This is my most recent flyer promoting my class at my company's Fitness Center.

Bo-ken,

I am a graphic designer/marketing person (in real life) as well, and my school is also looking for creative and effective ways to advertize.

I would suggest building a website. Something good-looking and comprehensive, which will answer any question a newbie—or anyone—might have. This will validate your school to someone looking for lessons. Optimize it for search engines, put it up on as many local and national MA Shool listings as you can find (a lot of them are free).

We actually got quite a few students in class solely due to the website. One person followed it until our school moved to a location more convinient for him—then he joined the class. If you'd like to check out our site, it's linked through my signature below this post.

You can also run ads in local community papers, free papers in your area which are read by the demographic that might be interested in MA—the ads I bet are pretty cheap in them. Don't run just one—run several over a few months (if you can afford it) and keep the look almost the same.

i first open my business in washington DC, where theres lots of good martial arts schools. now i'm in california, which this is "mcdojo land", i learned a very important lesson, that we have to work harder to learn the business of the martial arts. i always been lazy about business because i made money easy back east. but here in california, i use to rely on, can your sensei do this. its sucks becauses its like tap dancing for students, but it worked. i do it sometimes now. but i also learned that you can hire people to talk for you (i use to do that, now i do my own sales pith) or pay somebody to make the adverstisement. which is expensive but it brings me more people than i could do it on my own.

also, be careful you dont insult a good teacher just because he has a nice school. i met some teachers who love the art, like we do, but they have more many to buy a nice shopping center than us, so naturally they get more students. my place is in "the hood", i have gang graffiti on my outisde wall, [censored] i even have old bangers who train with me, but we can all make a living we just have to make sure more people know where we are. you cant talk too tough because they afraid to study with you, but you cant be too soft or they dont respect you. its hard i know, but the best way is learning and falling, so you learn better the next time around.

my best advertising is:
* reputation - when your a better fighters, people know it and they want to study with you. especially when you are the only one of a certain style in your city
* website - it always brings me people, expensive to build it, but after that it only cost money to pay a fee once a year ($80) and each time we make changes
* yallow pages - this is expensive all the time, but it makes the phone ring all the time too.
* flyers - they work but you have to do so much to reach a few people. i do this every week.
* tournaments - if your good in fighting, do it. i recruited many people because i fight. theres not many teachers out there who know how to fight, and the decision to study is fast, when they seen what you can do.

good luck okay

oldman thats a good looking flyer. did you make it?

DEFINITELY have to have a website. People are checking the internet as much as the phone directories anymore. Perhaps even more so these days.

Link your site to a lot of other sites which have martial arts school directories such as: http://www.challengermartialarts.com

That will help spread the word about what you do.


-John

I'm thinking of using this to advertise my potential school:



PS - This is post 10500 for me.

Yes, online should play at least a part in most advertising strategies these days. A website that looks good AND IS SEARCH OPTIMIZED will give tremendous value for money plus it's something you can direct to when they ask for more info on you.

I live in a relatively town in the UK (pop. 60,000) and there are consistently over 600 searches a month on the internet for martial arts schools in the area. I've been in advertising for almost 15yrs now and the internet is superbly cost-effective, as long as your website looks good and again can be found by the search engines.

who THEY are. excuse me, i spell like a 10 years old kid!