I do not believe in giving away gloves and wraps when doing Internet coupon promotions. After doing this for a while and having success I find giving away gloves and wraps is a huge waist of money. It has had little to no affect on the success of my promotion. Nobody is buying the coupons for the gloves and wraps, they are buying it for the UBC and the kickboxing Classes. So when you give them away you are creating a huge unnecessary expense and eliminating another revenue stream. Selling gloves and wraps to the coupon customer.

I had someone in the industry say “this just shows the low quality of your program, making people barrow smelly used gloves”. But my argument is when you are dealing with this many people that are paying you so little, you need to get every dime. Plus you have to take into consideration the stress this many new students, all at once; can put on your classes and instructors.

For many people the purchase of the coupon is an impulse bye or a friend talked them into it. They take one class and walk out with your fourteen dollars, if you gave them gloves and wraps. I even know a couple of schools that gave them away with there promotion and had people coming in just to get the gloves and wraps and never took a class.

I will also argue that the majority of the people you sold coupons to are not going to reenroll no matter what you give them and that gloves and wraps have little to no impact on there decision. The only thing that really matters is how well they are treated when they walk in the door and weather or not the classes are fun, challenging and engaging.

I know immediacy the ones that are most likely to stick around and renew on a regular program. it’s the ones that come to the front desk and buy a pair of gloves. The students that take one or two classes and never show up again, should not walk out with a brand new pair of gloves and wraps that will sit in a closet and cost you your profits.

You also need to get the coupon students in the habit of buying from you from the beginning.

Because they have not technically bought from you yet, they purchased a coupon from one of the coupon sites, not from you. It could be as much as three months ago. So in addition to selling gloves we also offer low cost upgrades during their program.

We have Strength and Conditioning classes that is not a part of the coupon, so they can upgrade to for just $15 to include these classes during there four weeks. We also never let the program run out without offering some type of incentive to enroll in the next UBC start date or some other type of ongoing program.

We create a special deal for the coupon students that if the reenroll prior to their half waypoint of their program they get a discount or added time.

You also have to be careful about have often you are running these campaigns.

You need to understand that the coupons lower the value of your programming, period. There is just no way around it. This is why many restaurants have stopped using this type of marketing because people just wait for the next coupon to come out. Once someone get used to getting a meal at half price they really don’t want to pay full price the next time they come in.

If you are running a lot of Internet coupon of campaigns you will find that many people will just wait until they get another coupon before they come back. We try not to run more than a couple of coupon promotions a year.

The coupon deals are also great if your just getting started with your fitness program and want to fill your kickboxing classes

Set a number goal of active students and use the coupons to get you there and than back off and try and get you price per student up before you do it again.

Just remember, if you run to many of them you end up setting a low value on your programming.

And remember to have additional programming that is not included in the coupon, like the UBC, Strength & Conditioning or Level II programming. This way you have justification for charging more once the coupon runs out and gives the incentive for the student not to just wait for another coupon.

I hope the information I have given you is helpful. We have had great success with these types of promotions in building our New MA Fitness Studio.

I do have some additional tips and a couple must do’s, like what the subject matter must say when doing these promotions. If you would like me to help you with you promotion just call me at 727-418-4882 or email me at Jimgraden@yahoo.com  and set a FREE personal consultations at no cost.  I will be more than willing to help you  get the most  out of your marketing for your martial arts fitness program.