Episode 623 - Why Most Martial Arts School Marketing Sucks
In this episode, listen in as Jeremy and Andrew talk about Why Most Martial Arts School Marketing Sucks.
Why Most Martial Arts School Marketing Sucks - Episode 623
What do you value the most? Most of us value our families, our careers, and other important things. We consider these values when we decide on the location of our house, where we send our kids to school, or whether to buy a car or use public transportation. This is the same with Martial Arts school marketing because most of the time, we don’t consider what potential students’ value the most. In this episode, listen in as Jeremy and Andrew talk about Why Most Martial Arts School Marketing Sucks and what you need in order to do marketing properly.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's going on everybody? Welcome, this is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. I am Jeremy Lesniak joined by Andrew Adams and today we're talking about problems with martial arts school marketing. Even if you don't have a school, you'd probably find something at least interesting about this conversation so stick around. If you wanna see all the things that we do at whistlekick, things we've been doing for years, go to whistlekick.com. It’s our online home. You're gonna find all the different things that we do there. One of the things that we have there is a store, if you use the code podcast15 and you'd get yourself 15% off anything that we have there, from uniforms to hats to hoodies to...well if the warehouse space here is a little bit more organized and it will be soon! I'm cleaning this up soon, I would show you all kinds of things but that's coming.
Now, other things that we have available at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. It's a website for the show where we have transcripts and links and for guest episodes, we have photos and videos and social media and all kinds of stuff like that. So, if you like this show go check that out. While you're there, you can sign up for the newsletter, you can also leave us a tip because yeah it costs money. I'm paying your gas.
Andrew Adam:
It all adds up.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It does! It all adds up. Right? This show doesn't come out of thin air, we work hard on it so if you value it consider helping us out. Other ways you can help out whistlekickprogrmas.com, you can get our program that supplements your martial arts training for probably less than you think. You can grab one of our books on Amazon or the biggie... the Patreon, patreon.com – patreon.com/whistlekick. We release exclusive content on there as well as merch that you are not gonna find on the store so if you support us, we're gonna support you back.
Andrew Adam:
Absolutely!
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you hit me, I'll hit you back. If you support me, I'll support you back.
Andrew Adam:
And from what I understand, our Patreon subscribers get free merch.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. We didn't raise the prices, we just threw merch on top of it. We're constantly looking at how we can improve and make things more valuable to the people on the other end of this and we found a way that... you know... yeah it costs us money. It absolutely costs us money, but the hope is it will bring more people in and join Patreon because they'll say "Oh! Not only do I get this and this, but I also now get this".
Andrew Adam:
Pretty cool.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Overwhelming value, that is my business motto and that's probably a good leading accidentally.
Andrew Adam:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Overwhelming value. Everything that we do in the world, some of you may know- outside of whistlekick one of the ways that I help fund all the things that we do is I’m a consultant. Most of the work that I do is in the marketing space, and I believe you can see everything in the world from the perspective of a marketer. If I sell you...Andrew if I sell you this pen, if you pay a hundred dollars for this pen, it is because you believe that the value of this pen is greater than a hundred dollars.
Andrew Adam:
Yep, and it would be a good value exchange for me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that's the key right there, value exchange. If you thought this pen was worth fifty dollars, you would not pay a hundred dollars for it.
Andrew Adam:
Nope.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Everything that we do in life is based on that value exchange. If I part with my time, my money, my energy, in some way- it is because I believe what I'm receiving back is more valuable and it will come up with all kinds of examples. "Jeremy, I don't actually want to go to that family picnic." You value the relationships that will be compromised.
Andrew Adam:
"I don't want to pay my taxes last year.”
Jeremy Lesniak:
You value not going to jail more than the money you paid your taxes with. Everything can be looked at in this way and so when we look at martial arts schools specifically, a lot of them miss this idea, this concept of providing and presenting the value that they provide. Now, this is given rise to a lot of companies, and I see them and hear from them all the time. I'm trying to roll my eyes under this hat and they're promising all of these things "We're gonna get you two hundred students in the next two months".
Andrew Adam:
I see this on Facebook all the time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I hear you. If I had a martial arts school, not here you wouldn't. Any bold claim like that always sets me back. Here’s why, when I step in and I work on the marketing for any of my clients, some of which are martial arts schools. The things holding them back- the way they present their information, their goals for their business are all different. I've known martial arts schools that have no desire to be full-time. They have no desire to grow more than you know “I want five more students" because the economics for that really changed things for me. I don't want five hundred students. I also know there's a martial arts school that I'm working with right now, they're on track to open on their second location. That's a really different presentation, that’s a really different value proposition. So, the purpose of today's episode is for me to vent a little bit. As well as to give you out there some things to think about. Now, I've been babbling. Do you have anything you want to chime in?
