Free Marketing

[KungFuGirl]

My husband and I have had great success in promoting our school through passing out flyers for a Free Women's Self Defense Seminar. We have hooked up with the Women's Refuge in our County and will be taking donations for them. You can see a copy of the flyer on our website: www.reddingmartialarts.com
I have gone to about 30 or more hair/nail salons and we have had about 21 women register so far for the seminar February 18th. We will be starting a WSD class in March and several ladies have expressed interest in our children's programs also. The neat thing is that it cost so little to make the flyers. We paid about $25 for the design and 6 cents a copy at Office Depot. Then I just went to the salons and asked to set some flyers by the magazines or on the counter. The words FREE and accepting donations for the women's refuge are pretty powerful. I haven't had one place say no and many are very excited about it. I myself being a women might be one reason. I just wanted to pass along something that seems to be working for us. I will update after the event to let you all know how it goes.

Sandra Butler
Redding Martial Arts
ReddingMartialArts.com

[DragonMind]

Great thinking. Cross marketing is a wonderful way to create low cost campaigns. Let me toss out another idea to consider. You can also get other businesses to help pre-qualify your referrals. Think about what businesses reflect the kind of people you want to attract AND indicate that they have the disposable income to become members, e.g. dry cleaners. Approach the dry cleaners about giving their best customers a discount for being referred by them. You offer the cleaners a finder's fee for evey customer they refer that enrolls and stays for X months so they will be motivated to refer the kinds of people you want.

While lots of people get excited about "free" offers, they aren't necessarily right for your school. Be sure to track not only your response rate, but your conversion rate as well. Sometimes free programs get a lot of people in the door, but they're the wrong kind of people and you end up with few new students.

[WMKS Shogun]

I was actually thinking of doing the same thing. i hit up the local women's fitness center. i feel like an idiot for not thinking of the salons right off the bat. So i figured i would share my revelation with you. i am not sure if it is a local or national chain, but i went to curves for women (the fitness center) and talked to a desk worker there. also, girl scouts, and church groups could be helpful. Just some thoughts.

[KungFuGirl]

We had the seminar... it went okay. Expected 35 to show and only 12 came, but it was snowing lighting that morning, which happens about every three years here in Redding, and I think we held it too early.. with a few adjustments I think it will be better next year. About 3 women were interested in our women's self defense class and one women signed up her 8 year old son for Little Warriors. So we did have a good response, though I know it could have been better... live and learn.. :)

[thruster]

My husband and I have had great success in promoting our school through passing out flyers for a Free Women's Self Defense Seminar. We have hooked up with the Women's Refuge in our County and will be taking donations for them. You can see a copy of the flyer on our website: www.reddingmartialarts.com
I have gone to about 30 or more hair/nail salons and we have had about 21 women register so far for the seminar February 18th. We will be starting a WSD class in March and several ladies have expressed interest in our children's programs also. The neat thing is that it cost so little to make the flyers. We paid about $25 for the design and 6 cents a copy at Office Depot. Then I just went to the salons and asked to set some flyers by the magazines or on the counter. The words FREE and accepting donations for the women's refuge are pretty powerful. I haven't had one place say no and many are very excited about it. I myself being a women might be one reason. I just wanted to pass along something that seems to be working for us. I will update after the event to let you all know how it goes.

Sandra Butler
Redding Martial Arts
ReddingMartialArts.com


Hi Sandra :wave:

Don't know if you remember me or not but I trained with you guys for a short while about year ago before I blasted off to Canada. (I was the guy with the sore neck)

I worked in both T.V. and Radio there for a number of years and know a bit about your market and anyway here is my idea to get the word out.
You have a local cable access channel there. During it's non-programing hours they run a Bulletin Board.
As a business I think $10 bucks will get you like on for all month. Here is the url Redding Community Access (http://www.accessredding.org/bulbrd.html)

So what do you think of my idea?

Hope all is great with you Nick and the Baby!

Greg

[DragonMind]

We had the seminar... it went okay. Expected 35 to show and only 12 came, but it was snowing lighting that morning, which happens about every three years here in Redding, and I think we held it too early.. with a few adjustments I think it will be better next year. About 3 women were interested in our women's self defense class and one women signed up her 8 year old son for Little Warriors. So we did have a good response, though I know it could have been better... live and learn.. :)
Glad to hear things went well. Let's talk numbers now. You passed out how many flyers? You had how many inquiries? Your response rate is Inquiries/Flyers. Your appointment ratio will be 35/Flyers for flyer effectiveness and 35/Inquiries for your communications effectiveness. Your conversion rate is 12/35 or 34%. Ideally you should be above 80%. That gives you a baseline to measure your next seminar against.

Looking at your long term sales conversions you have 1 confirmed out of 12 or 8%, so far. If the other 3 actually follow through you'll have 25% for single sale conversion. Now you have some baseline numbers to compare other marketing efforts against.