Posts Tagged ‘Adult Students’
Author: Marketing Martial Arts to Adults
This month's member ads can be found in the member's download area.
Most martial art school owners do a horrible job of marketing to adults… even the ones who offer programs geared toward the adult market.
The fact is, children’s martial arts has dominated the industry for so long, most of the industry has forgotten what it’s like to have a floor full of adults.
This, in turn, has led to instructors being out of touch with what the adult market wants. Further, even those school owners who focus on adult martial arts programs often get it wrong.
That’s because they are also out of touch with what the market wants, but for different reasons. These instructors are often so focused on what their needs and desires are, they forget or completely miss what the vast majority of people are looking for in a martial arts program.
So, the purpose of this month’s marketing tip is to review the basics of marketing martial arts to adults… read on and you might very well find you’ve been missing the mark in your own marketing efforts.
The Basics of Marketing Martial Arts to Adults
Join the forum discussion on this post
Posted in 
Keeping Adult Students Interested Isn’t Easy, But It Is Possible…
How do you keep adults in class? Here are a few ideas...
As hard as it is for some schools to attract adult students, you’d think they’d put more effort into keeping them around.
Even so, adult retention presents a real issue to school owners across the spectrum of styles and markets.
Adults seem to have ten times the distractions of children, and they don’t have parents paying for their lessons who make them go to class twice a week.
Work, family, dating, finishing a degree… these are just a few examples of things that can distract adult students and that may be competing with you for their attention.
So, how do you keep adults attending class?
I don’t have the 110% solution to that issue, but I can offer some helpful suggestions that may help boost your adult retention. Here are a few simple strategies you can use that may help increase your adult enrollment and boost your adult class attendance.
Read the rest of this entry »
If You Schedule It Without Promoting It, They Probably Won’t Come
Most intelligent and thinking school owners know that the more services they offer their clients, the more opportunities it creates to increase their school’s income.
Think about it… your students are going to spend money on “extras” each month, anyway. They may as well be spending that money at your school.
The thing is, it can be quite frustrating to plan, schedule, and host a special event, only to have a poor turnout. And, it’s even worse when you lose money. However, there’s a simple way to make certain every special event you host makes a profit… Read the rest of this entry »
Join the forum discussion on this post
January and February are great months to enroll adult students, if you capitalize on everyone’s motivation to lose weight and get in shape in the New Year. But what if you don’t offer fitness classes? Don’t let that stop you… EVERY MARTIAL ARTS CLASS IS A FITNESS CLASS! But, for January and February, you are going to spend some extra time focusing on fitness in classes. Now, if your classes are already vigorous, heart-pounding, sweat drenching workouts… that’s great! If not, then here are some ideas to give Read the rest of this entry »
For many martial arts instructors, teaching children is just not something that they care to do. For whatever reason, they would prefer to spend their time teaching adults, and would rather avoid opening their classes to kids.
Well, despite what you may have been told, making a living running an “all-adult” martial arts school is very do-able; in fact, I know of one martial arts studio in a small town near me that has over 300 adult students.
Another long-time school owner I know decided that he enjoyed teaching adults more than kids, even though his main market had been children for 15 years. So, he developed a marketing approach that was geared specifically for adults, and went from less than ten adults to nearly 40 adult students in a few months time.
His style? Traditional tae kwon do. I think that proves you don’t have to teach MMA or military hand-to-hand to attract adults; you just have to know how to find the adults that want what you teach.
But how are you going to attract that type of adult into your classes? By offering them what they want!
Generally speaking, adults enter martial arts classes for two main reasons:
1. To lose weight and get in shape
2. And to learn realistic self-defense skills
The key is in attracting adults who have disposable income and the time to devote to martial arts training. The schools I mentioned have been very successful in this because their ads focus on giving adults what they want.
As you might guess, in order to attract the adult market you have to get the word out that your classes can provide those benefits.
Here’s a “mini-course” in marketing that explains exactly how to attract adult students to your classes: Read the rest of this entry »
When most martial arts school owners think of special events, they probably envision Ninja Nights, sleepovers, and other lock-in type events for children. Rarely, however, do such school owners consider hosting special events for their adult students. The school owner may believe that their adult students are too busy or too broke to attend such an event, or that they have to bring in a “big-name” martial artist to teach in order to get anyone to come. And, we all know how much those “name” martial artists charge for their services (and rightly so; they have bills Read the rest of this entry »
"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
