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49 – Martial Arts Websites vs ClickFunnels & Page Builders

November 1, 2017 by George Fourie

ClickFunnels and Page Builders can be great, but is that what you really need instead of your martial arts website? Here's my take.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Do you need a hole or a drill (and a driller)?
The myth about what you need to create a sales funnel
Doing the ‘Richard Branson Test’ for your martial arts business
What a basic martial arts business sales funnel looks like
The difference between an internet marketing funnel and martial arts school funnel
The important factors that influence customers’ buying behaviour
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media, and in this video, I'm going to give you my take on websites versus ClickFunnels, or what I'm going to refer to is real martial arts websites, I'll explain why in a minute, versus ClickFunnels, Leadpages, and other page builders. I think there's a bit of confusion in the marketplace about what a funnel actually is, what part of a funnel you actually need, and for what type of business? Do you need the same type of intricate sales funnel structure for a martial arts business versus if you're selling digital products, or you got an e-commerce store or something like that?

There's a bit of confusion, and I was on a webinar yesterday where the guy I was referring to doing a comparison between a website versus a funnel, a sales funnel, and kind of saying, “Look, the website model is dead. You need sales funnel.” But I think that creates confusion because why does it need to be different? It doesn't need to be different. It's the same thing, it just means one website model was developed with an old mindset, with the sales funnel was not. It doesn't have to be different.

Do you need sales funnel? Absolutely. Does it need to be separate to your website? Definitely not. There's a bit of confusion with that, so I'm going to be as diplomatic as possible here, and want to give you my perspective on the difference between ClickFunnels, websites, martial arts websites, really crappy websites, good websites, and other types of page builders. And look, we've used them all, and I'll give full disclosure, martialartsmedia.com, my company, we develop martial arts websites, we help martial arts school owners with online lead generation. That's our focus.

We've used a bit of some page builder tools for some clients, but the majority, we build out our websites on Wordpress, because it's a platform that you own, we don't have to keep your login details, you don't have to pay a monthly fee for it. That's our preferred way but I want to give you both, all the facts, and you can make the decision for yourself because maybe a tool like ClickFunnels is for you, but maybe it's not.

The first thing I want to really look at here is to look at the old situation. Do you need a drill or hole? Well, you need the hole, right? How are you going to get the hole through a drill? Now, what type of drill you need? Maybe you need a certain type of drill? Different brand? Do you need to actually be the driller, or can you actually hire a person that's an expert at drilling the hole, and get that person into drill the hole for you?

My comparison analogy is, are you the right person for the job? Are you the person who should be doing drilling the holes in your business? Should you be building your own website? In 2017, I don't think it's necessary that you need to be touching any tech whatsoever, and a mental model is just to do the Richard Branson test. The question is, would Richard Branson be doing this in his business? I want to ask you that. Are you the right person to be doing drilling the holes, and putting up websites?

You know, my expertise is computer programming, I've adapted to marketing over the last 10 years, but I can put a website together, and I've got a web developer on staff, he's pretty busy with developing websites at the moment. Yesterday I was putting together a report for this actual video, and I'll actually show you, and because he was busy, I didn't want to bother him, so I put together a landing page myself, and for me, I thought, “Hey, this looks pretty cool doesn't it?” So I put this together, and I showed it to my developer, and five minutes later, he brings me this, which looks 10 times better, and I think the danger in a lot of these types of tools is it does what happened to me. It creates false confidence.

Now this is both on Wordpress to a different editor, but it creates false confidence that you think you are actually really good, where maybe you're not, and maybe somebody else could do it much better, do a professional job for you, and you get a better result at the end of the day. Keep that in mind. Are you the right person for the job here? Do you need to be drilling the holes in your business, or should you hire someone else to do that for you? Let's just remove the marketing hype for a minute, and let's look at the actual facts.

I'm going to draw out a sales funnel here for you, just to give you a bit of an idea, but this happened to one of our members in our Martial Arts Media Academy, where we teach martial arts school owners about lead generation, and the member said to me, well we were running through Facebook ads, and the member said to me, “Well, yeah, I'll get the ad up, but I've just got to figure this ClickFunnels thing out.” And I was asking, “Why? What are you going to need to do with ClickFunnels?” “Well, I was told I need ClickFunnels, so I bought this thing.” And I told the person, “Well, you've got a perfect landing page. We developed a landing page for you, it's professionally designed, we interviewed you for the actual copywriting to get your perfect message, to get your values, and put it down in writing into a structured sales message.”

And we'd done all this for the person, and it was ready to go. All that they needed to do was actually commit to the Facebook ads, but instead, they bought ClickFunnels and got sucked in by the tech, and started buying products that they thought they needed, which they didn't need, and that's what I've got a problem with. Not that actual tool, but that the wrong people are buying the tools thinking they need it, where they actually don't.

I want to show you this quickly, and just for, I guess, if you don't know anything about me, just for a bit of credibility for my end, I guess, but our landing pages that we've developed and I pulled this report just before I created the video. Since the last 10 to 11 months, our landing pages have generated 964 paid trial students, so in monetary value that's $30,000, but that's not really what's important.

What the real value is, is the lifetime student value, and from based on our numbers, the average that we normally find is $1,500 is a good lifetime student value. If you calculate it on that, yours might be more or less, that's $1.4 million. $1.455 million worth of students. Look, our landing pages convert. They convert, we create a custom copy from that, we design it, we put it on your website and we don't use ClickFunnels or any fancy page builder, and it gets results.

I want to break that down for you quickly, and let me just fire up my iPad here quickly, and use this as an example. Let's have a look. If we look at a sales funnel. Now, for the most part. Right now, let's do a comparison. In the internet marketing space, and this is sometimes a problem when you buy into internet marketing hype because there's a lot of internet marketing hype out that there. If you look at, let's do this and we looked at internet marketing.

A lot of the models that people follow would be, you've got your page here, and they call it a let's say like a trip wire, and the tripwire might be like a $7 product. You're trying to create this sort of value letter. We try to do the same, but I'll show you a different way in a minute. So, you've got this $7 product that you create, and then that goes to what's called a one-time offer normally. You only see it now, there, never again. You gotta buy it there, and let's say that's $47 or $97. That's the up-sell once you've bought the other one. Then, that page might take you to another one-time offer, OTO, and let's say that was $297. Excuse the handwriting. That's if you said yes, and if you said no, then you might go to a down-sell of, let's say $197. That's sort of an internet marketing model. You've got all these steps that you follow, and you want to bulk up a real funnel of all these different aspects.

Now, let's look at a martial arts school. With a martial arts school, you don't need that much right? You might, look, there can be variations of this, because for some of our clients, Facebook ads, they send them directly to the landing page. Just a straightforward sales page, as is. It could be, let's call that the rate offer. That'll be the paid trial page. People can go there directly, but you might have another page here. This could be the homepage on a website, but it's basically like a, we're going to call it a lead magnet page, or an inquiry page. It's kind of where something free is happening. This could be an online inquiry, it could be downloaded lead magnet, a lead magnet, something of value, for the purpose of getting a lead. It's basically a contact and inquiry page. Your funnel could be something like the free thing, and then people see the paid trial after, and then all that you really need after that is a thank you page.

This is a really, really important page. We don't have time to go into that into detail, but the way we do our Facebook ads is we track each of these elements so that we know how we can advertise to people based on the action that I've taken. That's going a bit off course, so I won't go into that right now, but that is the basic funnel. That is a basic funnel for a martial arts school. Free offer, paid trial offer, and the thank you page.

