Marketing Martial Arts

January 23, 2012 By Ryan Wheaton Leave a Comment

Negative Reviews in Local Search Results May Be Killing Your Online Reputation

At one time or another, we’ve all had a bad experiences with a service or business that makes us never want to go back. Ever.

It’s happened.

It’s going to happen again.

Now, if it happens to you, it happens to your customers.

And, they may have just had one of those dreaded experiences at your martial arts school.

Nowadays, people turn to online local directories like Google Places or Yelp to share their experience as a warning to others.

You can choose to ignore negative reviews or respond to them head on.

The choice is yours.

How often do you monitor your reviews online?

Having positive reviews has always been important but having positive online review is absolutely critical in today’s online obsessed world.

But what do you do when you have even one negative review in a sea of positive reviews? What do you do when you have more negative reviews than positive?

You can’t just ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

It won’t.

And it can (and will) only get worse.

You have to respond and try and make things right.

By saying nothing, you’re basically telling everyone who reads this you don’t care enough to respond and that person (more importantly) is right.

Either way, it’s bad for business.

It’s Time to Audit Your Reviews

If you haven’t done this in a while for your martial arts school, I highly recommend you take a look at what’s being said and what kind of rankings you are receiving. I hope you’re pleasantly surprised to find all positive reviews.

However, you might be surprised to find out that you have unhappy former students leaving one star reviews with a laundry list of all that’s wrong and evil with your business for your potential future students to read.

While there is no real way to calculate the true impact to your business, I think we can agree that it definitely hurts you. And bad.

What if the following example was your martial arts school?

Imagine what it would be like to load up your page and find that you have multiple negative reviews for your martial arts school.

That’s probably going to happen this martial arts school’s owner someday.

Check this out…

If you look at the red circles above, you’ll see that potential customers indicated that those reviews helped them. I don’t know about you, but I read those to mean “Hell no! I’ll never ever, never ever train here. Ever!” and can’t picture the person saying “Oh hell yes! I cant wait to send my kids here and pay all those hidden fees!”

Sadly, from the looks of things, this owner hasn’t ever looked at these reviews.

You can tell because they haven’t responded to them. Either they don’t care (which would be shocking), they don’t want to respond, or they don’t know they can respond (which they can as a verified owner of the page).

I’m hoping for the later but you never know.

What do you think?

I really want to know what you think about this and how you would handle it.

If this was your business, how would you respond? Would you take the same approach as this martial arts school owner and say nothing? Has this ever happened to you? How did you respond? Share with our community in a comment below!

Popularity: 1%

January 19, 2012 By Ryan Wheaton Leave a Comment

How to Add a Facebook Like Box to Your Website

If you’re looking to get more people to “like” your Facebook Fan Page for your martial arts school, this post will give you an idea on how to do that for yourself simply and easily.

Why create a Facebook Like Box?

If you’ve visited Marketing Martial Arts lately, you’ve probably seen an example of this in the right hand column. I added this to the site a while back and have enjoyed seeing an increase in the amount of followers on Facebook each and every month. It’s become one of the best ways to get people to like my page that I’ve found and wanted to share the idea with you so you knew how to add it to your site, too.

I think this works so well because it provides “social proof” that other people like your page. Social proof is an important marketing concept and is one you should definitely add to your marketing arsenal. Think of these almost like positive testimonials of your business.

Not only that, but by adding the Facebook Like Box, you’ll be able to make it a “one click” process for someone to like your page from your website without having to go to Facebook to do it.

How to Get a Like Box

Getting a Facebook Like Box is simple – visit the Developers Page for the Like Box on Facebook then complete the Like Box generator form. Once done, you can cut and paste it into the code of your website.

You have a lot of choices on how the like box is presented, including:

Facebook Page URL – Add your Facebook URL here
Width – Enter in the desired pixel width of your like box.
Height – You can either leave this blank or your can enter in the pixel height if your website’s design only allows a certain amount of vertical space.
Color Scheme – Choose from “light” or “dark” options.
Choose Faces – This is an on/off switch that lets you display a sample of the people who already like your page along with their profile photo.
Border Color – Add the hexadecimal color of your choice for your border, if you want one.
Show Stream – This is an on/off switch that lets you display your posts from from your Facebook page.
Show Header – This on/off switch either automatically adds “Find us on Facebook” text at the top or removes it.

If you’re looking for a smaller solution, you can also add the Facebook Like Button instead. Either way, it’s a very similar process.

Does anyone else use this on their website? What results have you seen? Share with our community in a comment below!

Popularity: 2%

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: facebook, social media

December 27, 2011 By Ryan Wheaton Leave a Comment

Newsletter Marketing Made Simple

Sending a monthly email newsletters for your martial arts schools can increase awareness for your service, increases repeat business and turn existing students in a sales people for your business. Not only that, but it can also build your reputation as local expert, help you to get the word out on events and promotions, and help reinforce your brand.

Building an email list of your customers and prospective customers helps you to keep in touch and soft-sell your services and can help you establish trust, add value and build community.

