Marketing Multipliers for Gymnastics / Cheerleading & Martial Arts School Owners
by GREG SILVA, owner of United Professionals & Premier Martial Arts Red Mountain

SHOT GUN - There is one unwelcomed truth concerning marketing your child activity center. Nothing works great! However the good news is that there are a lot of strategies that work well. Knowing this, we must implement several marketing tools every month. An analogy would be that of fishing. Implementing one marketing tool per month is like fishing with a single line and hook. Implementing several marketing tools is equivalent to fishing with a net. I refer to this type of marketing as the "Shot Gun" Approach.

CONSISTENCY - Many school/gym owners have told me that advertising doesn't work. I asked how they came to that conclusion and was told that they ran the ad in the paper last month and received only a few calls. This can be expected when first advertising. I was at a restaurant recently and saw a child in a uniform. I asked the father why he chose that academy. He said "My son took a guest class there a few months ago. The mother said "No - he was invited to a birthday party there last year." The boy said - "no - remember last month I got a flyer from the school." The point is that it may take several inputs to get a response - be consistent.

KNOW YOUR STATISTICS - Prior to planning a marketing strategy it is helpful to thoroughly understand the results you can expect from your marketing programs. How many calls can you expect from your Yellow Page ad, flyers, door hangers etc? How much is it going to cost per call you generate? To obtain this information be sure to ask prospective students how they heard about your school/gym? Chart this information along with the cost of these programs to develop statistics to be used when formulating your campaigns.

WORK BACKWARDS - Prior to formulating your marketing strategies you first must set your goals. These goals include how many students you can comfortably handle though your intro procedure and accept into you program. This is important because you want to make sure you provide great service to all new students. At the same time you want to be sure to keep the flow of new students coming in order for your business to grow. As a general rule of thumb, multiply the number of students you want to enroll by 2 and you will have the number of inquires you need to generate.

CHOOSE AT LEAST FIVE - Once you have the number of calls you need to generate it's time to make your plan. This of course is done at least two weeks prior. In other words, you will develop your marketing strategy for December in mid November. Review your statistics and implement the needed marketing tools to generate those calls. For instance, you may need to do door hangers, newspaper insert, demo, buddy day and flyer run to generate 50 calls, resulting in 25 new students.

BUDGET - Rule of thumb here is to allocate 10% of your monthly gross to marketing and advertising. Smaller schools/gyms may need to look towards internal marketing such as guest passes, buddy days, flyers, VIP passes due to their limited budget. Schools with a large operating budget shouldn't overlook internal marketing yet may also look to external marketing such as Billboards, Radio, Newspaper Ads, Direct Mailing, Team Sponsorship and other media that will provide a greater impact.

SEPARATING SUPER FLUFF, FLUFF AND PLANNING - If someone tells you, "you've got to advertise", that's Super Fluff. If they tell you to advertise in the "Penny Saver", that's Fluff. If you are educated on your target market, understand the difference between benefits and features, realize the demographics of your area and develop your ad to those things - you are now "planning".

BENEFITS AND FEATURES - Open up the Yellow Pages and review the ads you see. Most will list what they consider "Benefits". However 90% are features available at all schools/gyms, not benefits of your particular facility. On the other hand, we teach private classes - specialized children's curriculum or safe matted floor are benefits for training at your school/gym.

WORD OF MOUTH - I'm sure everyone will agree that word of mouth is the best advertising. Challenge is that most schools/gyms don't give their students and parents a lot to talk about. The most effective way to get parents to talk about their kids is for them to see results in attitude and behavior. A school that truly instills confidence, pride, self-discipline, respect and control at the school and at home, a school that improves motor skills, coordination and build champions will become REMARKABLE and the referrals will pour in.

IT'S BEEN A BAD MONTH - These words should never be spoken. I mean, when did you first discover that you were having a bad month? Did you wait until the 30th to look over your statistics and realize you weren't getting calls. Hopefully you look at this information daily. At anytime during the month you notice things are slow - add something that can be implemented immediately, either a buddy day, flyer run, ad cards, school talk, or any number of ideas that will get you fast results.