Do you need a funnel building tool that's $100-$300 a month for that? I don't think so, because why can't your website do the same thing? Your website can do the same thing, and you don't need 20 funnels, or 30 funnels or 40 funnels to do that. If you got one funnel that you optimize and that converts, and I'll show you the ways we go about that in a minute. Again, do you want to get your hands dirty with those types of tools? It's good to have the knowledge, but should you be the person doing it? I think you can do better things in your business, better things in running your martial arts school, in running the classes, running the schools, training your staff, running a better business, and get somebody to do this type of thing for you.

Back to the funnel. This is the basic funnel. If you optimize that one funnel, then you've got a working model. Then you can just drive traffic to that because here's the problem. The problem is this. If you have an awesome funnel, but you're not respecting the customer journey, then what's the point of people seeing your awesome funnel on a Facebook ad? Then when they actually decide to do some research on you. People do that, they go to Google, they check you out, and they land on your website, and your website sucks, and you lose the lead. They click the back button and they go to your competitor.

What does that help you? Does this mean you need to have the funnel, and then you need to have the website, and then you need to have 20 funnels, and multiple pages, multiple websites? I don't think so. If you actually know how to develop a website properly, then you know how to segment the people on that website. That means that your pages are independent. I'll go back to that in a minute because I want to answer something else, just on multiple websites, which I also believe you don't need. We'll cover that in just a minute.

Let me not jump around. Back to the customer journey. Customer journey. What we need to know about our customers is people take 6-8 interactions before they reach a point of conversion. That is the customer journey. 6-8 brand interactions, that's salesforce stat. That can be they check their mobile phone, they drove past their phone, they checked out your website, they saw your Facebook page, they saw a social media post. There's a lot of interactions that can happen before a conversion.

Conversion doesn't need to be a paid trial. It can be just a phone call, it can be just an email. This customer journey is happening, and it's happening at multiple times, different times, different devices. Those are steps that we just got to know that this is what's happening. So, why don't we base our marketing on these facts, and make sure that we got all the conversion points covered? Because I can guarantee you, if you're running 20, 30, 40 funnels, that's going to be really, really hard to optimize, and really, really hard to track people. Unless that is your full-time gig, or you got a very, very deep pocket to cater for that, it's going to take a lot of work.

Let's get back to the website. Does this mean if you're running multiple styles, that you're going to need multiple websites? Look, there's different ways of doing things, and all respect to how everybody does their way of business. The way we try and look at it from the start is leverage. How can you do the least amount of things, for the maximum amount of effort? Because look at this online world, it's crazy right? Do you ever feel that you're getting everything done that you need to get done? Why not just structure things that you work on the core basics, the core fundamentals, and you structure them right that your marketing becomes easier, and you don't have to spend all this time and all this tech, stuff, and everything. Let's get back to, I want to get back to the iPad here.

Let's take a quick look. Here's the thing and this is if you're running multiple styles within your school. If you're running multiple styles, for us, this is how we structure the website. We start off with the homepage. We got the homepage. Then the homepage is really where people land. It's really also just a landing page because people are going to land there, they are at different stages in their buying cycle, something else I will explain in a minute as well. The homepage really serves as a place to put people in the right place to have the right conversation.

What might happen is they are interested in style 1. Not a dollar sign, hang on. Style 1 might be kids' karate, for example, or they are interested in style 2, kickboxing. Or maybe they're interested in style 3, Krav Maga, or something else. These are three different conversations to be had. That's what the homepage is doing, it's acting like a chooser to send people where they need to go. These pages then do the specific copy for the specific audience having this specific conversation. It's no brochure, it's actually understanding the design concept, and knowing your market, and knowing how to segment it properly to send people to the right place.

One thing that we focus on because we do Google advertising, we make sure that all these pages have all the relevant information that you need to make a decision because we advertise them independently. We don't send people to the homepage, ever. People land there because they might be following your brand, or they heard about you. They google you, so the first page they're going to land is that homepage. That happens, but when it comes to the structure, we want to make sure that the homepage is just a chooser to send people to the right place. All these pages have a conversation that was self-targeted.

Do you need multiple web pages for this? No. How many signs do you have in front of your school? Do you have a different sign for each style or page? Do you segment your school like that? If people come for kickboxing, do you hide the kids? You know what I mean? There's always going to be this bit of overlap. You're much better off, in my opinion, and I've had this conversation multiple times in high-level mastermind groups. It's much better to have your one website, one brand, simplify things, and make sure that you're segmenting at the right place. I guess I should say this because segmentation is important.

Being specific is important, but are you doing it at the right place? Do you need to do it on a Facebook level, so that every Facebook page is different? I don't think so. Why don't you keep it under your same brand, and segment at the right place? Because this is where the conversion really is going to happen most of the time, depending on your marketing strategy of course again, is on the website. So why don't you segment people there and have those separate conversations? This can easily be done on one website. When people land on the kids' karate, they don't see the kickboxing, they see kids. They see kids' pictures. They see all that. So you can segment this according to that. I hope that helps.

The way we go about this when we’re creating a website. Look, it does take work, there's no doubt about that. We focus strongly on what's called A/B split testing. That means that one website might have a separate headline to the other one. We're fortunate enough that we develop websites, so we do this on a larger scale, and that way we can track different elements, and we do take it a step further. That is with heat maps.

Heat maps are really, really revealing, because you go based on not what people say they do, but what they actually do. You can see what people are clicking on your website, and the advantage we get from this is invaluable because we can see exactly what people are doing, what they click on, what they do not click on. This takes the A/B split testing to another level because what we gain from the one, we can use on the other. It becomes an invaluable exercise to really check our different websites for what we do for members. So, that's the one thing.

I should talk about the other side. Does this mean that all websites are created equal? Definitely not. This is the other, and this takes the conversation to a whole nother ball game. One thing we can establish, you need a sales funnel. Does it need to be on ClickFunnels or Leadpages or one of these tools? No, it doesn't. You can build that out on your website, preferably get a professional person to do it that understands sales and marketing.

Here's the problem with most web developers. Most web developers don't focus on sales and marketing, and I understand that really clearly, because I started out as a computer programmer, and tech and gadgets was my thing. It was only until I started learning about online marketing, and marketing and sales, that I really started to see how the two actually linked together. The problem is, it's two very, very different skill sets generally. A person that's focused on technology and analytics, or a person that's focused on graphics, is not necessarily focused on sales and marketing. When your development team consists of a technical person and a graphics designer, there's absolutely zero sales strategy on that website. So, you got to watch out.

What I've put together for this video is a report, and you can download that. This will help you. It's called “20 Questions to Ask Your Web Developer Before Investing in a New Martial Arts Website.” This is the top 20 questions that I've pulled together of what you should be asking a web developer. This is very, very quickly going to tell you where their mind is at, and if they're going to deliver with what it is that you need. What do you need from your website? You need leads, and you need paid trials. You need someone with that understanding. If you're watching this video on Facebook, just type 20 in the comments, and we will send that through to you. Otherwise, just check it out on martialartsmedia.com and it will be available for download in the show notes of this episode. Something else for you to consider.

We've covered your website can be your sales funnel. You need someone that actually understand the sales and marketing process to facilitate that for you. A big thing of why we focus on building things on your website, and this will be covered a bit more in the report, is having an asset. When you look at the online world, there's one place where you actually build out an asset, and that is in your domain name. So your .com, .au, .co, .uk, wherever you are located.

Your website address is your one and only asset. The problem that can happen is you own the domain name, but somebody else actually owns your website, so it's kind of like you own the house on a piece of land, but somebody else owns the land. Somebody else can just take the land away from you, and you're just stuck with the house. Or, you own the land but somebody else owns your house, so somebody can just go break the house down if they want. Something to check out for.

So, when you're building out things on the internet, and you're looking at the long term, what's going to last the longest for you? Then it's a wise move to build things out on your website. It's maybe not always the quickest, and maybe not always the easiest, but long term, it's going to benefit you, because all your prime content, and if I say content, videos and articles, that stays on your website.

