Posts Tagged ‘marketing plan’

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 »

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 »

Marketing Plan For the Months of March and April, 2010: Seasonal Promotion – Easter

1. Print Ads: Keep placing your ads wherever they are working, and pull them from any publication that fails to pull leads.

And just because no one signed up that called last month, it doesn’t mean you should pull the ad! All it means is that you need to work on your phone and enrollment skills.

Remember, you are going to enroll about half your leads if you’re an expert salesperson, about 25% if you aren’t. So, base your ROI (return on investment) on your average numbers, and if you got enough calls to cover the cost of the ad the same month (from initial payments on new members) then keep running the ad. Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing Plan for the Months of February/March

1. Print Ads: If you’re running ads in print publications and they’re working, keep it up. Also, start considering hiring a door-to-door flier company to target area neighborhoods around your school with the fliers from this month.

Or, get your leadership team out on a Saturday morning and make an event out of it… offer a prize for the first team to distribute 100 fliers on doors (send them out by twos, make sure an adult is in each team). Take them all out for an inexpensive meal after.

2. Banner Sign: Put your 3 foot by 8 foot banner sign in front of your school… Read the rest of this entry »

Capitalizing on Seasonal Trends…

This month’s ad is a unique take on the typical after New Year fitness ads you usually see. The idea is to do a seasonal tie-in, while still capitalizing on the public’s current seasonal interest in health and fitness.

We suggest you use in print ads, fliers, take ones, and get it blown up to hang in your front window…

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Print Ads: Run this month’s ad (the New Year Fitness ads and fliers) where moms and women will see it – the local parenting magazine or in the family section of the local newspaper is a good start. Remember, women make up the bulk of your fitness clients – market to them first and foremost. 2. Fliers: Print up those fliers and distribute them in neighborhoods around your school. 3. Large Front Window Display: Blow up the full-color 8.5 by 11.0 inch flier at Kinko’s, have them mount it on foam board, and stick it in your front window. 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 »

The biggest challenge new and established school owners face is getting new students. The thing most martial arts instructors fail to realize is that, once they open their doors, they are no longer just in the business of teaching martial arts. Now that they’ve decided to open a studio, they have an added responsibility to keep their doors open by attracting new business.

Although many instructors fail miserably in their marketing efforts, it’s often more due to a lack of planning than a pure lack of marketing know-how. Instead of going over the basics of marketing (you can read that by picking up any good marketing book), instead I am going to tell you how to plan your efforts so you get the most from your hard work and money. Here’s how: Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve said many times before, planning and goal-setting is crucial to your success as a martial arts instructor. Or, as someone once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going how will you know when you get there?”

The first step to developing a comprehensive plan for your business is setting goals for profits. Since the majority of our income is derived from tuition payments, we must set profit goals that are based on our enrollments, renewals and attrition.

Setting goals and adopting performance guidelines based on these numbers is one of the most basic management tasks you need to complete if you are to become successful running your studio.

Here’s how to do it… Read the rest of this entry »

”Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
- Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Marketing is the Lifeblood of Your Studio

How important is marketing for your success? Without any reservations, I can tell you that it’s the lifeblood of your business. As I emphasize in the manual, no matter how good your product or service is it doesn’t matter one bit unless people know about it.

When current and aspiring martial arts school owners contact me for help increasing their enrollment, one of the first things I inquire about is their marketing. How and where are they advertising, how do they track their advertising results, how much is their advertising budget, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »