Posts Tagged ‘teaching martial arts’

Easy Online Martial Arts Marketing Methods You May Have Overlooked

There has never been a better time for martial arts marketing, because it’s never been easier to get the word out about your school. Online marketing and modern technology can take the grunt work out of promoting your programs.

Still, I know that many of you may not be leveraging the internet as well as you might to market your school. With all the different ways you can market your school online, it’s easy to get caught up with the more obvious marketing methods, and overlook the subtler and simpler ways to promote your school that are sitting right under your nose.

So, with that in mind here are several relatively quick and easy ways to boost your online marketing while barely lifting a finger (well, except to hit a few keys).
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A Heartfelt Approach to Bringing Back Inactive Students

Every month you are going to lose between 3% and 5% of your students. It’s just a fact of life. Some will drop out because they have moved away, or they took up another recreational activity, or they had a child…

However, many of those students who drop out do so because they simply didn’t feel appreciated. In the book Appreciation Marketing, authors Tommy Wyatt and Curtis Lewsey cite a recent study that indicates 68% of clients who leave do so because of perceived indifference*.

In other words, most clients leave because they think you don’t care. And, I’d say that’s doubly true in our industry, due to the unique relationships we develop with our students. Think about it – teaching martial arts is a very personal business.

Yet, all it really takes sometimes is a little show of appreciation to get those inactive students back and training at your school. And, it takes very little on your part to do so.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to do just exactly that. Read the rest of this entry »

How to Increase Your Business Dramatically Without Increasing Your Overhead

In Jay Abraham’s excellent book, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got, Mr. Abraham claims that there are only three ways you can increase your business:

1. By increasing your number of clients -
2. By increasing the average size of the sale per client -
3. By increasing the number of times clients return and buy again.

So, let’s take a look at Mr. Abraham’s observation above, and see how exactly we can apply that to the business of teaching martial arts. Read the rest of this entry »

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How To Become A Top School By Focusing On The “Big Five” Principles of Martial Arts School Management

Running a martial arts school successfully is really pretty simple – it’s getting your school off the ground that is the hard part. Even so, the same principles that allow you to manage a school effectively are the very same principles needed to get you through your launch period.

Think it’s complicated? It’s really not… launching and growing your school is really just a matter of staying focused on the “Big Five” areas of martial arts school management.

No matter where you are in the business life-cycle, I recommend that every month you should review your current operations as they relate to each of the “Big Five” management principles, then pick one crucial thing to implement/improve upon in each area, and then repeat this process every month thereafter.

By the way, the “Big Five” areas are: Read the rest of this entry »

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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 »

Occasionally I get asked whether an instructor should teach out of their home. Since roughly one-half of the schools I’ve trained at have been located either in or on the grounds of private residences, I can relate to this issue.

My first bit of advice with regards to this issue of teaching out of your home is that you speak to an attorney about these matters. Since I’m not an attorney, any advice I can offer is pure conjecture based on my own experiences running a business. Only an attorney that is licensed to practice in your area can give you a definitive opinion in these matters. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I was clicking around on some martial arts websites and came across an interesting article on the Bullshido website, the topic of which was “The difference between a commercial martial arts school and a McDojo.”

Now, normally I’d expect to hear the standard diatribe – including a lot of senseless yammering about how “real” martial arts schools don’t teach kids. As you might imagine, I was shocked when I read the following:

“Lets take a walk into a school shall we?

… there’s a large kids class going on right now. The kids are taking turns throwing front kicks and round kicks on kick pads and practicing how to roll someone off them on the ground. The parents are sitting watching their children drinking Starbucks and yapping about whatever it is they yap about while they watch their kids jump around in karate suits.

McDojo right?

Lets not judge so quickly here…

If the above description was a McDojo then EVERY professionally run martial arts academy would be considered a “McDojo”. The Gracie Jiu Jitsu academy, Gokor’s, Renzo’s, the Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu Club, the ADCC training center….ALL of them. Meanwhile, we all know that every school I mentioned has produced people that would kick your a$$ six ways from Sunday.”

Seriously, I have to hand it to the author of the post (and I think he’s a moderator on one of the forum topics) – he really hit the nail on the head about the fact that teaching martial arts to children doesn’t necessarily equal selling-out.

Which of course brings me to the topic of this article; namely, how to avoid the stigma that goes with teaching children’s programs in your school… Read the rest of this entry »