How to use social media to spread the word about your martial arts school
Competing for attention on social media can be a daunting task. Millions of people and companies are fighting for tiny slices of each business niche. Large amounts of money are invested in creating the most eye catching and attention grabbing posts, videos and images.
If you try to compete in this way, you are taking on a very substantial challenge. One that’s probably incompatible with running a martial arts school and teaching lessons.
What you can do instead is use your social media to talk to your local area and your potential clients within it. There is no need for you to attract large numbers of clicks from Australia if your dojo is in Islington, North London.
You can use your social media channels for two purposes.
Show what training with you is like
You can share casual videos and images of people training in your school. If you do this regularly, this can serve to show people, who might be researching martial arts classes in your area, the kind of atmosphere and culture you keep in your school.
Based on this, they can make a decision whether your classes will be the right fit for them. This is equally relevant if you run family friendly karate classes focused on children or a rough and ready boxing gym for adults only.
In either of these situations you want the right kind of customer to walk through the door. You social media posts can serve to attract the right kind of person for whom your gym will be the right fit.
If you run multiple types of classes that range from casual classes for kids to serious training for adults, you can make this clear with a variety of posts.
Directly advertise
Use the various social media advertising options to target people in your local area. Most social media platforms allow you to target your posts and ads geographically.
This is relevant for a martial arts gym as you can make a reasonable guess on how far people are willing to travel for martial arts classes and target your advertising within this radius.
You want to get as granular with your advertising on social media as possible. Given that you can target people by their gender, age range, location and interests, you can tailor your ads to these very specific demographics.
Ads for self defence classes for young women should look different to ads for advanced jiu jitsu no-gi sessions for men.
Using flyers to advertise martial arts classes locally
Most types of businesses in London use flyers to advertise. Ranging from gyms to estate agents and everything in-between. Leaflets are a very effective tool for bringing in new customers and creating brand recognition in specific areas of London.
However, as designing, printing and distributing flyers carries a cost, you want to make sure that you get the most out of your investment. From our experience as an established leaflet distribution company we’d advise you to focus on the following.
Decide on your strategy
The first place to start when it comes to developing a proper leaflet distribution strategy is defining exactly what you want each drop to achieve.
You can aim to simply raise the awareness of your classes in a given area. In this case, you might try to make your flyer informative and mostly focus on sharing a wide range of classes you offer.
As a different example, you might want to fill a particular class in your schedule. Let’s say an early morning jiu jitsu class that professionals can attend before going to work. In this case you would aim your whole design and distribution strategy towards this end.
Knowing exactly what you want your flyer campaign to achieve will make all the difference.
Create your design with a pro
When it comes to designing your leaflet, spend the money and work with someone who is experienced in flyer design. There are many details that you might miss when it comes to leaflet design unless you work with someone who knows exactly how a flyer should be structured.
You can read up more about structuring flyers and design on our website if you want to be better informed on this topic.
Keep things as simple as possible
Stick to a single page A5 format on a reasonably thick paper (200-300gsm). Keep one side of your leaflet for information about your services and the other dedicated to a great quality picture that summarizes what you do.
Keeping things simple like this is the winning recipe, when it comes to leaflet distribution in London.
Find a reputable distribution company
When you are looking for a distribution company, look for someone who can demonstrate a good knowledge of London. Check that their distribution systems exclude undeliverable addresses, business addresses and other potential causes of waste of your flyers.
Ideally find a company that will be able to handle the printing and storage of your leaflets as well. Reducing the headache of storing and transporting tens of thousands of leaflets is imperative for a busy gym owner.
Most importantly, find a company that allows you to communicate with real sales and distribution people. Don’t book your leaflet campaigns via online forms and AI assistants on people’s websites.
Run the idea for your campaign by experienced people that care about the success of your campaign and who will want you to be a long term client.
Read up more on leaflet distribution
To understand leaflet distribution better, have a look at some of our articles about the statistics around flyer delivery, creating your leaflets and getting the best return on investment when it comes to your campaigns.
Is having a website important?
In the age of social media, many people feel like having a website is no longer very important for some types of businesses. This might be the case for some. However, a martial arts school can definitely benefit from having a well designed and detailed website.
The main benefit of having a website is the amount of information you are able to communicate to a potential customer.
You can include details about the focus of each of your classes, share information about yourself and your other instructors or include an FAQ section to pre-emptively answer the most common questions people have.
You can also set up a booking system with a calendar to simplify the booking process for some people.
Your website doesn’t have to be flashy or complicated, but it should be informative. An informative website will potentially have a big impact on a potential customer who is serious and is deciding between multiple martial arts schools.
It can communicate more information than any piece of advertising, you’ll be able to create.
Engaging the local community
Being a visible part of your local community can also have a big positive impact on your martial arts school. It’s one of the best ways to also insulate yourself from changes in the advertising landscape, that are outside of your control.
For example, If your social media is bringing in the majority of new students right now, it’s a good to have alternatives set up, to know that an unexpected algorithm change or new legislation around social media advertising won’t impact you disproportionately.
You can aim to be engaged with other local businesses, gyms or schools. Provide free community seminars or public demonstrations of your skills adjacent to local events (farmers markets, fairs, etc…)
These things make a difference in the long term and over the period of years can create a steady stream of new students that is completely independent from your other active forms of advertising.
