Martial Arts World News Magazine - Volume 22 | Issue 2

PRO SHOP POWER
Get Paid to Advertise Your School
By Mr. Sun Kang
Many longtime school owners are aware of the three classes of advertising:
1. Paid advertising
2. Free advertising
3. Profit advertising
Everyone is familiar with paid advertising:
you pay someone to advertise your school. You
can pay a newspaper, television station, radio
station, or printer who prints your flyers, but
you pay someone real money to advertise your
school.
Many school owners are also aware of free
advertising in the form of publicity, but not many
schools use it. You can get publicity by submitting
news stories to local newspapers, magazines,
and radio and television stations. If you
get a half-page article in the newspaper, that’s
literally hundreds—maybe thousands—of dollars
of advertising the paper is giving you for “free”
(in exchange for giving them an interesting story). Likewise, if you
get a two-minute video segment on the local news station, that’s
definitely worth thousands of dollars, and again, you get it for free.
How can you get more publicity? First, establish a relationship
with your local media (newspaper, radio, TV) staff. The small-town,
weekly papers and magazines are easier to work with, because
they have less news and a smaller budget, so they generally
appreciate any help you can give them. They like human-interest
stories about local people, so all you have to do is supply them
with a good story about your students. Some schools have their
local paper print the results of each of their belt tests, tournaments,
etc. They’ve also established themselves as
local experts on safety, submitting a regular safety
column.
Larger, big-city daily papers are a little tougher
to establish this kind of friendly relationship
with, but they’re still interested in good stories
that sell papers. All you have to do is create that
story. A great way to become friendly with larger
staffs like daily papers or TV news is to sponsor
a charity event.
The kind of advertising that we referred to in the title is profit
advertising, where someone actually pays you to advertise your
school. How can you get in on this great deal? You may already be
doing some of it, but why not do more?
You make a profit by advertising your logo on items for sale in
your Pro Shop like school t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, equipment
bags and back packs, etc. You can order them easily and inexpensively
from Vision USA (1-800-424-5425), and then sell them at
a profit. Every time your student wears the clothes or carries the
bag/back pack, he advertises your school.
Of course, you can compound the power of profit advertising
with VIP cards, where the student gives them out to friends
who ask about your school when they see the clothing or bag.
The friend gets a free week, and the student earns a reward
from your pro shop, like a t-shirt, jacket, or bag, and you continue
the cycle.
We strongly recommend that you take advantage of all three
classes of advertising to promote your school. If you haven’t been
using free publicity and profit advertising, be sure to add them to
your toolbox to increase your enrollment this year! You have nothing
to lose and everything to gain!
MR. SUN KANG is the President of Vision Martial Arts Supply, Los Angeles Branch, who helps school owners all over
the US maximize their retail sales and drive more revenue into their schools.
88 MARTIAL ARTS WORLD NEWS VOLUME 22 | ISSUE 2