5 Easy, Inexpensive Ways to Market a Martial Arts School
Non-McDojo martial arts schools often don’t do much in the way to market themselves because they’re often run with a low budget. There are, however, a number of easy, yet inexpensive ways to market a dojo, even if you don’t want to spend much money.
1. Create a Google Places Listing. This is an easy way to make your martial arts website easier to find on Google. It is a free listing service on Google for local businesses. You can enter information about your school, add photos and videos, run promotions, and even have students do reviews. It only takes about 30 minutes to do, with minimal technical skills. Create a Google Places listing now.
2. Create and Run a Facebook Page. Facebook is of the most popular social media websites. Creating a community page for your dojo helps you communicate with students, both current and prospective. You can create and promote events, advertise sales/promotions, get feedback from your students, and a lot more. Create a Facebook Page now.
3. Add Your Website to Directories. One of the ways to get your website to rank higher on search engines is to have relevant websites linking to it. You can submit your site to martial arts school directories like MartialArtsClubDirectory.com or MartialArtsListings.com. You can also submit your site to regular business directories like Hot Frog, or ones that are specific to your area like OttawaWeb.com, for example. Relevant links help search engines determine your site’s importance on the Web. The more links you have from well-travelled sites, the better.
4. Participate on Martial Arts Forums. When you participate on forums, like PlanetJitsu.com for example, you often have the option to leave a link to your website in your signature file. This is one more way to get inbound links to help boost search engine rank. It can also be a good tool for learning and sharing information.
5. Write a Martial Arts Blog. This can be quite time-consuming, especially if you’re not a writer, but it’s a great way to add content to your website or if it’s not attached to your website, to simply establish your credibility as a martial artist. It helps people understand what you have to offer, as well as your philosophy as a trainer and martial artist. If you’re going to do it though, you should post on it at least once a week, if not more. The more you write, and the better quality your posts, the more of a following you’ll get on the Web. This also can help establish your reputation outside of the direct location where you practice. I’ve been writing on my martial arts blog, Jiu-jitsu Sensei, for years. It’s the reason why I got picked out to become an author for Tuttle Publishing. 🙂
I hope this helps anyone out there who runs a dojo or is thinking about running one. I wish you every success!
We're proud to announce that Lori O'Connell Sensei's new book, When the Fight Goes to the Ground: Jiu-jitsu Strategies & Tactics for Self-Defense, published through international martial arts publisher Tuttle Publishing, is now available in major book stores and online. More about it & where to buy it.
That's indeed useful info, thanks. My sensei links to interesting seminars. This helps both to boost the credibility of our dojo (shows he's interested in other arts beside JJ) and it ensures higher ranking on google. He also labeled what he teaches 'JJ and self-defense' as this attracts a wider audience than those solely interested in JJ. Of course some people are put of by it (they want to go traditional) but the epitaph is adequate in that is signals we go beyond traditional JJ techniques and add elements from other arts we feel are useful, focussing on SD instead of tradition or martial sport. The only downside is the hours classes are held (wednesday from 7 to 8.30pm and friday from 8.30 to 10.30u pm) which probably puts of a lot of students (we live in a university town and a lot of students tend to go home for the weekend) but it cannot be helped since the other slots in the roster are filled already.
Zara
Most of the quality dojos I've trained at never marketed themselves, often feeling it was too expensive or selling out. As a result, some great places didn't attract enough students to stay open.
Great advice.
Zara, it's more important for your Sensei to get other websites that are relevant to link to him than it is for him to link to other sites. When a website links to your site, search engines take this as a vote of confidence in the site. While linking to other sites can help establish your Sensei's credibility, it doesn't do as much to help with search engine rankings than it would the other way around.
That being said, having an awkward time slot certainly does make it harder to market.
Journeyman, I just think that's really sad. Unfortunately, it's the way of the world. If we don't get the word out about ourselves, no one will be there to see what we have to offer. I just hate to see good instructors who really give their all for their students when there are so many financially successful dojos that sell out, only seeing students for the business opportunities they represent.
