Attack Of The Killer Guest Pass Ideas, Part 2

Here's a whole stack of guest pass referral program ideas so you can open up a can of whoop-butt on your marketing...

Just in case last month’s gargantuan list of guest pass referral ideas wasn’t enough, you’ll find the second half of my big list of 99 ways to use guest passes to get more students at the end of this article.

But first, let’s review a few key points from last month’s article on using guest passes…

Basic Concepts For Using Guest Passes Effectively

A few key points about using guest passes that will greatly enhance their effectiveness as a marketing method for your school…

• Guest passes are most effective when you convey and retain a high perceived value for the guest passes.
• So, make sure you PRINT THE ACTUAL VALUE ON THE GUEST PASS. For example, “Valued at $100.00″.
• You may find it helpful to only allow staff and students to hand out free guest passes. While this will limit the number of ways you can use guest passes, you will find it creates a very high perceived value in the eyes of the recipient. I always tell my staff and students, “Only staff and students are allowed to give these out, and they’re worth over $100 each. So, be sure you tell whoever you gift them to how much that little card is worth!”
• One way to get around that issue of limiting distribution is to have two different guest passes; a one month guest pass that only staff and students may give away ($100+ value), and a “FREE WEEK!” guest pass that you use in all other guest pass promotions ($25+ value).

Although a guest pass is basically a business card with value, if you treat it nonchalantly you’ll blunt the effectiveness of this marketing method. So, work hard to retain the value of your guest passes! To get a solid introduction to using guest passes in your school, you should read the following articles FIRST before starting to implement the ideas listed later in this article:

Using Referral Programs to Get New Students
Using Holiday Guest Passes To Get New Students

My BIG List Of Guest Pass Referral Program Ideas…

Now without further ado, here’s the second half of my BIG list of guest pass marketing ideas:

Read the rest of this entry »

A Good Graduation Ceremony Both Attracts And Keeps Students

Making your martial arts promotion ceremonies meaningful and memorable is an effective way to both keep and attract students.

Graduation night is a concept I picked up from observing successful school owners from around the country. When I started my first school, I tried to network with and visit as many successful school owners as I could, both to exchange ideas and to observe their “best practices” in action.

One thing I observed was that, in many of the most successful schools, they used belt promotions as a means of both increasing their retention and to promote their programs. For retention purposes, nothing beats getting the family members of your students involved and giving them an opportunity to see their loved one in action.

In addition, this is also a powerful incentive for your students to perform well and stay committed to their training, because they want to be able to “show” their family how they are progressing in their martial arts training.

Likewise when it comes to attracting new students, there are few things more powerful than third-party endorsements. And, the best third-party endorsements are those people can witness with their own eyes. As they say, “Seeing is believing”. Well, when friends of your students see them getting recognition for their hard work, and enjoying doing their martial art, it is a powerful recruiting tool for your school.

Holding regular scheduled graduation celebration events where students are ENCOURAGED to invite their friends is a great way to achieve both of the above objectives. Here’s how… Read the rest of this entry »

After Marketing Comes Selling – Where The Real Fun Begins…

While the phone may seem initimidating to you at first, the sooner you start seeing it as your friend, the faster you will be able to grow your school.

Many would-be school owners and aspiring full-time instructors have convinced themselves that they don’t need to know how to sell to be successful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Accept this now – you have to be a good salesman (or “sales person” if you prefer) in order to run a successful school. However, this doesn’t mean you have to use sneaky tactics or adopt a hard sell approach to enrollments.

On the contrary, these tactics will work against you as you grow your school. Tricking or manipulating potential students into signing up often creates problems down the road, especially if your programs and customer service are substandard.

Instead, learning to be a good salesman as a martial art school owner requires learning how to treat people right, and selling by demonstrating the value of your programs. Remember – telling informs, but showing convinces. And, only the truly convinced will invest both their money and their time into becoming a long-term member of your school.

