41 – The 5 Stages Of The Martial Arts Student Signup Cycle

Every martial arts prospect that sees your marketing is in 1 of 5 stages. Do you know what to say in each one?


IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The 5 different stages of a martial arts student prospect
  • When and when not to use a paid trial offer
  • How to influence buying decisions at different stages in the signup cycle
  • The landing page system that is currently responsible for more than 612 paid trial students
  • How many touch points (brand interactions) it take before a conversion
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

So the big question is, right, does your website have these offers? Are you catering for the hot? Are you catering for the warm and are you catering for the cold?

Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media and today I have an awesome training for you. So, this training is something that we focus on in our Martial Arts Media Academy and is part of a presentation that I did over the weekend at The Main Event, Fred Depalma’s ”The Main Event,” hosted by MA 1st, which was in Sydney. And the presentation that I did, or the segment that I'm going to talk about today rather, is called “The martial arts student sign up cycle.”

Now, credit where credit is due, always: this was created by Eugene Schwartz, who wrote a book called “Breakthrough Advertising.” You'll pay about $150 for this book on Amazon and it's, he was a legendary marketer and copywriter. And what he talks about is the 5 different stages that a prospect will be in based on their interest level. And when you understand these different levels, you are able to fine tune your marketing message to be relevant to them, because, let’s say you have somebody, they’ve got questions and they don't have everything together about this martial arts thing.

And you go and just present a price to them – they're just not ready, so that's where objections normally come from: ah, I need to think about it, I'm not interested, I don't know, I need to ask my wife – that's where those kinds of objections normally come from is, because a person isn't ready and there are questions that they might not know what it is or they just feel unsure, or they're just too embarrassed maybe to tell you. And that's where sort of the objections come up, which can generally be classed as excuses.

The flipside is, if you don't know when somebody is absolutely ready to join, then you can also miss the boat because you might be carrying on, waffling on and they could be ready to buy and you can talk them out of joining – also, something that can happen. So I'm going to share this segment with you – I highly recommend you look at the full the presentation because the full presentation will give you the nuts and bolts of how it all fits together, but this by itself is super valuable. So I hope it helps, let me take you through it. If you're listening to the audio, I recommend you go to martialartsmedia.com, check the video out and it will all be clear and make sense. All right.

So, the presentation was “Become the go-to martial arts school through the internet and social media marketing” and this segment is called martial arts students sign up cycle. So, there are five different stages of awareness that a prospect goes through.

1. The first one at the top, which is what most people normally focus on is hot, and right at the bottom is cold, the person that's completely unaware or not interested in martial arts whatsoever.

So, where do we look at the hot market? So this person, they kind of know everything they want, right? This person knows that they want confidence for the kid or fitness or discipline, they know they might want to lose weight and they know everything about your club as well, they just kind of need the right offer to switch them over. So this is where a paid trial can work very well, right? Because they're ready.

2.  Then you’re going to look at the warm, the warm audience and the warm audience, the warm prospect is service aware, right? They know about your school and what your gym has to offer, but they're just not sure if it's right for them yet, OK? So what type of questions can you ask this person? What do they need to know? Do they need to know what martial arts style is right for them? What do they still need to know to take them over the line?

I did a case study with Paul Veldman, I advertised and promoted it quite a bit, you might have seen it. It was titled “How a martial arts school owner turned quiet time into 96 paid trials student in 14 days while converting 70% into full members.” Now, that case study was really targeted at these top two segments, right, the hot and the warm market. There are obviously other things that went with it: the right time, the timing, the deadline on the offer and so forth.

And funny enough, I was going through all the statistics, preparing for the presentation and the landing pages that we create, so the landing pages that we create and we create paid trials for, has a total 612 paid trial students over the last 6 months, OK? So that's $19,542, but obviously, that's just the income from the paid trial. So, depending on what your lifetime student value would be, whether that's $1,500, or a $1,000, I know if you're going to work it out on $1,500, it's going to be just short of a $1,000,000 worth of business! So, that is the power of having a really, really good offer, but also having it constructed in a way that converts and takes in the business, all right?

So that's really focusing on those top, those top two. So you're looking at the warm and the hot market.

3.  Now, going a bit further down, you've got the lukewarm market, solution aware, all right? They know about martial arts and the benefits, they just need the right offer or school or gym to sign up, OK? So they don't really know about your gym or school yet:  what can you put in front of these people? Do they need to know details about how to choose a martial arts school, or do they have sort of myths that are lingering in their mind, if, let’s say martial arts cause violence in kids or something like that.

What are the questions that they need to be answered and where are they going to find this information? They're going to find it on your website or someone else's, that's really the key and that's what we got through in the full presentation.

4.  Then you're cool – now, this is getting a lot harder, you'll see at the top; there are only a few touch points needed, OK? It’s going to take 6-8 touch points, interactions before somebody converts into anything and at the bottom, you're going to have a lot of touch points, because there’s a lot of the education process that's happening.

Ok, so the cool are problem aware. They sense the problem with their own fitness, their confidence, or perhaps see it in their child, but they don't know what the solution is to solve it yet. So they haven't put martial arts in the same line of how it’s going to solve this problem for them.

5.  And then, of course, you've got cold, all right? You've got the cold audience, they don't know anything about martial arts yet, or somebody just told them something about it, so they might just go looking, all right, what's this martial arts thing. They know nothing, they've got no real desire yet, they may be curious, or they probably just know nothing at all, right? They're just not interested and that person, of course, doesn't matter. You can charge them a $1 for a month and they're still not going to join because they're just not interested.

So the big question is, does your website have these offers? Are you catering for the hot? Are you catering for the warm and are you catering for the cold, or the cool market? The cool audience rather, I keep on saying market – the cool prospect. Do you have offers on your website that are strategically positioned to answer all those questions? Because, if it doesn't, then chances are, you have a leaking bucket, all right? People are coming to your website and they are leaving because they don't find what it is they need.

And I've done a lot of training on this, but I’m kind of pulling back on the training because it’s too hard. I end up trying to educate people that should be educated on more than websites and it’s just hard work and I've done it for favors, but if you're going to get something like this done, rather get somebody that understands marketing, understands sales and knows how to actually build a website that's going to generate business for you and that knows how to target these different segments.

I hope that helps, I'm doing the full presentation on this, which will be invaluable for you if you take on board what we talk about. A lot of time has gone into this, this is a lot of things that we've done for our top clients and this is just really breaking it down, the information and the process that we got through.

And I’d love to have you on board. It’s at http://martialartsmedia.live, is where you can access the presentation, or there will be a notification of when the next one will be and that's it. And if you would like help with all this stuff and you want us to walk you through it, guide you or your team members, then you can head over to martial arts media.academy and we will see if we can help you with growing your martial arts school.

