Marketing ideas for a struggling school

[Texas TKD Lady]

Can some of you provide tips for growing and promoting a TKD school?

I'm a 1st dan black belt at a very small dojang in my city. Enrollment is low (I'm not sure if we even have 50 right now), and I know the school isn't making much money, if any at all. The chief instructor and I are close friends, so I want to help him come up with some ways to improve the business. He is young and doesn't have much business experience, but he has a lot of drive. Meanwhile our GM, while very revered and experienced, is close to retirement and isn't very open to new ideas.

There are some things we can't change right now, such as the location, so that's not worth worrying about. There are plenty of other things we can change, such as the website and more importantly, whom we target and our marketing strategy....right now it's a matter of getting unstuck and figuring out what to do and how to do it.

I'd love to hear some tips and success stories from the community. Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Andrew Green]

biggest bang for your buck on marketing dollars right now is likely Facebook and having a good website. That plus community involvement will go a long way. What are you doing for marketing now? Care to post (or pm me) your website?

 

[TrueJim]

Tips for Owners of Taekwondo Schools

 

[WaterGal]

Well, I think the first step is to figure out where things are going wrong. Do people in the community know about the school? Does the school get contacted by prospective members? If those things are the problem, then better marketing could help you a lot. You need to figure out who your prospective customers are, what they're looking for, and find a way to communicate to them that you're a great place for that and how to get started. That could be through a nice website, social media, putting up signs, doing demonstrations, putting on community events, sponsoring the local kid's softball team, getting involved with community groups, etc etc.

But there could be other reasons for low student numbers. If people contact the school and almost never sign up, you could have a problem in the sales and onboarding process. That is to say, prospective members need someone to make them feel comfortable, answer their questions, get them to try whatever kind of trial class or membership or whatever you guys have, and then once they've done that, sell them on signing up. If this process seems too difficult or confusing, or they don't understand the value of what you offer, they may give up.

 

[Earl Weiss]

Lead boxes. You've likely seen them at small stores saying "Win a vacation" fill out card and place in box. Yours would say "Win Free Martial Arts Lessons" Small flyer on baox and cards to fill out. Then someone collects cards and they are all winners. You collect cards monthly and send out notices to all saying they won 2 free classes for themselves and a friend. Schedule all winners for the same 2 intro classes. Typicaly have those special classes end just as a regular class starts so they can stay and watch. Do those classes monthly. You get interested people in the door. . Send out 100 cards and perhaps get 10 people in the door. Turn 2 of those ten into regular students. At the end of the year you added 24 students.

Next is a 2 for one special. 2 people for the price of one for your regular intro priogram.

 

[Texas TKD Lady]

Thank you all for these great ideas!