Top Posts August 2010

Here are the top 5 posts for Marketing Martial Arts in August 2010;  according to how many times they were uniquely viewed by our visitors:

1. 10 Red Flags Your Martial Arts School is in Trouble
2. All Professional Martial Arts Schools are McDojos
3. 4 Popular Social Media Websites to help Grow Your Martial Arts School
4. 10 Types of Irresistible Offers You Can Make to Prospects
5. 50 Killer Ideas for Building a More Profitable Martial Arts School

As always, thanks for reading Marketing Martial Arts!

Popularity: 1%

Back to School Marketing for your Martial Arts School

Back to school season is here.

Is your martial arts school ready?

Back to school is a theme that you can easily build a solid marketing campaign around.

For many martial arts schools, back to school represents a huge opportunity for new student enrollments.

Parents are looking for activities that will help their little Billy grow and develop into a responsible and mature adult.

And, you’re program is the ultimate solution to help them with that problem.

Your mission should be to educate parents on how you can help them with the development of little Billy in a way no one else can match.

All it takes is a little homework and elbow grease.

Here are a few things that can help you figure this all out for your martial arts school.

What’s in it for the prospect?

Remember, your prospect love three things: “Me, myself and I.”

If you’re not talking to them and what’s in it for them, you’re not talking to your audience.

You’re wasting their time.

You have to write to your target audience and speak to what they’re looking for in order to get their attention.

You can’t ignore this.

Parents want to know how you can help them and their child.

Be specific and clear.

Remember, if they have to hunt for it, they usually won’t bother searching.

How easily can they redeem the offer?

Obviously you need an offer to get parent’s to take action.

Then you need to make it easy to redeem so your prospects can get one step closer to becoming paying students.

Do you make it an easter egg hunt on your website to find out how to redeem the offer or it is on every page in highly visible areas?

Again, be clear and specific.

Do they respond by phone?… By email?… By contact form?

Keeping it simple keeps it effective.

Don’t give them 10 ways to respond.

I (usually) only use one.

What’s your message?

As part of your messaging, you’re going to want to speak to the benefits so parents easily get why martial arts training is a great idea for their child and how it will help them in school.

Here are some of the many benefits that martial arts training provides to help get you started:

1. Better concentration
2. More focus
3. Improved self confidence
4. Self discipline
5. Modesty
6. Courtesy
7. Patience
8. Self control
9. Integrity
10. Goal setting
11. Respect
12. Positive attitude
13. Healthy exercise

All that and a positive atmosphere where homework is encouraged and may even be a part of the program (after school programs).

All of these things can ultimately help improve grades, which is a BIG seller for many parents.

Don’t stop talking about how much your program can help their little Billy.

How will you get the word out?

Now we’re talking about promotion. Here are 15 ways you can get the word out:

1. Window Signs
2. Facebook Fan Page
3. Twitter
4. Flyers
5. Your Website
6. Text messages
7. Direct mail
8. Pay Per Click
9. Your email list
10. Door hangers
11. Media releases
12. Classified ads
13. Newspaper ads
14. Window display
15. Referrals
16. etc.

Just remember, not all parents know and understand the benefits of placing their child in your martial arts program. You have to educate them, first.

How is your martial arts school leveraging back to school?

Popularity: 1%

9 Reasons Why Your Martial Arts School Still Needs a Website

Some martial arts school owners have said there is little reason anymore to have a website with free services available like Google Places, Facebook Fan Pages.

And, I couldn’t disagree more.

My answer?

Every single professional martial arts school should have its own website. Yes. Absolutely. With out a doubt. Period.

Some would argue that because those tools are free, there is no reason to pay to have a website.

There are many things wrong with that line of thinking.

Primarily, social media sites aren’t for selling.

They are about creating, maintaining and nurturing relationships.

(Read that again… one more time…)

They aren’t for selling!

That’s where you website comes in.

Its purpose is to sell.

Its not an after thought…

It doesn’t support your social media efforts…

It drives your online marketing and should be your online destination of choice.

Your website is the hub and the free sites like Facebook are the spokes. It’s not the other way around.

