Marketing Advice By Business Type
Marketing a Self Defense Program
A profitable self defense school is about more than supply and demand. It's about designing ways to entice new customers to engage with your products and to encourage existing customers to increase the frequency of their purchases.
Marketing is the bridge between an organization and its customer base. Build your bridge poorly and you'll quickly find your self defense school cut off from the marketplace.
A lack of marketing experience can sometimes be overcome through persistence and innovation, two key features of self defense school profitability.
Marketing Expertise
Don't have a background in marketing? That shouldn't stop you from taking a larger promotional role in your company by educating yourself about today's most effective marketing concepts. Entrepreneurs and leaders of self defense schools can't afford to invest large sums of money in untested strategies or first-time marketers. If you don't have a marketing background, it's critical to either educate yourself about basic marketing principles or consult with a professional marketing firm. We advise our business partners to seriously consider outsourcing their promotional requirements because professional marketers tend to have their fingers on the pulse of the marketplace.
Loss Leaders
The majority of self defense schools understand that more customers will walk through the door if a few products are priced at less than full retail value. Although you may lose money on one product, you can make up for it buy selling a higher volume of other products. But to be effective, loss leader marketing requires planning, especially in product selection and price points. For self defense schools, the real benefits of loss leaders emerge through the careful marketing of other products, usually offered at a much higher margin. Also, it's important to carefully consider the quantity of discounted products you are willing to offer at the loss leader price since stockpiling or a high volume of loss leader sales can negate the revenue benefits of this strategy.
Media Monitoring
Some marketing initiatives lend themselves to simple measurement while others are more challenging. Direct mail can be evaluated by tallying the cost of inputs (e.g. a premium mailing list, printing, postage, etc.) and measuring the number of customer responses you receive from the campaign. However, measuring the amount of influence your brand has in the marketplace can be trickier. With the help of marketing professionals, media monitoring can provide up-to-date assessments of the amount of influence your self defense school has in the public sphere. If executed properly, media monitoring can help your brand get ahead of negative messaging and exert greater influence over news cycles.
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