Andrew Adam:
No, it's definitely an observation that I have noticed within the last... I would say within the last year and I don't know if it’s directly related because of the pandemic that we have been in but there are all the time now Facebook ads that I see that are exactly like you are describing. "We can get you a bunch of students. Join! Look at our course!" and so definitely has become more prevalent and more prominent and maybe just the google algorithm on my computer are noticing...maybe some of it but it definitely has become a lot more prevalent for sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, there's... I don't know if I wanna call it hard and fast rule but there's a guideline in the business world that when anybody promises you any result, they're probably lying. If someone shows up and they say "Hey! We're gonna get your business to page one of Google." They're either lying or doing fraudulent [06:30:27]. When someone says "We're gonna get you a hundred new students" before they know what the population is, how many martial arts schools are in the area, what the general demographics are, what the people charge, what martial arts they're offering etc. They're lying!
Andrew Adam:
Without knowing the instructor! The instructor could be a jerk.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There are so many reasons why you cannot promise us and when those ads pop up on Facebook, I look at the comments and one of two things goes on in those comments. There are comments that really seem to be planted.
Andrew Adam:
Interesting. I haven't even looked at the comments.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I can't say for sure they are not. I can’t also say for sure that they are. I read them with some skepticism because it’s such a short response that it really sounds like a type of thing a marketer would say, "Hey, can you make comment with this, and they email them, or they message them and say [07:34:20].”
Andrew Adam:
Interesting.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or you get others where people are saying, "But how are you gonna do this? Send me more information." There's this general skepticism but people are willing to try.
Andrew Adam:
And engage.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, here's what we know if there was some magic formula to get a whole bunch of new students into a martial arts school. We would’ve probably seen it used elsewhere with other activities for years because as martial artists we still value what we used to do that it's really hard to get people to pay attention to anything new. How do I know that? It's literally the story of my business. It’s literally the whistlekick's story - getting people to look at doing something new and different but we've always bought this from here, we've always done it this way. "Wanna try something new?" Martial artists are skeptical. It's the only industry we've to brag and think it is better to not change anything.
Andrew Adam:
Interesting yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, we would see that business model coming, we would see that secret formula coming doesn't exist. There is no secret formula. If there's a secret formula, everybody would be using it. Now, those courses, those “here's how to do all of these things”, those knowledge products that are out there. Those have reached a critical mass, the vast majority of them involved teaching people, I shouldn't say vast majority. A lot of them involved selling a program to somebody teaching them how to make their own knowledge product that they can sell for you know five hundred or a thousand or ten thousand dollars. When it comes down to getting someone into a martial arts school, there are only a handful of things that matter. Can you name some of them? Let me make it a little more specific. "I'm a martial arts school. I'm looking to grow, and I want more students." What are the things that I think about? What are the things I can do to bring in more students?
Andrew Adam:
The things you could specifically do? Marketing wise?
Jeremy Lesniak:
The hint - there are only two.
Andrew Adam:
The old school one would be advertising print like putting an ad on paper or in older days there was the phone book.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Going direct to people who are not connected to your school.
Andrew Adam:
Yep, exactly and then the other one would be I would think friends and family of people you already know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
People encouraging more [10:08.21]. Those are the only two ways. You get in front of them, you encourage the people that already know and value what you do to talk to other people. Those are the only two things. If you think about it that way, every bit of social media, every bit of advertising falls in one of those two categories. Can you guess which of those two was far more effective?
Andrew Adam:
The word of mouth one, that’s for sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you have martial arts school and you're putting all your money into social media advertising and newspaper advertising and the phone book which by the way those things are not dead and you ignore encouraging your existing students to bring people in, you messed it up. There are a lot of ways to do that. It's things like 'bring a friend' you know cheesy and non-cheesy way you could do things like this. What gets people to actually sign up? If we take it back to the things we said at the beginning, value exchange... what value are people deriving from training that makes them part with their time, energy, and money to take classes?
Andrew Adam:
Well, I mean it could be a number of things. Could be for some it's learning some... just being involved in something that's historical and they enjoy that and that's value to some people.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There's an intellectual sign
Andrew Adam:
Exactly yeah, for some it's ... if it’s a parent having a kid involved, it’s learning some discipline or it's just getting healthy and being better with their body and understanding how their body works.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Personal development, physical development.