A few things for you to consider. Now, look, if you're doing things yourself, and you're at the point in your business that you've got to do absolutely everything, then maybe a tool like ClickFunnels or Leadpages can help. But you got to be careful because you might get sucked into a lot of things from top marketers, that'll make you buy things. Probably won't make you, but you'll feel that you need to buy these things, and you don't really need them. It's something for you to consider.

If you are hands-on with the tech, and you feel that you're 100% clued up on all the stuff, and nobody can do a better job, then hey, commit to it, do your thing. It could be good to just sometimes test things and get an offer out quickly. But if you want more specifics, and you want to be a bit more in detail of getting a sales funnel done for you, or website done that's yours on your domain, in your structure, then reach out to a professional, whether that's us or not. Go for it.

All right, I hope that helps. I hope that clarifies a few things. If you want to download that report, go to martialartsmedia.com, or if you're watching this on Facebook, just leave a comment with the word 20, and we'll send that through to you. Thanks, and I'll speak to you soon. Cheers.

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

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48 – How To Create Martial Arts Training Videos With Jack Leung

October 23, 2017 by George Fourie

Jack Leung is capturing attention with his martial arts training videos. We discuss frameworks to create your own.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How video marketing can help boost your martial arts business.
Step by step framework for making engaging martial arts videos.
How to grab attention in the first 30 seconds.
Why Jack Leung ended his career in graphic design and pursued martial arts instructing.
How to overcome the one thing that stops martial arts school owners from creating videos.
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

George: Hi, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today, I have another great guest with me, Sifu Jack Leung. And Sifu Jack Leung has, I'll guess I'll start off with the video side of things, has an awesome YouTube channel. You've got to see the videos to appreciate it, and we'll link to it in the show notes. And look, a video marketing, doing video in general, is something that, it's a big component. We're always talking about it in the Martial Arts Media Academy with our students, of really leveraging it. And Jack claims he's not an expert, but I'm sure you're going to disagree when you watch his videos. So, first and foremost, welcome to the show, Jack.

Jack: Thank you for having me, thank you.

George: Awesome. So, let's start just in the beginning, to give people a bit of an idea, who is Jack Leung?

Jack: Hi everyone, my name is Jack Leung, and I teach Wing Chun in Queensland. I currently run two full-time clubs, and four different small clubs at different locations, at school halls and community centres.

George: Alright, cool. So, going a bit further back, how did your whole martial arts journey evolve?

Jack: I started out training in Hong Kong, and I'm from Hong Kong. I started out training with Karate first in high school. And I went to, let's just say a rough high school, and we get to test a lot of things before there were videophones and that kind of stuff. So sometimes, a lot of instructors don't say … they only tell you the good stories. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you lose badly, and that's when I started looking into martial arts.

In the beginning, I like to tell people, and this is what I tell parents, I want to be stronger, to be able to protect myself, but that wasn't the case. I just wanted to be very good, to protect myself and beat up other kids. But that's very different 20 years later, that's very different 20 years later. So, that's how I started. And I started training Goju Karate first, for five or six years, and in between, I trained some different types of Kung Fu. Some Southern Praying Mantis, different lineages of Praying Mantis, and then I met my Sifu in 1996 when I walk past on the way to school. And then, I started, I just walk in and say, “Oh, what is Wing Chun?”. And that got me interested in training Wing Chun.

George: Awesome. So, how long have you actually been in Australia, then?

Jack: I've been here, I think, roughly 20 years now, I think 20 years. Yeah, let me think. Yeah, 20 years now.

George: So your whole family moved over to Australia?

Jack: No, I came over to study, first, and then I went back and forth. In the beginning, I didn't know if I liked this place, and then, so I came over, I studied, and I went back and forth. And, yeah, that's how I stayed behind.

George: So what made you really see Australia as a way to obviously further your life, and stay permanently?

Jack: I would like to say, I like Brisbane, I'm from Brisbane, and I love the weather here. It's the Sunshine State, I love the beach, and outdoor living, it's great. I'm not saying Hong Kong's not great, but it can be a crowded places, and just a lot of conflicts, a lot of people. Let me rephrase this, there's conflict everywhere, but it's easier when you have to travel every day, you go on train and there's lots of people in and out. A big city like that, I prefer Brisbane. And now I like Australia, that's why I'm here.

George: Awesome. Cool, so you started your journey in Hong Kong, and then you moved to Australia. So, how did this evolve to then actually going on the teaching journey?

Jack: So, I never thought I would teach Kung Fu, or any martial arts. Before I teach Kung Fu, I had a graphic design company and printing company. I was doing that for the past 10 years before that, and in terms of business-wise, it's not bad, it's not bad, but I just have to always work over-hours. Just imagine if you need business card, or flyers for your events, for your next event. People always come in and say, “I need it.” “When do you need it?” “I need it yesterday.” It's always a rushed job.

And when you're a boss, it's hard, because when other people, your employee, leave and finish work at 5:30 or 6:00, you're the boss, and you have a client, and they want it urgently, so who's going to stay behind? Your job. If they're willing to pay extra-loading, as in they pay extra $60 for extra time who's going to stay behind? You will have to stay behind. I will have to stay behind. Meaning, every night, lots of time, I stay until 9:00, and very late, yes, that's right.

George: Yes, I was at a business conference on Monday in Sydney, and it was a joke that came up: you're the business owner, then you've got the staff, and it was kind of like, It was said in a sarcastic way, “How can these bastards not want to work the hours that we want to work as the business owners?”. So, we always expect them to obviously give that output, but yes, I understand that pressure of, your clients … And you always feel your reputation is at stake, so even if it's the littlest thing if you love your job and your business, you always take it to, “I've got to stick to this deadline whether it's impossible or not.”

Jack: It is true. So that's how I decided, after 10 years of doing the same thing, I decided to just start something else. I first got into fitness training, I was doing that. And it was hard, it's never easy. To all martial arts business owners out there, for those who are interested in going full time, I'm telling you, it's not easy. But if you do what you like, you don't have to work a day in your life anymore, and that's my favourite quote.

George: I love that quote, that's fantastic. So, let's go into our topic that we're going to talk about, focus on a little more, and that's video marketing, and just doing videos. So for starters, why video, for you?

Jack: Why video for me? Because I come from a creative industry, print and graphic design, I like the visual aspect: what draws attention? And this is very different, and interesting, how this compare to 10 years ago. I remember when Facebook first started, it was a lot of posts, a lot of photos, pictures, and then became YouTube videos. There was no Facebook videos. And that's when people start sharing videos. And I think (a slight sidetrack), I think that's the best time to do it, to do YouTube videos.

But now, it's easier. The platform seems like it's easier to share videos. And the technology change, and now we all have smartphones, so it's very easy to just shoot something and spread your ideas, what you do, online, and showcase how you train, or training, any tips. And that's why I started doing videos.

George: Okay. I don't know the stats, I don't know how many. Yeah, I'll try and get the stats for the transcript, but there's, I don't know how many billions of videos that get, I think it's just uploaded, on a daily basis, and then watched. And internet connections are getting faster, it just becomes a lot easier for people to just watch videos. So, you mentioned a key thing there, about attention. So, that's really the key of video, because everybody always talks about, “Hey, we should do video,” and then they go shoot a live video of them fumbling around and procrastinating. And then, two minutes in, you've watched nothing. And that's obviously the wrong way of doing it. So, if you focus on the attention aspect, how would you go about that, to really capture people's attention?

