Marketing 101
In a world where the economic climate is difficult and running a profitable club can be tricky, here are some tips and hints from us to help you promote your club for free, or for as cheap as possible!
Social Media
The following social media channels all offer free pages / accounts:
The important thing to do is work out which of these mediums suit you / your club / your style. Most people will search to see if your club has a Facebook page, so that's the only one we would say is essential. The rest depend on you. The more you use, the better your SEO will be.
SEO if you weren't sure stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and simply means how high up a search engine's pages do you appear when people search for you or for a related word to your club. The higher you are, the easier people will find you.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a great free tool from Google that allows you to see what people are looking for on Google. Simply type in a word or phrase (i.e. your club's name or "martial arts") and see what the top related search terms around the world are.
You might be thinking why this information is useful. Well you can use this information when thinking about what to talk about through your social media pages, or on your website. The closer your content is to what people are looking for, the more people will find you and your page. Easy!
Google Analytics
Another great free tool from the world's largest search engine, Google Analytics is a must for your website. Simply open an account, add the Google Analytics code to your website (ask your website provider if you are unsure), and then you will have access to a world of data that you will help you optimise your message to your potential new students.
Google Analytics will give you more data about your website than you can probably handle. Here are some of the key things you can find out from this data:
- How many unique visitors a month to your site
- How many visits to your site in a month
- What keywords people are using to find your site
- What are the most popular pages on your site
- What is a visitor's "landing page"
All this data can be used to streamline your marketing.
Find a Club Databases
A lot of pages offer you the chance to advertise your martial arts club for free. We at Bear Martial Arts are no different here and we have our own Find a Club Locator Map. It's free to sign up and we strongly recommend that you do.
There are lots of databases like these around the internet (none quite as good as ours obviously!) and it's worth signing up to all the free ones. Each one will give you new exposure, a new web page with your club's details on - all helping improve your SEO further.
On our site you can go one stage further, and advertise your events for free on our Martial Arts Calendar. It's worth taking advantage of this as well.
Blogs
Writing a blog and linking it to your club has lots of advantages:
- Improves SEO
- Content for your website (if blog appears on your site)
- Exposure on other sites (if blog appears on someone else's site)
- Shows your students and potential students how knowledgable you are
- Allows you to talk about issues that are relevant to you and your martial art
If you wish to write a blog for us then please do! We will publish it through our social media channels, and on our site - where we will also link it to your site / club
If there's anything here you'd like to add or ask about, please email us, or use the comments box below.