Treat ‘Em Right, And They’ll Stay – But First, You Have to Get Them To Try It Out

The thing is, demonstrating value requires that you actually get the prospective student (hereafter referred to as a “prospect”) to try your school out. The introductory course is where the real convincing occurs (this is sometimes called a “trial course” – language you should avoid, since it suggest a lack of commitment on the student’s part). But in most cases, a bit of selling is required to convince a complete stranger to try your school.

So, how do you do it? It’s simple really, if you follow a few basic principles. And while I can’t really go over the complete sales process in a short article, I will go over the basic principles here to get you started. Read the rest of this entry »

Speed Kills…

Sometimes you're better off taking your bike instead of the express route... especially when it comes to growing your school. Move too fast, and the results can be disastrous.

In the past six months, out of the hundreds of site members we have, I’ve had just three site members contact me to tell me they were either closing their schools or scaling back on their operations…

Although this is an extremely low percentage of failure – especially during an extended recession – I believe that it will be instructive to examine reasons why these schools didn’t make it, in order that we can all avoid making the same mistakes.

In each case, these folks were new school owners or instructors who were in the early stages of launching a school. In two of the three cases, the instructors were teaching in part-time locations, yet they both cited a lack of cash-flow as the reason for their having to “close” their schools. (Note: In the third case, the instructor lost his lease and couldn’t find another suitable location within his budget – a reason totally beyond his control.)

What went wrong here? Upon further probing, the reason in each case was made plain. In their impatience with starting a new business, they just moved ahead too fast and it killed their schools – a very common mistake. This is something I’ve had experience with in the past myself, and which led to my developing the Small Dojo Big Profits method of starting a martial arts school.

Now, before I go on here let me state that there’s no shame in making mistakes when you’re starting a business. Believe me, every successful business owner can rattle off a least two or three major mistakes they made when they were first starting out. The only shame is in not learning from your own mistakes or from those of someone else, which is why you should read this article carefully to avoid these very common mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »

Current Month’s Marketing Plan

A Few General Notes on Effective Online and Offline Marketing For Martial Arts Schools

It's back-to-school time... do you know where your kids are?

For those of you who weren’t members last month, read the article on Becoming an Expert Marketer so you understand the concepts behind this marketing plan. Pay particular attention to the “Marketing Base” concept, and keep it in mind as you implement this marketing plan.

As a standard goal for your monthly marketing activities, you should be generating at least 25-30 leads a month. If not, you need to first EXPAND your marketing by implementing the marketing plans provided to you on this site each month. And, not just some of it… do all of it. That’s the first step in achieving effective marketing for your school.

Expected Results And Trouble-Shooting Your Marketing… Read the rest of this entry »

Summer Intensive Kids Camps

It seems that school owners in some areas are experiencing difficulties in filling their summer camps this year. Whether this is due to the current economic conditions in those areas, or due to waiting too long to start advertising their camps (I suspect the latter), there’s always a way to salvage these situations to make the best of things.

Back in 2006 at around this time of the year, I was facing a major crisis in my school. Sky-high fuel costs were causing a major budget crunch for most families in my area, and as it turns out our community was one of the first to show signs of the mortgage fallout. Bottom line was, only about half of my after-school karate kids were staying through the summer, and I was facing a major budget crisis of my own if I didn’t make up that income fast.

So, I borrowed an idea from another instructor and decided to hold “Summer Intensive Training Camps” in my school. I posted a description of how this works in the forums last week. Here’s how you do it: Read the rest of this entry »

How To Avoid Wasting Time Digging For Gold In Diamond Country…

After going through the steps in this article, you may find (as I did) that there are better markets segments to pursue than the one you initially chose...

Choosing your primary niche market can be tough when you’re first starting out. This decision cannot and should not be made lightly. Certainly, you should strongly consider going after multiple markets in your area in order to grow your school and stabilize your income.

