Starting and Running Your Own Martial Arts School. Karen Levitz Vactor

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      He maintained that people have six kinds of basic needs. The most fundamental of those needs are the physical ones: food, shelter, oxygen. If these fundamental, primitive needs are met, then people are freed to meet their second level of need: safety and security. Once people feel safe and secure, then they seek out the third level, and so on through the six levels.

      How does this work for you? Remember: people’s hearts motivate them to buy as much as or more than their heads do. Typically they are motivated by the lower-level needs more strongly than upper-level ones. What benefits can you offer to tap into one or more of your potential students’ basic needs?

      Let’s say that one of your features is a spring-loaded training deck. This allows your students to train without putting undue stress on their joints. In short, it helps keep them safe. Safety is one of the basic human needs (level two). A pro shop is a feature. If students can get your opinion before purchasing gear, they will feel that they know enough to make a wise selection. That increases their feelings of competence (level four). Moreover, they will be more likely to have gear that matches the gear of the other students, increasing their feelings of belonging (level three).

      Go back to your features list. Pick out your top ten features—the features that are your strongest, that are most likely to distinguish you from your competition. List how each feature will benefit your students. Write down as many benefits as you can think of.

      Each feature should have several benefits, and those benefits may be different for different students. For example, a spring-loaded, padded floor may appeal to an adult student because it saves wear and tear on arthritic hips: it makes them feel safe. Parents of young students will like the idea that it takes the pressure off the growth plates of their child’s joints: it appeals to maternal and paternal instincts. And the three-year-olds might just enjoy jumping up and down on it: it makes their time with you more fun. For prospective adult students, your benefits must appeal to adults. For elementary school students, the benefits must appeal to the parents. For teenagers, the benefits must appeal to both the parents and the teenager.

      Let’s go back and summarize. When figuring out what you have to offer, ask yourself four questions:

      1. What image do I want to project?

       2. What tangible things project that image?

       3. What are the features of my school?

       4. What benefits do those features offer the prospective student?

      Once you have answers for these questions, once you have a clear view of who and what you are, you can pull together the necessary information to build a marketing identity.

      Develop Your Marketing Identity

      Go through your lists—image, features, and benefits—and pick out the five to ten most important points. Choose aspects of your image you can project convincingly. Include the feature-benefit combinations that are likely to be most important to your prospective students.

      Remember: this is your marketing identity. It is an identity that will convince prospective students that your school is the right place for them to study. What can you offer them that no one else can? What feature-benefits are so attractive that they would be tough to say “no” to? What part of your image says, “Come study with me, I can make your life a better one.”

      Turn these five to ten points into a single paragraph that expresses the best of who you are. Once you have the information in place, rewrite the paragraph to make it personal. It should sound as though you are talking to a potential student: friendly, personal, informative. This paragraph is your marketing identity.

      What do you do with a marketing identity? You build your business communications on it. It is the basis for your brochure and all the rest of your advertising. It is a part of your business plan and loan applications. It helps you choose a location. It helps you sign up new students. It helps keep you focused when serving your current students. What do you do with a marketing identity? Let’s just say that marketing your school successfully without one would be tough. A marketing identity expresses who you are and why people should choose you and your school.

      Choose a Name That Reflects Your Image

      Large corporations spend big bucks choosing names that make people want to buy their products. You probably don’t have that kind of money to throw at a market research campaign. Nonetheless, you must choose your school name carefully. What you name your school does make a difference.

      Choose a name that fits with your image. If you were a parent looking for a place for your shy seven-year-old to study self-defense, would you choose a place called Bloody Tiger Gym? If you were a young adult looking for a traditional martial arts teacher, would you even darken the door of Little Dragons Karate School and Day Care Center? Your name should capture your image.

      Your school name should be partly descriptive, partly inventive. The descriptive part tells what you do as a business. It identifies you quickly to potential customers. For example, let’s say you want to call your school “Eastern Treasures.” In your mind, put that name on a storefront sign. Now drive by and look at it as though you were unfamiliar with the business. What do you see? A martial arts school? An import shop? A jewelry store? If the sign, however, were to say “Eastern Treasures Wushu Academy” you would know what happens inside. Part of your business name must state what you do.

      The other part of your business name should be inventive. If your name is purely descriptive, you cannot protect it from others who might want to use it. So for example if you call your martial arts school “Shorin-ryu Karate,” and if another school down the street opens a school that teaches the same style, they too could call their business “Shorin-ryu Karate.” Why? Because “Shorin-ryu” is the name of a style of karate. Like the names of specific objects, the name of a specific martial art or specific martial arts style cannot be protected as a trademark or service mark (unless of course the art is something entirely new and invented by you). A better name would be “Golden Leopard Shorin-ryu Karate.”

      How about a name like “Dave Smith’s Taekwondo Academy”? A business name that incorporates your own name can be legally protected. You should, however, think of the wider consequences of using your own name. If your school doesn’t succeed, will you want your name associated with a failed business? If it does succeed, but you want to open another business of a very different kind, could there be image problems if the one business is associated with the other? What if the business is successful beyond your wildest dream? If someone comes to you to buy the business, including the name, would you sell? Would you want someone else controlling a school bearing your name? Using your own name as a part of your business name has its disadvantages. If, however, your name is highly recognizable or a central part of your school’s image, using it can be a savvy marketing decision. If using your own name as a part of your business’s name will draw in business from your target market, you may decide the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

      Choose a school name after you’ve put together a marketing identity. Naming a school before you’ve determined its identity is like naming a baby before you know whether it’s a boy or a girl. Your school name must project your school image.