Should Demographics Dictate Your Martial Arts School’s Image?

Posted by Mike Massie on November 5, 2009

Know Thy Image

I fully expect some clown to start offering martial arts for pets or some such nonsense at some point - which would be an extreme case of trying to offer something for everyone... or every-pet, in this case.

Trying to be all things to all people is a sure-fire way to become nothing to no one. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t diversify into having multiple programs for multiple age demographics. Not at all… in fact, for most school owners and in most locations I think it’s a mistake to just go after a single demographic.

Know What Pays Thy Bills

However, I do think you need to know what pays the bills, and be practical about pursuing that demographic and making it the priority in your school. For example…

In my first school, I built the entire school on kids programs. That was my whole image, and even though I taught adult classes, fitness classes, and so on, my entire image was tied up in being a kid-friendly school.

But in my most recent school, I focused more on presenting the message that we had programs for the whole family. Still, I wanted to teach more adults, so I focused more on that.

The thing is, getting kids in your school is usually the easiest task. It’s the adults that are much harder to attract. That’s why I always go for the kid’s market first, then go after the adults once the kid’s programs are paying the bills.

Know Thy Demographic

What’s that have to do with image?

Well, all my ads are pretty much middle of the road as far as raciness goes. The raciest thing I’ve ever run was for my boot camp, and that’s because the model showed midriff and had a belly piercing (it looked good, though – the ads performed well).

Mostly, I’ve stuck with mom-friendly stuff, because in the areas I operated in most of my clients and decision-makers were moms.

Know Thy Target Market

Here’s something to consider, though…

Say you run a gym that’s MMA oriented, and your enrollment is mostly made up of the 20- and 30-something, tatted up, Affiliction-wearing guys.

Chances are good that your kids classes are going to be made up of kids from those households.

So, you’ll still get some “contact” enrollments just by virtue of farming your existing clientele – it’s just going to fall out that way.

But, that “bad boy” image isn’t going to go over well with families who just walk in off the street. Your average soccer mom is going to be turned off by it, and she’ll take her kids down the street to the plain-vanilla-typical-suburban-family-image school down the street.

This is just one example, and I think you can see the converse also applies. If your school is viewed as a “kiddie” school, chances are good that will work against you if you are marketing hard core MMA or adult self-defense programs.

Know Thy Image As It Applies To Thy Demographic

This is why it’s important to understand the demographics of your area… so you can make sure you don’t have an image disconnect between the image your marketing projects and your local market.

In more densely populated urban areas, it may be possible to pick and choose your ideal student by targeting a particular demographic. This is what you see advertisers doing in mass media marketing – the audience is broad enough to allow the advertiser’s to pick and choose their market to a certain extent.

However, your market reach is effectively only 5-10 miles from your location (ten being on the extreme edges of your market).

So, the demographic found in that geographical area absolutely dictates what your marketing image should be.

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Questions? Comments?

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The Myth of the Magic Bullet in Marketing Your Martial Arts School

Posted by Mike Massie on June 4, 2009

In this business, every kid (er... school owner) should have one

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

There are no “magic bullets” when it comes to marketing your school. The ‘one single best marketing method” is a marketing myth – it doesn’t exist.

People routinely ask me what the best method is for marketing a martial arts school.

My answer?

“All of them!”

Or, I might be inclined to say, “The ones that work!”

The thing is, you can’t just rely on a single method of marketing your school. Consumers these days are absolutely bombarded with marketing messages, and your hopes of catching their attention with a single method of marketing are slim to none.

How to Get Noticed By Potential Clients In Your Target Market

Instead, you need to make sure your potential new student sees your marketing message multiple times, over and over again so the chances that they’ll respond increase significantly.

There are dozens of methods of marketing your school (I list 37 ideas in my marketing manual, and every month the members of my dirt-cheap martial arts business coaching club receive a marketing plan with 10-12 actionable marketing ideas to implement the following month). Some ways work better than others, depending on the market, the quality of the execution, frequency, etc.

The only way to find out what works is to test multiple marketing methods, and stick with the ones that get results. And, don’t just try one method once then decide it doesn’t work – you should try multiple ways to use each marketing medium (print ads, web, direct mail, door-to-door, etc.) before discarding a method as useless. Often, poor ad performance can be chalked up to poor execution, not the method or channel.

Don’t Worry About Finding A Magic Bullet – Instead, Buy A Machine Gun

On a final note, stop looking for a single killer marketing method that you can use to the exclusion of all others. In most cases and with most markets, a single marketing approach may only bring in a few leads a week. That may not sound like much, and you may be tempted to discount a method that only results in one or two leads a week.

However, I’ll gladly use 10 or 12 different marketing ideas that “only” generate 1 or 2 leads a week… because if I use them all at once, they soon add up.

And, when all those different marketing and promotional methods are used simultaneously, it often results in marketing synergy, where the combined effect is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

So, stop searching for that single “magic marketing bullet”. Instead, resolve yourself to the fact that to get the desired result, you just need to use lots of bullets.

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Mike Massie is the author of Small Dojo Big Profits and runs a martial arts business coaching website for new instructors and small school owners, StartingAMartialArtSchool.com. Click here to purchase Mike’s business manuals and materials.