5 LESSONS FROM A Martial Arts Kids MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Background
Champion's Creed is a very unique customer. They're a mixed martial arts gym run by Brian & Sheila Bird, with a 5000 sq ft facility that offers kids classes, adult classes, and competitive training from amateur to UFC fighters. They also host a ton of events, workshops, and masterclasses.
The owners come from a business mindset and have created a really exceptional experience for their members. They have a lot going on… ALL the time! (I don't think the owners ever sleep! haha)
To showcase their marketing, I would probably need to write a small book about it. We take care of everything from designing t-shirts to running advertising campaigns and supporting their front-end staff with phone scripts and sales calls.
What I'm going to focus on today is the marketing for their kids classes. When we first met in 2016, they hadn't really focused on kids classes (which is actually quite the opposite from most martial arts training). They wanted to grow that area of their business, and they hired a specialized martial arts consultant to guide them through creating a world-class program for kids. And then asked me to come up with the marketing plan.
If you have a business that needs an increase in registrations, you can inspire yourself through the lessons learned from Champion's Creed marketing for kids classes.
5 Marketing Failures
I promised to write about marketing failures in each post in this section, so here are some lessons learned from the “failed experiments” we had in this campaign. Let’s start with the lessons from 5 Marketing Failures.
1. Use Original Photos
We did a photoshoot for the client because we noticed that real kids drove better results than stock photos.
2. Use the 20% text Allowance on Facebook Ads
The images that used up the 20% text did better than the ones that were just photos. This was also true for social media images.
3. Use video
Video gets a lot of engagement, and you can run Video View ads. If you don’t have video footage, what you can do is use Facebook’s slides or other automated tools right in the Facebook Ad Manager. Just insert some great photos and away you go. We spent a ton of money on hiring a videographer and got some great footage. And what I ended up doing — I used that footage and cut it up into little chunks so I could test out more ads.
4. Use Dynamic Ads
Test. Test. Test. Test out your images, headlines & body text by running Dynamic Ads on Facebook.
5. Test different kinds of ads
If something is working, then keep doing it. But keep some budget on the side to run new experiments. These are the different kinds of ads we tested. Different ads work for different parts of the buying and decision-making funnel.
Broad Audience — Website Traffic
Engagement Ads — Use these to get more likes on the ads, and then re-use them as regular or lead ads
Facebook Lead Ads
Video View Ads
5 Marketing Lessons Learned
1. AWARENESS: RUN SMART DIGITAL ADS
What we did for digital advertising is split up the campaign between Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
From a high-level perspective: Google Ads are useful when someone is searching for "kids martial arts classes Calgary," and you'll want to have a landing page for people to go to that offers more information about the program.
Facebook Ads are better at targeting specific audiences. When we run Facebook Ads, we do a combination of Facebook Lead Forms, traffic to the landing page, and remarketing strategies.
2. CAPTURE: HAVE A COMPELLING LANDING PAGE
Make sure your landing page answers the following questions:
Is this for me? (List ages or qualifiers so people know they're in the right place.)
What's in it for me? (What are the benefits of the program?)
Who else (other than you) says this is a good program/product? (This is the social credibility piece.)
Do people look like they're having fun? (Self-explanatory)
Can I watch a video of real people having fun?
Do they look like real people? (Stay away from stock photos.)
What do I need to do next? (This is the call to action.)
As you can see, we like to provide a large amount of detail so that people can make an informed decision.
3. FOLLOW UP: HAVE A GOOD FOLLOW UP PROCESS
Champion's Creed uses a bunch of different software tools to keep up with the leads that come from their marketing efforts. We have weekly 15 - 20 min meetings to review how many leads we're getting from Google, from Facebook, from the search engines, etc.
We compare month-to-month and even compare how we're doing today based on how we did this same time last month, to see if we need to pivot/change/improve any of our strategies.
Choose software that can grow with your business. The best advice I got from one of my mentors is to pick software that is developed by a company with tons of users, and/or software that has been adopted by large companies, that way you’ll know that they’re constantly improving their features because they’re well funded.
4. ENGAGEMENT: CREATE A MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE
We know that once people come in the door, they love what Champion's Creed has to offer. That's how all the work we do and all the funds that Champion's Creed puts into their advertising and digital marketing pays off in the end.
If you’re just starting your marketing agency or looking at DIY options, here are a few more ideas to keep the end-user happy using some of your marketing skills
Designing cool posters & t-shirts for Kids Events.
Setting up registration for Kids Events & Competitions.
Sending out monthly email reminders and social media posts of parent participation nights.
Writing articles on social media about Champion's Creed's kid’s classes, what's unique about them.
Basically educating their clientele and new potential clients about why Champion's Creed is such a great place for their kids to learn confidence, self-esteem, and self-defense.
5. RINSE & REPEAT: WHERE CAN IMPROVEMENTS BE MADE?
The process works because we're constantly looking at metrics and can tell, in each part of the customer journey, where improvements can be made. Once the process has been refined you can work on fine-tuning and getting into more details.
Doing marketing RIGHT takes an incredible amount of work, and it is FUN. The trick is to combine tech and numbers, with creativity and content. The ultimate payoff — a client attraction strategy that works!