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I'm a little late bringing this idea to you, but I always assume that late is better than never. This article is mainly for school owners but it is also good for those seeking to open a school in the future.
As far as advertising goes, this is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to boost membership numbers at certain times throughout the year and is almost fool proof in getting at least a mild response. Not only that, you usually have to pay for advertising, but in this case, you get paid FOR advertising. Interested yet?
I have named this technique "One month memberships for the Holidays," but you can use it throughout the year for different things, as I will explain to you.
This program is quite simple in the fact that it is just a spin-off of the one and two week trial programs that most schools run year-round. However, instead of marketing the trial program to prospects through advertising, you are marketing the program to current students who will pay for and advertise the program for you!
The first step is to decide what holiday you are going to launch this promotion for. The promotion can be run during Christmas/Hanukkah, summertime, back to school, New Years, etc. You then have to decide on a title for the program in order to generate the best response. For some of these I have already done the work for you and you are welcome to use my suggestions (or come up with your own).
Christmas/Hanukkah - "Give the Gift Of Life Skills"
New Years - "The Greatest New Years Resolution You Can Help A Child Make"
Back to School - "Help A Child Start Out The New School Year With Confidence"
The second step is to organize the promotion to fit your school's schedule. Do you offer an unlimited program? Do you only let students come two or three times a week? Make sure that the one month promotion aligns with your school's policies. You can't let a child work out in your dojang on an unlimited basis throughout the trial and then limit him or her to coming three times a week when they convert to a regular membership.
The third step is very simple, pricing. Remember, these memberships are going to be sold as gifts which are given to others. We aren't looking to make too much money off the actual promotion, we are looking to make money by gaining students through conversions to our regular program. I would suggest that you keep the price at or under $50. You want to at least cover the cost of the uniform you give to the new student, but after that it's pretty much whatever you think you can get people to pay based on the area you work in. In my area $49 would be a fairly easy sell.
Now that we have figured out which promotion we want to launch and how much we are going to sell it for, we need to organize it and package it. When the student or parent buys the promotion, how are they going to receive it? If you are looking for insight, I'm here to the rescue. Let's talk about what they should get:
1. A nice, professional certificate stating the terms of the promotional membership.
2. A uniform.
3. A flier or pamphlet about your school.
It will be your decision how to package these three things. You can just hand over the items to the buyer or you can find a nice gift bag to put them in. You could also charge a little extra and put them in a box that you wrap for them. If you want to go all out, you can make your own custom wrapping paper for your business. Creativity equals sales so start thinking.
Next we need to figure out how we are going to get the promotion in front of people. Your first campaign should be sent by email. In marketing, it is known that you have to get an advertisement in front of people an average of three times before they buy. The email campaign is a feeler campaign to start this process. Your next campaign should be launched in your lobby with posters describing the promotion. The final campaign should be carried out by sending home fliers with your students. How you design the fliers, posters, and emails is up to you, but make them nice, neat, professional, and easy to understand.
Lastly, we need to figure out how we are going to collect payment and get this package to the buyer. If you know anything about marketing and selling, you'll know that it isn't easy to get people's money if you don't make it easy for people to give their money. Here are my proposals:
1. You should set up a section of your website to collect payments for this promotion online. The promotion should be advertised on the front page. The emails you send out as step one of launching the promotion should contain a link to this section of your website. You will get a much higher response to your email campaign if readers can purchase the promotion within minutes of reading about it and without even leaving their chair.
2. The posters in your lobby should simply say "See us in the office to purchase this gift." Again, they see the advertisement in the lobby and only have to walk 10 steps to pay for the promotion. If you tell them that they can buy online in this campaign they may say "ah, I'll do it when I get home." There goes that sale.
3. The fliers you send home with your students should not be formatted like the email, but should be colorful and strategically laid out like any other print ad. It should inform the reader that they can pay online, or by coming into the studio. Now you have given them both opportunities.
When you collect the payments, it is important that you get the following information:
* Name of gift recipient
* Age of gift recipient (to size the uniform)
* Address of buyer
After the buyer purchases the package, you can give them the option of coming to pick it up in your studio or to receive it by mail. If they want you to mail it to them, you might want to think about putting a shipping charge on it.
Some rules about the promotion:
1. Don't limit the membership to certain months, days, or weeks; let the student experience your program like any other beginner would.
2. Don't put an expiration on the certificate.
3. Don't list prices for your regular memberships - get them in the door first.
The only problem you may run into is identical to problems with all other gift certificates; the recipient might sit on it and not use it, or wait extended periods of time before using it. In order to solve this problem you have to give the recipient notice that they can get more for nothing if they act in a timely manner. I would put something on the certificate or on a flier in the package that says, "Use within two weeks and receive free registration if you decide to sign up on our regular program."
This program really is simple and the results are amazing. If you have a 300 member school and you only get a 10% response, you could end up with 30 new members, plus any brothers and sisters you might snag in the process. That's at least $1470 just in promotions if you priced the package at $49. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars to find thirty new members, you collected $1470 to get them.
If you have any questions please leave a comment and I will respond to you by email. I would also love to hear feedback from those who use this program in the future…Good luck!
