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%

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%

Top Posts for May 2010

Here are the top 5 posts for Marketing Martial Arts in May 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. Do You Have a Marketing Plan in Place for the Next Karate Kid Movie? (POLL)
3. 7 Often Overlooked Martial Arts Marketing Tools
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: 7%

Why You Should Sign Up for a Google Webmaster Tools Account

A question came in from my good friend Fletch about a post I wrote a long time ago about Top 10 Essential WordPress Plugins for Martial Arts school Owners.

Fletch asked:

… Also, you say we, your loyal readers, should register a Google, Yahoo, and MSN webmaster account, but you don’t tell us what we should do with those accounts. I looked on Google’s FAQ about that, and it was a bit confusing. It seemed like a good idea but didn’t apply to me. Maybe you could do another post explaining what we need to do with those webmaster accounts. I don’t mind figuring out how to do things, I just would like to be pointed in the right direction for what would be a good use of my effort. Thanks for the advice!

This was in regards to the following recommendation in that post:

Google XML Sitemaps WordPress Plugin
Another great SEO friendly plugin. In order to maximize this plugin, you should also register a Webmaster Tools account with Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

By creating webmaster tools account with Google, Yahoo and Bing (formerly MSN), you can tell the individual search engines where your XML sitemaps are located and what pages on your website you want them to spider. I highly recommend you do this with all three, not just Google; even if the majority of traffic comes to your website from Google.

Further, these accounts also give you additional tools to help diagnose any problems on your site that might be interfering with the spidering of your site like broken files, missing files, bad links, etc. If you have a lot of errors, it can impact how your site is spidered and may make it difficult for them to rank your site.

By updating any errors that present themselves, it demonstrates you are trying to run a “clean” website; which the Google Gods smile upon because it makes their job easier to crawl your site. I bet you’ll find errors you never even know you had.

What kinds of things are in Google’s webmaster tools account?

1. Sitemaps – Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. You will have to verify the site is yours before being able to hav ethem spider your sitemap. This is pretty simple and they give you two options to verify.
2. Crawler access – Lists pages blocked and the reason(s) why they were blocked.
3. Sitelinks – Sitelinks are links to a site’s interior pages. Not all sites have sitelinks. Google generates these links automatically, but you can remove sitelinks you don’t want.
4. Search quires – A list of all top search queries that are used to find your site in Google.
5. Links to your site – A list of pages that have links from outside websites. Also shows you what URL’s (domain names) those links are coming from.
6. Keywords – The most common keywords Google found when crawling your site. These should reflect the subject matter of your site.
7. Internal links – A list of pages linked to by other pages on your site.
8. Crawl errors – Issues Google encountered when crawling your site.
9. Crawl stats – Googlebot (Google’s spider) activity in the last 90 days.
10. HTML suggestions - Google detects any potential issues with content on your pages, including duplicate, missing, or problematic title tags or meta descriptions.
11. Site Performance – This page shows you performance statistics of your site. You can use this information to improve the speed of your site and create a faster experience for your users.
12. And more!

Each search engine has their own tools, but that at least gives you an idea of what Google offers.

You can sign up for a webmaster tools account at all three major search engines here:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• Bing Webmaster Center

If you don’t have a WordPress site, you should still do an XML sitemap. You can either learn how to do it by hand or you can use an autogenerator to do it for you. Once complete, you would still create a webmaster tools account and tell them where to find your XML sitemap.

Hope that helps, Fletch (and everyone else who had the same question)!

Popularity: 7%

Karate Kid Movie Poster Winners

Announcing the winners of the Karate Kid Movie Poster Contest!

Please join me in congratulating the following martial arts school owners who submitted their ideas on how to attract potential students from the release of the next Karate Kid movie:

1. John Young

1. Bring in your ticket stub from the new Karate Kid movie and receive a free week of lessons!

2. Have a karate kid movie night where you watch all the original films and students can bring a friend to the event.

3. Have bully busting classes free to the public since that is what the movie is about..bullying!

2. Sensei George

There is a drive inn movie theater within a few miles of my school. We have worked out an arrangement that in addition to performing an demonstration on the opening weekend of the Karate Kid movie we will be printing all the concession stand menus which include an ad for my karate school on them. Every car that comes to the drive in is given one of these so after people get excited about the karate kid movie they have a take-away that leads them to our door! We plan on printing the menus for them for the whole run time of the movie so we will have at least 4- weeks of solid advertising targeted to people interested in karate!

3. Brenda Guiden

1. Plan to take your school as a group to the movie (pre-sell matinee tickets to students), preferably on June 12th (day after the opening but is on a Saturday when most kids will attend). Make sure all your students are wearing their school T-Shirts which will look very impressive as a group. Make sure instructors are there and have business cards. Anyone who remotely shows an interest in your school should get a card and offer to present the card for a week of free beginner lessons and a personal invitation to come witness your next belt testing.

2. Any community event attended by your school should always (if permitted) have a drawing box for a free pair of tickets to “The Karate Kid”. Info can be added to your data base.

4. Raymond Bennett

My wife and I own a small Kung-fu school and are operating on a shoe string budget. However, we are going to try and purchase 10 tickets and advertise in the local paper, “The first 10 people to stop in and try our Free Introductory Class receives a free ticket to the movie.” Or something to that effect.
If there are no takers (not a pessimist, just a realist) then we’ll take our students to the movie wearing our school t-shirts.

And/or, have our students waving bright signs near the theater with “Ask me about FREE Kung-Fu lessons” Then hand out our fliers with “Bring in your Karate Kid ticket stub and receive 1 month of Kung-fu lessons FREE!

5. B Basche (Send me your email address!)

I think a large park on a Saturday and Sunday doing some demos. Offer one free class and for everyone that signs up, there will be a drawing for a free movie pass to Karate Kid

If you see your name listed here, you won!

I’ll send you an email requesting your address so I can send you a poster. If you are B Basche, I need your email address so I can request your address.

Your posters will be dropped in the mail by Tuesday (assuming I get your address by then!).

How did they win? They entered their ideas on how to attract new students from the release of the next Karate Kid movie and their idea was selected.

While the contest is closed, you can still share your ideas by commenting at the bottom of this post:

Karate Kid Marketing Ideas for Martial Arts School Owners PLUS Movie Poster Contest

Congratulations everyone!

Popularity: 8%

Karate Kid Marketing Ideas for Martial Arts School Owners PLUS Movie Poster Contest

How would you like to win a free movie poster for the upcoming Karate Kid movie (opens June 11) to hang at your martial arts school?

As part of a promotion, Sony sent me five Karate Kid movie posters (<— see left) and I’d like to share them with you.

All it takes is for you to share a new marketing idea to help other school owners out and you will be entered to win. It’s that simple!

Here are four marketing/promotion ideas to help get you started:

1) Contact local movie theaters and speak with the manager to see if you can set up a table and do demonstrations on opening night. I was contacted by one so I know they are open to it.

2) Take prospects to the movie! Buy tickets in advance and have your students bring their friends who are interested in taking lessons. Your treat. Turn it into an enter to win contest to build the excitement then make them an offer to get started.

3) Develop a “Karate Kid” trial package you can use to help recruit new students. Advertise it on your website and at your martial arts school.

4) Look into advertising on the movie screen at the movie theater. Sometimes this can be very affordable. When you’re on the phone with the manager, be sure to ask about rates. Run this for as long as the movie is playing at that theatre.

Remember, taking full advantage of this event is not just about marketing before the premier, it’s the entire time the movie plays in the theaters and even when it comes out on DVD!

Popularity: 9%

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