Martial Arts Business Success in 2010

2009 was a brutal year for many martial arts school owners. To help you spring into 2010 with a little more juice, here is my top 10 list of martial arts business and marketing tips to help your martial arts school become even more successful in the New Year.

1. If you haven’t already done so, implement everything I talked about in Make Your Martial Arts School More Successful in 2009.
2. Start doing online videos. You can do martial arts commercials, demonstrations, interviews..whatever. Host them on YouTube.com for free then pipe them into your website.
3. Create a Facebook Fan Page. In the age of social media, it’s time to set up a Facebook Fan page. This is a great tool for retention as as well as prospecting. I get interaction from my students on virtually every post I make.
4. Test Twitter. You’ll definitely want to experiment with this one. It might work for you and it might not. I don’t personally have a lot of students interacting on Twitter but still use it to get out information pertaining to my martial arts school. As this becomes even more mainstream, you will be ahead of the curve if you start using this now as you build your legion of faithful followers.
5. Test paid search. Paid search is the sponsored advertising you see in the search engines like Google. You pay for clicks on a keyword basis.  The more you’re willing to pay, the higher up in the ads you are. I highly recommend you start with Google. It’s the easiest and most effective system there is where you can send targeted prospects to your martial arts schools website in a relatively cost effective manner.
6. Create a member’s area on your website. This is a great tool for retention. Some say you shouldn’t restrict this area (it can help with recruitment) while other’s say make it password protected (makes it more exclusive). I personally have mine behind a password protected area as it is a competitive advantage. Whichever way you choose, you can house a private forum… how to videos… curriculum downloads… training tips… and more. The important thing is to make it worth visiting often and that it becomes a valuable supplement to your students training.
7. Build a list. This is one of the best things you can do for your martial arts school. Segment your students vs. prospects and send them different messages.
8. Show your students you care. Don’t just do this once and think you’re covered. It’s something you need to do often in conjunction with offering remarkable classes in order to maximize retention.
9. Create irresistible offers. This will help you to attract and sign up new students.  Learn How to Create an Irresistible Offer Your Prospects Can’t Refuse and 10 Types of Irresistible Offers You Can Make to Prospects.
10. Ask yourself 10 essential martial arts business questions for 2010.

I hope this helps and wish you great success in 2010! I look forward to hearing how you’re doing to build and grow your school.

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Blanketing the Search Engines

When it comes to marketing your business online do you solely rely on your martial arts school’s website to drive potential new students to your business or do you blanket the search engines?

I subscribe to the theory of blanketing the search engines and use a lot of third party websites to help give my salt lake city utah martial arts school more of a presence. This way I have more than one opportunity in the search results to attract potential new students.

Some might call this a shotgun approach but in online marketing relying on only one thing (your website) is just plain a bad idea. While it certainly should be a primary focus, you should also consider using these other tools to help build and grow your martial arts school as it gives you more opportunity to get your prospects attention.

Some examples to help you blanket your search results include local business directories, social media sites and paid search.

Local Directories

1. Google.com/local
2. local.yahoo.com
3. Bing.com/local
4. Yelp.com
5. InsiderPages.com
6. CitySearch.com
7. SuperPages.com
8. Local.com

With the directories mentioned above that are owned by a search engine, your school can be included in the local maps that appear at the top of the search results pages.

Further, the search engines weigh heavily on the local directories in many markets. Sometimes they list the directory (a ton of local martial arts businesses) and sometimes they list specific martial arts businesses. Either way, if it’s indexed and ranking well, you have a chance at more eyeballs looking at your page.

Social Media Sites

1. Facebook Fan Pages
2. Twitter
3. FriendFeed
4. YouTube
5. Flickr

The search engines love social media sites as they find them highly relevant because they are updated so frequently, among other reasons.

Paid Search

1. Google Adwords
2. Yahoo Advertising
3. Bing/Microsoft Advertising
4. Facebook Ads

Another big idea to consider is paid search. This is where you pay a search engine on a per click basis to have an ad in the “sponsored ads” section of the search results. You bid on different keywords for higher placement. So long as your daily budget isn’t exhausted and your competitors don’t outbid you, you’re in good shape. This can also be highly cost effective depending on your market. More on that in future posts.

With all of these sites and resources helping to blanket the search results, I don’t have to worry if one particular third party site gets devalued in the search results because Google was having a bad day. I have plenty of others to help pick up the slack. And, with paid search, you have a presence even if your website or other sites aren’t ranking well.

