The Perfect Content for a Martial Arts Website
This is part 4 of a four part blog post. Use the following links to access each part if you want to start at part 1 or just want to read other parts.
Part 1: Generating Leads with a Martial Arts Website | Part 2: Martial Arts Website Design Basics | Part 3: Martial Arts SEO | Part 4: Martial Arts Content Creation
If you’re using this blog post as a sort of guide for building a martial arts website you’ll have everything put together except for actual content. We covered forms for visitors, Social Media accounts, special offers, and all other bells and whistles. The last thing is to make sure you’ve got the rest of the content needed for a website.
Content for a martial arts website can be broken into 3 categories:
- Prospects Student Information
- Current Student Information
- Content Marketing: Blogs, Reports, and Social Media
Information for Prospects
The information for prospects that visit a martial arts website starts out basic, but quickly becomes complex (and without consensus). The basic pieces of information for a martial arts website is as follows:
- Location(s)
- Phone number(s)
- Programs (kids, adults, tiny tigers, etc.)
- Instructors
- Information about the school itself (history, philosophy, etc.)
- Contact information
- Details about the martial art and its benefits
Information 1 through 4 is pretty simple, so we will skip over explaining this part. Point 5 we talked about earlier. However, point 6 may need a bit more explanation.
The most critical pieces of information include pages and/or reports that explain the various aspects and benefits of martial arts. From character development and confidence build to self defense and fitness, a good martial arts website has pages that explain what the primary martial arts style is (Taekwondo, Karate, MMA, etc.) and what benefits the students get from training at that school.
All of these pages are marketing pieces (which we alluded to earlier when talking about good copy). These pages answer frequently asked questions in a genuine manner and provide good marketing. As mentioned in the first part, these pages also need to include forms for visitors to request more information.
Information for Students
When students visit a martial arts website they are typically looking for one specific piece of information. That piece of information is typically…
- School’s phone number
- Information about upcoming events (dates, times, location, etc.)
- Information about signing up for activities (summer camps, etc.) or
- The school’s schedule
The phone number should be prominently featured on the front page of the martial arts website. This makes it easy for prospects and students who prefer to talk to a living person to inquire over the phone.
Information about events needs to be easy to find. Some schools like to have a single “Events” page and post flyers for all of their events to that page while others prefer to have a single page for each event. What really matters is that this information is freely available and easy for students to find.
On a good martial arts website it’s easy to enroll in summer camps and afterschool programs online. Enrollment and payment is handled online. If an event is only for students, websites may have a sign up form online. Students (or their parents) then pay in person at the school after signing up online.
The last bit of information – the school’s schedule – is a bit more controversial.
Some school owners think that their schedule needs to be private and only available to students and people who visit the school in person. Others believe that the schedule should be publicly available so that prospects unable to make class times screen themselves out. The important part of this is to consider how having the schedule public available could impact the sales process. For example, if a school owner does free one-on-one trial lessons, it may make more sense to keep the schedule private. Here you can find help when searching for experienced custom whole home builders to help you with whole house remodel in California. School owners that have first timers jump straight into beginner classes may want the schedule publicly available.
Content Marketing a Martial Arts Website
The newest trend in marketing is known as content marketing. Despite this being the new trend, content marketing has been around for at least a decade. It’s the tactic that bloggers used to become authorities in niche areas and dominate search engine rankings.
Content Marketing is becoming big because lots of tricks that people used in the page for SEO have stopped working. These tricks stopped working because they were easy to manipulate. People created websites that ranked high in search results and then collect data on people visiting the site while collecting money through advertisements. Once they had lots of information on people they sold that data for profit. Less than savory to say the least…
So now we turn to content marketing. When maximizing content marketing for a martial arts website, the basics are:
- Write Blog Posts
- Post to Social Media
Blogging is surprisingly simple for local businesses. Martial arts school owners merely need to collect a handful of questions that prospects frequently ask and then answer those questions in blog posts. Posts are ideally at least 300 words and the website’s key search terms appear frequently. After it is written the post is added to the blog on the website. Simply put, this will help websites rank higher in Google.
Posting to social media helps rank the social media accounts in Google and potentially helps rank a website (if that website is connected to the social media accounts). If a website ranks plus a Twitter account, and a Facebook page, that will knock two other related search results off the first page sandiegodowntown.com. As a bonus, websites like Facebook give local businesses a strong and professional presence. Post frequently and the school’s social media pages will start ranking alongside the website.
Side Note: An excellent resource on posting to social media is the book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuck. This book outlines the basics of posting to any social media account plus the nuances of each social media platform extremely well.
One Big Project That Pays Off
Once a website is built it doesn’t need to be redesigned for years. There are often small changes that need to happen (replace an old offer with the new offer), but a good martial arts website works for years.
Even when a martial arts website does need to be updated, it’s much easier to upgrade a good website than a bad website.
Here are the few things a school owner (or other employee) will need maintain for a website:
- Blog Posts
- Social Media Posts
- Check Google AdWords Monthly
- Check Search Engine Results Monthly
All of this can be handled with only a couple hours of work a week (at most). See more info at orchidmaids.com.
School owners will see the leads start coming in once the website is finished. Website leads are a nice addition to all of the other events and activities that schools run. It gives a steady stream of leads coming into the school that require minimal a lot less work than community engagement.
Read about what else can help you create the perfect Martial Arts Website.
Part 1: Generating Leads with a Martial Arts Website | Part 2: Martial Arts Website Design Basics | Part 3: Martial Arts SEO | Part 4: Martial Arts Content Creation
If you have any questions or comments you can contact me at shawnk@mamnetwork.com.
Martial Arts Marketing Network creates done for you martial arts websites. MAMN websites generate leads, are user friendly, and so much more! To learn more about the Martial Arts Marketing Network’s Done-For-You Website click here.