Jack: So, from my experience, I'm not an expert, but I just try to learn from different people's videos. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and try to learn from them. And this is from my research, is that people just have very short attention span, unfortunately, and if you don't capture them within the first 30 minutes, some even say, hang on, I said 30 minutes, I mean 30 seconds. If you can't capture, Facebook videos, in 10 seconds, you can't really get them. So first of all, like you said, you have to really have a topic, and what the video is for. Is this to showcase your techniques, or is this to spread some self-defence, or even the culture of your school, marketing for your school? You really have to work out on a topic in order to showcase your video and make it better for your business.

George: Okay, cool. So, you start with the topic, and then really communicating that really clearly, that the person that's going to watch it, that they know immediately, “Alright, this is what's in it for me, I'm going to get this.” Then, how do you transition from that?

Jack: Sorry, I can't hear you again, sorry.

George: So, how would you transition from, so you've done opening, then what becomes the focus in the video from there?

Jack: It really depends on the individual topic. So, if this video is to showcase our school, and we put it on a website for marketing, then what sort of image would you want to display yourself? If you're a fight gym, and you have a lot of fighters, I would say you would put different types of fighting videos in there. And if you're a family-oriented gym, or school, then you would put different topics, how you could actually give confidence to the young children, young kids. And if you're focusing on self-defence, or if it's just a general awareness video, then you have different topic-specific videos.

So then, you go into … I see a lot of times that people just do a video and just randomly shoot, like what you said earlier, just shoot around. “This is my school, and this is what we're doing.” And there's no lighting, audio is really bad, and … I'm not saying my video's good, please don't get this wrong: I'm trying to learn, it's more than just an iPhone or a smartphone now, it's more about lighting, it's more about getting a good mic. If you're trying to explain your concept, you need good audio, you need good … It's all together in one package.

And sometimes, it's interesting too, some normal videos that people shot by their phone would go viral, too. It's the content, too, it's also the content. You have everything in the right place but you don't have the right content, it won't work.

George: Yes, because there's so many ways to go about that. One thing I always try to speak about to our members in the academy, is, to get over the initial.. There is a fear element to it. Which is almost strange for me with martial arts instructors, because it's nothing different to what you would do on a day-to-day basis, you are teaching. So, looking at the, just to break down the layers of, what are the obstacles to overcome to do video? And that being, do you really need the flash video camera, or can you just use the iPhone? Do you need the fancy lighting? So, you prefer the lighting. And you work with, what type of equipment do you use, then, when you go about your videos?

Jack: It depends on what sort of videos I do. So, sometimes I get a team in, a video-photographer in. And they're good at what they do, you have to respect those people, and that's what they study and that's what they, give credit to them. And they can produce some really high-quality video. But sometimes, for a technique workshop, so I'm going to introduce, so, what happens when people grab me, choke me, grab my neck, what do you do? Those kind of short videos, it's about the content.

So, you need a proper, you can't just shoot it with a really old VHS camera or video camera. It has to be HD, the light has to be good. And if you don't have good lights, you can always shoot under the sun, just not facing the sun, it's under the sun. And also, audio has to be good. The problem with the smartphone is, you don't have a good mic to it. What I'm saying is, when I'm shooting, for example, if I'm holding a camera here and the person's way is usually, you want to showcase the entire body, how they stand. So, it's actually at least four, five meters away. And when you're trying to explain things that far away with a smartphone, it's really hard.

George: Yes.

Jack: So I got a professional Røde mic, from the store, and so I can hook it up, and it gives better. But it's never going to be as good as a professional video-photographer. But, it really depends on what sort of video you're producing.

George: Yeah, and like you said, the content. My, and I can't reach it now, it's a little lav mic, so it's the little mic that, you can just clip it on your shirt, and then it just goes in the iPhone. But I've got this long lead, that if I need the distance.

Jack: That can be a little tricky because I used to have one of those, and it can be really tricky when you're demonstrating. For normal use, if you're presenting the idea, that's perfect, but if you're demonstrating a martial art move, just imagine a ground fighter with that, to explain. It's very hard, you tangle them all up. Okay, I'm joking about, I'm just saying. So I recently, I keep buying toys every week, if my wife is watching this she's not going to be happy. So, I bought a wireless mic, so I'm testing it out. So, I can wear it on me, I can put it in my iPad or my SLR, and then, the audio can go across. And hopefully, that will work for me.

George: Yeah. So, just on the, because you said you had a Røde mic, that's the premium brand with mics. So, you have it on a boom stand that it's just above you when you?

Jack: And or you can always do this at a lower cost. The Røde mic that I bought isn't too expensive, it's under $100, and when you were saying, the boom stand, I didn't get that, I just tangle it on a stick, on a training stick we have. It's the same idea, but someone will have to hold it, hold it up high. Or, you can somehow just attach it over the top, and that's a cheaper option for good video, audio if you do.

George: Alright, great. So one thing I really try and get across to martial arts school owners is to really embrace the idea of video because it's the one platform that you can leverage. You can create one video, you can transcribe the actual audio, you can turn it into a blog post, and you can email it to your prospects. Then, you can start your social media, and you can just place it everywhere. So, if you can look for a leverage point for your marketing, then video is really it because it's the one modality that you can just convert into all these multiple modalities.

So, what advice would you give for a martial arts instructor that's hesitating with the whole doing the video thing and just the real, core basics of what they should do to get started?

Jack: I would say, always give it a try. When I first started, it's the fear of facing a camera, looking at a camera. It's like you're talking to someone, but there's no one there. And you get nervous, and I think you have to start doing a little bit mini test videos, and work around it, the fear. I think the fear is the most important thing. Most martial artists, most martial art business owner knows their own stuff. If you don't know, then I would be worried about it. So, most people know their own stuff. But to present it in front of a camera, my advice is, you don't have to do it in front of your students, just set up a tripod, put a camera, or put your iPhone on, face yourself, and try to do some simply, try give it a shot. One minute video.

And have a look at it. If it's not too bad, you can always work on it. This is a very different day to before, we can always shoot and re-shoot. If it's not good, just delete, redo it again. If the audio's not good, I'm going to work on the mic. And lighting. You can do it outdoor, or just grab two lights that's facing from behind the camera, like you were saying earlier, and facing towards you, and that would work. You don't want to have it, I'm not expert, but you don't want to have it above you. Above you, the shadow's coming down, won't make you look too good. But if it's facing in front of you, have the audio on. Try to get a tripod, tripod is a good idea. You don't want to shake your video unless you're trying to do some action video. But I'll leave that to the video-photographer.

So there is all my advice. It's not too much about the technology itself. The mic itself is under $100, tripod, a cheap one is 30. It's about the fear of talking to a square-shaped object, and continue talking, and showing your technique, or displaying your school. That's the hard bit, I think.

George: Yes. You're so right. I think it's also the fear of being judged. Is it going to be good enough? What are my peers going to say? How are people going to perceive this? Am I going to get backlash? People love to hate on martial arts videos. Everybody always knows something better, or, “You could have done this.” That's just in the bigger scheme of things. But I think there's that fear element, of obviously getting over, “How am I going to be perceived by the community,” as such.

Jack: Yes. It's also the fear. But, remember one thing, it's just like everything else and including martial arts: the more you train, the better you get. You remember your first day when you walk into a dojo? You know nothing. And then, you get better at things, and then you're down the track, like for example you get your black belt: you realize you only know little. But that's how it is. So same with video, it's the fear. “I don't know how to set this up.” Try to learn. There's lots of videos online, you can educate yourself. Educating yourself. But not going in, and not willing to educate yourself, that is the big problem with a lot of martial artists, and general business people, and that's a big problem.

So, my tip is just give it a go, video yourself, lighting. If you're already videoing yourself, see how you can improve it. Can you work better on the lighting? What about audio? Have you got those, video and audio? What about your transitions between? Are you good at editing? If not, you can always find people who are good at editing online, places like fiverr.com. You can get someone to do your intro logos and things like that.

