Posts Tagged ‘Leads’

The First 30 Make All The Difference

The first 30 students are always the toughest ones to get, but yet that first 30 will be the foundation that your remaining enrollment is built on.

So, it’s crucial that you have a solid marketing strategy for attracting your first 30 students when you open your doors.

For many instructors who are just starting out, getting 30 students may seem like a monumental task. However, just like any other undertaking, if you break it down you’ll find it’s much easier to accomplish.

So, here’s my “quick-start” marketing plan for getting your first 30 students: Read the rest of this entry »

“Work” – The Dirty Word in Martial Arts Marketing

Work.

It’s that dirty little four-letter word associated with martial arts marketing in all its varied forms. There’s no avoiding it, and no denying it.

Marketing your studio takes work.

Yet, without marketing you’re dead in the water. Just as a fisherman can’t catch fish without casting a net or line, you can’t expect to get leads and clients without doing any marketing.

And, just because it takes time and effort to market your school, that doesn’t give you an excuse to ignore or avoid it. In fact, if anything it should be the first thing you knock out every day, since it’s often the most time-intensive activity each day.

Why I Look Forward To Doing My Marketing

Yes, I actually look forward to doing the marketing for my martial arts business. Why? Because I’ve invested enough time and effort into it that I’m good at it, and because of that I know there’s a reward at the end of every successful campaign I invest my time and effort into.

Notice, I didn’t say, “Invest money into.” That’s because with today’s technology, it actually costs very little to market a small business… if you know what you’re doing.

Yet, I have coaching clients who are anything but marketing geniuses who are successfully using technologies like blogging, social media, and email to market their schools and studios – and to great effect.

In fact, if you check out the MASAI site updates that appear later in this article, you’ll find out how to market your school for around $60 a month. Seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting Social to Get Leads and Build Your Database

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can help you build your email list - which in turn increases your local direct marketing reach.

Social media, social media, social media blah blah blah…

Okay – so I bet you’ve heard a lot about social media. By now you might be totally in love with it or sick and tired of hearing about it. Possibly a little of both.

Regardless of where you are with it, social media really is just ‘the internet’. The internet itself has morphed from a monologue into a dialogue and now more than ever information, news and rumors spread at a fantastic rate.

By its most basic definition, social media is a conversation, just digitized. It’s a dialogue, connecting the world in ways that have never been possible before.

And, it’s pervasive to our modern culture. That’s why you need to at least understand what social media is and how it affects your business – and your email list. Read the rest of this entry »

“Building It” Fast Is Simply A Matter Of Following What Works In The Majority Of Successful Martial Art Schools…

Want to grow your school? Follow a proven plan.

Starting a martial art school is tough – and growing a martial art school is even tougher.

That’s why I spent a lot of time in my first school analyzing my operations and comparing them to what successful school owners did. I traveled and spent time with them, observing first-hand what they were doing to grow their schools.

From those observations, I compared what successful instructors were doing, and settled on the activities that were most common among the schools I observed…

It’s not like I kept a bunch of data tables and graphs; it was nothing so complicated as all that. Basically, if I saw a lot of successful instructors doing something, I figured it was important and made note of it.

Then, I made sure I was doing those exact same tasks and activities in my own school on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Now after 15 years of doing this, I’m able to boil down the key elements to martial arts business success into a very simple formula and very thorough checklists, ensuring that I’m hitting on all eight cylinders in my martial art school operations.

This month, I’ve decided to share that formula and most of those checklist items with you in the remainder of this article. Want to hit 100 martial arts students fast, and then continue that growth? 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 »

On my recent flight out to Florida to teach an SDBBP and Fighting Fit™ instructor certification seminar, I decided to catch up on some reading and picked up Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Several people had recommended the book to me, and I wasn’t disappointed. Outliers is a book about highly successful people, whom the author calls (you guessed it) outliers. The entire premise of the book is that success is often mistakenly credited fully and completely to an individual’s hard work, determination, and talent; but, as the author explains, that’s always only half the story.

The Whole Truth On What Leads To Success

Read the rest of this entry »

Although most of the martial arts school owners and instructors I have coached don’t want to have a huge mega-studio, many of us would like to earn a comfortable living teaching between 150 and 200 students. While for some that may seem like an easy goal, for many others reaching 150 students seems near impossible.

The biggest hurdle to most school owners in hitting their enrollment goals is that they tend to look at different aspects of their business in isolated terms. Over here we have “curriculum”, here we have “advertising”, here we have “retention”, here is “billing”, then there’s “scheduling”, “pricing”, etc.

The problem with this is that it leads to a skewed sort of thinking – that is to say, you start to think that one part of your operations won’t affect the whole. And that can be hazardous to achieving your goal of having a small, profitable studio.

Let me explain… Read the rest of this entry »