Posts Tagged ‘Prospects’

Selling The Intangible Benefits of Martial Arts Training

This month's martial arts marketing materials can be downloaded from the member's download area.

When marketing martial arts classes for children, you should be aware of what motivates parents to spend money on extracurricular activities for their children.

If you believe parents are motivated by the same motivating factors that get children interested in martial arts, you’re way off base.

In fact, parents motivations for enrolling their children in martial arts are often the exact opposite of that of their children.

Let’s examine these motivations in brief to help you better understand how to market your children’s programs to the greatest effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding Lead Capture and Autoresponders for Online Marketing of Your Martial Art School

Martial arts marketing using autoresponders, email, and lead capture is easy when you understand how to use technology to get the most from your marketing. But what exactly is an autoresponder? And what is lead capture? For those of you who are new to online marketing for local businesses, “lead capture” refers to using an online form that provides an incentive for site visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or email list. And, an autoresponder is an automated service that uses a web-based software program to automatically send out follow-up messages to your captured leads (your email list). In addition to capturing leads and following up automatically, most paid email autoresponder services allow you to efficiently manage your contact lists and send out newsletters (called “broadcasts”) to your list with just a few clicks of the mouse. This is a useful and valuable feature that by itself makes paying $20 0r $30 a month for an autoresponder worthwhile.

Why Use Paid Services Instead of “Free” Solutions?

As I’ve often said, “free” isn’t free if it Read the rest of this entry »

Simple Honesty And Convenience Can Really Make A Difference In Your Bottom Line

Think you have some powerful sales kung fu? Put away those slick tricks. Honesty and convenience are better than tricks, any day of the week.

So, think you have some powerful “sales kung fu”?

If so, you likely are aware that your customers see the enrollment process as a buying process. They are shopping you along with your competitors, and will likely make their buying decision based on how good you are at convincing them to join your school.

Now, having said that, you should know that I am not a fan AT ALL of sneaky tricks and hard sell tactics.

So, before we go on let me present you with the number one rule I want you to live and die by in your sales process:

Massie-ism #674:

“When you have the truth, you don’t need tricks. Always tell the truth to your customers.”

No matter what you’ve been told, and no matter who told you – slick tricks work against you and not for you when you are building your enrollment.

Growing a school over the long-term is about building trust and a reputation for honesty in your community. Being known as the local used car salesman of martial arts instructors is not the best way to achieve that goal.

With that in mind, let’s look at a few key areas where you can use honesty and common sense courtesy to your best advantage to increase your sales and conversions.
Read the rest of this entry »

How To Build Your Email List And Use It To Grow Your Martial Art School…

This is what most people see when they open their inbox. Follow the tips in this article to make sure your emails get opened.

The fact is, even though email has been around virtually since the beginning of the internet, most business owners overlook it as a powerful and nearly free marketing tool.

And today with all the “shinier objects” online (like social media marketing for instance) many business owners discount or overlook the power of having a solid email list for their business.

This is a HUGE mistake! Email marketing remains one of the best, if not the best, marketing weapons to have in your marketing quiver. Think about it – except for the cost of your email newsletter and lead capture software, it is absolutely 100% free to send a promotional email out to your list.

And, you can do it as often as you like, typically in just a few minutes for a single promotional email (as long as it takes to type a few paragraphs and hit “send”).

But, there’s email marketing and then there’s really good email marketing… and knowing a few simple tricks and secrets can make all the difference in the world in how effective your email marketing is for your school.

So, let’s go over a few tips and tricks that will improve your optins (leads) and response rate (how many people respond to your emails).

Read the rest of this entry »

Learning What Triggers Buying Decisions Can Mean The Difference Between Failure And Success

Are you a white belt in sales? Learning what makes people buy will go a long way toward getting you out of the beginner's class in sales skills.

Do you know why people buy?

It seems like such a simple question, one that most people would glibly answer, “Because they want stuff.”

True, but that really merely scratches the surface. In truth, people buy for a multitude of reasons, but what triggers a consumer to make a buying decision…

Well, that’s a whole different story. And, if you can identify and leverage buying triggers, you can greatly increase your chances of growing and running a thriving martial arts school for years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

A Confused Mind Never Buys…

Handing out unnecessary information just for the sake of doing it can actually hinder the enrollment process by creating confusion in the mind of the prospective student.

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 would enroll…

Well, if you’ve been reading my materials for any length of time, you know that I hold a strong dislike for unnecessary complexity in any shape or form in any process – be it in business systems, martial arts technique, or teaching methods.

And, the above situation is no exception. Let me explain why I think overloading new prospects with information is a mistake, and allow me to show you how to make your enrollment process much, much simpler.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s No Need To Be Afraid Of “FREE”

Let me ask you a question…

What have you given away for free lately?

Now, I’m not talking about giving away a bunch of free lessons – that’s not very wise, and if done too much it’ll cheapen the value of your service in the prospects eyes.

Think about it, you don’t see doctors giving away free surgeries, or attorneys advertising “First Case in Court Free!”

However, there are times when you can give away something for free and have it work in your favor. The trick is finding ways to do this while meeting two very important criteria:

1. First, the free offer must perform the function of enticing the prospect to give up something valuable – either their contact information, their commitment, or their time -
2. Second, the free offer must NOT be constructed in such a way that you are giving away too much value and thereby reducing the perceived value of your services (and I’ll explain how to determine whether this is so – read carefully because this is important!)

Meeting these two criteria is crucial to your free offer’s success. Fail to meet either one and you’ll end up on the losing end of the deal, every single time.

So, how do you do this? Here’s how… 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 »

After operating various martial arts schools and programs for over fifteen years, one thing that I have learned is that my students are my best advertisement.

What I mean to say by that is, I get more people that call or stop by to join classes who say they heard about us from “a friend” than I generally get from paid advertisements.

That tells me that my students say positive things about the school (which really makes me happy). And, if you are offering a quality program and treating your students right, you’ll likely get quite a bit of new students from referrals as well.

In fact, referrals can end up being your number one source of new students. And once you start getting them, you don’t want them to stop!

So, in order to encourage referrals, it’s a very good idea to offer a referral incentive program in your studio. We’ve used one for years that has worked very well for us.

Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »