Martial Arts Business Success in 2010
December 30, 2009 by Ryan Wheaton
Filed under Business
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.
- If you haven’t already done so, implement everything I talked about in Make Your Martial Arts School More Successful in 2009.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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I'm Ryan Wheaton. I'm a marketer, martial artist and martial arts school owner. My website 
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Great article, Ryan! I’ve implemented social networking pages already (FB, Twitter) with various levels of success. One of the things on the list I’ll try is increasing email capture on signup / keeping it current. There are HUGE changes going on at Olney Taekwondo Center. In fact, the school theme for 2010 is “Change is good.” Best of luck in 2010. Your articles are detailed, informative, and very useful!!
Cindy,
Good to see you commenting on here again and thanks for your kind words. P.S. Your site is shaping up nicely! You should consider making your offer more prominent and on it’s own page in the upper navigation that says “Free Trial.”
Ryan