Posts Tagged ‘Teaching Adults’

For many martial arts instructors, teaching children is just not something that they care to do. For whatever reason, they would prefer to spend their time teaching adults, and would rather avoid opening their classes to kids.

Well, despite what you may have been told, making a living running an “all-adult” martial arts school is very do-able; in fact, I know of one martial arts studio in a small town near me that has over 300 adult students.

Another long-time school owner I know decided that he enjoyed teaching adults more than kids, even though his main market had been children for 15 years. So, he developed a marketing approach that was geared specifically for adults, and went from less than ten adults to nearly 40 adult students in a few months time.

His style? Traditional tae kwon do. I think that proves you don’t have to teach MMA or military hand-to-hand to attract adults; you just have to know how to find the adults that want what you teach.

But how are you going to attract that type of adult into your classes? By offering them what they want!

Generally speaking, adults enter martial arts classes for two main reasons:

1. To lose weight and get in shape
2. And to learn realistic self-defense skills

The key is in attracting adults who have disposable income and the time to devote to martial arts training. The schools I mentioned have been very successful in this because their ads focus on giving adults what they want.

As you might guess, in order to attract the adult market you have to get the word out that your classes can provide those benefits.

Here’s a “mini-course” in marketing that explains exactly how to attract adult students to your classes: Read the rest of this entry »