That's it – I will see you in the next video. Cheers!

 

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

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35 – The Biggest Mistake Martial Arts School Owners Make When Marketing Online

Struggling to string together successful marketing strategies for your martial arts school? You could be missing these 3 keys.

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and today, I want to talk about the one biggest problem that martial arts business owners have when marketing their school on the internet. Now, a few days ago, I released a business case study from a client of ours that attracted 96 paid trial students within a 14-day period, which is a quiet time and on the back end, managed to convert 70% into full paying members. Now, that is awesome, it's great results, I'm sure you would like it for your business as well, but there's one big problem with this, a few segments, a few parts that contribute to this one big problem.

Firstly, that paid trials system, that paid trial offer is only covering 1 to 2 of 5 segments out of a buying cycle. What does that mean? It means that your prospects are at different stages in a buying cycle. Some are completely cold and they're not interested in martial arts at all, and others are hot and they're ready. And the warm and hot phases are where you can present the offer in front of someone and they're ready. They have all their questions answered about martial arts, they know it's good for them, they know their child is going to get confidence, they know they're going to get self-defence skills, they know the benefits that relate to them and all that they need is the right offer to take them over the edge.

Now, that's awesome and that's awesome if you have a lot of reach. The reach as in, you have a big market to get your message out to, like you live in a big city. But what if you are in a smaller segment of the market, in a small town? How quickly are you going to burn out just putting that paid trial offer in front of someone? So you're going to need to think a lot deeper and you're going to have to think of how you can cover that cold and cooler type market and swing them to the benefits of martial arts. That comes with a content marketing strategy, which we're not going to talk about right now. So that's one part of it.

The next thing you've got to look at is pre-frame. Pre-frame meaning, what has that person seen or heard about your business before that they see the offer. If your brand is not familiar or you have a bad reputation, or people just don't know anything about you, there's a lot more steps in the process before you can actually put that good offer in front of them, before they are going to cross the line and make that buying decision. And that comes to the one biggest problem, which is having no strategy. No strategy for how you market your business online. And it's not your fault because there's not a lot of this information out there.

martial arts school marketing

And where you can find that information, it's normally not applicable to your martial arts business. And that puts you on the hunt, because now you go to Facebook groups and forums, you try and get information and you get a little bit here, and you get a little bit there and you try and piece it together, but it's not really a strategic approach from one end to the other that puts things in line, that helps you position yourself as that market leader and helps you attract the top leads and be the market leader within your area.

And so that is where I want to help you. I want to help you with a strategy, a strategy that you can use, that you can apply to marketing your business online that's going to benefit you for the long haul. So I'm not just talking about quick tricks, I'm not talking about a clever ad and a clever strategy and a clever trick, because yes, those things can help you, but if it's not congruent with a formal strategy, then that's what you're going to be always doing.

You're always going to be looking for that next quick trick, that next quick fix to help you grow your business. And it's a tiring approach. So I want to show you a strategy that you can apply for the long haul that's going to help you attract leads and help you position yourself as the market leader, as the go-to martial arts school within your area.

So if you want to jump on the web class, we're going to be doing this live, it's going to be a live interactive web class. You can go to martialartsmedia.com/workshop, or wherever the link is around this video if you're watching it.

Thanks, I hope to see you in the web class, I hope to help you grow your business – cheers!

 

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32 – 30 Tips For Martial Arts Business Owners From Industry Experts (Part 2)

A continuation of the 31st episode, here’s the second batch of tips from martial arts experts that are equally valuable as the first.

martial arts business tips

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How traveling can help widen your knowledge in running a martial arts club
  • The benefits of hiring top-level instructors to teach at your martial arts school
  • The importance of marketing and matching it to the right prospect at the right time
  • The advantages of having your school accredited by the government
  • Why it pays to invest on your martial arts premise and facilities
  • How to overcome tall poppy syndrome
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Commit to your passion: if you want to succeed with your martial arts business, just go all in focus on that.

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another MAM Business Podcast, episode number 32. And we are continuing from last week. Last week’s episode, which was 25 tips, 25 tips for martial arts business owners from industry experts, part 1. And this week, we're going over to part 2. So we are working our way through episodes number 15 to number 30 and we’re going to be covering tips from those. So, as always, you can find the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/32, the number 32. And that’s it. I’m going to jump straight into part 2.

26 – Get out of your comfort zone, travel, and train with people that are at a much better level than you.

Starting out with number 26, Justin Sidelle, who is one of the head coaches at Bali MMA. And if you want to go take an awesome tropical holiday combined with awesome training with top-level martial artists, Bali MMA should be on the top of your list. For me, it’s again, here in Perth, where I’m based, it’s a really quick holiday, it’s a bit of a common holiday to go to Bali, because everybody just does it and it’s cheaper to get on a plane and go to Bali for a weekend, then to drive down south a few hours. So it’s a very common holiday, but it’s a very diverse place. And you can have multiple experiences: if you’re into surfing, awesome beaches, awesome surfing, there’s great shopping, there’s great entertainment, and of course, Bali MMA.

So if you want a very diverse holiday on a tropical island, put this on the top of your list. You’ve got Justin Sidelle, who’s one of the head coaches – I believe it was started by two brothers, Anthony and Andrew Leone and you also have Tiffany Van Soest, who is an undefeated glory world kickboxing champion, Muay Thai champion and the tip of that would be, something that Justin Sidelle mentioned in the interview was, when Tiffany walks onto the floor, everybody shuts up and listens and takes note. And training with her just lifts the game and lifts the level of everybody on the mats.

So that would be the tip: go train with people that are at a much higher level than you, get out of your comfort zone, travel, and train with people that are at a much better level than you and obviously learn from that. And I know that’s something most martial artists do, but hey: go do it on a nice tropical island, why not?

27 – Give back to the community.

Number 27, something that’s a big part for Justin and their team, is to give back to the community. And they work with a couple of orphanages and do a lot of donations and do a lot of community work as well. They’re living in the tropics and they are giving back to their community.

28 – Hire top level instructors to teach at your martial arts school.

Alright, moving on to 28 was from episode 17 with Con Lazos, and the topic was recruiting externally. You know, most martial arts school owners rely on grooming students to become their instructors, to become their first black belt, but if you don’t have time for that, Con’s suggestion is, get people that already have a following, or an established top level instructors and recruit them to start teaching at your school. And one of those people that do teach at Con Lazos’ school is Richard Norton, who has featured in multiple and multiple movies and then his home ground when he is based in Australia. That was tip number 28.

