| Friend,
Last week's emails were more or less about why you shouldn't follow the herd in building your dojo.
I think we pretty well established that the herd mentality can lead you down a path you might not want to take. And, I think I also made it clear how you could end up owning the dojo of your nightmares instead of your dreams.
Well, last week I also promised to tell you how I pulled my second school out of the hole I dug it into during the Great Recession.
It's been about ten years since those events occurred, and I think I have enough perspective on what happened to give you the straight dope on how I got my dojo back on track.
So, here goes...
How To Pull Your Dojo Out Of A Hole
The way the recession came on in the town my school was located in was the strangest thing. One month it seemed like things were going great and the economy was stronger than ever, and the next month I couldn't enroll a student to save my life.
At first I thought it was something that I was doing (actually, in part it was - but I'll get to that in a minute). I thought maybe I had made a mistake in moving my school.
Maybe people couldn't find me... or maybe I was putting the old address on my ads. But no, that was silly - my new location was much more visible, we had more traffic going by the school, my sign was bigger, and the phone number certainly didn't change.
After a few weeks of reading the news and paying attention to what was going on in the world, I realized that the economy and my dojo were both pretty well screwed.
Step #1: Marketing
So, the first thing I did was what I'd always done - I increased my marketing. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that marketing had changed a lot in the two years between selling my first school and opening the second.
Print ads just weren't the powerhouse they once were, and Yellow Pages ads weren't cutting it either. I spent a ton on marketing that didn't work, and finally got to the point where my reserves were tapped.
And that's when I said, "Screw it, I'm not spending any more money on advertising. I'm going to do it all myself using free and cheap marketing methods."
When All Else Fails...
Since the marketing methods I once relied on weren't providing me with the returns I needed, I went back to the drawing board and reevaluated everything I knew about marketing.
I had no idea at the time why my tried and true marketing methods were bombing. But what I did know was that internet marketing was working really well for my online business.
I'd studied direct response marketing and internet marketing in great depth when I was launching Small Dojo Big Profits a few years prior. Once I figured out that I was going to have to publish and market it myself, I had no choice but to go that route.
But would the same marketing methods work for my martial art school? There was only one way to find out.
Mike Puts All His Eggs In The Internet Marketing Basket
So, I applied everything I learned in marketing Small Dojo Big Profits to marketing my martial art school: - I wrote long-form sales letters for every one of my programs...
- I revamped my school website, turning it from an online brochure-style site to a classic direct response website...
- I put those sales letters on my site...
- I set up an email autoresponder for my school, placed opt-in forms on my new website, and wrote a series of follow-up emails for my autoresponder...
- I created offers to entice people to enter their contact info and sign up for my newsletter...
- And, I set up a system for following up with the people who responded...
This was exactly how I marketed Small Dojo Big Profits when I first launched it, and all I did was apply what worked in my internet business to marketing my dojo.
The results? Well, they were mixed at first, and tomorrow I'll tell you what went right, what didn't, and how I fixed it.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
P.S. - Everything I'm sharing with you this week is covered in detail in The Martial Arts Marketing Success System. So if you want to know the details on how I marketed my school using low-cost and no-cost methods, it's all in there. | 