However, you should carefully research the local market in order to determine which market will be your primary focus in your school. The primary market you go after is the one in which there is the most opportunity at the time you launch your school. This takes work and research to determine, but it’s well worth your time and trouble.

A quick note for those of you with established schools; going through this process can be of great benefit to you as well. Many times, we become complacent and overlook glaring market opportunities or impending threats to our market position. If it’s been a while since you’ve done anything remotely resembling market research, I strongly suggest you spend a Saturday afternoon following this process – it will be time well spent.

Whether you are just starting out or you’re an established school owner, here’s how you go about choosing your primary market focus for your school… Read the rest of this entry »

Efficiency, Sanity, And Profitability Go Hand In Hand

Your profitability and sanity rely on how efficiently your school is run. Setting up your school to be low-stress early on is a sure way to maintain both.

Running a martial arts school can easily become a high-stress nightmare for new instructors. At first when you just have a few students, it’s a piece of cake. However, once you start growing beyond a few dozen students the enormity of managing a school can sneak up on you, until one day you wake up and realize, “I have no life outside my school!”

Well, running a high-stress school is a quick path to instructor/owner burnout, and a good way to ruin your business. Stress and fatigue leads to burnout, burnout leads to complacency, and complacency will soon lead to an empty floor.

I’d like to help you avoid all that. Here’s how to avoid burnout by setting your school up to be low maintenance from the very beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

Martial Arts Business Success Step #1 – Get Your Marketing And Lead Generation Down Pat

Follow my steps to martial arts business success and you'll soon become a martial arts business "master".

Until a student walks in the door and you collect a check, you aren’t in business.

You can get business cards printed up, tell everyone you’re starting a martial art school, and even sign a lease on a building, but not one of those things really mark the transition from “wannabe” to bona fide school owner.

The only thing that does is getting paid – that’s it. And, you cannot and will not get paid without marketing your school and services effectively. Period.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve counseled struggling school owners who gave little if any consideration to marketing when launching their school. And by the same token, I’ve also counseled school owners who wasted considerable time, effort, and resources on highly ineffective and grossly inefficient marketing methods.

If you want to launch and run a successful school, start with becoming an expert marketer. This article will teach you the fundamentals of marketing and lead generation, which marketing and advertising methods are best suited to small businesses, and how to best implement those methods for the greatest effect. Read the rest of this entry »

“Are You Nuts? You Want Me To Give Away Free Classes?”

It's easy to get focused on your current students and forget you need to attract new ones. Using guest referral passes is the second most effective marketing method among martial art school owners.

In the recent survey I posted on my blog and in the member forums, guest passes (sometimes called VIP passes) came in at number two as the most effective form of advertisement and marketing for martial art school owners. This doesn’t surprise me a bit, as I’ve been using guest passes as an effective form of marketing since I was first introduced to them in the late 90′s.

Of course, my first reaction to using them was probably similar to that of most instructors. “What? You want me to give away free classes? Are you nuts?” The thing is, I was networking with some very successful instructors at the time, and I was able to verify the effectiveness of guest pass programs firsthand by observing their results. And, soon after I learned how to effectively implement them in my own school, we found they were in fact a great way to get new students.

Basic Concepts For Using Guest Passes Effectively

A few key points about using guest passes that will greatly enhance their effectiveness as a marketing method for your school… Read the rest of this entry »

Why It’s Not Always Good Idea To Try To Build A Better Mousetrap

Learning the business of martial arts is a lot like working your way up through the ranks. You take things in sequence, learning new skills that build on those you learned in previous stages.

One thing I’ve observed since I started offering business coaching to martial art school owners is that we have a tendency to want to do our own thing.

Take for example the numerous styles and systems that exist today. There are as many styles and systems as there are instructors who believe they have something unique to offer. As one of my students once put it, “It seems like every instructor reaches a certain level, then they want to create their own system.”