29 – Groom students to be the best versions of themselves.

Number 29, groom students to be the best versions of themselves. So invest into your students to become the best person they can and that is through education, through teaching them how to be a better instructor and all the rest.

30 – When things get tough, believe in the technique.

Alright, number 30 from episode 18: Paul Schreiner. And Paul Schreiner is a head coach for Marcelo Garcia Academy in New York. The tip was, when things get tough, believe in the technique. If the technique is going to work, it’s going to work against anyone. It’s not going to fall apart, even if your opponent is bigger and stronger than you. And Paul was put onto me by Jess Fraser, who trained at Marcelo Garcia Academy and Jess obviously travels all over the world and trains with a lot of people and the one thing that stood out for her, was Paul, his coaching ability and his ability to communicate martial arts in a systematic way that’s easy to understand and grasp and learn from. And his take on jiu-jitsu, the idea that you’re working towards is perfection, this excellence perfection that isn’t attainable, but the excellence, the near perfection is something that we can experience and just try to sharpen ourselves. I really liked that, that was awesome.

31 – “Jiu-jitsu is the marriage or the union of two things: the technique and the will to win.”

All right, 31 on coaching: as a governing principle, I’m always trying to strip down, rather than elaborate whatever I’m doing. A lot of times, in the past, I was given credit I didn’t deserve as a good coach. When I’m looking back, I don’t think I was, because I was a good explainer of moves. And I think that’s almost one of the least important things about coaching now: being the teacher, being the explainer of moves. It’s more about getting your student to be able to do it and understanding how the moves connect and the art of redirecting your opponent's attack against them. And a cool quote from BJ Penn: jiu-jitsu is the marriage or the union of basically two things: the technique and the will to win. Alright, awesome.

32 – Invest in your own premises and property.

Number 32: episode number 19, with Fari Salievski. This was the second episode with Fari: use your martial arts business as an avenue to invest in other things, such as your own premises and property.

33 – If you’re not doing recurring billing, get onto that.

Number 33, the start of the recurring billing in Australia and how essential it is to your business.

Number 33, if you’re not doing recurring billing, get onto that. This episode was a lot about the start of how recurring billing started within Australia and how Fari spearheaded that movement.

34 – Keep your marketing simple, don’t hype.

Number 34: keep it simple, don’t hype. Try and minimize your debt, minimize unnecessary expense.

35 – Don’t let the tall poppy syndrome get you down.

All right, number 35, episode 20 with Kevin Blundell: big topic, hard to combat tall poppy syndrome. And I’m lining up an interview with, this is going to be a big topic because it’s funny how the world works: when you’re successful, everybody wants to drag you down and wants to insult you and criticize your technique and criticize your business and you’ve gone McDojo. Everybody would rather almost see you fail or be mediocre in a way. And a big topic was getting over that whole tall poppy syndrome. Don’t let the tall poppy syndrome get you down and move at your own pace, do what’s right for you, your students and your family.

Kumiai Ryu Martial Arts System

36 – Undersell your membership but over-deliver.

Number 36: undersell your membership but over-deliver.

37 – Have your school government accredited.

Number 37: government accreditation creates credibility and a point of differentiation. That’s a strong one, especially if you’re surrounded by schools that are kind of backyard schools, and look, hey, this is not a negative if you’re starting in a back yard. It depends obviously on your goals and what you want, and maybe it’s a stepping stone for you. But if you want a point of differentiation and that’s what this podcast is about, about giving you that edge, then why don’t you go for something like that. Why don’t you get a government accreditation and have something to show that you are qualified to work with kids and manage kids within your facilities.

38 – Remove trial intros completely and replace it with paid trials.

Number 38, remove trial intros completely to simplify the onboarding process and replace it with paid trials. One thing that Kevin and his team at Kumiai Ryu do not do is free intros. They do not a free intro at all, they offer a paid trial system, normally $49 for two weeks and that is their trial. The trial is, pay and train and work on the conversion from that point.

39 –  Match your marketing message to seasons celebrations.

Number 39 was by myself and I spoke a bit about, match your marketing message to seasons celebrations, and this is something that Paul Veldman already actually covered. I want to extend on that and the tip would be, one marketing channel is not enough. And Dan Kennedy is a top copywriter that always used to say, one is the most dangerous number in business because remove one and you have nothing. Have two, and you still have something. I would say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, because if that basket goes, what have you got left? What have you got to fall on? Have multiple channels of marketing happening that you can rely on.

Yes, it’s good to focus, obviously put your focus on what’s hot, Facebook marketing. Which is hot right now, but make sure you have backups. Because they’re not always going to be running smoothly as well. You might be running a great campaign this month and it dies off a bit, so when you have multiple avenues of marketing happening, then you’re always covered for the downtime in whatever channel it is that you’re working with.

40 – Keep your marketing message clear and concise.

Number 40, keep your marketing message clear and concise. Use strict deadlines with your offers, time and date. If you say something ends tomorrow, make it 5 pm tomorrow. Be strict on your deadlines.

41 – Bigger profits equals better facilities, better equipment, and a better service.

Number 41 from episode 23, Fari Salievski: bigger profits equals better facilities, better equipment, and a better service. And I’ll recap back to episode 20, where Kevin Blundell mentioned, if you are earning one dollar, you are in business. The backend of the conversation was, a lot of people charge $5 a class, or $10 a class, or they don’t charge a premium. But at the end of the day, when you’re charging a dollar versus a $100, you are in business.

Fari Salievski

And when you are in business and you’re providing a service, now you have an obligation to deliver, because somebody is paying for this service. So why not charge a decent premium and deliver a better service with better facilities, whatever it is that you do, upgrade your equipment, provide more staff on the mats, be able to do more with the bigger profits that you are making and provide a better service, which leads to better retention.

42 – Check your statistics.

Number 42, check your numbers. Are you paying up to $1500 per phone call to retrieve lost funds through your billing company? So keep a good eye on your numbers.

43 – Own your digital assets, your own website.

Number 43, from me on episode 24: own your digital assets, your own website. If knowledge is slowing you down, grab a page builder to speed things up, so don’t let it be the stick in the wheel. If you’re struggling to get going with your marketing, just do something, get something going. But at the end of the day, you want to be building assets and as you build assets in your business with equipment and facilities and location, you want to be doing the same with your online properties.

And the best way to do that is to focus on putting content, premium content on your website. Yes, they should go on Facebook and all these social channels, but your website is yours and it’s the one things that are going to be constant. Social media channels might come and go, their popularity might come and go, but your website, as long as your business is there, you’re going to have your domain name and that’s where you should be putting primary content.

