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CHAPTER ONE:

BUILD A SUCCESSFUL MARKETING IDENTITY

Your marketing identity is the face your business presents to the public. It contains the benefits you have to offer to a prospective student. It reflects your image, the way you project the things you believe in. It contains the things that best distinguish you from your competition. Your marketing identity is the foundation for all your advertising, for the way you approach prospective students, even for the way you decorate your school. It is your single most important marketing tool.

Focus on Your Image

Rule number one of marketing: people buy on emotion, on instinct. That doesn’t mean all consumers are irrational. It just means that if people are going to spend hard-earned money on something, they are going to want to feel good about doing so. How often have you purchased something on a whim, just for the fun of it? How often have you relied, at least in part, on instinct or “street smarts” to tell you if what you were looking at was a good deal or a fraud? Your potential students do the same thing.

Your School’s Image

When developing a marketing identity you must first ask yourself what image you want to project. What image do you want for your school? When prospective students talk to you for the first time—when they hang up the phone or walk out the door—how do they feel? Is that how you want them to feel about you? How can you get them to know in their gut that studying with you is the right thing to do?

Before you dismiss image as some artificial advertising fiction, think about the teachers you have studied with. Were they people of integrity? Did they care about the well-being of their students? Whether you answered yes or no, how could you tell? You could tell by the way they conducted themselves, the way they managed their school. You could tell by the way their “walk matched their talk.” That, in its simplest form, is image.

If you believe in honor and integrity, the individual decisions you make about your business must reflect that honor and integrity. If children are important to you, you should show that in your day-to-day dealings with them. If you value strength tempered by self-control, if that is what you teach your students, ask yourself whether you project that value in your daily dealings with people. Looking at image is a reality check: Do your “walk and talk” reflect the things that are valuable to you?

If you are both the teacher and the owner of your school, about 60 percent of your school’s image will be a reflection of your personality. The other 40 percent, however, will come from choices you make for your business. These choices will eventually give your business a personality of its own. Just as your personality comes through in your choice of clothes, the way you wear your hair, the way you speak to others, your business personality comes through in the way it looks and feels to others.

When examining your image, consider what target market you wish to attract. Your target market is the people you want to serve. Who is likely to want to study with you? To define your target market, think in terms of age, gender, marital status, and disposable income. These characteristics are called the “demographics” of your target market. Think about your preferences, but also think about the kind of people your art has attracted in the past. Talk to other martial arts school owners in your city about whom they teach. If your style has a national organization, check with them on their demographics. If your style has very few children (or adults), very few people in urban (or rural) areas, very few people with incomes over (or under) a certain level, there may be good reasons for those demographics. If you plan to attract a target market different from what your art usually attracts, make sure you have good reasons to support that choice.

A word on choosing children as your target market: if you want to teach children, your target market will be the children, yes. But it will also be the parents of those children. Specifically, your target market will be young adults with children and the disposable income necessary to enroll them in your school.

Your target market should be defined by the image you choose. If your target market is young children, you probably don’t want to present yourself as a school for serious hand-to-hand combat. If your target market includes mostly soldiers from a nearby army base, teaching playground self-defense is silly.

In your idea notebook, describe your school’s image—the way you want to come across to students and prospective students. Who is your target market? Do you want to come across as a school where the whole family is welcome? Or do you teach mostly children? Or perhaps are you directing your services at just adults, or just a certain group of adults? Look at the choices you have made for your school. Do you want to create an image of stability and permanence, or do you want to look lean, mean, and highly mobile? Do you want a large school with a dozen teachers, a midsized school with you and an assistant teacher, or a handful of students who become like a family to each other? Are you a place where people can work out at their own level and have fun, or are you a training ground for serious martial artists relentless in their pursuit of excellence? If a reporter were to do a feature article about your school, what would you like to read in it? Finish this sentence: “(Name of your school) is a school that _____________.” Get as detailed as you can. Remember that the more detailed you can get now, the easier it will be to use the information in your marketing identity later.

When it comes to image, there are no right or wrong answers. You are free to choose the image you wish. But the image you choose will have consequences. It will affect the kind and number of students you bring in. It will also affect your financial success. That being said, your school is your school. You choose your image, and you reap from the results of your choice, both positive and negative.

Your Own Personal Image

The next question, once you’ve pinpointed your business’s image, is “What is your professional image?” How do you want to come across to current and potential students? Are you a mentor, a professor, a kindergarten teacher, a drill sergeant, or something else? What is your outlook on life, your views about education, your opinion about the role of the martial arts in society? How do you dress? How do you carry yourself? Are you a full-time, professional teacher? Do you do some other work by day and teach martial arts instruction in the evening? Is your art a way of life you share with a handful of students? If a reporter were to do a feature article about you, what would you like to read in it?

In your notebook, describe the image you yourself want to project. Get as detailed as you can. Again, the more detailed you can get now, the easier it will be to use the information in your marketing identity later.

