want the shortcut?

Comment TWO MILES on any of my Instagram posts [@massage_marketing_done_for_you] and I’ll send you the free Post Like a Local guide to help you get started.

Next episode, we're going one layer deeper with the E in PLACE: Emotion - and why your clients don't just have complaints, they have feelings about them.

Listen to the full episode above, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you

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

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you

You've been using this formula since episode one. You just didn't know it had a name.

If the last thing you posted on Instagram could've been posted by a massage therapist in Ohio, Oregon, or Florida... and nobody would know the difference... this episode is for you. Today I'm finally naming the thing I've been teaching you in pieces this whole show: PLACE.

What PLACE Actually Stands For

Profession, Location, Activity, Complaint, Emotion.

Five ingredients. Without two or more of these, your content goes generic. It goes invisible. It becomes background noise.

Here's why this matters so much for solo MTs specifically: we're not trying to go viral. We're not trying to reach someone in another state, another time zone. We're trying to reach one specific kind of person, doing one specific kind of thing, feeling one specific kind of way, within about two miles of our table.

PLACE is the formula that makes sure your content is actually built to do that job (instead of just being content for content's sake).

Breaking Down Each Letter

P is for Profession and this is the client's profession, not yours. A nurse on her feet twelve hours a shift. A hairstylist hunched over a chair all day. A teacher bending down to kid-height forty times a day. Naming it makes the reader feel like you wrote the caption specifically for them, before they even get to the rest of it.

L is for Location the one everyone skips because it feels too obvious. Except it's the single highest-leverage thing you can do. Naming your actual neighborhood is what gets you in front of someone searching "massage near me" right now, today, in pain, ready to book. (This is exactly what happened with Hillary's story back in episode one — her reel surfaced directly on her Google Business Profile because of how specifically she tied her content to her location. That wasn't luck. That was Location, done on purpose.)

A is for Activity what is this person physically doing in their life that's causing them to need you? A runner. A new parent lifting a car seat forty times a day. A desk worker sitting nine hours straight. Activity turns "I do massage" into "I help people who [specific physical thing] feel human again."

C is for Complaint the actual physical thing bothering them. Not "stress." Not "tension." Low back pain after long drives. Tight shoulders from breastfeeding. Headaches from jaw clenching. Vague complaints get vague attention. Specific complaints get oh my god, yes, that's me attention.

E is for Emotion how they feel emotionally around the complaint. Frustrated nothing's worked. Embarrassed they're "too young" to feel this beat up. Relieved the second they get on the table. Emotion is what makes content feel human instead of an ad.

Put all five together and instead of "Massage therapy offers many benefits," you get something like:

That's not a caption. That's a conversation with one specific person.

And PLACE isn't a one-time content idea, it's a lens. Every caption, every reel, every carousel runs through this filter from now on.

This Week's One Thing

Take whatever you already have scheduled to post next. Don't create something new, just grab what's sitting there. Run it through PLACE: Profession, Location, Activity, Complaint, Emotion. See which ones are missing. Fill them in. Post it and see what happens.

Loved this episode? Comment TWOMILES on this week's post and I'll get you the cheat-sheet version.

Next week: something I haven't talked about yet on this show. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening.

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you

TWO MILES AWAY | Episode 3: Your Location Is Your Niche

Most massage therapists are being told to niche down by specialty - pick a modality, pick a client type, build your whole identity around it. But what if you already have a niche and just aren't using it? In this episode, Cindy makes the case that your location is your niche. Mainstream marketing advice is built for businesses that scale nationally, and that's not us. Solo MTs are competing for the attention of people within a five-mile radius, and most of them are already searching "massage near me." The client who's about to book with you isn't in another state... they're two miles away.

What's in this episode:

• Why "niche down by specialty" advice doesn't actually apply to solo massage therapists
• The difference between competing globally vs. getting found locally
• Why your zip code might be the most powerful niche you already have
• How Google rewards specificity of place (sometimes more than service type)
• Why local content has dramatically less competition than broad wellness content
• A real-world example of a massage therapist with great content who was completely unfindable by location, and what it cost her

Tip for This Week:

Pull up your most recent social post or your Instagram bio and ask yourself: if a potential client saw this with zero context, would they know where you are? Not your website, not your booking link... the post itself. If the answer is no, that's your next fix. Add your city, your neighborhood, a local landmark, something that tells the algorithm and the human reading it exactly where you are.

Find me on Instagram: @massage_marketing_done_for_you