44 – Ensure your marketing message is matched to the right prospect at the right time.

Number 44, episode 25: make sure your marketing message is matched to the right prospect at the right time. Are they ready for your offer, or are they not sold on martial arts yet? So we do a lot of this in our coaching, where we talk about the different levels of the buying cycle, where a person is at. And sometimes, a person is not ready for your offer. It’s great to go directly for the offer, but depending on your market and how people feel about martial arts, or if they’re not familiar with your brand, your marketing is going to have to stretch a bit further than just that offer. You’re probably going to have to put a lot more content out, to get, to sway people on the benefits of martial arts and to point out the problem that they have that martial arts can solve.

45 – Why not run a martial arts open day for an hour only?

Number 45, number 26, Darryl Thornton: run a martial arts open day for an hour only. And this focuses on the power of having an event based marketing them. Think about you running an open day and it’s 5,6 7, 8 hours long. Your staff start off on a high energy and then their energy drops and all of a sudden, you have people rock up when their energy is low, so there no structure into how things are happening, because people are arriving at different times, and unless you have a super sequenced structure for a solid 8 hours, people are just going to arrive at the wrong time for the wrong thing. So having an event based, where it starts at a certain time, everybody gets there at the same time, it follows a structure, and then at the end, you are able to present an offer. And that is how Darryl received more than 70 sign up son the day of his open hour.

martial arts open day

46 – Travel and widen your martial arts knowledge and skills.

Number 46, travel and grow your martial arts knowledge by experience in a different country with a different culture and widen your knowledge.

47 – Incentivise your prospects or students to the next level.

Number 47, Paul Veldman for the second time on the martial arts media business podcast: incentivise your prospects or students to the next level. If they take a paid trial, what is their reward for signing up now to create urgency? In their case, what they were doing, what they do is, remove their joining fee and if they do that within a certain amount of time, within their trial period, then they will waive the joining fee and that way creates a bit of urgency.

George Fourie Paul Veldman

48 – Reward your existing students with lock in prices.

Number 48, reward your existing students with lock in prices. This is something that was taught to Paul Veldman by Ridvan, Master Ridvan Manav from Australian Martial Arts Academy in Sydney. The concept is rewarding your existing students by locking in their membership fees. So whatever that fee was that they joined at, lock it in at that price and make it known that they are being rewarded for being a member by keeping the price the same. And that way, when people want to think about maybe quitting, sometimes they’re going to stick it out over that hurdle because they’re thinking, well, I might want to come back, but if I come back, it’s going to be more, and it just keeps people a bit more committed to their martial arts journey.

49 – Value reputation over money.

Number 49: reputation first, dollars second.

50 – Make sure that your branding resonates with your target market.

Number 50, episode 28, Matt Ball: make sure that your branding resonates with your target market. And the conversation started where the branding was all focused on a fighter type image, with skulls and everything and then they had a look back and after working with Dave Kovar and his team, they had a look back and realised that it’s not really something that’s going to gel with the mums and to bring in kids and so forth. So they changed all their branding and made sure that it resonates with a family environment. So for you, depending on what type of gym and school you run, make sure that your branding resonates with the image that you are trying to project out to the public.

Martial Arts Business

51 – Don’t turn your Dojo into a McDojo.

Number 51, if you associate success with a sleazeball salesman, you will never push yourself and potentially sabotage your success when it gets in reach.  That’s a deep topic because I hear a lot of people talk about that and say, you know, we’re just starting out and we want to be successful, but I don’t want to turn into a McDojo, I don’t want to be ripping people off. And it’s this kind of attitude, that it is noble to not be successful, it’s noble to not charge for the service that you provide. And at the end of the day, martial arts changes lives. It should be a lot more expensive, if people know the benefits, it’s life changing.  

I don’t think anybody should be ashamed about charging a premium, whatever that is within reason. I mean, look, there’s probably people that do rip people off, but I think people are too quick to jump to the McDojo conclusion and at the end of the day, I think it would rob you from yourself of being successful, because now you think, well, the minute I start making money, I’m going to be a McDojo. And everybody thinks I’m going to be McDojo.

By having that association, you end up sabotaging your success. And I’ve read something interesting in a book the other day, that we do everything for status. And the first part of it was, hang on: I don’t think so, I don’t do things for status. And because you think people do things for status, as in a way to have a fancy car or look good, but the reverse side of it is, people do things for status because they also don’t want to look bad. You don’t want to look like you being the loser as well, so status goes both ways. And a lot of people do things for status, so it’s a deep topic and I’m actually going to do an interview with someone next week, hopefully, but if it’s not next week, the week after. But we’ll go deep into this topic, about the association with success.

52 – Commit to your passion.

Number 52, episode 29, Stuart Grant: commit to your passion. If you want to succeed with your martial arts business, just go all in focus on that and make that work. And importantly, make sure that you’ve got your family on board with you, your partner, your wife, your loved ones. Make sure that they know that this is what you’re going to be doing, that they know there’s going to be a few obstacles to come through to go through, but this is the journey that you’re going to take and commit to it, go all in and work towards that success, which Stuart Grant does. Just go have a look at episode 29 and go look at the video tour of Westside MMA, it will blow your mind, it’s fascinating.

martial arts success

53 – Study marketing.

Alright, 53: study marketing. Stuart actually learned the skills of Google AdWords and Facebook marketing himself and this is something that not a lot of people take on and I take my hat off to him, especially the Google AdWords side, because I think you’ve got to be quite technical minded and you’ve got to really commit to learning these skills. Study marketing and look: if you need help with that kind of stuff, whether it’s hard to do it, you need some advice about it, or you’d like it done for you, then hit us up. Go to martialartsmedia.com and get in touch with us and see if we can help you with what you want to achieve. Moving on to the last episode and the last two tips.

54 – Travel and get yourself educated.

Number 54, Matt Wickham: if you’re not getting the martial arts coaching in your town, get in a car, drive. Get on a plane, and if you have to, it doesn’t matter where you have to travel, get yourself educated. If you’re not getting the education you need where you are, it’s time to broaden your horizons, start traveling.  Go visit Bali MMA, go visit matt in Echuca. Go travel to an event and get educated.

matt wickham

55 – Travel changes your perspective.

Alright, and the last one, 55: travel changes your perspective. It probably goes hand in hand with 54 and why not invite top martial artists to your school, so that your students get the same education. So if you’re not going to travel, make a plan. See what’s already happening. If a top name is traveling close by to your area, see what deal you can do. Maybe you can save some money and get top training at your location. And as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.