Andrew Adam:
Yep, those things could all play a factor and value.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There are a couple more.
Andrew Adam:
For some people are competition-driven so they enjoy being a part of that and gaining some psychological… I don’t want to say advantage or others because that totally comes out wrong, but being able to have a better mindset about competition-
Jeremy Lesniak:
Skill development, personal development.
Andrew Adam:
Okay, I guess I can think about a whole lot of others.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Self-defense.
Andrew Adam:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Probably the biggest one for sure, there are only a few why’s that people really have. They may express them differently. But if you can speak those things, you can nail it. You can get those things down and the irony is every martial arts program I’ve ever known has done all of these things they had personal development. They’ve had skill development. They've had physical development. They had a self-defense component and I think the last one we didn't talk about because most martial arts schools suck at doing it is building a community. Community pops out organically but how many schools actually foster it?
Andrew Adam:
Yeah, and work to development.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How many schools have a monthly or quarterly potluck for after Saturday training or for something to bring people to gather so they get the opportunity to say things like "I didn't recognize you with clothes on.” Which is a common thing that we would say in my Dojo because we only saw people in their gi. I've heard that said in a number of different ways. Now, given that we’ve just talked about what martial marketing is, and I spent the top of the episode really cooping over what's being done out there. Why don’t those things necessarily connect? Is it possible that some of these people on Facebook really has some secret sauce and they know what questions to ask martial arts school and they are really able to help them out in a great way? It's possible.
Andrew Adam:
Doubtful.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's doubtful but possible and here's why I say that because I know the economics of Facebook advertising.
Andrew Adam:
See I don’t.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I know that if I spend... let's put it this way, let's say I spend a hundred dollars a month on Facebook ads. That has to result in a hundred dollars in profit. Every person that responds to my offer, you know “I'm gonna help you get 750,000 new students.”
Andrew Adam:
Wow, I gotta build a bigger Dojo.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Gonna need a bigger boat. Every person who responds to that is not necessarily gonna sign up so that hundred dollars on ads means that If I get one person to respond, I only need to get a hundred and one dollars from them but if two people are interested in only getting one of them... Now, I have to make sure that I'm working on those numbers. That person that signs up has to do a hundred dollars or both of them have to do 50, right? And if I spend five hundred dollars on the ads, now I have to get five people signed up. Most of these programs I'm seeing, they're not hundred dollars a month. I know what they're paying for these words because I do this advertising for people and so I see that most of them seem to be spending hundreds of dollars if not thousands of dollars a month in order for the economics to work... Now, let's assume that they're good at business cause' if they're not good at business-
Andrew Adam:
Why should they keep on doing it?
Jeremy Lesniak:
They shouldn't be helping, let's give them the benefit of the doubt that they are good at business. They are going to use that Facebook ad to overwhelmingly make money. The more encouraging the free offer, quite often the higher the price on the other end because they're trying to get you down this path.
Andrew Adam:
Hooked in.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How do we get people to try martial arts? We don't say "Okay! Buy uniform and a belt and six private lessons and sign up for six months in advance." We don't say that. What do we say?
Andrew Adam:
No, we will say "Come on and try a couple of classes for free".
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yup, the free offer. We get them on the door, we could showcase them what we do that we do well and hopefully they will stick around, and they'll spend some money. And if we can do that affordably-
Andrew Adam:
We succeeded.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It works. We still have to consider those economics. Now that I've been taking a bunch of shots at martial arts... These martial arts marketers... There are two kinds of obvious questions. One, Jeremy why are you taking shots of these people when you do something similar? Two, Jeremy how do we know that you're not just blowing smoke and you suck at this, and three, how can I do it the right way or better way? The first thing, I'm not calling anybody out. I really try not to do that. There is a part of me that has wanted to invest in what these people offer so I could do some big exposé and point out what works and don't.
Andrew Adam:
We need more Patreon for that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm not spending thousands of dollars out of own my pocket to prove whether or not these people know what they're doing, sorry.
Andrew Adam:
Can I interject though? If a Patreon subscriber wants to pay a thousand dollars for us to investigate it-
Jeremy Lesniak:
If somebody wants to commission and study into this, I'll by all means do it. Two, Jeremy what makes what you do different? Most of my marketing comes from word of mouth. In fact if you track down my consulting website you might think "Huh? For somebody makes a website, this is kinda weak." That's not how I get my customers. I know what I need to do.