If you’re new to email marketing, be sure to get up to speed on some of the email marketing basics here.

And, setting up and delivering an email newsletter is easier than you think. Not only that, building a list is one of the most important things you can do for your business.

I’m often asked who I use and the answer is simple. I use AWeber.com email newsletter software and they can also help you build a list, manage it and message to it as little or as often as you want. What I like most about AWeber.com is how easily I can set up, schedule, and segment newsletters.

Why AWeber.com

Of all the email software companies out there, I use AWeber.com and have been with them since 2005. As an internet marketer, I sign up for a ton of email lists. And, I began noticing a lot of companies were using them so I suspected they were trusted software provider. I took them up on their trial offer and have never looked back since.

AWeber.com provides automated tools so you can get set up quickly and easily. You just select your list name your want to use, then the design of the form you want to use, then you choose what fields you want then they generate the code for you so you can copy and paste it into the HTML of your website. The process is really simple and a great way to build a list so you can reach out each and every month.

In fact, I use AWeber.com to send emails automatically every time a new post goes live. You can sign up for instant blog alerts here to see example of this in use.

AWeber.com Offers…

30-day trial for only $1
30-day money back guarantee
You can change your plan later
Monthly plans with no long term contracts
No set up fees
Over 150 template you can easily update
Tons of color schemes to match your branding
Easily add your logo and images
Tested in all major email clients
Personalization is a snap. Everything from first name to email address to date they joined and more.
Plain text and HTML options available

Learn more about AWeber.com email newsletter software here.

RSS to Email

If you have a blog, they offer a great feature where an email will be automatically be sent to a subscriber list every time you publish a new post. it simply connects to your RSS feed url. For those that are on my email list, that’s the service I use. You can set your preference on how many articles need to hit before it sends, what day you want it sent, the time, and more.

Key Metrics

Another important aspect is tracking your open rate. Open rate is determined by simply taking the number of people who viewed the email divided by the number of people on your list. And, they make that as simple as anything I’ve ever seen. You can determine who’s opened your emails, who hasn’t, who clicked your links, and more.

Simple Social Integration

They also offer Twitter and Facebook integration so you can instantly send your fans and followers a link to your newest emails. It will also create an archive of past newsletters.

Copy and Paste to Blog

You can even publish your email on your website so visitors can browse your past emails, share you content with others and help build your email list, Facebook likes and Twitter followers. They make it simple for you to copy and paste to your website if you wish.

How I use AWeber.com

I use AWeber.com email newsletter software in a lot of different ways to help me reach my existing students, past students and future students.

Monthly newsletters – Example–>
Blog to email delivery
Student’s only alerts
New member education program
Trial program updates
Special promotions and offers
Free guide requests
Contact form responses
And more.

You don’t have to be a programmer or be technologically oriented to use their software. Most of it is cut and paste friendly and they offer a ton of easy to follow instructions and demos.

AWeber.com email newsletter software helps me reach my members and potential members each month in a way that I can message them at the same time or separately if I want. You can create a students only list, a prospect list and more making segmenting as easy as point and click. I’ve never had problems with deliverability and experience high open rates so I know my emails are breaking through to their inboxes.

I could go on and on. Simply put, I highly recommend them. You just have to go check them out and see what I mean.

(NOTICE: I do make a little commission for each person who clicks my links and signs up with AWeber.com email newsletter software, but that isn’t the reason for this post. This just has really helped my business and I wanted you to know about it. If you don’t want me to make anything for any reason, just type in AWeber.com into your browser and I won’t make a dime).

Popularity: 4%

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: email, email marketing

November 21, 2011 By Ryan Wheaton Leave a Comment

Making the Most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday and Cyber represent some huge shopping days that can help your martial arts school boost revenue and get some new students while you’re at it.

Do you already have promotions already in place? Are you ready to capitalize on this shopping season? If not, here are some ideas to get you started.

Don’t Leave Money on the Table

Remember to create deals for both existing students as well as potential new students. I know a lot of martial art schools who only do one over the other. Don’t leave money on the table! Make it easy for both groups to buy from you.

For existing students:

Create a shopping event sale. Send your students and parents an invitation to come in and save on merchandise, private lessons, gift certificates or upgrades. Be sure to clearly state all the particulars including the who, what, where, when and why’s that will motivate your students to come in. Give them reason to spend more by creating a contest that automatically enters them into a contest for a prize. For example, spend over $300 to enter to win an Apple iPad 2!
Sell gift certificates. Family members are always looking for gift ideas. Make it easy to buy from you and offer a “buy now” option on your website. You can also offer a discount on trial program packages to your students so they can give them as gifts to their friends, co-workers or family members for the holidays. Consider using PayPal buy now buttons as they make it incredibly easy to add to your website and accept money online.