And also, another important thing is, I think, it's also not just one video. You've got to think, plan ahead. What is your goal? Is it a series of video? Are these videos trying to help you promote your school? What are you trying to showcase? Are you just trying to showcase a self-defence move, where there's 10,000 people showing it already on YouTube? What make your video better than the video next door, than the person next door? So that's what I think.

George:Definitely so and I think that's probably the most important part, is, what is the point? Why are you actually doing the video? Is it to speak to the prospects? Is it to speak to somebody in the community? Is it to speak to an existing student? And I know there are people that go as far as, write that, just like in marketing when we write sales copy, we try and create this avatar, this person. His name's Bob, 35-year-old, has two kids, and wanting to start training martial arts but he's not sure. He's got these injuries, he's never done anything, and he thinks he needs to be fit.

So, you have this mental image of this one person, and then base it on that. And I've heard a lot of people actually put a photo of someone behind the camera as well, just to take away that awkwardness, of their perfect prospect, whoever they're trying to talk to. And now it becomes more real because you're having a conversation with someone.

Jack: Yes, yes. When I first started doing the videos, and a lot of interviews, I actually need someone to sit behind the camera, so I can actually look at that person, and explain to that person. And that helps a lot, too. That helps a lot. And I was saying earlier that there's online website that can help you edit your videos. I forgot to say that there are a lot of apps these days, which you can actually put your videos in together, a few clicks, like iMovies on your iPhone, and different types of apps. Adobe apps and they can put your … If you're looking at putting a marketing video for your school, that will help, definitely help.

Obviously, getting a video-photographer is the best, it's the best. But sometimes, I put in a bigger production, and sometimes I do little production in between. What I tend to do is, I try to put out a video every week, so there's always a video. It can be a big production, it can be a small production, it can be talking about techniques, how I deal with things, or it can just be fun.

When you were saying earlier, I know this is a little bit different to how business-minded people, where they write out programs and what they do, I like fun. I enjoy being with my students, I enjoy videoing things, I do things sometimes I don't … It's not always about money for me, but there's no limit for me. Sometimes, I blow my video budget, I just go, “Oh, cool, add in the drone. How much is a drone? 500? Oh. Add in the drone, don't tell my wife.” And then it makes the video look cool.

And we went with a bunch of our student, we went to Glass Hill mountain, we shot at 5:00 AM in the morning with the drone going up, and it looks beautiful, I love this. And at the same time, does it help? I think it helps. It helps my potential, people who are interested in training. “Hey, this instructor seems fun, this school seems fun.” Maybe it's not a direct marketing or direct business mindset, I'm not trying to build this fun because I am fun, and we are fun. And this is what we're trying to showcase, rather than, “Come join with us, we are the fun school.” No, it's not like that. It's what we do, make us who we are.

George: That's excellent. So you're really using it as a way to express your personality. And I'd probably add to that, then, because I think that's when you're starting out, that's probably the biggest obstacle. Well, once you've actually started doing it, the biggest thing is to really just find your voice. That place where you're comfortable with the camera, and the way you portray yourself. For me, the rule I put in place with face-to-camera video, is just be comfortable messing up. Just be comfortable making mistakes.

If we're having a conversation, I do it in the podcasts all the time, I fumble on a word, or I say something and I'm like, “Oh, okay, I shouldn't have said that” but I just laugh it off. I just make peace with it. Because, if I was having a conversation with someone, that's my personality, that's the way I am, so I'm going to make these mistakes. Now it's just on video, there's nothing really different.

Jack: Yes, that's right. But there's one thing, I forgot to say, is when you put it out there, when you put yourself out there, there will, like everything else in the world, there will be people that like you, and there will be a lot of people that don't like you. And to present yourself out there, there will be people leaving not so friendly comment. And you just have to ignore them. And this is what you do, and then … So that might be something a martial arts business owner will have to think before they present themselves, put themselves out there.

George: Yes. And my filter for that is, when I get backlash, then I'm obviously doing something right. That's the justification I have for myself. But it's really true, because when you start speaking to a certain audience, and the right audience that connects with you, then this polarizing thing almost happens automatically. Because you're connecting with a certain profile, which means you are upsetting other profiles, or they just don't agree, or they have never done a video, and they're jealous, and they're not getting over their own fear, so their defense mechanism is to run you down, because they're just not doing it, so yeah. But definitely, get comfortable with the backlash that comes with any form of content marketing, as such.

Jack: That's right, yes.

George: So to wrap up, we can put together a bit of a framework. I really like production style video for the big things you're going to do. I see, you had an awesome promo video on your YouTube video for the events, with music, and it was really just, it had the suspense feel to it, which was really good, with the opening, just the music in the background. But then again, I'm a big fan of also, just videos on the fly. Because, if you're doing video as a method for content marketing, then it's good to not have barriers, that you get it done. And that would be, maybe it's the iPhone and the mic and the boom, and you've got light coming into your dojo on the mats, and now you can do something. Or hand the camera to a student to do the filming.

So, I guess if we had to look at a checklist, we've talked about finding your voice, having the lights pointed at you, try and get a good mic. If you don't have a mic, just start, because it could take you 10 takes of a video to actually feel that comfort of, okay, this is something that I actually want to put up. So you've got that. Make sure that you cover the topic, be very clear on the opening because we want to grab attention. And then start your content, what it is that you're going to do.

And then I'll add, for a little framework, something that we've … And public speakers have always spoken about this, that you tell them what you're going to tell them, then you tell them, and then you tell them what you just told them. And it does really add to the video framework. Because now you can just say, “Hey, this is me, this is what we're going to do, this is,” maybe, the situation, how it will happen. And then you do it, and then you do the recap, and then you can close off, obviously, with, “Check us out on YouTube,” or your website, wherever you want to go.

Jack: You're good at this, exactly what you just did. That's exactly what you just said, I think you went through all the point list, for which you said.

George: There you go. Awesome. Before we wrap up, just with, where people can find you, because you've got to … And we'll add a lot of videos to this episode, so you can just check the show notes for that. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I did not get to?

Jack: We didn't get to talk about the positive energy, which is another … I said, we are happy, we're a good club, we're fun club, but I also believe we're a positive energy, and that's the culture of the club. So I did say earlier, about people marketing their videos towards different point of view, and why they do their videos, but also, showcase your school, so people know who you are, what you do before they come in and see you. And that's very important, too.

George: Very good point. And with that, it would help that your videos don't, you don't have to be the hero. This is actually, I remember this now, I added this as a slide in one of our training module in the academy, but the whole thing was, don't be … You don't have to be the hero. If you want to showcase, as you say, why not get your students involved?

Jack: That's right, that's right. I'm not always the centre of the spotlight, and a lot of my videos are my students, and why they enjoy training here. And the events, we had events where we dress up in Star Wars costume, and we order lightsabers in, and we had some duelling. And then we did some training workshops, and all the donation money goes to children's hospital. Things like that, it showcase who you are, and what you do, and what you enjoy, and what you believe, and that’s the most important. That's what I think.

George: That's excellent. And we can tie that back to marketing as well, because, at the time of recording this, Halloween's coming up, and that's an ideal … How can you turn that into a fun event? Doesn't have to be marketing video, but you showcase the fun environment and the positive energy that happens at your school.

Jack: Yes.

George: Alright, awesome. Well, Jack Leung, it's been fantastic speaking to you. Now, for anybody that wants to check out Jack's website, it's practical-wingchun.com.au, did I get that right?

Jack: That's right, yes.

George: And your YouTube channel, if people want to find that. What is your YouTube channel called?

