Your marketing isn't failing. Your planning is.
Most owners tell me they've got a marketing problem.
The ads have stopped working. Facebook's changed again. Nobody in their town wants to train any more, apparently. So I ask one question back. What have you got planned for next month?
Then there's a pause.
Because there isn't anything planned. There's a vague idea about maybe doing a taster week, maybe a grading, maybe something for the summer, they'll sort it nearer the time.
That's not a marketing problem. It's a nothing-planned problem, and the two aren't the same thing at all.
How it actually goes
Things go quiet. Panic sets in. You throw an offer out because you have to do something, a few people come in, everyone breathes out again. Six weeks later it's quiet, and everyone's surprised.
Then I get the message. "I don't know what's going on with my marketing."
Nothing's going on with your marketing. You only do marketing when you're frightened. The rest of the time you're teaching, sorting the timetable, chasing a payment, covering a class because somebody's ill, and the promoting only happens when the numbers scare you.
It's like driving a car and only ever putting fuel in when the light comes on, then wondering why you keep getting stranded. The car's fine. You just never plan the fill-up.
So here's the three things I'd change, in the order I'd change them. None of them cost you anything. The first one takes about twenty minutes.
Put one money maker in every month
Twenty minutes. Open a calendar, twelve months in front of you, and write one thing in each month that brings money in.
A grading. A camp. A parents' course. Ladies' self defence block. Bring a friend fortnight. A weapons seminar. New uniforms in September when everyone's back. A half term day camp. A belt test with the family invited. Whatever it is for your school, one per month, and all the rest of it.
Don't design them now. Don't pick the price, the poster, the wording, none of that. Just name the thing and put it in the month. If you sit there trying to plan the whole of March properly you'll be there four hours and you'll do one month and quit.
Two things happen when you do this.
The first is you'll spot the empty months straight away. Everybody's got them. February, April, November, they sit there blank and those are the months you always describe as "quiet". They're not quiet. There's nothing in them.
The second is you stop being surprised. Look at your calendar. That's your money for the next twelve months, sat there in black and white. If the calendar's empty, the month's going to be empty, and no amount of posting on a Wednesday afternoon fixes that.
Parents get paid early in December and Christmas wipes them out. They'll enquire in January because it's January, then they'll tell you they'll start soon, because they're skint until the end of the month. February is when they've got money again.
Same pattern in autumn. September is people thinking about it, October is people paying. So don't put your biggest push in the month people are broke and then go quiet in the month their wallets open.
Write the number down before you promote anything
This is the one you're skipping. I'd put money on it.
Before you tell a single person about the thing you've just put in the calendar, decide what a full one looks like. Then write the number down.
The room holds forty comfortably. So thirty is your number. Thirty is a win, thirty gets promoted like a win, thirty gets photographed and posted and used to sell the next one.
Here's why it matters. Without a number, you turn up on the day, eighteen people are stood there, and you've got no idea whether that's brilliant or a disaster. So you decide how you feel about it based on how tired you are that morning. If you're honest, half the time you decide it went badly and quietly never run it again.
With a number, you know on the Tuesday that you're at eleven and you need nineteen more, which means you've still got three weeks to do something about it. That's the whole point. The number isn't there to judge you afterwards. It's there so you can see the problem while there's still time to fix it.
Book the promoting on the day you book the thing
Most owners book the event and then promote it once, about nine days before, on one post, and call that marketing.
Here's what I want instead. The day the thing goes in the calendar, work backwards from it and put the promoting in too. Actual dates, actual jobs.
- Six weeks outIt gets mentioned on the mats.
- Four weeks outThe email goes to the whole list.
- Three weeks outYou tell them again in class and get names down on paper.
- Two weeks outThe parents get a message.
- Ten days outYou message everybody who's said yes but hasn't paid.
- Three days outLast call.
- The day afterYou post the photos — that's the first advert for the next one.
That's not more work. It's the same work, decided once, in advance, instead of invented in a panic on the Sunday night.
The bit people miss is that one channel isn't enough. Your email list, the mats, the socials, the parents sat in the waiting area. Some of them will never open an email. Some of them are never on Facebook. Same message, said in every place they actually are, more than once.
The half hour that keeps it alive
None of this survives on its own. I've watched owners build a lovely twelve month plan in April and never look at it again.
So half an hour on a Sunday. What's coming in the next six weeks, what's due to be promoted this week, and what number am I chasing. That's it. That's literally it.
Thirty minutes on a Sunday against a quiet month you didn't see coming. Not really a fair fight, is it.
So which one are you not doing?
You already know. Most owners can do the first one this afternoon, and most owners have never once done the second.
Twenty minutes. Twelve months. One thing in each. Get it done.