Posts Tagged ‘adults’

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

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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.
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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 »

Marketing Summer Programs

Although it’s a commonly accepted fact in the martial arts industry that schools often experience a slump in business during the summer months, let me make one point clear to you:

Slumps are for school owners who don’t plan ahead.

This is something I wised up to early on in my career of starting and running martial arts schools. Whether we’re talking summer slumps, holiday dry spells, or spring break blues… if you plan ahead you’ll often find hidden opportunities that you never knew existed. Read the rest of this entry »

Wanna’ Crush Your Competition?

Many times, the best way to crush your competition is to be as different as possible.

Crushing your competition right out of the gate is a hard thing to do…

Especially if you’re opening your school in a tough market with lots of competitors.

Even so, there is only one nearly surefire way I know of to crush your competitors…

And that’s to compete on a totally different playing field than the ones they are running their businesses on…

Here’s how you can do exactly that, and secure your school’s financial future by carving out a niche in your market that is uniquely yours and yours alone. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a dilemma most martial arts instructors face when they start teaching kids (well, those who are honest and have integrity, anyway). That is, how do you handle belt rank promotions for kids?

Obviously, kids don’t have anywhere near the emotional maturity, logical deduction, motor skills, strength, or learning ability adults have. Granted, kids can do a lot of things many adults can’t (full splits in three weeks, anyone?) but generally speaking they simply cannot perform like adults when it comes to retention of techniques, application of techniques, and performing like an adult black belt.

So how do you handle belt rank promotions for kids without lowering standards or becoming the thing you hate most? Read the rest of this entry »

Last month I wrote to you about planning your classes out for the new year ahead of time. This will ensure your classes are exciting, that you have less work and stress next year, and that you have more time to focus on enjoying teaching. In short, planning out your entire year’s worth of lesson plans ahead of time will make you more effective as a teacher. Planning for your marketing in the new year is no different, and in fact I’d say it takes an even higher priority than planning your classes. Why? It’s putting the horse before the cart… no students – no classes! So, let’s look at how you can plan your marketing cycle out for the year, based around the marketing approach that I teach all my coaching clients to use to build their enrollments rapidly.

Planning The Cycle…

Remember last month when I explained how to break your curriculum up by year, quarter, and month? We’re going to do roughly the same thing with our marketing plan, but we need to take other factors into consideration – namely:

• Seasonal swings in inquiries and enrollments -
• Seasonal “windows of opportunity” for certain markets and age groups -
• Seasonal and holiday promotions -

Now, let’s just take the first quarter of the year… we obviously have the New Year holiday to kick things off… the opportunity here is to attract adults who are looking to lose weight and get in 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 »

The other day, I was clicking around on some martial arts websites and came across an interesting article on the Bullshido website, the topic of which was “The difference between a commercial martial arts school and a McDojo.”

Now, normally I’d expect to hear the standard diatribe – including a lot of senseless yammering about how “real” martial arts schools don’t teach kids. As you might imagine, I was shocked when I read the following:

“Lets take a walk into a school shall we?

If the above description was a McDojo then EVERY professionally run martial arts academy would be considered a “McDojo”. The Gracie Jiu Jitsu academy, Gokor’s, Renzo’s, the Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu Club, the ADCC training center….ALL of them. Meanwhile, we all know that every school I mentioned has produced people that would kick your a$$ six ways from Sunday.”

Seriously, I have to hand it to the author of the post (and I think he’s a moderator on one of the forum topics) – he really hit the nail on the head about the fact that teaching martial arts to children doesn’t necessarily equal selling-out.

Which of course brings me to the topic of this article; namely, how to avoid the stigma that goes with teaching children’s programs in your school… Read the rest of this entry »