Jack: Practical Wing Chun Australia, and then you can find me on the YouTube channel.

George: Alright, awesome. Any other links that we need to mention, where people can find you?

Jack: Practical Wing Chun Australia on the Facebook link, and you can find me, yeah.

George: Alright, awesome. Jack, it's been great speaking to you, I will speak to you soon.

Jack: Thank you, I'll see you soon. Take care, buddy.

George: Awesome, cheers.

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

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47 – [Case Study] How Dave Richardson from Kung Fu Southside Grew His School by 33%

October 9, 2017 by George Fourie

Martial Arts Media Academy founding member shares his successful growth while getting ready for the next benchmark.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The greatest impact the Martial Arts Media Academy has contributed to Dave Richardson’s martial arts school growth
Why you should invest in hiring a marketing expert
The benefits of email marketing and why you should not neglect it
What is ‘superhero syndrome’ and why you should avoid it
How you can get marketing help through the Martial Arts Media Academy
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Yeah, the other thing that was really helpful was the coaching calls, and going through the websites and what not, and how to tweak this and change that, and work together in the Academy to make the pieces fit.

George: Hey this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media, and I'm joined today with Dave Richardson. Now Dave is based in Brisbane from Kung Fu Southside, and Dave is also one of our first members of the Martial Arts Media Academy. So we're going to have just a bit of a chat about his experience and his journey. So welcome to the call, Dave.

Dave: Good day George, thank you mate for having me on your podcast.

George: Awesome, so let's just go back to the beginning, before you got started with the Martial Arts Media Academy, so what is it that made you join? Was it a problem that you were trying to solve or something? Or what sort of vision did you have in mind in the beginning?

Dave: Funnily enough, in the beginning, it just started off over a cup of coffee with a mate of mine, Jack Leung from Practical Wing Chun, he pointed out your Martial Arts Media Facebook page I think it was. I looked into it and then yeah you had the academy there and it sort of went from there, because I was really wanting to make my school go full time. At that stage it wasn't, so I was just hungry for information and help to get into an industry that I'd been a part of but only on the outskirts.

George: Okay, so give us a bit of a background, so 'cause you currently got the school, you're transitioning into full time, and you're still working a business during the day, right?

Dave: Yes, correct, correct. The school started in a shed in my backyard and we outgrew that and we ended up moving into a commercial premises, it was just traveling under its own steam. Then I realized that this is my calling, and I'd rather be teaching people Kung Fu than killing bugs in my pest control business. So the transition is still being made, but definitely now Kung Fu is taking up more and more time and generating more income.

George: Cool, so how are you juggling the two at this point in time? You've got the pest control business, right?

Dave: Yes.

George: Cool, so how's the juggle going between the transitioning between that and the Kung Fu school?

Dave: You've hit the nail on the head, juggle is the right word. Time management was one of the skills that I've really had to learn. So trying to portion time where I can focus on the school, not just the teaching side of it, but the actual building of the business side of it as well. So that's what I've done, I've set aside two days a week where my focus is on building the business side of the school.

George: Awesome, if we look at when you entered the academy and working with me, what are the sort of top two or three things that's made the biggest impact for you?

Dave: Oh George, one of the biggest things was the website because I built my own website, I'm one of these guys that'll have a crack at anything. Doesn't mean I'm good at it but I'll have a go at it, and yeah so the website that you did for me actually help with conversions. It was a lot better, rather than just a name, rank and serial number type website, to actually have a website that funneled for want of a better word, funneled people to an offer page and the offer that you presented with me as part of the academy really has made a difference as well. So that was one of them, the email sequence follow up, you have to follow up, if you don't follow through you don't get anywhere. Then also the Facebook, using Facebook and the marketing strategies there is really generating more website traffic as well as its own Facebook traffic as well.

George: Awesome and you hit the nail on the head there with, I think if you find it especially in the martial arts industry that people are go-getters so you want to do everything yourself. There's a top marketer, he calls it the superhero syndrome, you just want to take it all on and do it yourself. With a website, if you've got a little tech knowledge, it's actually an easy thing to put the tech together, you know you can hire most people to put that part together for you.

But when it comes to the actual strategy from front to back, that's where the real thinking part comes in, to really have it structured in a way that's going to convert and obviously deliver your message. Your strengths and what it is that makes your school unique, that be congruent, that when they actually walk in that there's a connection. Not they saw a stock image in a fancy place and now they walk in a place that's completely different as such.

Dave: Yes and that's true. Like you said, anybody can put a website together, hey I did it. If I can do it, then anybody can do it, but yeah the way it was structured, yeah that's an experience that I didn't have and that certainly made a difference as well.

George: Cool, and then, of course, the email now, email some people refer to as the old school way of marketing, but it's still the one item that everybody has, is an email address. I think a lot of people miss it, you know when people say emails not working, I say, “You're not doing it right.” Because that's generally the experience, it's easy to blame the platform, people say that all day about Facebook, about Google, the platform doesn't work. But it's really, again it comes down to the strategy of it.

The reason why we put a lot of focus on email is most martial arts school owners are of course time poor. So I guess that's a general thing in any business owner. So if you look at the things that you can automate in a structure, that's the one method where people are going to have some text exchange if it's not over the phone, then we want to look at leveraging your time.

Leveraging your time means, of course, putting the automation systems in place that can do a lot of the legwork for you. So when you are doing the follow up that there are some ways that you can contact everybody on mass, that still feels personal, and still building the relationship. That helps set you apart and get your time back at the end of the day.

Dave: Yeah, for sure, and you hit the nail on the head when you said strategy because you can send an email to anyone then it can be exactly the same as that website that I had, that was name, rank and serial number. I'm Joe Blogs from x, y, z martial arts school, and we cost this much, you can ring me on this number. You've just given all the people the information and there's no relationship built, so that was a big thing, was that the strategy in building the relationship through email. That strategy can carry across to your Facebook messages, anything like that, yeah so it's not about just giving information, it's about building a relationship.

George: Definitely so, it comes down to the understanding of the way of communication and that sort of trickles through. How about Facebook? Because you said it's sort of all, the different components as in a strategy is working together for you.

Dave: Yeah, like, pardon me. Running a few different strategies that are say informational, then there's competitions, then there's the offer. So just basically getting the brand out there, just standing up and say, “Hey, here we are.” You might not get an initial response from whatever you put out there, but you're getting put in front of people. That's the main thing because people might not be ready to start now.

Classic example is my mistiming of my last Facebook strategy with the daytime classes. School holidays were on, I didn't even take that into account, and all of the mums that wanted to start during the day because they have free time couldn't because they were looking after the kids. So hopefully next week, we'll have a big influx of mothers coming in for the daytime classes. Like they've all responded to us, but I was standing there by myself there the first day.

George: That's all good, I'm going to be creating a separate video about this, but I was attending a training with Dean Jackson and he was talking about identifying the five-star prospects and making peace with the fact that 85 percent of your prospects are not ready to join now. They're ready to join perhaps because they've expressed interest, but somewhere, and the time frame they apply this in the property market especially, but their strategy is that 100 percent of their prospects are going to join within the next two years.

So it takes the pressure off of sifting the 15 percent that's ready to join now, and then the 85 percent that's going to join later. The whole concept behind this is, how do you go about your marketing? Are you serving that 85 percent? Because if you're serving the 85 percent, the 15 percent will just jump on board anyway, 'cause they're ready. But if you focus all your efforts on too much strategy of I've got to get them on board now, you risk of actually turning the 85 percent off, because your marketing is so hard and in your face type of thing.

