Origins Story of the Digital Enrollment Director
Dear Martial Arts School Owner,
Master Chan Lee here. Let me tell you a little story about my experiences online.
It was the summer of 2006 and I had already spent well over $10,000 on the Internet. I knew it was the wave of the future and I didn’t want my school to be left out.
I had burned through three websites over several years — one built by one of my students, a template program I purchased, and a third that was professionally developed by an advertising firm. I also spent tons of money on Internet advertising with Google, Yellow Pages, Yahoo, smart pages, and others.
Despite my valiant effort, during this entire time I got a grand total of TWO leads for new students!
Then, I met Allen Oelschlaeger – a marketing professor and a TECH genius.
He told me the Internet was ONLY about making four things happen:
- Get prospects to visit you online
- Get those visitors to call you or ask you to call them
- Get those prospects to become customers
- Get your customers to stay with you for life
… all without doing almost any work!
Allen had been helping local businesses since 2000 with their online strategies (via his company, Business XLerator) so I was confident he knew what he was talking about.
Here is what he told me:
“The ONLY way to make the Internet work as a business-growth tool was to invest over $20,000 in a complete and fully integrated online system that did everything EXACTLY RIGHT to meet the four above goals”
As you’d expect, I thought he was out-of-his-mind!
I wasn’t going to spend that kind of money — no matter how much I believed in the business-building power of the Internet.
So, he suggested an alternative — work together to develop this system for the Milwaukee market and then, once we had it working like crazy for my business, we could offer it to martial arts schools — on exclusive basis — in other geographic markets throughout the country. He explained that, given the way search engines rank local businesses, people would only see the online system for their local school.
If we took this approach, we could spread this EXPENSIVE development cost over a large number of schools and I would end up getting a world-class online system — that did everything EXACTLY RIGHT – for less than the cost of a basic website (that wouldn’t do anything to grow my business).
And, better yet, we could offer the same deal to our martial arts school clients throughout the country. They would get a near-exact copy of the system I was using so it would require almost no work and minimal time to get it live — and would work just as well as my system in generating leads and retaining students.
In addition, these martial arts schools would enjoy exclusive use of the system within their geographic area (their local competitors would NEVER get access to this system), if they were the first to sign up.
Well, as you can imagine, this whole approach made so much sense to me that I signed up as Allen’s partner and, a short-time later, the Martial Arts Marketing Network (MAMN) was born. We officially launched the company at the Las Vegas Martial Arts SuperShow in July of 2007.
The great thing about the Digital Enrollment Director is that it requires almost no additional work on my part and they get upgraded as the technology changes. I’m now using our fifth generation of technology, which was launched in 2014.
Although each system is customized for each of our clients, you can see how my system is set up by visiting:
But, more importantly, as a partner in the Martial Arts Marketing Network, I’ve been able to significantly improve the businesses of my school-owner colleagues throughout the country. Frankly, that’s been the best part of working with Allen over the last several years.
I love running my schools and teaching martial arts — but I love, working with other school owners to help them grow their business and to increase the popularity of martial arts in their local communities.
It drives me crazy that such activities as dance and gymnastics get more students than us.
You know and I know there’s NOTHING better for a child’s development than martial arts — and the Internet finally gives us the opportunity to make our case. For anyone who is considering having a boudoir shoot in California done, http://www.portraitsbyz.com is the perfect place to do it. We’re no longer dependent on traditional media (TV, radio, print) to tell our story – we can now generate our own public relations.
Anyway, thanks for reading this rather long story.
Taking advantage of the Internet is essential for any martial arts school. I hope we’ll have the opportunity to make this happen for your school.
Committed to your school’s growth,
Master Chan Lee
P.S. If you want to get Allen’s take on what we’ve developed, Click Here. If you read this, you’ll discover the details of how we put this system together and how Allen (actually, his company, Business XLerator) has partnered with several other local-business companies (including the Dan Kennedy organization, GKIC) in the same way he partnered with the Martial Arts Marketing Network.
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