Sometime towards the end of 2015, most of us would’ve begun thinking about 2016 and also trying to plan ahead for it. Hopefully, you would have all got your plans in place and your goals setup, ready to start achieving them. Now that the first month of the year over, it’s a great time to see if you are still on track to achieving your goals if you haven’t achieved some of them already.
The initial influx
January brought the somewhat expected ‘mad rush’ of new students, for some of you, this may have been greater than you initially had anticipated. From our perspective, we noticed that trial lesson bookings had increased on Get Into Martial Arts during this period, which is great news for our clients, but what if your leads overall were not quite as expected?
There are several factors that come into play with things such as generating leads, for example, good SEO, targeted Facebook adverts and general demand for martial arts in your area. It’s important to understand what elements may be causing a lower than expected result, as this can help direct how you go about improving them.
It’s a good idea to keep track of everything, whether this is through built-in reporting on platforms such as Facebook, or your own KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). This will not only tell you what is and isn’t working well but help you monitor the changes over time and see the direct impact any changes you make have.
Managing expectations
You may have your own expectations for the year ahead and you may very well be on the way to achieving them, but it’s important to remember that you are not the only person with expectations about your business. The new students you acquired in January (and continue to get through the year) will also have expectations they want you to live up to.
Depending on the size of your school, having more trial lesson bookings and new students can potentially keep you rather focused on running classes smoothly. It’s important to not forget about your current and potential students and making sure their expectations are being met.
When you feel rushed off your feet and extremely busy, it’s not always so easy to make sure everyone’s expectations are 100% met. Be sure to utilise the features and resources in myMA to really help take some of this pressure off, allowing you to focus on keeping students happy, engaged and having fun. This will ultimately lead towards more people hearing how great your classes are and keep students coming back for much longer.
Stay focused. Learn and improve
Despite how busy you may find yourself, it’s important that you stay focused on your goals outlined in your 2016 business plan. Referring back to your business plan helps to make sure you are on track and if you’re not, helps you to identify why and resolve the matter. This is where any preparation you have done really starts to pay off.
You have hopefully been keeping track of everything you have been working on via your chosen reporting method(s). Taking some time to look over these each week can help make sure you are aware of everything that’s going on, allowing you to see what’s working and what’s not. If you have been running several Facebook adverts for example and one is not performing how you would like, checking the reports not only highlights this but shows you which adverts, by comparison, are working. This then allows you to either adjust the advert or cancel it and re-invest the money into another channel of marketing.
Regardless of the success, you may find yourself having, it is always a great idea to look for ways to improve. Using your reports is a fundamental way to do this, but don’t be afraid to expand this further and ask trial lesson students for feedback. All this information then comes together allowing you to refine the quality of your business and ensure it’s success.