The Image You Project

Now go back and read your notes on image, both for yourself and your school, and ask yourself another question. What tangible things do you do to project that image? This stage of the process is a reality check. You cannot afford to have an image that exists only on paper, only in your own mind. Look at what you have on paper and compare it to what exists in the real world of your school.

Take a look at your school and yourself. What do you do (or what will you do) to make your image real? For example, do you consider yourself a family school, a school for both adults and children? Then examine your dressing rooms, your equipment, your pro shop, every corner of your school. What do you have for children? Can they reach what they need to reach? Is your waiting area child-safe? Do you and your assistants know how to talk to children? Do you have activities for parents and children to do together? Perhaps you see yourself a winning tournament coach. Then look at your tournament program. Do you have training equipment for your athletes who choose to compete? Do you look for sponsors to help pay tournament expenses? Are you with your athlete at the tournaments? Do you avail yourself of programs that will make you a better coach?

Look, also, at your current students, especially your senior students. Many school owners have defined their target market as adults, both men and women, young to middle-aged. But when they look at their senior students, they are almost all young men or children. Look at your program, the physical demands, the atmosphere you create within your school. Is it suitable for your target market? Are you doing what is necessary to capture and keep the students you want?

Go back to the things you’ve written about your image. For each part of your image, ask yourself, “Am I projecting this now?” If the answer is “yes,” add it to a page in your notebook and title it “Current Image.” If you’re not projecting the image right now, can you change a few things and make this part of your image a reality in a month or less? If so, add it to a “Short-Term Image Goals” list. Make a note, too, about what you need to change to make this part of your image real. If the image is still more dream than reality, that’s OK. Those dreams can inspire your long-term goals. Add that part of your image to a “Long-Term Image Goals” list.

Remember these lists aren’t just lists, they’re your goals, the rudder for your school. Keep them in front of you. Figure out how you’re going to meet them and when you’re going to do so. Dream big dreams. Then, work as much as you dream.

Examine Your Features—What Do You Have?

Now that you have a clearer idea of your school’s image, let’s look at its features, what you and your school have to offer. Image is the impression you want to make on your students and prospective students. Features are the specific things you have to offer them.

On a list entitled “Features,” list the noteworthy features of your school. Think about equipment, physical space, resources, your own training and skills—in short, physical, objective characteristics. If you use Olympic-regulation equipment or nationally recognized teaching methods, those are features. So are well-lighted dressing rooms, a training area with good lighting and ventilation, a pro shop, your own credentials and associations, and your employees and their credentials. Walk around the school and look. List all the positive features.

Then recognize that a student will choose a school for more than just its features. A student will choose a school for the benefits those features offer.

Determine Your Benefits—What’s in It for Them?

Let’s say you’re a member of a national association of martial artists. A new student walks through the door. You tell him, as a part of your introduction to the school, that you and your school are a part of this great organization. He nods with a blank look on his face.

Let’s say, by contrast, that you listen to your prospective student, find out what’s important to him. If he has dreams of seeing himself standing on a dais with a gold medal around his neck, you show him how your affiliation will offer him tournament opportunities. Or if he is worried about having to start from scratch should he move to another city, you show him how your organization offers recognition of his rank throughout the country. What you have done is shown what a feature of your school can do for that prospective student. You have demonstrated its benefit. Benefits are how features tap into the basic needs and motivations of your students. Benefits satisfy the wants and desires of prospective students.

A brief word on people and what makes them do what they do and buy what they buy: One of the most commonly used hierarchies of motives was developed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow.

He maintained that people have six kinds of basic needs. The most fundamental of those needs are the physical ones: food, shelter, oxygen. If these fundamental, primitive needs are met, then people are freed to meet their second level of need: safety and security. Once people feel safe and secure, then they seek out the third level, and so on through the six levels.

How does this work for you? Remember: people’s hearts motivate them to buy as much as or more than their heads do. Typically they are motivated by the lower-level needs more strongly than upper-level ones. What benefits can you offer to tap into one or more of your potential students’ basic needs?

Let’s say that one of your features is a spring-loaded training deck. This allows your students to train without putting undue stress on their joints. In short, it helps keep them safe. Safety is one of the basic human needs (level two). A pro shop is a feature. If students can get your opinion before purchasing gear, they will feel that they know enough to make a wise selection. That increases their feelings of competence (level four). Moreover, they will be more likely to have gear that matches the gear of the other students, increasing their feelings of belonging (level three).

Go back to your features list. Pick out your top ten features—the features that are your strongest, that are most likely to distinguish you from your competition. List how each feature will benefit your students. Write down as many benefits as you can think of.