There we go. I hope you enjoyed the top 55 tips from martial arts business owners and experts. For show notes, go to martialartsmedia.com/32 and I look forward to being back next week, I’ve got a great interview, a few great interviews lined up, so I look forward to that. I’ll be back with you soon, have a great week, chat soon – cheers.

 

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

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15 – Martial Arts Advertising Ideas: Google Adwords vs. Facebook Marketing

Looking for martial arts marketing ideas? Google Adwords and Facebook ads are the big players. George Fourie shares the core differences.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The key difference between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads
  • Why one click doesn't help you generate leads anymore
  • How to focus on multiple touch points to engage your leads
  • All martial arts marketing ideas are worthless without this (HINT: Remarketing)

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

Good day everyone, it’s Facebook marketing, SEO: should you be doing all of this for your martial arts school, what should you be doing, what shouldn't you be doing, what is the differences, can they work together – let's discuss.

I'm George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com. In this video, I'm going to be talking about Google AdWords, should you be doing it, how does it compete with something on Facebook, what is SEO and all these fancy things. How do they work together and what strategies should you be looking out for where you implement this different marketing on these different platforms. So let's look at a comparison.

b-86Google and Facebook. Google: firstly, Google has a whole different way of advertising and marketing, because when you go to Google, you've got the intent. You've got intent to find a solution for a problem, you're looking for something. On Facebook, you're not looking for something. You're interacting, you're being social with your friends, you're looking at funny cat videos: you're doing something else than looking for something of martial arts or what it is that you're looking for. So Google has intent and Facebook is more like an interruption type of marketing. You've got to keep that in mind on how you're interacting with people, because if you think about it, it’s going to take someone 6 to 8 interactions with your brand before there's any form of conversion.

And that conversion is not necessarily joining up, that's a conversion of leaving an online inquiry, or picking up the phone and trying to engage with you as such. So the key thing to keep in mind: on Facebook, for example, if the first interaction is an ad, you have risked potential of turning that person off and not being able to take that relationship further, whereas, if you have relevant content for them, something that might interest them and from that lead to an ad afterwards, which is something that you can do, then you have more chance of converting that ad, that person into a lead, by following a different sequence.

Same as with Google of course. With Google, it’s a bit more direct, because somebody is searching for something, so an ad will show up, telling them, “This is what you've searched for,” and if your ad matches what they are looking for, that message-to-market match, then they're going to engage with your page and they are going to more than likely convert.

3With both these platforms, you've got to bear in mind that there are multiple touch points. It’s not just going to take that one click and that one view of the ad for somebody to actually convert. So you've got to be covering multiple platforms, and this is where you can have them both work together. This is how you're going to save money eventually on marketing. If you think there're 6 to 8 times that there needs to be an interaction before somebody's going to convert, how are you interacting with your prospect 6 to 8 times? How are you getting in front of them? Offer, offer, offer, offer, or content, value, content, content, offer? You've got to play around with how you are approaching your people so that you are starting by building a relationship and then slowly working towards the conversion.

Let's get back to this multiple touch points. A recent study – and thank you, Ezra Firestone, for this, mentioned that people start a search query on mobile and then they finish the transaction on a desktop. If you think about it, how many people are looking at your martial arts website and they click on the inquiry form and they just look at all this text and now they've got to sit and try ad work it on their phone with their thumbs and people just give up.

If somebody's found your website for the first time on the mobile website, they might not finish that inquiry on the mobile device, so you need a way to actually get them back to the website because chances are they're going to forget. How many times have you looked at a website on your mobile device, thinking that you'll get back to it and then you simply don't? I know I've probably got hundreds of saved things on my Facebook account that I don't even go back to that.

So it’s just something that you do and because of the way technology works, attention spans are just getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. So you've got to keep interacting with people on these multiple platforms and this is why platforms can work together, because if somebody has found you on Google and they looked at your page but they haven't done anything to convert, you can now do something like marketing campaigns, by tracking them through what's called the Facebook Pixel and you can show them ads when they land up on Facebook, so here's you next interaction. So you need all these little elements to work together.

Same as with Google Remarketing: when somebody goes to Google ads and they go away, you can have ads appear on different websites to get them back to your website and make sure that they convert. So if you accompany that type of things with good content – content meaning instructional videos or information that your prospects might be interested in and a good follow up email sequence, then you're touching all these multiple touch points and that is how you're going to have a profitable business and make your ads work and make your ads convert.

That's it – if you've got any questions with this type of thing and you need an help with that, – get in touch with us on martialartsmedia.com – I'll see you in the next video. Cheers!

 

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

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5 – How To Use Facebook For Martial Arts School Marketing

George Fourie speaks to Rod Darling about using the power of Facebook for Martial Arts School Marketing.


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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • What you must have before you start advertising on Facebook
  • A tried and tested ‘irresistible offer’ that you can model for your first campaign
  • 3 steps to follow when creating your irresistible offer
  • The power of strategic targeting that no flyers and papers can match
  • A sneaky cheat you can use with Facebook to discover what your target market is all about
  • One vital change that you can do to your martial arts website right now to boost your conversions
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hi, this is George Fourie, and welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 5. In this episode, we're going to change gears again a little bit. And today, I have on this show Rod Darling. And Rod Darling has been doing a few interesting things and strategies worth Facebook marketing. And we're going to go down to the real basics of Facebook marketing, and really how any martial arts business owner can jump on and start playing around, and getting your message out, getting your offers out to specific audiences, by doing simple strategies. So we're going to be talking about that.

First up – I do want to acknowledge a few reviews that we have on the podcast. Now, when you go the actual podcast episode, we number it according to the episode so that this one would be martialartsmedia.com/5 and on that, you'll find a link that goes to iTunes. And very much appreciated of course, when we get reviews, especially when they're 5-star reviews. But hey – an honest review is all that matters.

So I've got two reviews here and one from Robbie – apologies if I butcher any names because it can happen – Robbie Castellano. So Robbie says, “Great inside to the martial arts business schools with successful school owners – highly recommended.” So thanks for that Robbie. And then, “Great podcast on two inspiring martial artists,” by Shawn Allan. I'm going to tell you who Shawn Allan is in a second, but let me first read the reviews.

So, “George, great interview with Graham and Phil from WAIMA. I enjoyed the attitude that the boys have in challenging themselves over and over. They do provide us with an inside into their work ethic, professionalism, and ideas. Especially rewarding for me, as I was their employer/instructor back in the day. I clearly remember the reasons behind my decision to employ Graham above all others and that move has been the start of a journey that has benefited the martial arts industry. Then my decision to combine Phil with Graham has been a joy to follow. As an instructor, I've made many mistakes: choosing Graham as a young green belt to groom as an instructor has been a good choice. Helping Phil move into my old school as an instructor; then the owner has been equally beneficial. Of note is the reaction by the boys when I occasionally pass across. They always show me the heartfelt respect and genuine interest in my life journey. My response to them is reciprocated. It seems the WAIMA story is only just starting.  I'm sure you can appreciate this as a dad sitting on the sidelines, watching classes. Anyway, great interview, regards, Shawn Allan.”

