Holiday Enrollments Part I
By Darren A. Gaitan
Over the past couple of weeks I’m sure you have been bombarded with
emails about holiday sales from martial arts suppliers. Although
this sale should be one of your priorities, you should still be
mindful of other aspects that are more important. A sale can bring
you short term revenue, but focusing on just a sale will cost you
money over the next year. Be sure to revise your marketing campaign
so that it will attract new students to your school during the
holiday season. This season, other than summer time, is
statistically the most difficult for school owners. The interesting
thing is that it does not have to be difficult. Over the years I
have developed different techniques that I have used in order to
keep enrollments up during November and December.
Before I go into detail about these concepts, I would like to remind
you of how important it is to keep enrollments up during the holiday
season. As a school owner you have to understand that every aspect
of your school directly affects the other. Low enrollments turn into
low upgrades. Low upgrades have an affect on retention, which
affects the number of students testing, which discourages students
from referring friends, and finally affecting the gross of your
school. These effects are not fully realized until a couple months
into the new year. So it has the potential to make your busy months,
like January and February, produce financially mediocre revenues. No
one would voluntarily want this for their school and now you can
begin to understand why enrollments should be one of your top
priorities.
I learned many years that during this time of the year you have to
be a little more giving with your offers. You have to give more in
order to receive more. Let’s face it, people are in the Christmas
spirit, and they do expect more from the businesses that have
something to sell them. Why do you think retailers offer the best
sales during this time of the year? It’s because the revenue that
can be generated justifies them offering bigger discounts to
consumers. Some discounts are more than they would usually offer at
any other time during the year. Retailers understand that the
revenue produced from higher discounts and lower profit-margins are
worth every penny they lose. Adopt this temporary mentality by the
time you finish this article.
Moving forward, years ago I realized that parents did not want an
added expense during the holidays. This was the number one rebuttal
I was getting from leads. Parents also told me they would wait until
January when things had calmed down. Well I noticed that there was a
5% chance that they would return to the school in January (This is a
figure that I have calculated over the years by keep track of it). I
started to think of a strategy I could use to convince the parents
to enroll now rather than wait until January. I looked at the
problem. They didn’t want payments and they did not have time to
bring their kids to class. Well there was only one thing I could do.
I introduced my ”NO PAYMENTS UNTIL 2006” marketing campaign. I offer
this program starting in November and I run the offer until the end
of the year. I enroll them for six months of payments, and I give
them two months for free. During the first two months they are
allowed to take classes just like any other student. It solves the
problem because parents don’t feel like they are paying for
something that they are not using. Plus, by signing an agreement,
they do feel a sense of obligation to bring their kids to class.
I noticed that this strategy worked because of the advertising by
major retailers across the country. During the holiday shopping
season you can’t go anywhere without seeing some type of no interest
or no payments offer. This happens every year because it works. So
in a sense, consumers are conditioned to look for these offers more
so than any other. So by piggy backing on the consumer mentality
tone set by retailers, you can produce fantastic enrollment results
in November and December. In any business, the marketing plan needs
to change in order to appeal and entice the customer base it is
attempting to solicit.
Only one business exists that never adapts to the desires of their
potential consumers; an out of business.
Another tactic I use is offering a gift wrapped package in my
pro-shop. It’s a box that has a uniform, a patch, a certificate for
a birthday party, and a coupon for a free month of lessons. I
usually sell it at a discount or I sell it at a price where I make
the typical 100% markup on the merchandise included. It ranges from
$25.00 to $35.00. After selling the box, I have it gift wrapped so
that the parent can put it under the tree. I also have a couple made
so that I can donate them to local charities. Well you might ask the
question, if they are in need of charity how can they afford to
continue their martial arts lessons? I speak from first hand
experience, a lot of these parents are the type of parents that have
the grandparents pay or do have the money, but pay cash at the
school. It’s sad to say but a lot of these people use these public
aid programs as buffers rather than financial solutions. Either way,
you’ll have acquired new students that will continue after the 30
days expire and if they don’t you will have brought some happiness
to a needy child.
I also host special buddy days for the students of the school. I
call them a “parent present buddy day”. It will usually last about
an hour and a half. During the buddy day I teach a special class
that is pretty close to a birthday party format. Half way through
the class I have one of my assistant instructors take over the class
while I take pictures of each student. After I have taken everyone’s
picture, I print them out and the class moves on to the arts and
crafts activity. I order special picture frame kits for the Oriental
Trading Company and I have the kids make a picture frame with their
picture. When they are done, the picture frame goes into a bag with
a coupon for a free month for the parents, three chore vouchers from
the kids, a special holiday card from the school and various coupons
for my holiday sale. At the end of the class I hand out a pass to a
special mass intro class and I tell the kids to have their parents
open their present when they get home. I get a reasonable number of
students from this every year.
During this time of the year I get real aggressive when I’m
recruiting new students. I tend to offer new students more than I
normally would during a regular month. I have to in order to ensure
that I don’t feel the effects of a bad Christmas season later on in
January, February, and March. I use these techniques and the ones I
will be going over next week to guarantee the financial stability of
the school during a challenging time. If you have any questions,
please feel free to email me darren@championsway.com .
Darren A. Gaiten
Associate Consultant
ChampionsWay Inc.
877.774.5425
darren@championsway.com
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