Fall time is the best time: Back to School Marketing Strategies
Part IV
By Darren A. Gaitan
September is here now. All of your marketing strategies are now in
effect, and you should be looking for ways to improve your in-house cash
and student body at the same time. School owners across the country are
planning back to school fun nights. It is a great way to improve student
retention and it can help you enroll new members. You should also be
planning a back to school night to coincide with your September belt
graduation. Both of these events can help make September a month to
remember.
Back to school fun night should be planned on the third or last
Friday/Saturday of the month. I like to schedule them on Saturdays
because parents choose to go out on Saturdays rather than Fridays. This
means that attendance to this event will be higher. Back to school fun
night should be the event where you bring out all of your special games
and activities that you usually don't use during your regular fun
nights. You can have the Karate Jumper, Glow Chucks, Extreme Glow Dodge
ball, Glow punch, etc. These will be the activities that you have saved
for special events. Since it is a back to school fun night, students
should be inviting students from their classroom. Pass out invitations
at the end of every class. The invitation explains that there will be a
back to school concentration class, food, games, and all of your special
activities. Be sure to explain that this night will be a buddy night.
It's $20.00 or FREE which ever you choose. If you're looking for new
students out of this even then don't charge. If you're looking for
revenue then charge about $20.00. You can also reduce the price to
$10.00 or $5.00 if they bring a buddy. You can also give them a FREE
Wizard T-Shirt for your Harry Potter Fun night that you will be having
in November when the new movie comes out. I'll explain what this is all
about in a future article. I suggest using any variation of this event
to suit the needs of your school.
Next, your September belt graduation should also be your back to
school night for the community. Design flyers that you can post up
around the community. Go around to local businesses and ask them if you
can leave flyers at their counter. Change your lead box headers to
announce the event and change your offer to include a back to school
concentration course. (I like lead boxes because they are mini
billboards for your school. I really don't care if they produce new
students because the free advertisement I get is worth having the box
inside of a business.) In addition, you should be passing out
invitations to each of your students at the end of their class. Post the
announcement on your websites home page. Use Mr. Marketer to send out
the invitation via email to all of your active students. Inside of the
email, ask your students to forward it to all of their friends. Send out
another email to all of your prospects which announces your back to
school night. Don't forget to include the FREE concentration course
which can be held on a Saturday in the email. One last thing you can do
is to modify the school letter to ask the teacher if they could attend
the event as your students' board holder. You can also make an
invitation that will be given directly to their teacher that states the
same request as the letter. If you would like to take it a step further,
you could personally invite the principals of each school as your guests
of honor. Have them say a couple words about the importance of education
and character development.
These are two events that can be offered in the same month or you can
have one in September and the other in October. Schedule these events
based around what you think will be the best strategy for your school.
Keep in mind that you have very powerful tools to help you promote these
events. One of those tools is Mr. Marketer. The email feature is
probably the best way to promote these events. I use it to promote every
event I hold at the school. It saves a lot of time and money. The voice
broadcast is something I would use as a marketing tool for this event. I
would set it up to personally invite your beginning students to these
events. These are students that are most likely to bring in friends.
Plus, they love the fact that their getting a phone call from the master
instructor. The SMS broadcast can be used a couple days before the event
as a friendly reminder. (The integration of the SMS feature, in my
opinion, is 5 years head of its time. The potential for this feature is
immeasurable) Use your imagination and the ChampionsWay solutions you
have to make these events the best ones of the year. If you need ideas,
just send me an email
Darren@championsway.com . Good luck and remember, "You can't
hit a homerun unless you swing".
Darren A. Gaiten
Associate Consultant
ChampionsWay Inc.
877.774.5425
darren@championsway.com |
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