Why Your Martial Art School's Social Media Marketing Isn’t Working… And What To Do About It
Social media marketing for martial art schools isn't as simple as you think. Social media marketing—that is to say, FREE social media marketing—isn’t always easy to get a handle on. One reason for this is it’s a lot like doing PR work for your school.
Meaning, you can do a lot of it for a long period of time and not really see a direct impact on your school’s growth or profits, because the results are difficult to quantify.
However, what can be quantified is the direct and immediate effects of running an ad or boosted post to direct traffic to a specific lead capture or sales page. You can see the results based on how many leads or sales that page generates from the traffic you sent in a given period of time.
When Every Post Is An Ad…
You can also see the direct results of creating a free post in local parent and resident Facebook groups that directs traffic to your site. And, often these free posts can pay off… that is, if you don’t dilute your influence by always and only posting ads and promos online.
I know a school owner who makes this mistake every single week. All he ever posts are ads. Once a week, he posts a promotional video or ad to local Facebook groups, and then those people don’t see or hear from him until the following week… when he posts his next ad.
Folks, this is not how you use social media to market your school. Social media is all about engagement, meaning it’s about how well you engage your audience.
And, engagement on your own channels on Facebook is a thing of the past, unless you boost your posts, of course. But even then, you’re not going to get much engagement unless your post is of some interest or benefit to your audience.
Why Most People Don’t Pay Attention to Ads
News flash – marketing is typically of almost no interest to anyone, except for the person who happens to be specifically looking for what you’re selling at the time they see your ad (read that again, because it’s important).
This is why direct response marketing requires mass exposure – because you have to cast a wide net to catch all those fish who are looking for the exact “bait” you’re using at the time you decide to go fishing. I may have taken that analogy too far, but hopefully you get the point – only a small percentage of people are actively looking to “buy” martial arts lessons at any given time.
However, EVERYONE wants useful information that is of interest to them. EVERYONE wants to know how to lose weight, look thinner, look younger, stay safer, raise happier children, help their kids get better grades, and bully-proof their kids.
Why? These are all personal goals that are driven by a strong, immediate emotional need or desire. The desire to be loved and admired, the desire for safety, the desire for happiness and harmony, and the mothering drive (protection and nurturing) and the fathering drive (protection and provision).
Change The Way You Post To Get Better Results
And this is exactly why you CAN’T make every post on social media an ad, and why you CAN’T make every single post about you and how great your school is, and still expect to get good results from social media marketing. It ain’t gonna’ happen.
Nope. Instead, you need to make at least 60-80% of your posts (higher is better) about stuff people want to know about (read the previous paragraphs again if you’re still wondering what that might be). This is the basement foundation of content marketing, and it’s also the key to making social media marketing work for you.
AND (and there’s a good reason why that’s in caps), when you use this 80/20 approach to social media marketing, it will supercharge your paid social media ad campaigns.
How? The trust factor and the familiarity factor. The more often people see you, and the more they begin to see you as a trusted source of information (that is to say, a subject matter expert, also known as an authority), the more likely they are to trust you and respond more favorably to your ads.
When you’re the guy or gal who already helped them lose five pounds, or who gave them that tip on discipline that helped them motivate their kid to do their homework without whining, well…
…they’re going to be a lot more likely to listen to your pitch, than they are to listen to the guy they only hear from when he has something to sell.
I hope those of you who read this take it to heart. Because, becoming a local trusted authority is perhaps the best thing you can do to boost your image in your local community, and to boost your enrollment numbers over the long haul.
