PPS Flex-A-Bill Management Software

Booklet - How to Give Your Child A Head Start In Life Through Martial Art Training by Michael Pace -This Booklet Has Helped One School Sign Up Over 100 Students Their First Month-

How To Succeed with Professional Lead Boxes by Joseph Galea- AProven System Used By Successful Schools To Brings In Many New Students Monthly-

Improve Your Retention With These Professionally Written Articles For Your School Newsletter-

HealthKick: Martial Arts Fitness Newsletter Articles By Jennifer G Galea MS RD- Teach Your Students How To Eat For Top Performance-

How To Use Photo Sessions To Make a Profit and Receive Great Advertising Photos as a Bonus by Joseph Galea

What you should know before you sign a lease!

Tips For Keeping Good Staff

What To Do If Your Prospect Appointment Does Not Show!

Protect Your School With Non-Compete Agreements

Convert 60% of your Inquiries to New Students !!

Suggestion #1

Spend More Time on Promotion

Beginning immediately, invest two solid hours of time each day, Monday through Saturday, promoting your school. This time is spent thinking, planning and implementing various strategies (most of them are outlined below) for getting your school publicity in the media, exposure in your community and ultimately new students through your doors.

Reading your NAPMA consulting materials is one of the best places to look for fresh ideas. Second on the list might be networking with other school owners. The two hours a day may also involve a good deal of "pencil tapping," which describes the action of sitting at your desk and tapping your pencil on it until you figure out something to do.

If you will commit yourself to two hours a day of promotion for the next 12 months, you will not only see immediate return for your efforts you will also be building a new and healthier business for the future.

Suggestion #2

Call a Meeting to Mobilize Your Student Body and Their Parents

Management defined is: "getting things done through the efforts of others." One of the best (and least expensive) ways to bring in new students is through mobilizing your students and their parents to prospect for --and refer --new potential members. Consider calling an "Emergency Meeting" of your students and their parents to launch a new and focused referral and promotion campaign. Even if you've asked before, this meeting is called to put a sense of urgency and importance on your request. The meeting can be a direct, face-to-face PTA-type meeting or it could be a sidebar-meeting coinciding with a belt exam or other special event. The same message could also be delivered, although not as dramatically, during the course of two or three day's worth of classes. The goal is to ask (and ask passionately) for your students immediate help with promoting the school. Your request can be based on the following points:

· You remind your members that the best form of self-defense is to recognize a dangerous situation before it happens --and avoid it. Your school is not in trouble, but you're asking for their help now, well in advance of any major challenges.

· You work hard to develop a family-like environment in the school, a setting where if one of the students asked for your help you would do whatever you could. Conversely, if the instructor needs some help, the best place to turn is to his or her students. You're asking for everyone to pitch in to make the school work better. A secondary goal of such a meeting is to let your students know you're on a campaign to improve all aspects of the school's operations and that this is the best way, besides paying their tuition, that they can participate.

· Your budget for the school is not huge and advertising for new students is expensive. You'd rather be spending money on instructor education, training and equipment, as opposed to an ad in the local "Big Nickel." Asking for your student's participation in promoting the program is a far better use of the schools limited resources.

· If each current member could refer a new member over the course of the next 90 days (three months), the school would be in an entirely new position.

· You're also looking for any and all opportunities to give demonstrations, address groups, set up booths and provide group or company passes. If anyone in the meeting can think of a way to creatively promote the school, you're all ears.

· You've made up an envelope for each current student and parent containing 10 one-free-month guest-passes and 10 free introductory courses.

What you'll need for the meeting:

Print guest passes, buy envelopes. Plan seating at the meeting for parents if needed. Make posters and flyers for the meeting, have instructors announce it in every class for two weeks and make a courtesy call to all members prior to the event to insure strong attendance (set a convenient meeting time). Serve refreshments if appropriate.

Suggestion #3

Make a Media Contact List

One story in the local newspaper can represent thousands of dollars in advertising money. Make a list of every media source in your community and keep a new and different press release on their desk at least twice per month for the next year. Your long-term goal is to develop a friendly relationship with every media resource in your community.

Media List Contacts:

· TV and radio stations: Know all reporters' names, office addresses, fax numbers and e-mails addresses (if they'll take press releases via e-mail). Be sure to include the AM talk-radio disc-jockeys.

· Newspaper: Know each reporter's specialty and send extra releases to each City Editor. Always ask who to send a particular story to and how they like it delivered (Fax. E-mail or by phone?).

· Include all small printed publications: Parents Magazines, Senior Citizen publications, Alternative Press, etc…

· Add your town's information website if it has one.

Suggestion #4

Build a Special Events and Community Activities Calendar Call the Chamber of Commerce and the offices of every public and private school in your community. Your goal is to load your calendar with every special event happening in your community over the course of the coming year. You'll want to know about every fair, assembly, parade, lecture and trade show, regardless of its size. Once you have a listing of all events, then you can determine which ones you would like to have a presence at and how you'd like to participate (guest passes, demonstrations, a booth?).

Suggestion #5

Distribute Flyers Have students that can't afford to pay for lessons. Have them (or a teenager you're paying a few dollars to) pass out 250 fliers once a week in the parking lot of a high traffic grocery store. If that's against the law in your town, consider stuffing them in plastic door-hanger bags or finding a high-traffic business that will stuff the flyers in their customer's shopping bags with each sale. Tip: Suggest they do that for 250 to 500 flyers on Saturdays only. In return, you'll give the owner, his staff and their families a free 90-day course of lessons at your school.

Suggestion #6

Jump on the Random Acts of Kindness Bandwagon NAPMA's Random Acts of Kindness Character Development Program might be the most ingenious and ultimately the most profitable form of promotion you'll ever implement in your school and community. The opportunities the program creates for media attention, parental support, community goodwill and student participation are second to none. For more information on the Random Acts of Kindness program see the April 2002 NAPMA Now or call a NAPMA representative at 1-800-973-6734.

Suggestion #7

Distribute 1000 One-Month-Free Guest Passes Have a VIP One Month Free guest pass made (see NAPMA's ready made guest passes from past packages or call NAPMA for assistance) and find a way to get 1000 of them in the hands of potential students. Ideas for distribution:

· If there were any kind of "kids fair" or other community activity to benefit children, you could arrange to have a guest pass given to participants.

· Give a skate or water park passes for their next 500 customers (print "A gift from the management" on the cards to make it look like the pass is a gift from the park).

· Contact the Manager or Human Resources person at large businesses (50 employees and up) in your area and offer to gift them five one month passes for each of their employees and their families.

Suggestion #8

Plan Ahead Ninety percent of promotion is in the planning (ten percent is in recognizing an immediate promotional opportunity and seizing the moment). You need to plan, at the very least, three months of advertising and promotion in advance. In the next three months there will be a minimum of twelve weekends and as many weeks. Each weekend is an opportunity to finish a week's worth of promotional activity with a bang. Chew off your advertising plan a day and then a week at a time. The job of promotion can seem as overwhelming to a struggling school owner as a black belt test to a white belt. Just take it one step at a time, but tackle each step in a proactive way by planning. Your promotional campaign will, in most cases, be anchored by one form of paid advertising and then a dozen or so low cost and no cost promotional programs (i.e. referrals, flyers, press releases, demos).