So, if you didn't get that from the actual comment, Shawn Allan originally started the WA Institute of Martial Arts, before Graham and Phil took it over. And Graham and Phil was the interview that I did. It was broken up into three episodes, so episodes 1, 2 and 3, which you can get of course at martialartsmedia.com/1, /2 and /3. So there you go, two great interviews and very much appreciate when you leave a review, of course, because that's going to help us get up in the rankings and get the podcast out to all the other martial arts business owners out there.

Alright. So, that's it from me. We're going to jump into this episode. In this episode, we're going to dig over to the Facebook marketing. And Facebook is the prime hangout spot for everybody in the world; everybody's on Facebook. And doing a few things, when you've got your Facebook page up there, doing a few things strategically to get your message out, is not that hard to do. Now, obviously, you can get somebody to do that for you, that's something we specialize in, here at Martial Arts Media. Or, if you're just starting out, and you want to take it on yourself, Rod also offers his help and has a great few strategies to share on how you can get going by yourself. So that's it from me, let me welcome you to the interview, Mr. Rod darling from International Goju Karate Schools.

GEORGE: Cool, so are you ready to rock n roll?

ROD: Let’s do it mate!

GEORGE: All right! Good day everyone, today I have with me Rod Darling and we're going to be talking about Facebook marketing, how you can use your Facebook, or how you can promote your martial arts school through Facebook marketing. How are you doing today Rod?

ROD: Yeah, good, thanks mate, how are you?

GEORGE: Good, good. So just before we get into all the meaty stuff, just a bit of a background, who's Rod Darling?

ROD: Me, pretty much, I've been in the martial arts industry for… I think we started our club in 2002. And we used to do all the normal marketing methods, flyers and school newsletters and stuff like that. And we grew our school to a pretty big size; we're up to about 7-800 active now. Mainly in Perth and I've just moved over to Newcastle, 18 months ago, to get things happening over here as well, moved back home. Got tired of the slow pace of Perth. And we've also got kickboxing fitness studios, which we started up a couple of years ago, and it’s just going gangbusters, obviously cause the fitness industry is a massive market, compared to martial arts. So it’s much easier to grow, to get growth that way.

GEORGE: Ok, so you've got the location in Perth – come on, Perth isn't that bad! I mean, you're stuck, you have to stay there. So, and then how many locations have you got over East?

ROD: I have it here, in Newcastle office, just got one full-time location.

GEORGE: Ok.

ROD: And I've got a couple of, I've got three, four satellite locations where we run kids karate. And in Perth, we've got four, five full-time location now. One's a stand alone fitness kickboxing studio, the rest karate dojos, with fitness kickboxing in them as well.

GEORGE: Ok, excellent.

ROD: We've got about satellite locations started throughout Perth as well.

GEORGE: Ok, great. Ok so, the meaty stuff would be Facebook marketing. Now, a lot of people talk about. I guess there a lot of confusion about Facebook, how to go about it, what you should be doing. So I guess just for, to sort of backtrack before we get anywhere, with how to go about the advertising and so forth, how would you define the difference? If we talked just about social media stuff and the Facebook marketing?

ROD: Yeah, I don't do Instagram or anything else, so I don't know about that. My theory is that it’s the same as with my martial arts – just do one thing and do it well. So, Facebook as far as marketing, is the go right now. It will probably change in a few years time or so, and something else will come along. But right now, Facebook is the best way, as far as I'm concerned, to get students in, and to grow any business for that matter.

GEORGE: Ok, so let’s go to the start. Now, where should you begin? You've got a business, you've got a martial arts school, and you want to start promoting it on Facebook: what would be sort of the first steps to where to start?

ROD: Make sure you've got a fan page, obviously, cause you can't run boosted posts or ads unless you have a fan page or a business page, is what they call it now I think. But also, the trouble I see with the most martial artist, is that they don't know they market. They don't know their target market. And so we niche it down to, we have a kids karate program called Kanga Karate, so we'll have a business page for that program in that suburb as well.

So we niche it right down, and then we'll have a fan page for fitness kickboxing as well, and we'll have a fan page for junior karate also. We haven't hit the adult market for karate that hard, we just mainly focus on kids and then get the parents training. But that's a good start, just know your downloadmarket and do a lot of research on your market. And niche it down, so my Facebook coach said to me just the other day, “If you try and get everyone, you'll get no one.” So just niche it right down, just target.

At the moment, I'm just targeting fitness kickboxing; I'm just working on that. My karate grows with referrals, so I’ll just target just the normal fitness kickboxing, and then we'll also target moms and dads as a separate, cause they're a completely different anima. They think differently, they've got different wants and needs, so you can make your ads much more effective if you do it that way.

GEORGE: Ok, so that brings up something interesting because most martial arts schools will have several programs, all under the one roof. They'll offer Jiu Jitsu; they'll offer maybe, they'll offer Muay Thai. And then, of course, the kid's programs. With all of those segments, you're talking a different language, as you would when you see them face to face. So you go and create separate pages for those markets?

ROD: Yeah, for instance, in Perth, my main focus is Kanga karate, our kid's karate program. So we have a fan page for each location, even the little satellite locations. And that way, if you do an ad for that location, they can see through Google maps and with the addresses of your location, it comes up on the fan page as well. And you can target people in those suburbs a lot easier. And you know, it’s local.

GEORGE: Yeah, that's a good point. I guess there could be a way to go about that, a different way if you just had the one fan page. And then, that'll probably be a conversation way beyond this call, which you would be specific about your ads, on how you're going to target the market. Which is probably, I think we're probably going to go way beyond that conversation at this point.

ROD: Yeah, yeah. You could have a fan page for each program, and have all your locations included on that fan page. It’s just the way we do it because we're like franchise setup and we leave the fan page up to control to that franchise, run his ads. The biggest drama I see with having the one fan page with all the different programs is the content. Because you want to be putting out content to the people, and you're not going to put out, like krav maga, self-defense style content to a 4-6 years old kids program for karate. It’s a different type of content.

GEORGE: Very cool. Ok, that was a good learning point for me as well, cause we are also kind of try and put everything into one roof a lot of the times. But then, the only way to get people to the different segments would be with content promotion and so forth.

ROD: Yeah.

