Learning Lead Follow-Up for Martial Arts Online Marketing
What Does Lead Follow-Up Mean?
Following up on a lead means continuing the initial interaction with interested leads. This marketing activity is a critical point in lead generation. If you’re learning martial arts marketing online, one of the common problems you would want to solve is how to turn them into a conversion.
There are an estimated 45,586 martial arts studios in the United States. If you’re one of them, you may be wondering how to attract leads across various sources. A combat sports training facility will typically have a website and social media.
However, you will need a comprehensive lead generation and follow-up plan to attract and convert customers from the millions of interested martial arts enthusiasts. Mixed martial arts, for instance, has over 2.45 million participants who do combat sports for fitness in 2020. Whether your combat sports facility provides kid’s training for Judo or honing up the athletic abilities of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners, following up leads is crucial to getting them into your martial arts academy.
How To Follow Up a Lead for a Combat Martial Arts Academy
Learning online martial arts business means incorporating key actions in following up a lead. It’s a lead generation tactic that a martial arts academy has to implement in its online marketing activities. As you’re learning martial arts marketing online for your combat sports business, you will need to perform these key follow-up activities for your leads:
1. Identify the Leads
A martial arts academy gets several leads and inquiries from different acquisition channels. Before you decide who to follow up with, it’s important to categorize them first.
Segmenting the leads can be based on whether they are warm or cold leads. It can also be done by categorizing them according to demographics, such as age, gender, or location. You may identify, for instance, if the leads are parents who want to enroll their children for martial arts and the other set of leads for adult combat sports enthusiasts. Another would be the source of the lead – identifying them by the channel in which they were acquired.
2. Choose the Right Channels
Interested individuals who want to learn martial arts typically reach out to a combat sports academy via various means. Some of them may email, send a message on social media, or make a phone call. Each of these channels is vital to capturing leads and making a follow-up. To get more leads, you have to diversify the channels you’re using.
Although when it comes to follow-up, identify which channel your leads prefer to communicate. The ideal follow-up channel would be based on the channel in which you acquired the lead. A lead you made initial contact via email will best have a follow-up via email unless they wanted to discuss via phone.
3. Do a Quick Follow-Up
Leads respond better when they receive an immediate follow-up after their first inquiry. It’s one way to remind them, especially in a martial arts academy. Instead of forgetting about the lead’s interest to learn a combat sport, they are more likely to think about enrolling.
There are several ways to respond immediately nowadays. Automated email templates, for instance, can do the job of replying instantly to leads. You could even schedule an email follow-up according to the specific inquiry of the lead. Emails are efficient as you can build a sales funnel containing a series of messages to follow up the leads.
4. Personalized Messaging
The manner of communication is a vital aspect of following up on a lead. When leads receive a message, a personalized format catches their attention from the bulk of marketing messages they receive from their inbox.
Particularly for a martial arts academy, it’s best to come up with a customized message that will fit the lead’s inquiry for the follow-up. Don’t just settle for addressing the lead by their name. Instead, incorporate the specific need of the lead as a follow-up communication. It can be the operating hours of your academy or a specific technique that they want to improve in their martial arts.
5. Emphasize the Gym or Academy’s Advantage
When leads reach out to a martial arts academy, they are bringing with them a problem, which can be how to learn BJJ or improve their self-defense martial arts. Following up on a lead is the prime time for a martial arts academy to explain how their training can help solve the lead’s problems.
In the follow-up email or phone conversation, mention how your martial arts academy has skilled instructors who can help them learn techniques. You could even cite former students who have moved up their belt ranking if that is what the lead wants to resolve when they enroll in your combat sports academy.
6. Review the Leads
A crucial aspect of learning martial arts marketing online is taking the time to review the leads. Conducting follow-up would mean deciding which ones have already enrolled in your combat sports academy or which leads will need more convincing.
Reviewing the leads allows you to pinpoint which follow-up methods worked well to turn the leads into actual students in your combat sports academy. You can then implement the same approach when following up future leads, thereby increasing the attendance of your martial arts business.
How Often Should You Follow Up on a Lead?
Cold Leads
Most of the leads initially are cold leads, especially during the first inquiries. The ideal frequency to follow up on email is ideally within three times if they are still a cold lead.
Unresponsive leads will find your email too pushy if your follow-up extends beyond the third time. A maximum of three emails serve as a reminder to the cold lead about their interest in your martial arts academy rather than a blatant sales pitch. Three follow-up emails are already enough for them to either become a warm lead, show interest to enroll in your martial arts academy, or have already decided to choose another combat sports facility.
If the lead came or was reached out from a phone call, the follow-up action should be more immediate – ideally within 12 to 24 hours. Phone calls from cold leads need more immediate action to warm up their interest. It shows that you take the time to follow up on their inquiry.
Warm Leads
What constitutes warm leads are those who have shown interest in enrolling in the martial arts academy. These leads may have already inquired more than once or are passionate in their response to a martial arts academy’s marketing activity.
To convince them further in joining the combat sports training, a follow-up of up to six emails would be optimal. Warm leads are already weighing their decision on which martial arts academy to enroll in. When you feed them more information, it increases their likelihood of choosing your martial arts academy. They will then be already familiar with your mode of combat sports instruction and what else you can offer to them.
However, when it comes to phone calls, make the follow-up call ideally within every four days. Warm leads already have an interest, so they don’t necessarily need to be called daily, or your martial arts academy will look like it has an aggressive telemarketing approach. A four-day follow-up gives ample time for the warm leads to decide while putting your martial arts academy at the top of their minds.
Converting more leads for a martial arts academy requires all of these follow-up activities to convert more students and combat sports enthusiasts. You can also seek help from business guides that provide specific advice for a combat sports business. In learning martial arts marketing online, how you take care of the leads will impact the success of your martial arts academy.