The great thing about this is that all of these, with the exception of Google’s Adwords, are free. And, best of all, these all drive people back to my lead generation website one way or another.

Blanketing the search engines is a good idea for your business. The more spaces you occupy in the search results the better your chances are at attracting more potential students.

Do you blanket the search engines? How do you do  it?

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10 Essential Martial Arts Business Questions for 2010

Like any good martial arts instructor, sometimes it best to ask questions rather than give answers all the time. This way, you might uncover things more critical to your operation and business and it will mean more when it’s your idea.

Here are 10 questions to help your martial arts business grow in 2010:

1. How can I make my students lives easier/better?
   Always put your students first. Thinking about this might help you to uncover a new service or program you didn’t have before or how to improve existing ones.  You could consider offering more convenient hours, DVD’s, curriculum manuals, etc.
2. What are the biggest opportunities right now for my martial arts school to grow?
   Determining this will help you attack the low hanging fruit you need to give your business a much needed shot in the arm. What is the simplest things you can do that will give you the biggest bang for your buck?
3. What information do my instructors need right now?
   This speaks to direction, motivation and purpose. Rally the troops to make sure you’re all on the same page for the New Year. Share with them your vision and teach them how to improve. The last thing you need is instructors making this all up as they go along.
4. What systems can I set up to make my business run more efficiently?
   If you don’t have any, now is a good time to start. This could be as simple as create a system for answering the phone, teaching a trial program, teaching a class, greeting prospective new students, scheduling appointments, etc.  The more systems you have in place, the more efficient your operation becomes.
5. How can I increase my bottom line?
   Evaluate how many revenue streams you have and determine if you can create any more relevant ones. You can even work on ideas of how to get more out of your existing sources. Look at possibly adding new programs, upsells, cross sells, merchandise, seminars, etc.
6. What business skills do I need to improve upon?
   You know where you’re strong and where you’re weak. Work on things that need the most help. For some this might be marketing. For others, networking. Whatever “it” is, take a class… read a blog … buy a book.. subscribe to a magazine… get a mentor. Whatever you can do to improve the desired skill set.
7. What can I do to make it easier to do business with me?
   You might be hard to do business with and not even know it. Look at things like you sign up process, if you accept credit cards, are you easy to contact, etc. How can you make it even easier?
8. What can I do to retain more students?
   First you need to keep track of your stats to know if this is even a problem.  If your back door is busier than your front door, you’ve got some serious problems to fix! The key is to keep your students excited and engaged in their training. Ideas to help keep more students includes offering free private lessons, adding new classes and programs as well as introducing new drills and class formats.
9. How can I get more referrals?
   This is the lifeblood of the most successful martial arts schools. If you don’t have a referral program in place, get on it! Learn more about referral programs here.
10. How can I get “on” my business instead of “in” it?
    Are you in the trenches everyday answering phones… greeting walk in’s… teaching every class… private lessons… or do you have the resources and staff to help you be the visionary for your martial arts school? Read “E-Myth” by Michael Gerber for more information on this subject. A must read (WARNING: he’s a bit of wind bag but makes some great points).

What questions would you add to this list?

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Email Marketing that Gets Prospective Martial Arts Students to Respond

This question came from one of our readers, John Young, in response to one of my posts (I need your help). Here is John’s question:

What is the best type of message to send out to potential new students? Those who sign up for more information on our school’s site receive an email I send to them. The emails contain all the information about a trial program and the procedure to follow to sign up. However, many of our leads do not respond to the email. Is there any guidelines for us to follow, when writing a message, that will make them want to pick up the phone or email back about joining our trial program?

And, the answer is yes, there are absolutely things you want to include that will help prospects want to respond.

Before I go into all that, let me say this topic is actually one of my favorites in online marketing.

The reasons is because the use of Email has transformed my business. I still get (and return phone) calls but the ratio is totally lopsided now at about 15:1 emails to phone calls.

Let’s just say I’ve learned a lot in the last nine years of replying to emails from potential students and converting them to students. And, if I had to do it all over again, I would make sure I started my business with email marketing just as I did from day one. It’s that important.

Now back to John’s question…

Here’s how you can increase response rates using email:

Email Basics

1. Have permission – Make sure you’re only sending emails to people who have directly asked you for it. Do not buy lists and send emails to people who haven’t requested information. This is SPAM.
2. Send frequent emails - Most martial arts schools send one email to their prospect and expect them to respond. Then they don’t send any follow up emails because they don’t think the prospect is interested. Remember, it can take up to 7 contacts before someone responds. This is a marathon and not a sprint.
3. Develop a campaign – Devise say 8 emails that are automatically are sent out of a course of 3 months with more frequency in the beginning and less towards the end of three months. Then test to see at what point you’re getting the most response then tune up your campaign as you get more people to respond closer to the time of sign up. Remember, that’s when they’re most interested so you have to front load the “good stuff” early. You can even write follow ups that are sent in 15-30 day increments so you can keep in touch.
4. Timing of emails – Timing is everything. You should have a system set up to instantly respond to inquiries. You can’t wait until the next day, you have to begin the process the second someone emails you because, again, you have to act while the prospect is most interested.
5. Use email software – This is one of the best investments you can make. I use Aweber.com to keep in touch with all my prospects, current students and past clients. This way, I don’t have to retype a ton of repetitive emails. I can send custom emails to all of my lists or just to some people on my list. My system responds 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. The best part is that no matter what time of day a person requests for more information, they instantly get an email from me…even when I’m sleeping.

Email Message Strategies

1. Subject line - I will actually do a separate post on this topic but needless to say it must capture your prospects attention and get them to want to read the rest of your email. Testing the best headlines for open rates is something you want to do and can easily do using Aweber.com.
2. Make an offer – Making an offer in your email will definitely help increase response rates. A hard offer is where you are stating specifically what they’ll receive by responding… “Receive one month of lessons with a black belt instructor for only $49!” while a soft offer is passive… “Contact us to learn about our holiday special” where there isn’t anything specific mentioned.
3. Call to action – A good call to action includes urging the prospect to respond now, includes the deadline, restates the offer and provides an easy way to contact you.  Are you using strong calls to action or just hoping they know they should contact you now? Sending an email doesn’t automatically mean you expect a response. You have to ask for it.
4. Use hard deadlines – This alone can significantly increase response rates. When people there is a time limit, it drives them to take action. With no deadlines, people know they can put this off.
5. Social proof – Another good thing to include is social proof like testimonials or that other people are taking you up on your offer. If you’re sending HTML emails you can include photos with testimonials, which can be very powerful.
6. Keep emails on point- Your email shouldn’t be long winded. Keep it on point and remember you can break the message up into multiple emails.  This way, you get the benefit of frequent messages and demonstrates you respect your prospects time. Plus, you maximize the communication.

Further, if you have a lot of references to “free” in your email, you might be getting caught in spam filters at a mail client level or at the ISP level. Here are some other words and phrases that might flag your email as spam:

• 50% off!
• Click Here
• Call now!
• Subscribe
• Discount!
• You’re a Winner!
• Information you requested
• “Stop” or “Stops”
• Lose Weight
• Opportunity
• Amazing
• Satisfaction Guaranteed

John, I hope this thoroughly answered your question and that it helped give you some ideas to consider to get more response to your email.

For everyone else with experience, what else would you add to this list of important email ideas?

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Top Posts for November 2009

Here are the top 5 posts for Marketing Martial Arts in Novemeber 2009; according to how many times they were uniquely viewed by our visitors:

1. 50 Killer Ideas for Building a More Profitable Martial Arts School
2. 10 Types of Irresistible Offers You Can Make to Prospects
3. All Professional Martial Arts Schools are McDojos
4. 35 Direct Response Techniques that Improve Response Rates
5. Top 8 Pages Every Martial Arts School’s Website Should Have
   

Make sure to check out our martial arts marketing forum where you can get answers from fellow martial arts school owners.

As always I highly encourage you to share your thoughts in the form of a comment at the end of each post.

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Apologies

I’ll be honest.

I totally blew it in November.

I only was only able to get one post live.

That is a new record low for me and I hang my head in shame.

But, I promise to do better and December will be a much better month, I promise.

In fact, I’ll give you a little heads up on what I’ve been working on in hopes it will make up a little for the lack of posts.

Here we go…

I have two articles ready to go live which I’m excited about. One is called “10 Things You Need to do for Greater Success in 2010″ and the other talks about email marketing strategies that get your prospects to respond.

Both of which are based on my own marketing plan so stay tuned.

Not only that, but I will kick off a new series on search engine optimization. We’ll cover all of the ABS’s and 123s to help you get your Martial Arts school ranked for the right keywords in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

So, stay tuned as there is a lot more to come!

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