GEORGE: So, ok. So moving on, when you do your ads, what are you exactly doing? Are you putting up something on your website and promoting that? Are you promoting events, or are you creating a specific offer on Facebook – what's been working for you?

ROD: Yeah, we have what we call an irresistible offer. So we do a paid trial, and for most of our karate locations, our biggest offer that we sell is, we do 5 classes and a uniform for $29.99, and we have websites and landing pages where people can buy that, and we're just directing them to the website to buy that offer.

GEORGE: Ok, so, first and foremost: you're building your audience, so you've got your different page, and then you're putting up a specific page for the offer.

ROD: Yeah.

GEORGE: Right. And do you vary those offers, or do you sort of run with that, and then chop and change, or?

ROD: We've been running with that offer for a few years now, and we're too scared to change it because it works pretty good. We do have a formula to come up with our offers, and we do the same with kickboxing, we do three classes and a pair of gloves for $26.99. And I've also done different offers, just playing around over here, where I've done a six-week kickboxing program for a $127.

And I've been selling them straight off the bat, straight off Facebook. Cause I've always tried to keep it a low barrier offer, which is usually below $49, cause they'll buy it straight off the bat off the internet then. But I'm doing it for a $127 now, and we've done $169 as well, an absolute beginner course for adult karate as well. We've just done that recently, had over 60 people take that offer. As we get more confidence, we try bigger and bolder offers.

GEORGE: Yeah, that's it. Ok, I don't want you to give away all your secrets obviously, but do you mind sharing what's that formula that you take to create your offers?

ROD: There are 15 steps, but the main steps are: it needs to be unique, it needs to be different from everyone else, it needs to have lots of value. So free –  there's no value in two weeks free, there's nothing in it. What we do is, we try to give away a tangible product, which for kids karate would be a uniform, or adult karate would be a uniform, or for fitness, kickboxing would be gloves. And whatever the retail value is of that product, we keep the offer at 50% that retail value. Say if your uniform were worth $80, you'd keep your offer at $40, but I'd make it an oddball number and say $39. So the five classes in uniform for $39 and I’ll always put the value of the uniform in that offer. A uniform is usually valued at $80, or whatever your uniform's worth. And that works every time.

GEORGE: Ok, interesting. And I just want to clarify that: so you're basing the value also on something psychical, so not just the class, because two weeks free can be very, sort of “Great – what am I getting?”

ROD: Yeah. And that's another point, I try and do it as a specific number of classes, rather than four weeks and a uniform, or 2 weeks and a uniform, because then there's still a gray area – how many classes does that get me? So we try and keep it specific, so then there are fewer questions that're going through their head. So, two weeks – how many classes do that equal? Is that one class a week, or is it three classes a week – what does that get me? So we keep it specific, so they know what they're getting.

GEORGE: Yeah, really good point. Cause you don't want the prospect to be answering questions in their head, or give them hard work to try and figure out what is this offer. You want to make it easy for them just to make the decision and go with it.

ROD: Yeah. And once you have that offer, like we've been running with our offer for I don't know how many years know. It was the biggest change we ever did; it made a massive difference to us. Once you have that, that would do most of the heavy lifting in your marketing for you. Most of the work is done, once you have that irresistible offer, you just have to put it in front of the right people, and that's easy on Facebook.

GEORGE: OK, right, so I guess that's the crunch of it: if you're going to have a bad offer, it doesn't matter who the audience is: your offer is not going to work, and nobody's going to respond to your ad. So the first step is going to be, obliviously create your fan page. Get that if you're using profile for your martial arts school, it’s not going to work. Then create a good offer, so something that's going to work. And then start running the ads. Now, what are you doing to expand the fan base? Cause obviously, if you're running the ads just from your Facebook, is there anything that you're doing in particular that you can get more people to the fan page, or you're just doing that with the boosted type posts that's attracting friends, or friends of people in your club?

ROD: When I run my boosted posts – so I find boosted posts work better then a Facebook ad for martial arts. The ads will still work, but boosted posts just seems to work better every time we do it. So we don't target people that liked our page: we create an audience and so, if it’s kids karate, I’ll target moms, cause they make the buying decision most of the time. And I’ll just pick the suburbs in the surrounding area; it’s as simple as that. See, what happens is, this is another mistake that a lot of the guys make, cause I see ads – when I lived in Perth, I used to see ads from martial artists in Melbourne, popping up on my news feed.

It's either their targeting was crappy, or they're targeting people who liked their page and their friends. And this is another mistake they make: they invite all their martial arts friends to like their page. So, we get likes just from running those boosted posts, people will like your page anyway. And what you can do, once they've liked your post, or commented on your post, you can go through and invite them to like your page, so we're getting likes like that. So I don't run posts to get likes, I just do it sell more web special.

GEORGE: Right, interesting. And a good point to mention there, it’s still good to build their fan base, because your ads will be a lot cheaper. So you'll get more. But hang on, that doesn't apply to a boosted post.

ROD: I don't run ads to those people, I run ads to new people. And the people that do like my page will most probably see it anyway, cause they're in my target audience.

GEORGE: Right, OK. So you're not that concerned about running ads just to do your fan base: you want to expand it and get the message out to new people.

ROD: I’ll just run it, cause it’s so good on Facebook now, you can run a boosted post, and you can target women between 25 and 45 who live in your suburbs, who have kids between 3 and eight years old, you know? And you can't do that with flyers or a newspaper.

GEORGE: Exactly! And that right there is gold, that's what makes this direct response type marketing gold because it gives you this, Facebook has got all the data of everybody. Everything that you do on Facebook, I mean, you are literally the product on Facebook. You are the free user, you give them the data, and that data is obviously a way for you to customize ads and present an offer to those people. And you bring a point there is, again, how specific it is, if you're targeting somebody that's 25-45 and you know you're targeting women, then what is the conversation in your ad? What are the pictures that you're going to put in that ad? Do you get a woman to create that ad for you?

Rod DarlingROD: We do a whole exercise now. And we've only just learned this recently, but it’s making a massive difference, where for instance, I've just done that for fitness kickboxing, and I've spent three weeks going into my target. And there's a whole process that we go through; it’s called taking a stop. And we try and get into their head of that person and so, what are their problems, what are the causes of their problems, what behaviors are they doing because of these problems that they have in their life? And then you can speak their language. And when you start doing that – I forget who it was, but somebody said “If you can describe somebody's problem to them better than they can put it into words, they'll always run with you.” they'll always come to you to solve it, and that's what we do, pretty much. But I can't explain how we do that here! It takes ages to learn it!