Dave: Yeah, that makes perfect sense, I'd never thought of it that way, that's for sure. Instant gratification is always good like if you put something out there and then next thing it's going off, that's great. Look I've had that happen with a couple of Facebook promotions that I've done, and it's really been great because it's helped boost numbers quickly, which is what everybody wants. They want to boost numbers but like, we have a saying in Wing Chun that you start with the first form, which is the base form, and you build your foundation there.

If you haven't got the good foundation then the rest of it isn't going to work. It might work to a degree, but it has a high chance of falling over so yeah you've got to have that foundation there first. So the way I look at it is the websites got to be good, you've got to have a good web presence and then you can start adding the quick responses. So putting out the Facebook promos and stuff like that, that's going to generate the interest, but like you say that 85 percent have to have something there for them as well.

George: Yeah, definitely, so Dave what's the biggest impact this whole journey working with me has had on the business and personally? Especially now that you're taking this role of creating more content and taking on a different position and stance within the business.

Dave: Yeah George, I'm sort of the type of person that is always keen to learn. I've got a hunger for knowledge, so it's been a great journey with you doing all of the different aspects of what we've covered in the academy. Say from how your website should be structured, the email sequences, and then how to work Facebook, I mean how many modules was that. That did my head in, it's still doing my head in. But that was only part of it, it was about knowing your target market, who am I actually trying to get through the door?

Yeah, the other thing that was really helpful were the coaching calls and going through the websites and what not, and how to tweak this, and change that. Work together in the academy to make it all fit, make the pieces fit. Because it's one thing to have all the pieces of the puzzle, but if they're scattered all over the board it doesn't make much sense. So that was a key thing to making it work, was the coaching calls and putting the puzzle together.

George: Yes, thanks, Dave, and I'm glad you mentioned that because it's especially in this internet digital age, it's really easy to get information. You can get it in groups, you can take a piece here, and you can take a piece here. You can take someone’s strategy, but if you don't have the whole strategy and you don't have someone to really help you put it together, that's where people get stuck. Because you are time poor and now you buy this course and you're reading through it, taking the information in is easy, that's the easy part, it's actually having to put it into practice. That's where the obstacles come in, and if you don't have someone that can say, “Alright but hey maybe you should just adjust this, and adjust this.” That's what's going to really make the difference.

Dave: It certainly did make a difference because I had all the modules there. Like you said, information's easily accessible and making it all fit and work, well, as a martial artist that's what your instructors there for. Then there was other things like when we met in person at the Martial Arts First, and one of the persons that we met there, Henry Calantog, just from his way of teaching made me look differently at the way I was learning. Like with yourself, and so on, and so you're picking up bits and pieces from everywhere. And the podcasts, like the podcasts that you've been doing, I've learnt so much from those guys as well. Everything, everything's been a positive experience there's no doubt about it because I was green when I started and I'm still a darker shade of green now I suppose.

George: That's all good but I mean you're moving forward, your business is growing. What are things look like for you in the next six months with your martial arts school?

Dave: Well mate before we started, what was it, I think it was around July or August when we started, I think I had between 50 and 60 students. Just last week we cracked the 90 mark, which was huge. Yeah, it's been really good so I'm hoping after next week with the daytime classes kicking off full swing that we'll be over the 100 mark and then it's onwards and upwards.

George: Awesome, so I guess we should set a goal live on the podcast then, right?

Dave: You want accountability, well that's one way to do it I suppose.

George: Let's just tell the world that we're going to have Dave Richardson back on the podcast for when he strikes 100 and how many students?

Dave: Let's make it 150, a nice realistic easy one, we'll do that easy.

George: Alright, there we go, so everybody knows 150 students, Dave Richardson will be back on the Martial Arts Media Business podcast. There we go.

Dave: Now you've put me on the spot.

George: It can't be any better than that, just putting it out there could probably get it a lot sooner than what you'd expect. Anybody that's listening to this if you know Dave, hit him up and say, “Alright we're rooting for you, we're waiting for the 150 students.” Now the pressure’s on buddy.

Dave: Thanks, George.

George: Alright awesome, just to wrap it up, who would you recommend join the Martial Arts Academy and why do you feel so?

Dave: Mate, look anybody who has a martial arts school, you can't go wrong. Anybody who has a young martial arts school, if you've got no tech savvy at all definitely get on board, you'll learn a lot. I had a very minimal technological advantage, disadvantage and I was able to now be able to implement all of the automation for the email, using Facebook, the website. So anybody who has a school, starting a school, or wants to grow their business, get proactive. Invest in yourself, invest the time in yourself, and the dividends will pay for themselves, yup.

George: Awesome and for anybody interested in checking it out, martialartsmedia.academy is where you can get more information. So just go check that out, and yeah, join us in the academy.

Dave: Yeah, look forward to it.

George: Awesome, great to have you on Dave, and I'm probably going to be speaking to you again, when is it?

Dave: In about 60 students’ time.

George: No, I just wanted a time frame. Okay, I think we've put you under enough pressure, so yeah, in about 60 students’ time. Let's keep it at that.

Dave: No game on, challenge accepted.

George: Awesome, good stuff Dave, thanks for being on the show and we'll speak to you again in 60 students.

Dave: Good on you George, thank you mate, cheers.

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

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45 – How To Protect Your Martial Arts Business Name With Domains & Social Media Handles

September 8, 2017 by George Fourie

Getting your martial arts business name is one thing, but making sure that you have the right domain names and social media handles is another. George Fourie shares how.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Why you should avoid complicated domain name and social media handles
The importance of having congruent domain name and social media handles
How extensions can cost your credibility
How incorrect extensions can lead your competitors to a land grab and profit off your brand name
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media and today, I want to talk about how to protect your martial arts business name through domain names and through social media handles. So this is a question I get often, so let me give you the idea scenario.

Now, specifically, it came up yesterday, I was talking to one of our Martial Arts Media Academy members about building them a new website. But it’s not just about the new website, it’s about building a new website with a bit of a brand name change, so there's this bit of a shuffle happening, where they need to make a name change, which obviously means they need to make a domain name change.

So here's the ideal scenario: when you look at a domain name, you want to try and get something that's really going to match your brand name. But sometimes that is going to be hard, because if your brand name is super long, 4 or 5 words, it can get a bit tricky. Now, things that can also throw domain name off is things like hyphens, and numbers, OK? Because let's say you've got numbers, 6-0 for example in your domain name: every time you mention your domain name to someone, you're going to have to say 6-0 or 60, or is it the numbers, or is it spelt out as 60? So you're always going to have that additional explanation that you're going to need to clarify what's going on with your domain name.

The other is hyphens. Now, if you go and get a hyphen in your domain name, so let’s say martialarts-yourarea, then I want to ask why do you need the dash? Is it because somebody else already has martialartsyourarea in one word, or are you just trying to split it up in words? At the end of the day, if you don’t have both, it’s not a good idea, because if somebody else has martialartsyourarea, then that means when somebody types it in, they forget the hyphen, which is going to happen, that means that they're going to your competitors website, OK? Try and avoid anything hyphened, any type of – well, that's about the only character that you can add, because that creates confusion in the mind.

Now, let's look a bit further. Let’s look at what's the ideal domain to get and what's the ideal name for your area. So in the old days of search engine optimization, where you want to rank in Google, it was very popular to get domain name your area, or you want to get the keyword to rank in the search engines. So you'd have, let's say, martialartsyourarea, for example. So the logic in that was great, in the old days, we'd search to optimize and to be at the top in Google, but it’s not really relevant today anymore. So although it can have a nice catch to it and it could be good to have a domain name like that, it’s better to just stick with your brand and build an authority website.

So put a lot of content on it that it ranks naturally and you can still rank for those keywords if you just put them together in the titles and things. And by the way, if you are interested in a SEO training, I am busy preparing a SEO, just a basic SEO training for our Academy members and I was thinking about making it available to this group. So if it’s something that you are interested in, just leave me a comment below this video where you see it and we'll put that together and possibly share it in this group as well.

