Posts Tagged ‘Lead Generation’

How To Use Trade Shows and Fairs To Get Students

Trade shows, festivals, and local fairs are a great way to get in front of your target audience.

With warm weather arriving and spring in full swing, chances are good that the local community events calendar in your city is filling up with trade shows and festivals.

In fact, you may have even been invited to do a demonstration or have a table at one of these events.

And that’s a good thing. Even though you may dread doing these events (I know I do), lead generation from trade shows, local community events, health fairs, and school festivals remains one of the best ways to increase your community profile and to generate lots of leads quickly.

However, if you fail to do this lead generation method properly, you’ll just be wasting your time and missing out on a ton of great leads. So, follow my tips for successfully leveraging trade show and fair appearances to the greatest result in marketing your martial art school. 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 »

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 »

Multiple Marketing Methods Spell Lead Generation Success For Smart School Owners

A good marketing plan includes numerous sources for generating new leads and business.

I always talk about multiple source lead generation, and I often say I don’t care where a lead comes from. I felt I needed to provide some clarification on this, so I don’t give the impression that you don’t have to track your lead sources.

What I mean is that I’ll take a lead from ANY source – the lead doesn’t know where it came from. (I’m about to get off on a tangent, but bear with me here because this will be highly instructive.)

Why You Need To Cultivate Multiple Lead Sources

Here’s the deal – relying too much on one lead source is a serious mistake.

Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

How to Create a Lead Generating Machine In Under 90 Days… (Almost) For Free!

Most everyone asks me about martial arts marketing; or more specifically, how to get more students into their school. This seems to be a universal problem for school owners across the country.

For the majority of school owners, the main challenge with regards to getting more students is getting your programs in front of enough people (in other words, lead generation).

This is typically due to one of two issues:

1. A lack of or inadequate amount of marketing -
2. Ineffective marketing -

More often than not, with new school owners they aren’t marketing enough due to lack of funds with which to do so. Ten years ago, I’d have told any such school owner to get out and do some flyering and door hangers, an extremely time-intensive (but usually very effective) task.

Thankfully, we now live in an internet age where everyone has a world of potential customers at their fingertips. The question is, how do you reach them?

Well, that’s what this article is going to explain. Read the rest of this entry »