Wise Investment?

If you own a martial arts school, should you invest in one of those companies that helps you with marketing?

Short answer - possibly.

If you own a martial arts school, and you list that as your employer on Facebook, you will see ads daily from different companies that offer help with marketing strategies. Can they help you?
Possibly.

These companies usually will have a few pre-screening questions that you must answer in order to get information. They will promise to give you a free case study, or some of the document. That document will either be worthless, or will never come.

It's very important to take note of the screening questions. This is true in every other endeavor in life, as well. People who ask a question, are giving away their intent within the question.

Most of these companies will ask you if you have your own place, or if you sublease. This is very critical. If you do not have your own martial arts studio in a prominent location - that people pass by on a daily basis during regular activities - then they really cannot help you. Most people who buy martial arts do so out of a degree of impulse.

Some in the industry refer to this as the two hit system. The consumer sees the martial arts studio during their regular daily life. Then they targeted social media or Google ad will get their attention. This is the second hit - the ad. Seeing the physical location, remembering it, and seeing the ad build the degree of rapport. The consumer will buy from someone they trust, and that rapport is critical.

But you cannot have one without the other.

A visible commercial place, with no social media advertising, is doomed to certain failure. Similarly, a great social media presence, coupled with an out-of-the-way location, is also doomed to certain failure. Heck, even if you have a great commercial facility, and wonderful social media advertising, the studio will likely still fail.

That's the dirty secret of martial arts - a 95% failure rate among martial arts studios. While I would never discourage someone from opening up a martial arts studio, no intelligent businessman would ever invest money into a business model that has a 95% failure rate. And while there are most certainly exception to this rule; as always, the exception proves the rule.

The days of the club martial arts studio are waning. Examples of a good Studio that has between 20 and 50 participants and gets enough new blood to keep the numbers up are becoming scarce.  The Paradigm has shifted in the United States, and martial arts are viewed at completely differently these days. But this is how all things should be.