School Growth Checklist: Winter
Click here for the Printable Checklist.
By Jim
Tessman,
Marketing - ChampionsWay Inc.
Membership is the bread and butter of every Martial Arts
school and it’s one of the most difficult things for many owners to
increase. No matter how great your instructors are, new membership
will increase more quickly with solid business practices than
through good instruction alone. You need prospective students to
walk through your front door, be impressed with what they experience
and sign at the dotted line.
Following is a summary of some of the proven growth strategies that
will be used by many of the most successful Martial Arts schools as
they enter the Winter Season. We recommend you take a moment to
review these strategies as you create your winter marketing plan in
order to bring students into your club in a cost effective and
timely manner.
Try to visualize your school making use of these concepts as you
read them and remember that the time that you spend on this will pay
off if you are consistent and follow these instructions. Also
remember that ChampionsWay Martial Arts solutions can help you by
making all of the following tasks easier and far less time consuming
through automation and systemization, leaving you more time to focus
on teaching all of your new students!
Birthday Parties
Holding Birthday parties is a great way to increase your membership
of younger clients. Offer them to your existing clients as a way to
generate new leads from their networks. Remember to make sure the
party is fun, action packed and focused around using some of the
skills they would use in their classes. On top of this, the
instructor(s) who are running it should be very energetic and
knowledgeable. Have sign-in sheets that double as waivers and ask
for their level of interest in Martial Arts. Also remember to
involve the parents wherever possible so you get the opportunity to
talk to them, answer questions and make them feel comfortable with
you. The sign-in sheets will provide you with leads that you will
follow up on in the upcoming week. This can also turn into a good
business to make money on otherwise slow weekends
Christmas Cards
Sending Christmas cards each December is an excellent marketing tool
as it brings your school to the top of the recipients’ minds during
the Holidays. As many new clients come on board following their New
Years resolutions, this is an opportunity that you don’t want to
pass up. Many people even leave their Christmas cards on display
throughout the holiday season, offering an increased possibility of
additional people seeing the card and asking about your school.
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Websites
Not having a website now is like not having a phone number 10 years
ago. Without it, your business is crippled. People may drive past
your school, notice your ad in the newspaper or hear about your
school from a friend. What do you think their next step is likely to
be? They will then check your website! Make sure that your website
address is imprinted on everything promotional that you can get it
on – business cards, signage, throughout your gym and anywhere else
you can think of.
Prospects will look at the pictures of your school, what you offer,
what you teach, what your class schedules are and whether you offer
a free trial class or any other specials. People want information,
and you want the information that they see to be written and edited
by you, so it’s up to date and representative of your school. Your
website speaks for you – if it is “Under Construction” or outdated,
people will think the same about your school! If your website is
nonexistent, outdated or not representative of your school and your
teaching style, make sure to visit ChampionsWay Custom Websites in
order to start making your website work for you.
In order for people to find your website, you will want to follow a
few simple rules. Firstly, get it professionally built and regularly
updated, as you will be judged on your website by potential clients.
Secondly, make sure that you have a strong domain name that is
representative of your school and easy to remember, such as “http://www.gracieacademy.com”
or “http://www.jhoonrhee.com”. ChampionsWay marketing team would be happy to recommend up to 3
domain names to you that will perform better for you and will show
up higher on search engines, such as Google. Thirdly, you will want
unique, relevant and descriptive content on your home page such as
your city, school name and other information that someone might
search for. The more unique and relevant content on your website the
better your chances are for showing up higher on search engines.
You may also want to consider Search Engine Optimization ( SEO) or Internet Marketing Services, in order to ensure that
your site comes up when a person is using a search engine to find
your website. Many businesses have been built on Internet Marketing
& SEO alone, and ChampionsWay can help you optimize your website for
improved search engine performance.
Free Trials
It is important to offer people the opportunity to test your
services out. It will be much easier for you to sign a person up who
has come into your school and seen how clean it is, how the teachers
treat the students, what facilities are available and what to expect
before signing up. It can also help to offer a short one-on-one
training session for new prospects after they have tried a class.
This helps in two ways – it offers you a face to face with them to
ask them some questions and begin the sales process, and it also
sets you up to pre-sell them on some discounted private lessons! 25%
off of any private lessons paid for on signing up can be a great
opportunity for both parties.
No matter what, always end the interaction by asking for the sale.
Often all a person needs is for you to ask them if they would like
to join your club for them to take that step.
Tracking
So, you have a website, you’ve had a couple of birthday parties,
you’ve been sending follow-up letters and you’ve run a newspaper ad.
You now have 20 people booked for trial lessons and another 10
people have signed up for your school. Where did they come from?
Which advertising avenues have worked best? How much did each of
those people cost? All of these questions can be answered with
tracking software. Each lead (possible new student), is entered into
your ChampionsWay “MAS” school management software depending on
where they came from, then the system tracks them and comes up with
a report. This way you can determine what is bringing in the most
students for you so you can put more time and effort into those
channels.
Follow-Ups
You must always follow up with your leads. Call them to ask how they
liked their first class, send them Christmas cards, email them with
new class schedules - always stay in touch and follow-up. People who
didn’t sign up may want to sign up, may need a push or may need a
few reasons of why they should. Don’t ever let someone show interest
in joining your school without giving them every opportunity to
improve themselves by joining! The worst that can happen is that
you’ll learn something about why they aren’t interested.
Sounds like a lot of work? Maybe some more employees?
• Now imagine ChampionsWay allowing our highly experienced
staff to do the work for you so you don't have to. Hard to
believe? It won’t be when you read the statistical reports of
your campaigns and see the results that walk through your front
door.
• Click here for a live, Interactive Tour & from this point
forth you will see how you can spend less time, and less money,
while reaping more return from your marketing as we will put our
best strategies and materials to work for your business.
By Jim Tessman,
Marketing - ChampionsWay Inc.
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