| Friend,
Yesterday we took a look at the children's martial arts instruction market segment. Now, it's time to look at the adult market.
The Adult Martial Arts Market: An Overview
The adult martial arts market can be divided into two main segments, fitness and self-defense. Granted, some might say there is a third market segment, specifically adults who are taking martial arts for recreation, but in most cases adults take martial arts for recreation and self-defense, or for recreation and fitness.
Of course, there are also sub-segments in these primary market segments. You can subdivide each segment into men or women, or millennials, Gen X-ers, and boomers, or by income, or by any number of demographic factors. But for the most part, these divisions are entirely too granular to be of much practical use.
Certainly, you must understand who your ideal customer is in each segment, in order to target your marketing (and we'll get to that shortly). However, deep segmenting in the adult market is typically a waste of time for the martial art school owner, because buyer motivations are similar between these sub-segments.
What is a better use of your time is understanding why an adult might want to take martial arts classes. And to understand why an adult might choose to take a martial arts class, we need to look at the main markets, to see what draws adults to the martial arts in the first place.
Let's start with...
What Motivates Adult Consumers To Take Self-Defense?
The very first thing we should establish when examining the reasons why an adult would want to take a self-defense class is that self-defense is typically not going to be high on the list of priorities for most adults.
Here's why: - For the majority of adults, martial arts classes are a discretionary (optional) purchase.
- Food is an essential purchase. Rent is an essential purchase. Utilities and fuel are essential purchases. These expenses are not optional.
- But in our modern society, for the most part physical security and safety are not daily survival issues for the average citizen. Therefore, learning self-defense is not an essential purchase for the majority of adults.
You can argue this point all you want, but chances are good it's not going to change the public perception that most adults have regarding the need for self-defense training. And the major mistake most school owners make when selling self-defense training is using fear-based marketing.
I have taught assault prevention and personal safety classes for decades, and I know the statistics. Yet, I can tell you from experience that statistics are typically not enough to get people to take a self-defense class.
It is antithetical to the psychological makeup of the average person to accept that they might ever be the victim of a violent crime. In fact, most people will avoid having to think about such unpleasantness, and if they see such an advertisement, they immediately flip the page or click on to something more pleasant.
For this reason, using fear-based marketing is actually the worst way to market self-defense classes.
Why Adults Take Self-Defense Classes
Then why would someone choose to take self-defense lessons? To answer this question, we need to look at the psychology behind buyer behavior. People are typically motivated to make discretionary purchases for emotional, and not rational, reasons.
Unless a potential student is a bouncer, bodyguard, law enforcement, or military, and they have to know self-defense for their job (and in most cases cops and soldiers are content with the training they get from their employers), an adult student will not be motivated to take self-defense training for safety's sake.
The exception to this is when an adult student has a traumatic event. For example, exiting an abusive relationship, being physically or sexually assaulted, being the victim of a violent or non-violent crime, and so on. But the majority of adults will never suffer such an experience, and that means to attract them into your classes, you need to provide other reasons for training.
But for the most part, adults will choose to take self-defense training for the following reasons: - Social Conformity - People want to be seen with the "in" crowd. If a certain class or activity becomes popular with their friends, an adult might be motivated to participate.
- Fitness - People want to get fit for emotional reasons, because they want to be liked, and they want to feel attractive and be attractive to other people.
- Recreation - They're looking for a new and novel activity. You'd be surprised how many people choose to take a self-defense class for the challenge or to relieve ennui/boredom.
None of the reasons I list above are rational reasons for taking self-defense classes. Yet, they are the most common reasons why an adult would walk into a self-defense class.
Conclusions
And what should we conclude from this info? First off, we need to understand that adults are not likely to be motivated to take self-defense training on the basis of logic and statistics. This makes self-defense training a very tough sell.
Moreover, the adult self-defense market is actually only a very small slice of the overall adult market. The number of adults in a given area who might be interested in taking self-defense classes at any given time will be tiny compared to the number who want to get in shape or lose weight (note: much of the adult market falls in this category).
Further, negative, fear-based marketing is more likely to drive consumers away from our services, than it is to convince them to buy. So, we must avoid selling our self-defense programs based on safety and security reasons, and instead market them based on the recreational and fitness benefits.*
Coming Up...
Next we'll take a look at the adult fitness market. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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P.S. - *This indicates that it might not be a good idea to choose the adult self-defense market as our primary market on which to build a martial art school. That is, unless we offer self-defense classes as our primary program, while marketing them on the basis of the fitness and recreational benefits derived from training.
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