| Friend,
I've written about the 4th deadly belief that will destroy your dojo extensively... but it bears repeating. Especially in the context of this current email series.
It's probably the one false belief that is responsible for more failed dojos than any other. It's also the topic that I most often have to coach school owners on, and the one that gives martial art school owners the most grief.
And that belief is...
"MARKETING IS A DIRTY WORD!"
It pains me to even write that. Really, it does. And that's because I fell in love with all things marketing many years ago.
Some of you might bristle at my saying that. And that's because you think marketing is for people who can't get students "the honest way."
Riiiiggght.
Let's tackle that notion head on. Remember how earlier in the week I told you that awesome martial arts instructors are a dime a dozen?
It's absolutely true. You know it's true, but you may not want to accept it as truth. Yet, you've probably trained in a dojo and under an instructor that was just awesome, but they still struggled financially.
I figured this out early on because I happened to move around a lot when I was a young teen, during the same time that I was starting to study martial arts.
And everywhere I went, I looked for hardcore instructors who were teaching "real" martial arts. I ended up training under some fantastic instructors, and still most of them struggled to attract and keep students.
There are multiple reasons for that, but years later when I got into the business side of running a martial art school, I reflected on why those awesome instructors struggled.
I determined that a big part of it was because they had no idea how to market their services. (As I've said before, "build it and they will come" is a load of horse crap when it comes to starting and building a business.)
Now, occasionally I'll be contacted by a school owner who tells me that they don't market at all. Typically, with a little digging I find out that they do, in fact, market their school.
Most often, their marketing consists of being the only school in a particular area, or being located on a very busy road with a huge sign on the street, or doing a lot of word-of-mouth marketing simply by being very involved in the community, or they get a lot of press, because they know someone who works for the local news.
But they don't think that they're marketing, because it seems effortless to them to get students.
Believe me when I say this, because I have worked closely with dozens and dozens of martial arts instructors and school owners over the years. And, I have spoken or corresponded with hundreds more struggling school owners...
THOSE SCHOOLS THAT ARE FINANCIALLY SUCCESSFUL WHILE DOING MINIMAL MARKETING ARE OUTLIERS.
They are black swans. Unique, and rare. And just because someone you know wins the lottery, it doesn't mean you can just go out and buy a ticket and expect to get lucky, too.
Nope. The vast majority of business owners have to hustle and grind to get a steady stream of new students in their front door, week after week, month after month, year after year.
Make no mistake, marketing is the life-blood of your business. Without it, your dojo will be doomed to a mediocre existence at best, or at worst a slow and painful death.
Now that we've dealt with the idea that you can grow a school without marketing, let's deal with the main false belief at hand. That being, the idea that marketing is somehow dirty or beneath any self-respecting martial artist.
Here's how I see it...
I look at marketing as a tool. Much in the same way I look at firearms. Some people seem to think that firearms are evil. But, it you've ever used one to put food in your pot when you were hungry, or to protect yourself from predators (both animal and human), you know that their use can be very beneficial.
But in the hands of an evil person, certainly firearms can be used to cause all kinds of harm. In the same way, unethical people can do a great deal of harm with effective marketing.
So, is marketing "evil"? No, UNETHICAL MARKETING IS EVIL.
But, HONEST AND EFFECTIVE MARKETING IS A GOOD THING.
Effective marketing, when used by honest school owners, has a net positive effect. The school owner gets new students, and the students get to study quality martial arts from an honest instructor who will help them reach their personal goals.
And, those students get to avoid being taken to the cleaners by some fly-by-night dojo owner who is only interested in their money. In other words, they avoid being scammed because the awesome instructor learned the high art of marketing.
When I opened my first successful school, I had to fight an uphill battle to gain the local community's trust. That's because three commercial schools had opened and closed overnight in the years before I opened my doors.
One school owner stayed open for about a year, then he took everyone's tuition on the first of the month and then split town the same night.
A second school owner got thrown in jail for writing bad checks, leaving the students high and dry with no instructor to teach the classes they'd paid for.
And a third school owner got the old, "it's the dojo or me" ultimatum from his fiance and shut his school down over Christmas break, without any advance notice or warning to his students. (I know - what a hag, right? Or should I say, what a putz?)
In all three situations, one day the school was open, and the next day... POOF! No dojo.
So how do you think I survived until I gained the trust of the local community? It wasn't through the power of positive thinking, let me tell you.
Nope. It was through marketing. Marketing my tail off, in fact. Because I knew that I only had to get people through the front door to show them that I was honest and I was in it for the long haul.
Now, as you can imagine, I ended up getting a lot of students who had trained at one of those failed dojos. And if I'd never learned how to market a martial art school, I would never have gotten those students back into martial arts.
Some of them ended up becoming black belts under me. And a couple of them told me years later that they'd all but given up on the martial arts before they met me.
But instead of giving up on their goal of learning martial arts, they got to have a positive and lasting experience...
...and I got several students who ended up becoming some of the best students I've ever had the pleasure of teaching.
And it all happened because I learned how to market my school effectively. I don't know about you, but that's a win-win in my book, all day long.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
P.S. - I'd like to mention that marketing is not a one-shot thing. It's an action that you have to take on a daily basis in order to have a growing and financially stable dojo. Just wanted to make that point, because I run into so many school owners who think marketing is a one-and-done thing. I'll be sharing more about marketing cycles and systems in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that email series when it comes out.
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