How to help the instructor get more students

[wayneshin]

Just on marketing to adults. We have enormous success marketing directly to the parents of our Juniors. About every 12-18 months (whenever Senior numbers are getting low) we send out a letter inviting them to a 10 week beginners only class. The letter starts by saying "how many tomes have you watched your child train and thought, I could do that,I would like to try," and do forth. . It then covers the benefits ofhaving a shared interest with your children as they grow up, the health benefits, fitness, weight loss etc then gives some examples of Seniors who started after their children and got to Black Belt. Almost all our Seniors came from this letter. An added benefitisif you get the parents the kids are usually with you longer. It also enhances the "family" feel we like to have at our club.

[hammer]

No change, if anything we have fewer students because a few families moved out of town.

The school had a booth at a local town fair that generated around 20 leads but unfortunately I don't think any panned out. We did have a few adults who came in for one class (both had Kyokushin background) but nothing afterwards. Think one of the adults was several towns over and would have had a hard time making it to class but I don't know about the other.

I certainly don't mind the personalized instruction I'm getting, but I'm still concerned how things will go. This isn't the instructor's full time job but I'm sure there's only so much time he can spend in the red.

[sensei8]

No change, if anything we have fewer students because a few families moved out of town.

The school had a booth at a local town fair that generated around 20 leads but unfortunately I don't think any panned out. We did have a few adults who came in for one class (both had Kyokushin background) but nothing afterwards. Think one of the adults was several towns over and would have had a hard time making it to class but I don't know about the other.

I certainly don't mind the personalized instruction I'm getting, but I'm still concerned how things will go. This isn't the instructor's full time job but I'm sure there's only so much time he can spend in the red.

Your booth at a local town fair...

Did the school do any demo's at all?

Did anyone from the school wear a gi or a school t-shirt?

What marketing things did the school do at that this local town fair?

Was it mainly a meet and greet type booth?

Did your school do any follow-up calls on any of the leads?

[hammer]

No change, if anything we have fewer students because a few families moved out of town.

The school had a booth at a local town fair that generated around 20 leads but unfortunately I don't think any panned out. We did have a few adults who came in for one class (both had Kyokushin background) but nothing afterwards. Think one of the adults was several towns over and would have had a hard time making it to class but I don't know about the other.

I certainly don't mind the personalized instruction I'm getting, but I'm still concerned how things will go. This isn't the instructor's full time job but I'm sure there's only so much time he can spend in the red.

Your booth at a local town fair...

Did the school do any demo's at all?

Did anyone from the school wear a gi or a school t-shirt?

What marketing things did the school do at that this local town fair?

Was it mainly a meet and greet type booth?

Did your school do any follow-up calls on any of the leads?

It was a meet and greet booth, the school did a demo the previous year and did not get any leads. The instructor was actually happy about the number of leads, but I think getting responses and people in the door has been a challenge.

The previous school I went to largely relies on word of mouth to get students, but I think they have enough of a student base to make that work out OK. They were also having challenges bringing in new people when I left, but I doubt the politics going on had anything to do with it.

[IcemanSK]

Word of mouth from students to their friends is the best way to draw new adult students into class. I listen to adult BJJ students talk about the amazing experience that is a BJJ class and see the huge draw that is for their friends to join class.

If we can get our adult students to have that kind of experience, we'll have many long time adult students.

[bushido_man96]

It seems more and more difficult to get adults into an MA class anymore. Adults are always very busy, especially if they have kids. Most of the adults in our TKD class are there because they have kids in class. That's one reason why we have combined classes a lot of the time. And if the kids are doing other sports alot, then it cuts in on MA time.

I think the adult market is just getting harder to get filled into the Martial Arts.

This is a simple formula.

Where the kids go, the adults follow. Focus on the kids, really be awesome with them. Offer mixed classes where kids can train with parents. So many adults join just because they "want to earn a black belt as a family."

It's far more difficult to get adults to train without the children there.

I have a little more success because of being a BJJ academy. Let's be honest, from a marketing perspective, BJJ is on fire right now. So, because the reputation of BJJ is one of being "the most effective", adults do come in on their own.

I used to just have "Martial Arts" written on all my advertisements. And I would get interest from Moms signing up their kids. I've started adding "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu" to the adds and have seen a big spike in adults only and Dads signing up their sons.

The biggest thing you can do is to be authentic and honest about what you have and what you offer.

Thanks for the pointers here. Unfortunately, I don't get to have much say in the advertising, but out school does have some mixed classes. Unfortunately, we just don't get a lot of adults following. I would also love to see a college club idea crop back up, and try to run a college competition circuit, or something like that. But I just don't think that many college students are as interested. They have so much else on offer to them.