Andrew Adam:
And I would say we, whistlekick, don't make any claims that we can do anything for you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We work hard, I work hard. The team works hard to handle things on a case-on-case basis because we're not running this big system. We don't want to. Long term where are we gonna make our money? In selling stuff. We would maintain some of these consulting stuff but that's really not where we should be, and the last thing was-
Andrew Adam:
What can we do?
Jeremy Lesniak:
What can schools do...Here are few things you could do. Number one, focus on the word-of-mouth stuff first. Let your students know you want more students. Tell them "Hey! I’d like to see five more people in here.” Maybe you incentivize. “If you can bring somebody in for a free trial and they sign up, I'll give you a free month!" Things like that.
Two, get involved in the community. Some manner of social connection whether that's a demonstration, self-defense seminar, a potluck where people can bring friends and kids. You know, light saver day where they can bring people- there are so many ways that you could do this if you focus on how I can deliver more value to my existing students in such a way that people adjacent to them… because those are people that are gonna come in the easiest. Hear about it, participate in it, finds some value, get involved.
Andrew Adam:
Here's a great one. Run a 5K as a school. Every town I know of, small town, big town, it doesn’t matter. Have these little 5K races all the time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Some kind of charity.
Andrew Adam:
And they are usually inexpensive to participate in and if you as a school can go to the 5K, all wearing your dojo t-shirt or whatever... I'm not saying running in your gi, don't do that but you're advertising...you got 15-20 people there at this race all wearing the same t-shirt.
Jeremy Lesniak:
"Hey, that seems like a cool group of people. They seem like they're having fun. They seem like they enjoy talking to each other. Maybe I want to get involved".
Andrew Adam:
And how much does that cost the school?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Probably nothing.
Andrew Adam:
I mean the school could I guess pay for everyone's entrance to the 5K, probably not. You're just gonna say "Hey, it’s not a required thing but we’re gonna run this 5K.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As a school, we're gonna run this 5K-
Andrew Adam:
And so I as the instructor am out the cost of whatever costed me myself to enter the 5K.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that's a perfect example, so we should probably leave that there because the takeaway I want from people is to consider where's the value and like communicating the value. How do I make sure other people are interested in what we're doing enough that they're willing to hear about the value proposition?
If you walk down the street and you start off by saying "Come to Jeremy's martial arts school. It's only 6 dollars-" Right? But not that this would go well but it would go much better "Hey, would you be interested in hearing more about martial arts classes?"
Andrew Adam:
Maybe.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Still probably gonna be a no but far more likely than, "Let me throw our value proposition-' you’ve gotta create that opportunity where people are interested to learn so you could present to them and all better if you could find automatic ways to present it like training all of your students like "Hey, if you hear somebody talk about wanting to learn self-defense or meet a cool group of people, or make sure you mention the school”. Stuff like that. Anything we should add?
Andrew Adam:
No, I think it's good. Giving value for sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, because I'm always willing to open up this platform to people especially when I indirectly throw shade at them. If you are or are connected to one of these various martial arts school marketing programs that are flooding my Facebook feed right now.
Andrew Adam:
Or if you've done one.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or if you've done one, I wanna hear from you. Let's chat. We can chat informally. We can probably chat privately and if there's enough there, if you convince me that what you're doing is that different. I'll probably share what you're doing publicly. I don't mind doing it.
Andrew Adam:
That would be free marketing for them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Free marketing. When we are sometimes referred to as the number one martial arts podcast… is it Feedly? Feedspot?
Andrew Adam:
Content-wise I think for sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Feedspot calls us the top martial arts podcast. We're doing something right, at least according to them. If you wanna reach out to me jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media's @whistlekick, everywhere you could think of. The best ways to support us - Patreon, buy a book on Amazon, buy a program at whistlekickprograms.com, buy something at whistlekick.com using the code podcast15 like Andrew's hat.
Andrew Adam:
My hat right here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don't think that's a snapback, that's a snapback. I don't think that the stretchy ones are exactly the same. It's up there right now because we change [23:28.23]. You've got topic suggestions/guest, suggestions I wanna hear em and most importantly thank you. Thank you for your support. Thanks for all that you do for the show, for whistlekick, for the martial arts community. Anything else?
Andrew Adam:
No, I think that's good!
Jeremy Lesniak:
Until next time…
Jeremy Lesniak and Andrew Adams:
…train hard, smile, and have a great day.