GEORGE: For sure. I guess for someone that doesn't have access to those type of resources, the quickest way to make that discovery is I guess, really pay attention to what people are telling you that walk through your doors. The people that are coming through the doors and the people that are joining, and if you can get down to the reason why they're joining and what they are trying to achieve through their martial arts, not just kicking and punching stuff. But the real hidden benefit, the real REAL benefit – what are they going to get out of it? What type of transformation they are after?

ROD: And it’s a really good point, but be careful who you pick, because you want to pick your favorite clients. Because you want to attract more of those clients. So I pick my favorite ones, with my fitness kickboxing, there were a couple of ladies I asked questions to, and I modeled it on them, cause I want more of them. And now when ladies come in here,  it’s like they've been here for 12 months already on their first night. They just click with everyone. But there is a cheating way that you can use Facebook to do your market research. Once you have your fan page, and you now have people give you reviews, I’ll go through all the reviews on my fan page, and I’ll look at the wording that they're using.

So, for instance, when I did it for my kickboxing fitness studio, everyone said it was a great workout, and they had fun. And fun was the theme that kept coming through. So then I started to use those words in my ads as well, and I got better results. The other thing that you can do to get better targeting is, I go through those people that have given me a five-star review, and I’ll stalk their Facebook profile, and I’ll have a look at their interests, what pages they've liked. And you'll find a theme in there. It’s a bit harder with kids karate, but with fitness, it was easy. The pages that popped up all the time were Lorna Jane and the Biggest Loser and Michelle Bridges and things like that. So now I can target ads to those people. So it's a bit of a cheat way on Facebook to do it quickly.

GEORGE: OK, cool. And that brings up a good point, and I don't know if it’s going a little more advanced, but Facebook has other features, where you can create a lookalike audience. So it’s taking people that you have, and then Facebook uses their data to create a lookalike audience, which is mimicking all those features that you're talking about. The similarities and so forth, they try and base an audience on that, which expands on that. Have you used any of those features?

ROD: No I haven't, cause I just have my audiences saved, and I just keep hitting the same audience unless I'm doing a different campaign or a different offer. Then I’ll change it up a little bit. Or if I find I'm getting people starting to come from a different suburb, a little bit further away, I might expand the data a little bit further. But that's it. Just keep it simple, that's what it means to have a great offer if you have it articulated in a  way that they understand you and target the people who you want.

You can also target income now. I don't target people that can't afford me anymore. Cause when you have an irresistible offer, it’s like Groupon. We've done Groupon before, and there's a lot of bargain hunts out there. They'll just come and, you know.We did it for karate years ago, and we had like 60 kids come in, but none of them could afford us. It was a way to get uniforms.

GEORGE: And they've got the uniform hanging out the pub.

ROD: Yeah, for their dress ups.

GEORGE: Dress up party uniforms. Alright, cool. Anything else that I haven't asked you that you feel is important? What I like about this conversation is, it’s all about the basics. We're talking about getting your Facebook campaign sorted and really just keeping it simple, making sure that your audiences are well segmented through your pages, so that you can target accurately, that you're not talking about Muay Thai  fights to the mom who's trying to sign up her kids and sharing that type of content, so you can have a relevant conversation with your target audience. Is there anything that you feel, any other tips that you feel we should cover?

ROD: The basics are knowing your target, have a great offer and put it in front of them. That's all you need to know and do. But one problem that most businesses have and martial artists are really bad at this, is, your product is an obstacle to what they want. So for fitness, for example, they want to lose weight, but they don't necessarily want to go to the gym and sweat and workout hard. So your product is actually the obstacle, so you gotta talk to them about what they actually want, so don't talk about yourself on your website, cause I see martial artists, oh, we've been around for x amount of years, and we've won all these world titles, and we've done this and done that – they don't care. They don't care; that's not going to help them give their kid confidence. They just want to know how you're going to do that.

GEORGE: That opens a whole other interview. Cause that is the biggest mistake that I see on any martial arts website is, being us-centric and not you-centric. It’s all about we, and everything is we. We, us, we believe. And nobody cares, and nobody cares what you believe because…

ROD: You're weeing all over yourself!

GEORGE: Alright, that will be the tagline for this episode – don't wee all over yourself! Alright, awesome. So, Rod, I believe you also have a course that is in the making, and by the time that you listen to this interview – for anyone listening, it will probably be available. But for anybody that needs help with this and wants to take on this challenge, and they don't have the confidence, or they don't have someone that can do this for, do you have a website that they can go to?

ROD: I will have for this soon, I’ll have a landing page. But the best thing to do is contact me through Facebook. I've put together this course because I've been getting contacted every day by people wanting to ask all this stuff. And I help them, no worries at all, but I'm like, I need to put it together in a course. And it'll be a short course that'll get them results. After a week or so, they'll be generating page rise.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. So just contact Rod Darling through Facebook. And once the course is live, we will have it in the show notes so that it will be available in this episode. That will be at martialartsmedia.com/5. So that's it. Thanks a lot, Rod, I've learned a great deal and I'm sure everyone else did as well, and I hope to connect with you soon.

ROD: Yeah, cool!

GEORGE: Alright, thanks.

ROD: Thanks, bye.

GEORGE: Alright, there you have it – thanks again Rod for the great tips and we're going to follow this episode up. I'm going to be talking about a few different strategies and things that can add to what you're doing. And there's something that they came up with, the way Rod is approaching it, which is awesome and working well for them, how they are splitting their target markets through various pages. And I got thinking after the interview: there's a lot of brands, it would be very hard for them to restructure that format. So it would be very hard to go and, if you've got your brand and you've got a few locations out there, and you're serving a few target markets, you might get stuck with that approach. In a future episode, we'll get on and discuss a few alternative options that you can go about doing.

Rod, thanks a lot for the interview. Shared some great tips and some great things about the offers – if you just picked that up, the way they structure the offer and the value – there's some gold in there. Little things, but little things is what counts and what makes offers convert. And if you need Rod's help, you can just contact Rod, so rod, R-O-D Darling, just search for him on Facebook and connect with him on there, he'll be happy to help you with anything you need.

Coming up next week: I've got so many cool interviews lined up, so I'm very excited about that. There's a few topics that I'll also be discussing solo, so it's exciting to see this podcast evolving and I'm just going to continue interviewing people from all aspects of martial arts, maybe even get guests on board not from martial arts which we can learn from, obviously talking about the marketing aspect and so forth. But anything that can help build a better martial arts school, a better martial arts business at the end of the day.

Alright, that's it from me. For the show notes on this episode, you can go to martialartsmedia.com/5.  So, martialartsmedia.com/5 and I will catch you on the next show. Thanks a lot for tuning in, chat soon. Cheers!

 

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