How to Get 175 Karate Students All From Referral Marketing
August 20, 2008 by Ryan Wheaton
Filed under Marketing Concepts
I am at San Jose California at Search Engine Strategies and, as usual, am learning a ton. It’s a great event and I’ve met a ton of new people and enjoying myself very much.
My first night here, i went to a San Jose California microbrew called Gordon Biersch and was sitting at the bar when I noticed that the guy next to me had a martial arts t-shirt on. So, I decided to spark up a conversation with him and asked if he still trained. He said that he had a Tae Kwon Do dojo that was only a couple of blocks away.
You can imagine my delight when I heard he was a school owner. That is exactly what I had hoped when I started talking to him and thought he probably just took lessons. What a pleasant surprise.
Of course, I immediately started asking Mr. Jones questions and picking his brain to see what kind of marketing ideas he was implementing at his San Jose California martial arts school.
He has 4,000 sq. feet, 175 students, and has been in business for over four years so I was curious what he did in terms of marketing. I thought to myself, “geez, he must be doing a ton of marketing and must have a great website.”
So, I asked him what tactics he uses to have so many students. He just sat there, smiled, then sort of laughed and simply said “I don’t do any marketing. It’s all from referrals.”
I sat there in disbelief.
How can someone have 175 students…have 4,000 square feet facility…and not do ANY marketing. As a person who has spent a tremendous amount of time learning and espousing online and offline marketing, I couldn’t believe his fantastical story.
That evening, I Googled his studio and found that he was telling the truth. He had no website. I did, however, find his business listed in Yelp.com and someone had left a positive review. However, it listed a website and I thought “A-ha! Busted!” But when I clicked on it went to a “coming soon” page. So, maybe he was telling the truth after all.
However, the truth is, he’s a liar. He does marketing. And, he is really good at it.
He simply focuses on his existing students and they become so excited that they tell everyone about how much they love it. He is making his students evangelists and they become the marketing vehicle. All of which is free. That’s the power of referral marketing.
In essence, he is the marketing. He gets his students and their parents so fired up that they tell everyone they know about it. That, to me, is one of the best forms of marketing there is. Bravo!
But, I was still reluctant to believe his story and how it could be possible so I decided to walk to his San Jose California Martial Arts school and see for myself if his words matched the truth. Honestly, I thought he might be holding out on me.
I did notice a few things that really surprised me. First, he didn’t have a sign. Second, I walked in and still didn’t know I was in a martial arts school. The only clue that I was in the right place was that I saw a couple of trophies I spotted in a small window in a side room. Third, the martial arts school was pretty much a maze of walls and so it didn’t make it easy for me to know I was in the right place. I was expecting to walk right in and see the training floor; but it was in one of the back rooms in the space.
All of this seemed like a barrier to his success. However, it just doesn’t seem to matter like you might think.
Once I walked in and turned a corner, I was greeted by their program director who was a delightful person who took me on a tour of their facility. She too was part of the marketing of the school and I can see why so many people find it easy to pay his tuition rate each month to train there.
There was a class in session and there was many people participating and watching the class. So, he was telling the truth.
As you can see, you don’t HAVE to have spend a ton of money, or any, on marketing to make your school successful if you properly leverage referral marketing. However, from my experience, most martial arts schools can’t make it solely on referral marketing alone. It’s usually a part of the marketing mix.
While I applaud him on his success, I still wonder how much more successful he could be if he implemented some of the marketing ideas I talk about on this site. Again, that’s the marketer in me. Clearly for him, it works just fine. As I stated in another post, it’s not about my definition of success, it’s his that matters most (Read: Is Being a Part-Time Martial Arts School Owner a Bad Thing?).
How do you help generate referrals at your martial arts school? Is it one of your biggest sources of new students?
Popularity: 5%
I'm Ryan Wheaton. I'm a marketer, martial artist and martial arts school owner. My website 
Loading ...
Referrals are the life blood of the studio I work for. We have a VIP program offering incentives not only to the person who referred our studio, but the new student, and the incentive is big enough to make a difference in the eyes of the students and/or their parents, but not big enough to really negatively impact our finances.