If like me you are juggling a day job as well as running or considering starting a martial arts school in your spare time, you may find that when starting out your life becomes very busy. I mean, what do you call yourself, what is the over all plan, is there a market of this in my town, am I staying local, do I do lessons online, do I need to hire a place to run my classes or can I afford a monthly rent on top of my mortgage or how can I get students? These are all things that were spinning around in my head and as I was considering each of these options I started thinking about the availability of certified training. Would someone want to train with me if I didn't have the right credentials, insurance or club documentation and what are the costs? It was at this point I decided that I needed to sort the admin side of thing first.
Key Element 1 - Set up & Administration
There are a number of martial arts governing bodies online that provide a multitude of options for new and existing Clubs, Schools or Academies with lots of price choices. This is a good option as some include templates for mandatory documentation, student registrations, insurances and in some cases instructor training and certification. The British Martial Arts & Boxing Association is a good example although there are others.
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So, once you have got all that sorted and believe me this step can take a long time, you will want to think about branding and online presence. By far the easiest and cost free way to tackle branding is to make something yourself. Remember you can always employ a graphic designer later on to either smarten your brand up a bit or even produce something new. Image is everything when it comes to putting your digital self out there and must be appealing to your target audience.
Key Element 2 - Website
This is the backbone holding everything together. It should be where you send your Social Media followers (Key Element 3) for more information, updates, further resources links and members only areas. there are a variety of reasonably priced solutions from companies such as Wix or WordPress. Doing this prior to tackling the Social Media side is important as firstly you will need to get a domain name for your site. This could impact your preferred chosen name for your business because if it is taken, you cannot use it. You will need to add phone, email addresses and web address to your pages but it gives you time to get your branding right including images, straplines, corporate colours, fonts and services. Remember if you are using third party images you need to go royalty free otherwise there could be a lawsuit heading your way. Again there are plenty to choose from. I use Pexels
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Now we have our documentation in place, we have the right instructor certifications and insurances and have set up our Website is there anything else we need? Well, at this point you can plod on and if you already have a large following you may be lucky in getting students or a place to train but in reality, for most of us, we need that little bit more. We need to be directing prospective customers to the website to generate leads and hopefully income, so the last element in this blog is Social Media.
Key Element 3 - Social Media
For those of us who have only ever had our own online profiles, creating one for a business venture can be a bit daunting. It is essential that you do plenty of research of similar businesses to give you a feel for what is required and the sort of content and linkages that are used. To be honest, the major players do provide plenty of support and help in the set-up stages and I have given links to No Fear Martial Arts, my own pages, below Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / YouTube These are merely examples of how I have interpreted the huge amount of information on the Interweb rather than a standard to follow and you will find what works best for you. But, coming full circle to the branding aspect, this must remain consistent across all platforms that you have a presence on. This will enhance your overall brand and promote a higher level of professionalism.
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I will be continuing these blogs in the vein hope that someone out there will find them useful. Please do comment and ask for other topics if there is anything else Martial Arts related that you want to know. I will do my best. Remember for Bespoke Martial Arts Solutions, think No Fear Martial Arts
