In the BJJ community we have tons of great content out there for BJJ players on how to improve their game, the best gi to buy, BJJ history, and all kinds of other stuff. There really isn’t any info out there for BJJ gym owners though. I’d like to change that and help BJJ gym owners bring in more students and help spread BJJ to the masses.
The best way for me to do that is to help gym owners with what I know, and that’s their web presence. I’ve worked with over a dozen gyms and had my 101 BJJ Gym Marketing Tips ebook downloaded by hundreds of gym owners, so let me see if I can drop some knowledge here and help some people out.
What I’ve found to be the most important thing a gym owner can do to make his web presence bring in more students and leads is a good free trial combined with a call to action and lead capture.
That probably sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo to a lot of people, so let me explain.
- Lead Capture
Lead capture is a form on your website, which should be towards the top of your home page and also on the sidebar of each subpage, where interested website visitors can put in their name, phone number and email to sign up for a free trial and get more information.
You can see one here:
To get people to sign up through your lead capture you want two things, a free trial offer, and a call to action.
- Free Trial Offer
The free trial is pretty self explanatory. It can be a class, a week, a month or whatever. If the competitors in your area offer a free class, maybe you can try offering a free week and see how that does.
May gyms owners offer a free month. Some offer a free month with no strings attached. Some have you buy a “beginners package” with a gi, t-shirt, mouth piece, etc. to get the free month. There’s a lot of different ways to go about it, but offering some sort of free trial is a great way to get people to contact you and give you the chance to turn them into a potential student.
- Call To Action
A call to action is a marketing term which refers to you telling the website visitor to take a specific action. “Get Your Free Trial Now”, “Start Training Today”, “Call Us Now”, etc.
Having a simple call to action on your lead capture (as well as before your phone number, I.E. CALL US NOW 555-555-5555) has been proven to increase your opt in conversion rate, sometimes over a 100% increase. It’s a simple change that makes a huge difference.
Don’t Forget To Follow Up!
The quicker you can follow up with the person, either by phone or via email, the better your chances are of getting them to come in for their trial. If you have your email synched to your phone you can follow up with new leads throughout the day.
I’ve spoken to gym owners who have had great success with scheduling an actual appointment time for the potential student. It can be 15-20 minutes before class starts and just have a quick sit down with them, tour of the gym, explain BJJ and the rules to them, and then start class. This will have a huge impact on the student and instantly make them feel a connection to you and your gym. It also makes them much more likely to show up if you give them an actual appointment time, and call the day before to confirm that time, than if you just tell them to come in anytime.
Even if you don’t have lead capture on your current site, until you get one you can add a call to action to your phone number, and also put a free trial and call to action in bold like “GET YOUR ONE WEEK FREE TRIAL – EMAIL US NOW AT MAIL@BJJGYM.COM” on your site.
Making these few simple changes can have a huge impact on your gym and the amount of new students you bring in, especially if you are already ranking well in Google.
If you have any questions go ahead and shoot me an email. I’d love to help out anyway that I can.
AUTHOR BOX:
BJJWebsiteGurus.com specializes in building websites that rank higher in Google, and get gym owners more students. The BJJ players behind the business are Ben Weinstein, a Ralph Gracie Berkeley black belt and professional web designer who creates killer websites for BJJ gyms, and Cody Sweet, a blue belt and online marketer who spends his time dominating white belts, and helping BJJ schools rank better in Google. Don’t forget to check out their free 101 BJJ Gym Marketing Tips ebook.