In similar fashion, I’ve observed that martial arts instructors seem to want to create their own systems for starting and running their businesses as well…

Creating a unique expression that bears the mark of one’s individual personality and preferences is fine in the context of artistic expression. But in the context of running a martial art school, this often has disastrous results.

Mastery In Martial Arts Does Not Translate Into Martial Arts Business Mastery…

Think about it… by the time an instructor decides to codify their unique expression of a martial art style or system, they typically have decades of martial arts experience, study, and training under their belt. Thus, their unique approach is based on decades of trial, error, and experimentation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Want to know how to make sure your martial art school fails miserably?

Want to know how to tank your martial art school? Here's how, in just ten easy steps...

If you ever wanted to know how to tank a martial arts school, here’s a list of the top ten ways to fail in your martial arts business…

The Top Ten Ways To Tank Your Martial Arts School

1. Start Your School By The Seat Of Your Pants – Business plans? Business mentors? Business education? Who needs ‘em? Just wing it and you’ll be sure to end your career as a professional martial arts instructor before it even begins.
2. Put Pride And Ego Before Profits - If you want to fail big and fail fast, let your ego make all your business decisions instead of your common sense. This will lead you to rent a facility before you have any students, and you’ll also be likely to rent a lot more space than you really need. Sure, you’ll have the biggest nicest facility in town, but you’ll likely only have bragging rights until the first month’s rent is due…

Read the rest of this entry »

Is Bigger Better When It Comes To Martial Arts Schools?

Do you need a huge school and 500 students to be successful financially? Not by a long shot!

When it comes to running a martial arts school, size is an important consideration. Of course, everyone wants to have a lot of students and nice, spacious facilities. But how big is too big when it comes to running a martial art school?

To answer this question, first we have to determine exactly what our end goal is or starting our school. Then, once we can “begin with the end in mind”, we can determine how large we can get without hindering our progress toward our goal.

What Kind Of Lifestyle Do You Want?

This is perhaps the most important question to ask ourselves when we first set out to open a martial arts studio. You see, your lifestyle as an instructor will be largely determined by the size of your facility.

Now, this speaks not only to the amount of money you can potentially make, but also to the number of hours you will need to work to manage your school and staff. Obviously, the more students you enroll, the more gross income your school will generate.

However, at some point the law of diminishing returns will kick in; this is an economic principle that basically states that, when work output increases beyond a certain point, the relative return will begin to decrease. In other words, after a certain point in growth your profit margins will get more and more narrow.

That’s why size deserves careful consideration when you’re doing your initial business planning before opening your school. Let’s look at this topic in a bit more detail to see how size impacts profit margins in martial arts business. Read the rest of this entry »

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Summer Programs For Adults

Can you sell summer programs to adults? Sure you can!

Any seasonal change or event can be a reason for adults to be open to new experiences and activities, and summer is no exception. Although many parents may find they are busier during summer since their children are out of school, don’t let that keep you from marketing your programs to adults as well.

In my experience, interest in my adult programs actually tends to increase as summer draws near. This is in part due to adults wanting to get in better shape for summer.

Remember, you should also co-advertise your kid’s classes in a starburst in the corner of this month’s ad. Speak with your ad exec at your local paper, or your printer about modifying the ad with this sort of custom information.

Current Month’s Marketing Plan: Adult Summer Martial Arts Classes!

Marketing Plan for the Months of May – June 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

Your Members Want More – Just Make Sure You Give It To Them With Integrity

Having a BBC is a must, but "selling black belts" is NOT the way to go. If you do it, set it up so your BBC has integrity.

Having some sort of elite membership in your school is a must in this day and age.

You have to do this… I’ve tried having a school without an elite membership level, and it just doesn’t work.

As you probably already realize, those folks become your “core” and help keep the school together. Plus, it gives the really serious people something more.

Not to mention that it allows you to increase retention in your martial arts business. That’s a big one. We all want to keep our best students around longer, and a good BBC program can help you do exactly that.

How To Have A Successful BBC

Three things you must do: Read the rest of this entry »

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