09/30/2022
9 Fall Events & Activities to Boost Enrollment & Retention in Your Martial Arts School
Are you looking for ways to build connection in your martial arts school? To bring new students through your door?
Good news! You can accomplish BOTH objectives by running special events, activities, and offers.
And, what better time to do so than the Fall — a season filled with special holidays and themes to leverage as part of your event planning and marketing.
Add 1, a few, or all these events and activities to your martial arts business plan to help boost your student enrollments and retention — and make a positive impact on your community.
Fall Events, Activities & Special Offers
1. Halloween Costume Party
An annual staple in most martial arts facilities, a Halloween costume party is an exciting event for your existing students and an opportunity for new students to experience your school firsthand.
Encourage your students to bring a buddy. Include pizza, games, and prizes to make the party extra fun. Have flyers on hand to pass out to prospective students and their families.
2. Special Offer for Halloween
Leverage the spirit of Halloween by running a limited-time special offer like 2 private lessons and a uniform for a discounted price. Add an expiration date to the offer to create urgency and encourage sign-ups.
If you’re a Member Solutions client, be sure to use the client-exclusive Halloween Special Offer marketing kits in the Marketing Kit Library. There are 2 Halloween marketing kits to choose from. Each kit includes a fillable flyer, poster, door hanger, and Facebook Ad image.
3. Trick-or-Treat Goodies with Halloween Cards
Print out Halloween cards that serve as a voucher to visit your school. Attach a low-cost candy to each card or place the card in a bag with candy for your martial arts students to give to the trick-or-treaters in their neighborhood.
Parents of your students will love you for this as you’re saving them time and money. Your business will love you for it as it’ll help bring new students through your door.
If you’re a Member Solutions client, head to the Marketing Kit Library for an already-designed Halloween Card. Be sure to print extra Halloween cards to keep at your front desk.
4. Trunk or Treat
An alternative to the regular trick-or-treating, this is where each participating business decorates their vehicle and trunk of their vehicle for Halloween. Then at a designated date and time, all participants bring their vehicle to a parking lot for children and their families to walk from vehicle to vehicle collecting candy.
Be sure to include signage that represents your school. Pass out bags of candy with a Halloween card (mentioned above) to get word out about your business.
5. Fall Member Appreciation Picnic
With the cooler, crisp weather, October makes a great time to host a member appreciation picnic. Make the picnic extra festive with seasonal food, music, and Fall activities like pumpkin painting. Encourage your students to bring family and friends.
6. Bullying Prevention Workshop
October is National Bullying Prevention Month which makes it a great time to run a bullying prevention workshop to increase anti-bullying awareness and education among your students and the community. Host the workshop at your school. Consider partnering with local schools and organizations to deliver your message.
If you’re a Member Solutions client, save yourself time; use the already-made Bullying Prevention Workshop poster, flyer, door hanger, and Facebook Ad image for your event marketing.
7. Unity Day – Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Created by PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center, Unity Day is a day when everyone is encouraged to wear orange in support of bullying prevention. Taking part in Unity Day is a great way to visually show your support and reinforce your anti-bullying message to your students and the community.
Take pictures of your team and your students wearing orange and post them on your social media.
Check out this page from PACER for more ways you, your team, and your students can get involved on Unity Day.
8. National Gratitude Month
Did you know? November is National Gratitude Month — a time to give thanks and an opportunity to highlight the importance of gratitude. Consider incorporating meaningful lessons into your martial arts curriculum that reinforce the benefits of being grateful.
Some ideas: Ask students to write down 3 good things that happened to them today. Have students write a thank you note to a family member or friend.
9. Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals
Kick off the end-of-year holiday shopping season by running limited-time special offers on memberships and pro-shop items like gear, apparel, gift cards, and equipment. If you’re a Member Manager software user, be sure to enable the Member Portal to make it easy for your members to make purchases on the go — including new memberships.
Pro Tip!
Due to the time-sensitive nature of events, event marketing is most effective when done online.
Online tools, like our event registration software, make it extremely easy to build a custom online event form with a unique link that can then be easily shared in multiple places online. Not only that, online registration makes event management easier on you and your team by eliminating time-consuming data entry and fee collection.