Ok, so, getting back to the actual domain name, what do you need? Brand, brandable domain, something that's easy, something that’s easy to recognize, easy to remember and easy to spell, and then, what about the extension? So you've got .com, then obviously you've got your local domain, so you've got .com.au, .co.nz, and all this. So look: in the big global world of domain names, .com is still king, OK?

So .com is king, but for you as a local martial arts school, you want to get your country domain. So you want to get your .com.au, .co.uk, obviously if you're in the US, that's awesome, .com is going to do, but for the most part, you want to have your local domain name. Why? Because people want to know that you are a local business, right?

I mean, if I look at a domain name, if I look at a martial arts school and it’s just .com, it’s still got that international feel to it and it's a local business, so you want to get your .com.au. If you can get the .com, get it as well, but make sure you build your website out on your core domain name, so your local domain name.

Now, another thing that comes up: let's say somebody has martialartsyourarea and somebody else is building on yourareamartialarts. So… sorry, martialaartsyourbusinessname, so martialarts, hang on, OK: right, martialartsyourarea, that's the one domain that is available. And then somebody else has got yourareamartialarts, so just swapped around. Be careful for that as well, because again, people can get very easily confused with the two. So if it’s not a brandable name that's your name, then people can mix that up. So is it martialartsyourarea, or is it yourareamartialarts – if you don't have both, I would be hesitant to build out on a domain like that.

But to go on to domain extensions: when the .com.au, .co.uk and .coms are not available, people start going leaning towards these little tricky ones, .biz and .website and all these fancy extensions that haven't really taken off yet and people aren't really familiar with them. And believe me, people will do this: they might go type yourmartialartsbusiness.website.com, or something because people aren't that used to them right now.

For me, I'm in a different position. I'd buy up those domains for different extensions, so if I want to refer to our academy, for example, I would, I bought the domain name martialartsmedia.academy, we've got .community, .website, .group – so we use that as shorteners, but again, the whole domain name goes on the core brand.

Cool, so I hope that helps with domain names. One thing I didn't touch on is the social media handles. So, try and get them again, this is the perfect scenario, right? So if your domain name can match whatever your social media is, it just makes it easier from a branding perspective. So in my case, it’s Martial Arts Media, my Facebook I had to let go of the s, so Martial Art Media. Instagram, it’s a bit shorter, so I had to Martial Art Media as well.

So try and be congruent, because the last thing you want is, your Facebook profile says martial arts your business, and then your Instagram says martial arts 27498. Nobody's ever going to remember 27948, so just pay attention to those little things because it just helps you build a stronger brand and it positions you and protects you from what everybody else is doing. The last thing you want is, you've got the domain name and some guy sort of catches on and he's trying to be spiteful and he goes and registers your social media handle on Facebook and on Instagram and everywhere else. So the more you can do to protect your brand and your positioning on the internet, the better for you.

I hope that helps, we'll see you again soon in another video. If you've got any questions about websites, about our Martial Arts Media Academy, just leave me a comment below this video or send me a message. Thanks – I will speak to you soon. Cheers!

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

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44 – 10 Magic Words That Revive Old Martial Arts Students And Dead Leads

August 25, 2017 by George Fourie

Martial Arts marketing doesn't need to be complicated. All you need is to ‘sell' the next step…

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The ultimate content leverage experiment
Where the original 9 word email came from
The 10 words that can transform your martial arts marketing
How conversions actually work
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media and I'm doing a quick podcast experiment. I'm broadcasting this in the Martial Arts Media Group and hopefully, simultaneously it's being broadcasted on the Martial Arts Media page and also, to our YouTube channel and then also to Dropbox, which means we'll transcribe this for an actual podcast episode. So, let's see how this goes.

Now, the actual podcast, what I do want to discuss with you today is ten words that can completely transform the way you go about your business. And this concept, I shared this at the main event in Sydney, when I spoke at the main event, and it basically comes in the email format. Now, I want to give full credit where credit is due and this ten words, it's actually nine words, all right?

It's nine words and they come from a gentleman called Dean Jackson and Dean Jackson actually invented the squeeze page. Now, what we know in internet terms as a landing page, a page where you basically have a sales message or an offer or collect details, or whatever it is that you do, but one dedicated page to deliver a message.

So, Dean Jackson was the gentleman that actually invented this system and he also created what's called the nine-word email. Now, we've transformed it, the nine-word email, it's ten words now. And we call it in the Martial Arts Media Academy, we call it the “Boomerang Bullet.” And the reason we call it the Boomerang Bullet is because we expect a return and it's a bullet! It has an impact. So I'm going to share what the ten words are.

Now, as I mentioned, we use this within a campaign, so we use it as in a six part campaign. Every time we've done this for martial arts schools, for martial arts schools owners, we've had tremendous success. It's always baffled everybody when we do it, everybody tries and complicates it, but it works every single time and when you do it when you just simplify the message and you do it, you get a lot of responses.

So the way you can use it, you can use it to revive old students, you can use it to engage conversation with prospects who have not replied or have kind of just fallen off the radar, right? So if you're trying to revive old prospects, or revive old students, then these ten words can be used.

Now, the way we do it, we use this within an email sequence, so you would need some kind of an email tool, preferably to do it, if you are going to do it on a mass scale, but even if you’re using this with Facebook messages, or even in a text message, the concept of it will change the way you go about your marketing.

All right, so, you want to know what the ten words are? It's simple: you send out an email and obviously, the content is going to vary, but the way we normally do it is we keep the subject super short, so we just say, martial arts, or quick question, or something very, very short and then the ten words pretty much go:

Hey person,

Are you still interested in martial arts?

And you sign it with your name.

All right?

That's the email. No fancy banners, no company logos, no nothing, just hey person, are you still interested in martial arts? Obviously, the context can change: are you still interested in kick boxing, are you still interested in starting martial arts – you can play around with the words, but the concept is really just to keep it simple.

So, why does it work? Well, it cuts to the chase. In marketing, we always try and complicate things. We want to take people right to the end where we want to take them, so we want to tell them everything that we have, everything that we offer and when we do that, we do an information dump. Information dump, information overload. And most people look at the message they get and they look at it and think, OK, not now, I will look at it later. But the way and why this works is, conversation leads to conversion, OK? Conversation leads to conversion.

We can probably add another word in there: conversation leads to a relationship, leads to conversion. So if all that you're really after is to start the conversation that's going to lead to the conversion, then why not just focus on starting the conversation, right? It just simplifies it, because if there's no conversation, there will be no conversion. So when you use these ten words, it really just breaks it down to get the conversation started. Hey – are you still interested in martial arts? Yes, or no?

If the person is not, awesome – off the list, you don't have to contact them again. All right? Just really keep it easy. But then of course if they are, it gives you the opportunity to start the conversation and then you can go and present an offer, or whatever it is that you want to do.

So, hey, try it! If you've got a list of old students, students that aren't training anymore, prospects that have fallen off the radar – get them all together in an email autoresponder type of tool. If you need help with that type of thing and what type of tools you need, shoot me a message wherever you're watching this, or just an email george at martialartsmedia dot com and I can give you ideas of what type of tools you can use to facilitate this.

And of course, if you want information on how to use it with a larger campaign, then speak to us at the Martial Arts Media Academy, where we give you all the sequences, all the email sequences that will create a valuable campaign with this altogether, with an email campaign basically. But hey, go and try it. Keep it simple, get a message out, keep it personal, from your name, not your martial arts school and send it out, tell me how it goes and I'm sure you will thank me for the next time you see me.

That's it – thanks for watching, speak soon. Cheers!

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

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