Share Attack Of The Killer Guest Pass Ideas, Part 2 Just in case last month’s gargantuan list of guest pass referral ideas wasn’t enough, you’ll find the second half of my big list of 99 ways to use guest passes to get more students at the end of this article. But first, let’s review a [...]
Share A Good Graduation Ceremony Both Attracts And Keeps Students Graduation night is a concept I picked up from observing successful school owners from around the country. When I started my first school, I tried to network with and visit as many successful school owners as I could, both to exchange ideas and to observe [...]
Share “Are You Nuts? You Want Me To Give Away Free Classes?” In the recent survey I posted on my blog and in the member forums, guest passes (sometimes called VIP passes) came in at number two as the most effective form of advertisement and marketing for martial art school owners. This doesn’t surprise me [...]
Share A Confused Mind Never Buys… Recently, a MASAI member asked me how many sheets of information he should hand out to his new students and prospects. Apparently he’d been told by an “expert” that he needed to hand out a ton of information to new students, ostensibly to increase the likelihood that his prospects [...]
Share Do Your Enrollment Numbers Look This Good? Actual enrollment numbers from Martial Art School Alliance site members this month: – Paul Halme, 18 members so far… – Robby Bray, 17 members so far… – Jim Mahan, 12 members so far this month… and he teaches out of an old equipment warehouse with no heat [...]
Share 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 [...]
Share So, What’s Next? For new school owners, this may not seem like it’s even worth worrying about yet… but I’m here to tell you it’s something you need to consider if you’re past your first year in business. You might think it’s only important to have a strong program up to black belt, because [...]
Share So, Just What Is “Front-Loading”? It’s piling on too much curriculum in the beginner and intermediate stages of training. Usually, instructors do this because they want to impress students, keep them around, or even because they want to prove their students are better than everyone else’s, because they “know more.” “Front-loading” a curriculum is [...]
Share How To Increase Your Martial Arts Enrollments in 2010 2010 is finally here, and it’s time for martial art school owners everywhere to leave 2009 behind and focus on what’s important in the here and now… getting new students! To help you with this, here’s a list of ten things you can do to [...]
Share Simplify, Simplify, Simplify In the 14th century, a Franciscan friar and logician by the name of William of Ockham came up with one of the most famous rules of logical deduction… a rule that is still being applied today in a variety of fields and vocations. The rule is popularly referred to as “Ockham’s [...]
Share By Michael Massie When you are first starting your school, building your revenues through marketing and recruitment is your first and foremost priority. Due to the fact that your overall enrollment numbers are relatively low, retention is not an issue at this early stage in the game. Why Retention Becomes So Important After Your [...]
Share This month’s start-up article is essential for anyone who is launching a new school, because it has to do with staying on track using the “P.I.E.” method… 1. Planning 2. Implementation 3. Evaluation I actually learned this approach to task management when I was in the Army Combat Medical Specialist course at Ft. Sam [...]
Share The first time I gave out a guest pass for free karate lessons at my school, you would have thought I was giving away my firstborn child. At that time, I couldn’t see the economic value of giving away one week of lessons in exchange for possibly gaining a new student. Well, my view [...]
Share 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 [...]
Share As a martial arts school owner, you need to recognize the relationship between price and value. I feel that it’s important to share this with you because when you raise your rates, you can rest assured that there will be some people who will say that you are “too high” or “too expensive” or [...]