(Read that again… one more time…)

Here’s are 9 reasons why it’s important to have your own dedicated martial arts website:

1. You own the site. Your martial arts schools website is an asset. Treat it as something valuable as it is your flagship property in the digital world.
2. You can sell. A website is the place to sell, not on social media. Social media is about relationships, not selling.
3. Email capture. Remember: Having your email listed on a page isn’t the same as a form that captures their email. While possible to add onto Facebook Fan Pages, it’s not something you can do on most social media websites.
4. It projects professionalism. With a professionally designed website, your small karate dojo can project the image and professionalism of a much larger martial arts chain. Beware: The inverse is also true. With most free social media sites, you don’t have a choice on what it looks like.
5. Makes you easier to compare. Your prospects expect a website. If you don’t have one, it makes you hard to find and compare.
6. You have a branded domain. I get hit up by “SEO experts” spam all the time (funny, I know) and they use a free email account like hotmail, yahoo or gmail. I don’t trust them because without a domain name at the end of their email, they aren’t a real business. Having your own branded domain name (www.yourmartialartsschool.com) and email (yourname@yourmartialartschool.com) not only helps brand your business it also helps establish your credibility as a business. When it reads “yourmartialartschool.freesite.com” it’s not very easy to share and it makes you look cheap. Not only that, it’s harder to remember.
7. Better Analytics. With your own website, you gain deeper insight into your traffic with tools like Google Analytics. Most social media websites provide little-to-no analytics. Even when they do, they are pretty shallow in comparison.
8. Search Engine Optimization options. Back links are cold hard digital cash when it comes to ranking higher. Having your website that sells at the top of the search engine results is paramount to your businesses success. When you own your own site, you have full control over how the site is set up for search engine optimization. You don’t on a free site.
9. Distraction free landing pages. When something’s free, there is always some kind of interference. Whether it’s a pop up ad, banner ads, text link ads, Adsense or whatever there is always a cost and it always gets in the way of getting a lead.

Sure, those free online tools are great but they shouldn’t replace your own branded website.

Do you agree that you should have your own website? Share you thoughts in the form of a comment!

Popularity: 2%

10 Red Flags Your Martial Arts School is in Trouble

Are you having doubts if you’re going to be able to keep the doors open at your martial arts school much longer?

Do you invest your time and energy into your martial arts school and pour everything you’ve got into it but you’re still not making much, if any, money teaching martial arts?

While there is no magic formula to determine whether you’re going to make a living off of martial arts or if you’re going to have to shut your doors, there are certain things you can look at to tell you the overall health of your martial arts business.

Here are 10 warning signs that your martial arts school might be in trouble:

1. You’re unprofitable.
   Having money come in isn’t the same thing as turning a profit. In other words, what you bill each month isn’t as important as how much you make over and above your expenses each month. Many say a successful business is a profitable business. While profitability is only one measure of a business, it is certainly an important one.
2. You dread going in to teach.
   If you aren’t motivated and genuinely excited to show up each day, Houston we have a problem. If you’re not motivated, believe me, your students know it. And, if you’re not excited, they aren’t going to be and your chances of losing them as student increases. It’s just that simple.
3. You can’t take negative feedback.
   When a member or a prospect gives you some constructive feedback, what is your reaction? Do you freak out or think they’re stupid? Take a moment a listen and take their feedback to heart. Believe me, they’re telling you important things you need to address in your business. In short, you have to be open to change to make a change.
4. You don’t get many, if any, referrals.
   Wow. This is a big one. If your students aren’t excited enough to tell their friends, they probably have notice your lack of enthusiasm during class. Your classes need to be exciting and fun. You need to get people so pumped up that and feel they learned so much that they can’t help but tell their friends. Break up your routine! I know this is easier said than done. However, without making your classes worth talking about, you’re not likely to improve your lack of referrals. Another thing to increase the likelihood of referrals is to have a referral marketing system in place. Just remember, your classes first need to be worth referring for those to work.
5. You are the cheapest in town.
   This is the easiest way to go out of business. By being cheap, you’re not getting rewarded for the value you truly offer. Many martial artists struggle with asking for money let alone enough to be profitable. If you struggle with charging what you’re worth, you probably shouldn’t open up a martial arts school in the first place. Remember, the less you charge, the more students you need to make a profit. That’s a long, hard road to travel and most don’t make it with this approach (unless you have low overhead).
6. You hate to delegate.
   If you insist on doing everything yourself, you’re further behind than you realize. I know it may be hard to believe, but other people can do the job just as well as you can, if not better. Find out what your students do for a living and see if you can work out a trade or discounted service in return for their help. You might be surprised how many good resources you already have in your school you can use to help get your martial arts business back on track.
7. You don’t have the right systems in place.
   Having systems in place takes a lot of work. However, it will pay you back ten-fold. You should consider several different systems for your including operations, marketing, accounting, teaching, retention, prospecting, student intake and more. The more systems you have in place, the more efficient your operation becomes.
8. You’re not using EFT.
   I transformed my martial arts school the day I started using electronic funds transfer.  I no longer had to be a bill collector or the bad guy when someone didn’t pay. Now every month, the money is in my account and I don’t have to worry about it. And, you don’t have to be a large school to start using EFT. Every business no matter how big or small can benefit from it. If you’re still letting people pay you manually, you really should reconsider.
9. You’re the only one teaching.
   Having your students teach or assist is actually a great retention device and will also help free up your time to be on your business instead of in it. Start having your intermediate students help assist in your next class. You can have them run the stretching and warmups just to get them started. This allows you to be more attentive to your students and gives you a different perspective you don’t get from leading the entire class all the time. Once I started doing this,  I had more help than I knew what to do with.
10. You lose more students than you get each month.
    What is your retention rate? Do you even know? Keep your eye on the back door as that is as important for long term success as how many students are coming in the front door. The reasons for people leaving can likely be traced to one of the 9 things listed above. Whenever possible, see if you can find out the real reason why someone left. That can help you button things up even tighter.

Take a good look and see if your martial arts school is suffering from any of these red flags. Then set out to change them, one by one, as fast as you can.

What other red flags would you add to this list? Share you thoughts in the form of a comment!

Popularity: 3%

Does Your Martial Arts School Offer an After School Program? (POLL)

With back to school season right around the corner, I wanted to take a quick poll and see how many martial arts schools will be offering an after school program.

If you do offer an after school program, how has it helped your martial arts school grow?

If you don’t offer one, why not?

Popularity: 2%

Top Posts July 2010

Here are the top 5 posts for Marketing Martial Arts in July 2010;  according to how many times they were uniquely viewed by our visitors:

1. 4 Popular Social Media Websites to help Grow Your Martial Arts School
2. All Professional Martial Arts Schools are McDojos
3. 10 Types of Irresistible Offers You Can Make to Prospects
4. Should your Martial Arts School be using Social Media?
5. Karate Kid Marketing Ideas for Martial Arts School Owners

As always, thanks for reading Marketing Martial Arts!

Popularity: 3%

Are You Using Social Media to Promote Your Martial Arts School? (Poll)

I’ve started writing a lot about social media lately (4 Popular Social Media Websites to help Grow Your Martial Arts School and Should your Martial Arts School be using Social Media? with more coming soon).

And it got me wondering….

Are you using social media to promote your martial arts school?

Take the survey below and let me know!

Popularity: 4%

Should your Martial Arts School be using Social Media?

You’ve probably heard all the buzz about social media.

In fact, you may be considering doing it for your martial arts school after reading about my last post on social media for martial arts school owners.

But should your martial arts school even use it?

For starters, lets look at what social media is so we’re all on the same page.

What is Social Media?

Social media is word of mouth on digital steroids.

Social media describes content that is posted by users on various online platforms. Examples of social media include forums, blogs, microblogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, photo sharing sites and more. Social media applications include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr.

Social Media Statistics

Watch this video to get an idea of the importance of social media and why you should pay attention to it:

So, um….yeeeaah… you need to pay attention to it.

Thoughts on Social Media for Your Martial Arts Business

• It’s public. You’re not the only one who can find the good, bad and the ugly about your business online. Potential students are looking for reviews and info on what’s being said about your martial arts school. I check my Google Analytics account regularly for what keywords are being used to find my site. Increasingly, people are adding “reviews” on the end of my schools name so I know people are doing this (at least to me).
• Get ahead of it. Social media might not be your thing, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Dip your toes in now and at least see what’s being said. By having an established and active presence, if something does hit the fan, you will have history for spectators to better compare against to make a more informed opinion. If you have a student or instructor who’s particularly savvy with it, have them train you on how to get involved.
• Be responsive. At some point someone will say something online that may do damage to your businesses reputation. Hopefully you don’t experience what is happening to these martial arts schools on RipOffReport.com. Monitor your martial arts schools name by using tools like Google alerts and respond as soon as it hits your radar. DO NOT WAIT. Whether it is positive or negative, it’s still good to respond.
• Listen. Really listen. If people are making criticisms, are they valid? If they offer suggestions, can you incorporate them into your business? One way or the other, address these by responding to them wherever they may appear. I can’t tell you how many good suggestions have come my way since starting my Facebook Fan Page for my martial arts school.
• It gets easier the more you do it. It takes time to get used to updating and monitoring social media. However, if you build it into your routine and schedule it you will be more on top of it as the days go on.
• Everyone is a marketer. Using social networks, everyone at your school is a potential marketer. Your students and instructors might already be posting information and helping to you grow your martial arts school. This should be encouraged and even rewarded at times.

With social media you can publicly resolve unsolved issues… address bad customer experiences… thank people for praise and ideas… promote a special offer… run a contest… and more.

Taking your first step into social media will also help you to connect with existing students and potential students in a way your competitors might not be; which can help you build a competitive advantage.