It does help in the sense that if you look for certain keywords (for example 'escrima' since my sensei keeps an updated list of seminars in Belgium) our site appears in the first 10 hits so that might mean more visitors. There's also a section of links to clubs or dojo's my teacher trains or trained at, when you go looking for 'savate leuven' for example you might wander unto our site and maybe get interested. That being said you have a point of course: this is why we're mentioned on the websites of the federations we belong too (like all members of course) and on the site of the city under culture/sports clubs. We also distribute flyers once in a while so that should help too. I think there's little else we can do really, small independent clubs mainly depend on word of mouth anyway. We do plan on hosting a seminar featering top level instructors in about a year or two when we'll celebrate the dojo's fifth anniversary. On the site itself we also have a section with photo's taken during practice and one section showcasing some techniques on google (picasa web albums). This is the adress in case you'd like to check it out: http://picasaweb.google.com/Renbukan. I'm the guy in the red shirt getting beat up 😉 As you'll see it's not pure ju-jutsu but in my view it's pretty damn effective. The knife defense was done with an actual, sharpened knife: not exactly my idea of safety but he wanted it to look more impressive. This is the reason why I didn't fully commit to the attack which of course we do with practice knives.
Curious to know what you think, have a good day.
Zara
That site's rank for those keywords is a result of the words themselves rather than the fact that they're a link. You can have that effect simply by peppering relevant keywords to your dojo throughout the website.
As for the knife defense, it more or less follows with the philosophy we follow: close, control the knife, take the attacker to the ground, disarm. That being said, using only one hand to control the arm wielding the knife can be risky, particularly if the attacker is significantly bigger and stronger. In our style, we use both our arms to wrap and control the knife arm behind the elbow because the elbow is where the primary movement is initiated. We also focus on taking the person to the ground as quickly as possible, disarming after the attacker is on the ground.
There are weaknesses to any knife defense system, even ones that work, so a particular system's effectiveness depends largely on the the defender's personal strengths and limitations. Thanks for sharing!
This particular knife defense comes from kali-escrima which is a weapon system first and foremost and it's safe to assume this has actually been used countless of times so I'm pretty sure it works if trained properly. I think it's a good idea to combine defense & counterattack in one movement (krav maga uses the same approach and they are 'reality based' too)to interrupt his flow, if you just grab you're at risk of getting hit by his other hand and you'll have to wrestle him which depends a lot on strength too. The one handed block is strong since the whole body is behind it, with rotation and proper hand position: it's similar to a tan-sao in JKD or WC and I can assure you it takes little effort, even against superior (muscular) force. Basically the harder he strikes the more he hurts himself, at least as long as the block is done correctly. The one hand control is there as a check more than anything else: kali-escrima assumes the opponent is going to be trained (as soon as there's contact he's going to want to change direction or he'll fake to draw you out) so as soon as you feel force you go with it, scooping/parrying with the other hand, hitting and continuing on. Of course it's simply not possible to show a whole system in one series of photo's and as with everything there are levels of ability and different approaches to the same problem: we have two disarm series from kali (lameco & inosanto-lacoste) and a series of takedowns and locks from JJ in conjunction with the basic blocks, parries and counterstrikes. The disarms were originally meant as a means to take the knife and cut in one go, taking him to the ground would take time and put you in a more vulnerable position against multiple opponents. The purpose of the series is to basically flow from one disarm to the next in case he pulls away or pushes towards you. Controlling the knife hand allows for disarms, locks/takedowns or you can direct the blade into him. All in conjunction with proper footwork and strikes obviously. We train this first in drillform and then in free practice: it's basically an energy drill like the pushing hands in tai-chi-quan or chi-sao in WC. The purpose is to feel what he's doing and react appropriately. Personally I'd prefer to take him down in most cases but as I said we train both ways.
Unarmed defense against weapons, especially bladed ones is always dangerous: if faced with a knife run, talk your way out or pull an equal or superior weapon if you can. I think this is a very good system in that it allows for slight errors in the execution of the techniques and presumes a knowledgeable opponent who'll not just come charging in blindly: if you know something about knife fighting it's quite easy to fake or redirect while in flight, simply cutting the defending arm and continuing all over the body. In kali-escrima the other arm's back-up, this isn't shown here because we don't intend to broadcast whole defenses for others to pick up without any effort at all.
To each his own of course.
Thanks for your opinion. What did you think of the other stuff? Mostly standard JJ with a twist here and there.
Zara