For potential new students:

Offer substantial savings on your trial program. This is where you can really pick up some momentum for the New Year. There are a lot of different ways to go about this including discounts, free bonuses, two for one, etc. Be sure to steal one these 17 offer ideas for your promotion. If you need help with other promotional offer ideas, steal one of these.
Gift certificates. Give the gift of self defense! By making it simple to buy trial program gift certificates on your website, you’re enabling people who don’t even go to your school to help spread the word.

Be sure to spread the word by updating:

Facebook – Update your logo graphics, write posts or even create an event if you’re having one.
Website – Create graphics and a page that you link to from every page on your site. Make it easy to find.
Flyers – Create a flyer and canvas locally. Don’t forget to post them within your school and give a stack to your students to hang up at work.
Email – If you have an email list (if not, check out aweber.com email solutions) send out an email to your list.

Good luck with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday efforts!

Popularity: 4%

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: black friday, cyber monday, offer, promotion

November 18, 2011 By Ryan Wheaton Leave a Comment

How to Generate a QR Code

Have you seen these funky square bar codes looking things in print or online and ever wondered what they were or how they work?

They’re called QR codes and creating them is actually really, really simple.

Why Create a QR Code

Creating a QR code allows anyone with smart phone and a QR reader app the ability to scan a code then be redirected to targeted content. It’s much simpler than writing down a URL as it automatically forwards them to the content.

How to Create a QR Code

Creating a QR is easier than you might think. And, best of all, it’s free.

With the QR Code Generator available from Kaywa, you can create QR codes that will forward anyone who scans one to:

URL
Text
Phone Number
SMS

How to use a QR Code

Using a QR is actually pretty flexible because they can be used in print material as well as online. Some examples include:

Direct mail
Magnets
Flyers
Websites
HTML Emails
Signage
Print ads
Window stickers

They can be used in conjunction with:

Contests
Promotions
Coupon codes
Special events
Providing directions to your location
Linking to your website
Request more information

Try it out and let us know how you used it in your marketing materials by leaving a comment below.

Popularity: 6%

Filed Under: Marketing

October 12, 2011 By Ryan Wheaton Leave a Comment

Do You Know Your Conversion Rate?

Like any business, running a martial arts school is a numbers game. And, one of the most important numbers you can keep track of is your conversion rate.

Knowing what your conversion rate — and then improving it — is certainly important to the vitality of your martial arts business.

Knowing your conversion rate gives you a tangible statistic that you can proactively manage and helps you understand if changes to your site helps increase it or decreases it. Before you can improve your conversion rate, you have to first know what it is.

In order to calculate your conversion rate, you need to have some kind of tracking software on your website like Google Analytics. It will give you all the information you need to calculate your conversion rate.

How to Calculate Your Conversion Rate

Here is the formula for calculating your conversion rate on your website:

Total Conversions/Total visitors X 100 = Conversion Rate

“Conversions” refers to how many people have taken an action you want to measure. This could be a newsletter sign up, trial program sign up, request for more information, contact form submission, etc.

“Total visitors” refers to the total number of visitors you’ve had on your website during a given period of measurement. I usually look at this stat on a monthly basis.

For example, if I had 10 people in a one month period sign up for my trial program email update offer and I had 1,000 people visit my website that month, my conversion rate would be 1%. If I improved my conversion rate and had 20 people sign up with the same amount of traffic, my conversion rate would be 2%.

Focus on Improving Conversion, Not Traffic

Improving your conversion rate means that for the same amount of traffic, you get more leads. More leads means more prospects you can potentially convert to paying members. The best part is that it doesn’t cost you any additional marketing expenditures to generate more leads because you’re getting more from the existing amount of traffic you already have.

A common mistake is to focus on getting more traffic instead of trying to improve ones conversion rate. The thinking there is that with more traffic, one will naturally get more sales by volume. I actually had a client tell me this a while back. They didn’t want to focus on making their process better because “it was too hard.” They told me they just wanted to cram more people through their existing process and it would work out on the back end.

I didn’t get it then and I still don’t get it to this day.

Unfortunately, that’s working harder, not smarter.

For example: If your conversion rate is 1% and you get 100 visitors you will get one lead. Now, if you can send two hundred people in that same period, you could get two leads.

Establish a Baseline

Before you can improve your conversion rate, you have to establish a baseline. Then you can begin testing things to help improve your conversion rate. Having a baseline will help you know if your tests are helping or hurting you.

In general, a really good conversion rate on a website is 2%. Yours may obviously vary but will at least give you some kind of gauge on where you’re at with your site.

One of the best ways to track conversions in Google Analytics is to set up a goal.

In its default state, Google Analytics tracks almost all of the information you need to determine your conversion rates. However, it does need to be modified a little to make it so you track specific “goals” like how many times someone got to your thank you page (the page someone sees after filling out your lead form). Setting up goals is simple. To learn step-by-step how to set up goals using Google Analytics, go to the source.

In future posts I will explain how you can improve your conversation rate.

So, how is your conversion rate measuring up?

Popularity: 7%

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: conversion

Negative Reviews in Local Search Results May Be Killing Your Online Reputation

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