Marketing For Martial Arts Studios
I was recently talking to a martial arts studio owner and we were discussing the importance of marketing for his business. We both agreed that the goal of martial arts marketing is to get new students into the doors of the studio. While other businesses use marketing to reach both new and existing customers, martial arts studios often just focus their marketing efforts on new customers. The reason for this is that as the business model of a martial arts studio is naturally designed to retain customers - once a student signs up, they continually work towards different belts.
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What Is a Buyer's Journey?
Every buyer takes a journey with your business. Some of these journeys last years and produce great profits, while journeys end before they really begin. Instead of thinking of sales from the prospective of a business, the buyer's journey focuses on how a customer evolves in their engagement with your business.
In developing a business model, it is important to understand that there is a natural progression every buyer takes in regards to their engagement with your business. It take time to build trust with a buyer and it takes a pretty significant effort for them to walk through their journey of doing business with you. To understand a buyer's journey, we must start by looking at the stages a buyer takes during their journey with a business. There are four stages to a buyers journey...
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Using Employee Down-Time as Sales-Time
This summer, my family and I vacationed in Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island, MI. On the island, employees would hustle to get sales as they were giving out samples and soliciting customers on the street - doing just about everything possible to get a sale, and they often did. People were spending all kinds of money.
But in Mackinaw City was different.
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3 Simple and (Extremely) Affordable Website Options
Over the last month I have talked with several business owners who have expressed a need for something different with their website. They have one of two problems: they are paying too much for their website with not enough return, or they currently don't have a functional website.
The good news is that there are some great do-it-yourself website options available today - options that are affordable, beautiful, and easy to use. Honestly, I have seen these DYI drag-and-drop sites look and perform MUCH better than “professionally developed” sites.
While there are numerous website platform builders available, I have chosen three to discuss. These have been chosen based on popularity, functionality, design, and ease of use. You really can’t go wrong with either of these three options though each has...
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What Makes a Business Healthy
When we look at a small business, we can usually tell pretty quickly whether or not a business is healthy. We can tell if the business is mature and strong, right? The parking lot is always full, they always have what we need, and the staff make you feel welcome and leave a desire to return. On the other hand, we can also tell if the business is weak and dying. We have all seen it.
I remember going into a local hardware store for the first time after moving to a new town. Within moments of being in the store, I was asking myself
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How a Business Coach Can Help Your Business
If you are the one on top - the business owner - the buck stops with you. If you want to make money this month, you push harder and make it happen. If you are tired or just not feeling it, you can sit on your butt. It is completely up to you.
The winds of motivation are constantly changing and this is where a business coach can help you stay on course. Here are a few ways to find a business coach without necessarily breaking the bank...
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5 Reasons Why SEO Should Be Important For Your Business
While everyone seems to understand the importance of Search engine optimization (SEO), I am absolutely amazed at how many businesses do not utilize the most basic tactics of SEO.
For example, I have been talking to my son's taekwondo studio for several years about the importance of SEO. For whatever reason, they delayed and delayed implementing basic tactics on their website. When they finally did implement a few SEO tactics, they ended up with so many
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3 Ways to Find Keywords for Your Small Business
As the hack of the week is to incorporate keywords into the website of your small business, I thought it would be important to share with you a few ways to find good keywords to focus on.
After all, if no one is searching for a keyword then what is the point? Here are three ways to find good small business keywords.
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Alternative to Yellow Pages: Using Local Keywords
Just a decade ago, most businesses would purchase a space in the Yellow Pages book and just wait for the phone to ring. They didn’t need an alternative advertising option - Yellow Pages just worked.
Oh how the times have changed. Small businesses can no longer just rely on Yellow Pages because 80% of consumers use the internet when they are trying to find a new product or service. Therefore, small businesses must find an alternative to Yellow Pages.
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Hack of the Week: Using Keywords on Your Website
Let’s face it. We live in a digital world; if you don’t have a presence online then you don’t exist. At least in the eyes of those who are actually searching to buy a product or service that you are offering.
According to Forbes, “consumers report using the internet first (80% of the time) when they need a new product or service, and printed Yellow Pages only second or third (about 50% of the time.)”
This means that if you are a small business owner, you can no longer...
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Hack of the Day: Hold a Facebook Contest
As I was browsing Facebook yesterday, I saw that a friend of mine had shared a post about a jazz vocalist (Diana Krall) coming to the Embassy Therater in Fort Wayne, Indiana where I live.
The post was published on Friday afternoon and said that they would be giving away two free tickets on Monday. To get a chance to win the tickets, all I had to do was to like, comment, and share the post about the ticket giveaway - which I did.
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Hack of the Day: Type With Your Voice
When I was in college in the late 1990s, a friend in mine had a challenge - he was a slow-typer. He’d never learned proper typing technique, so his two-finger method would take hours longer than it needed to.
I remember walking into his room one weekend and seeing him at his computer with a headset. He’d just installed brand-new voice recognition software...
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