Each feature should have several benefits, and those benefits may be different for different students. For example, a spring-loaded, padded floor may appeal to an adult student because it saves wear and tear on arthritic hips: it makes them feel safe. Parents of young students will like the idea that it takes the pressure off the growth plates of their child’s joints: it appeals to maternal and paternal instincts. And the three-year-olds might just enjoy jumping up and down on it: it makes their time with you more fun. For prospective adult students, your benefits must appeal to adults. For elementary school students, the benefits must appeal to the parents. For teenagers, the benefits must appeal to both the parents and the teenager.

Let’s go back and summarize. When figuring out what you have to offer, ask yourself four questions:

1. What image do I want to project?

2. What tangible things project that image?

3. What are the features of my school?

4. What benefits do those features offer the prospective student?

Once you have answers for these questions, once you have a clear view of who and what you are, you can pull together the necessary information to build a marketing identity.

Develop Your Marketing Identity

Go through your lists—image, features, and benefits—and pick out the five to ten most important points. Choose aspects of your image you can project convincingly. Include the feature-benefit combinations that are likely to be most important to your prospective students.

Remember: this is your marketing identity. It is an identity that will convince prospective students that your school is the right place for them to study. What can you offer them that no one else can? What feature-benefits are so attractive that they would be tough to say “no” to? What part of your image says, “Come study with me, I can make your life a better one.”

Turn these five to ten points into a single paragraph that expresses the best of who you are. Once you have the information in place, rewrite the paragraph to make it personal. It should sound as though you are talking to a potential student: friendly, personal, informative. This paragraph is your marketing identity.

What do you do with a marketing identity? You build your business communications on it. It is the basis for your brochure and all the rest of your advertising. It is a part of your business plan and loan applications. It helps you choose a location. It helps you sign up new students. It helps keep you focused when serving your current students. What do you do with a marketing identity? Let’s just say that marketing your school successfully without one would be tough. A marketing identity expresses who you are and why people should choose you and your school.

Choose a Name That Reflects Your Image

Large corporations spend big bucks choosing names that make people want to buy their products. You probably don’t have that kind of money to throw at a market research campaign. Nonetheless, you must choose your school name carefully. What you name your school does make a difference.

Choose a name that fits with your image. If you were a parent looking for a place for your shy seven-year-old to study self-defense, would you choose a place called Bloody Tiger Gym? If you were a young adult looking for a traditional martial arts teacher, would you even darken the door of Little Dragons Karate School and Day Care Center? Your name should capture your image.

Your school name should be partly descriptive, partly inventive. The descriptive part tells what you do as a business. It identifies you quickly to potential customers. For example, let’s say you want to call your school “Eastern Treasures.” In your mind, put that name on a storefront sign. Now drive by and look at it as though you were unfamiliar with the business. What do you see? A martial arts school? An import shop? A jewelry store? If the sign, however, were to say “Eastern Treasures Wushu Academy” you would know what happens inside. Part of your business name must state what you do.

The other part of your business name should be inventive. If your name is purely descriptive, you cannot protect it from others who might want to use it. So for example if you call your martial arts school “Shorin-ryu Karate,” and if another school down the street opens a school that teaches the same style, they too could call their business “Shorin-ryu Karate.” Why? Because “Shorin-ryu” is the name of a style of karate. Like the names of specific objects, the name of a specific martial art or specific martial arts style cannot be protected as a trademark or service mark (unless of course the art is something entirely new and invented by you). A better name would be “Golden Leopard Shorin-ryu Karate.”

How about a name like “Dave Smith’s Taekwondo Academy”? A business name that incorporates your own name can be legally protected. You should, however, think of the wider consequences of using your own name. If your school doesn’t succeed, will you want your name associated with a failed business? If it does succeed, but you want to open another business of a very different kind, could there be image problems if the one business is associated with the other? What if the business is successful beyond your wildest dream? If someone comes to you to buy the business, including the name, would you sell? Would you want someone else controlling a school bearing your name? Using your own name as a part of your business name has its disadvantages. If, however, your name is highly recognizable or a central part of your school’s image, using it can be a savvy marketing decision. If using your own name as a part of your business’s name will draw in business from your target market, you may decide the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Choose a school name after you’ve put together a marketing identity. Naming a school before you’ve determined its identity is like naming a baby before you know whether it’s a boy or a girl. Your school name must project your school image.

Your marketing identity affects everything you present to the public: your business name, your brochure, your posters, your selling approach, your tour for prospective students, and all of your mass-media advertising. It states who you are, what benefits you give to your students, and why you are different from your competition. It helps you to focus your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Later we’ll show you how to build on your marketing identity to create your mission statement and to secure financing for your school. We’ll show you how to turn your marketing identity into effective advertising, and how to use it to bring in and sign up new students. You’ll also need a clear picture of your marketing identity to choose the right location for your school. You’ll need it to help you set the right fees for your services. In short, if you don’t have a clear marketing identity before you begin putting the pieces of your business together, you can waste a lot of time and effort. Spend some time putting one together now.