How do you use social media at your martial arts school?

Popularity: 5%

Top Post for June 2010

Here are the top 5 posts for Marketing Martial Arts in June 2010;  according to how many times they were uniquely viewed by our visitors:

1. Karate Kid Marketing Ideas for Martial Arts School Owners PLUS Movie Poster Contest
2. All Professional Martial Arts Schools are McDojos
3. Why You Should Sign Up for a Google Webmaster Tools Account
4. 10 Types of Irresistible Offers You Can Make to Prospects
5. Martial Arts Business Success in 2010

As always, thanks for reading Marketing Martial Arts!

Popularity: 5%

4 Popular Social Media Websites to help Grow Your Martial Arts School

If you haven’t yet started down the road of social media yet for your martial arts school, it’s not too late to get your feet wet.

This post will give you a basic introduction to four of the most well known social media websites to help dip your toe into the subject. I am also going to provide examples of martial arts school owners who are using each social media tool to help give you an idea where this can all go.

Let’s get started and begin by exploring Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and FLICKR.

Facebook.com

Facebook is a social networking site that was created in 2004 and started at Harvard University as a social networking site for students. However, it’s grown from a college based site to one with over 400,000,000 people from all over the world who use it.

Facebook allows you to create a personal profile, add and search for friends, send and receive private messages, share interests, upload photos and videos, share links and more. It also allows your friends to leave comments and creates ways of interacting that are far more robust than email.

Further, martial arts school owners can create a Facebook Fan Page that allow them to connect with their students and potential students from within Facebooks site. Once a fan “likes” a page, they receive updates in their Facebook stream whenever there is an update.

Common things to do on your Facebook Fan page is to create events and then invite people to them, upload and share photos and videos, congratulate students on promotions, ask questions and get feedback, announce special offers and promotions, and more.

Here are some good examples of Martial Arts schools using Facebook fan pages:

• Northwind Martial Arts
• Integrity Martial Arts
• One World Self Defense
• Pecoranos Martial Arts

Ready to get started? Create an account on Facebook here.

Twitter.com

Twitter.com is a social networking site that allows its users to create text based updates called “tweets.”

Tweets are like mini blog posts or short messages that are all written within 140 characters (Twitter’s maximum limit for each tweet). Obviously it is very important to work on being very succinct and to the point with each Tweet.

Other people with a Twitter account can follow your “tweets” by becoming a “follower.”

Twitter allows you to create and distribute timely and relevant information quickly to students and potential students who follow your tweets. The key is in getting people to follow you and in turn, you can follow other people. Common Twitter etiquette is to follow those who follow you so it’s a solid way to help build an audience.

If you’re worried this is a time consuming task that will require you to sit in front of your computer all day, don’t sweat it. There are tons of mobile applications (apps) that allow you to plug into your Twitter account making it easy to update from your cell phone wherever you have an Internet connection.

Martial arts school owners can use this to alert your followers of special offers, answer student questions, share links to consumer awareness content on your website and more.

Here are some good examples of Martial Arts Schools using Twitter:

• @urbanmartialarts
• @olneytkd
• @HyperMA (not a martial arts school but martial arts related)
• @dojos
• @mmacombatzone

Ready to get started? Create an account on Twitter.com here.

YouTube.com

YouTube is a social video sharing website where users can easily upload, share and watch online videos. Youtube was founded in 2005 as a way to make video sharing more simple.

You create an account and viewers interested in your videos can subscribe to them; sending them alerts whenever you post new videos. YouTube.com also makes it easy to embed movies into your website with little knowledge of HTML and share them via links.

Martial arts school owners can upload and share videos from karate tournaments, martial arts school tours, interviews, student reviews, martial arts commercials and more.

Here are some martial arts schools using YouTube.com:

• Casa De Kenpo
• UK Kung Fu School
• Tiger Schulmann’s MMA
• Fighters Edge MMA

Ready to get started? Create an account on YouTube.com here.

Flickr.com

Flickr is a social photo sharing and hosting site that was founded in 2004 and is said to have 4 billion images hosted on its website.  They make it easy to upload, search, share and comment on digital photos.

If you’ve got a digital camera and are a shutter bug, uploading photos from your martial arts school and events is a great way to help promote your school. Your students can view their photos and also easily share them with family and friends.

Here are some martial arts schools using FLICKR.com:

• Urban Martial Arts
• Montana Gorls
• Choes Hapkido
• Jui Jitsu Boise

Ready to get started? Create an account on Flickr.com here.

How does do you use social media to grow and stay connected with students at your martial arts school?

Share your ideas in the form of a comment!

Popularity: 7%

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