How To Get Back Students You Lost And Increase Revenue After Re-Opening
So you’ve successfully reopened your martial arts school in compliance with your state health guidelines and want to get back to business.
This article will give you tips garnered from industry experts on what you can do to regain lost students and increase your revenue to make up for losses from Coronavirus.
The important thing to keep in mind is that all strategies for attracting new students and retaining the ones you have must be in compliance with the health guidelines so you’re going to have to be creative.
Where You Are At Now
Most school owners had at least 30% of their students not move over to their online classes. This could be because they weren’t able to get into the online classes or because of financial need.
A 30% percent drop in revenue is a huge barrier. But it also underlines a key area where you need to have a strategy. How do you regain those students?
Figure Out Why: The Power of Personal Attention
The first question you have to ask yourself is why they didn’t follow you to online. Arrange a stop by at their house where you can give the student some school swag and get them excited about training again. If they aren’t comfortable with this, you can also arrange a video call where you can reiterate the value of training, explain that you are going to be offering some training at your school and how easy it is to do video training to supplement in class. Show them the personal attention they’ll be getting. This can include private zoom lessons on a weekly basis with their instructors.
Personal attention = student retention.
1. Converting from Online to In-Person
A lot of students and their parents are going to be anxious about returning. You should communicate to them all the safety measures you have in place. Classes of no more than 10, offering earlier start times and more classes, taking temperatures before entrance into the building, frequent cleaning and time between classes to allow for social distancing as outlined in our previous article. . By being clear about the efforts you are taking you can ease if not eliminate their anxiety.
Also continue to offer online training for the foreseeable future. It’s going to take a while for people to become comfortable in the new normal and training at your school will involve an acceptance of a small risk.
If you cut prices for online training, you should consider bringing them back up as soon as kids start training at school. You can’t devalue your services at the same time when you have to teach more classes and have the same overhead.
2. Focus on Growing Family Memberships
A big take away from successful club owners dealing with Coronavirus is to focus on growing your family memberships.
Why?
To practice at home during the shutdown, most of the students needed some form of parental supervision. They had to get involved to hold targets or joined their kids as a bonding exercise. Parents were involved in martial arts training on a scale never seen before. Use this new connection to martial arts to your advantage. Focus on getting them involved permanently and convert their membership into a family tier.
Family memberships allow you to give deals, but still make more income than you’d otherwise. This also can radically grow your network as siblings join other siblings and their parents and then connect you to their friends and family as well. This can a real chance at growth.
3. Expand Private Lessons
As we mentioned earlier, personal attention is the key to retention. Each student should continue to get their once-a-week private lessons they were getting on Zoom. You could even have one particularly personable instructor in charge of making sure these happen throughout the week. It can really solidify your relationship to your students.
2020 Armor Hack for Private Sessions
But 10 minutes for a 100 or even 200 students can take it out of you. We recommend getting them to train at home with 20/20 Armor’s New Live Stream Training Mode.
This way they can measure each individual kick in power, stamina and reaction time. They can send their instructor their video and you can give them detailed analysis on what they need to do to improve in a quick message that will take you less than 2-3 minutes. These private lessons will be immensely valuable and also data driven. You’ll be able to watch their video and give them tips they can use. This is a great way to supercharge the value of online lessons for your students.
A huge benefit to you is that they’ll be way less time consuming and serve as homework that keeps your student invested in their training.
Summary
So those are three strategies that should bring in new revenue and help you regain the students that you’ve lost.
- Organize video chats or stop bys to get buy in
- Focus on growing family membership
- Expand online private lessons (Superpowered by 2020 Armor)
Let us know some strategies that are working for you and help school owners like yourself navigate these difficult times.
Interested in making more money?
Learn how 20/20 Armor can help your school generate more revenue with these three key strategies.
