Nothing changed in the account. Same budget, same offer, same ads, same town. Last month you were thinking about opening a second beginners' class, and this month Tuesday at 5.30 has three gaps in it and you're sitting in the ads manager late at night looking for the thing that broke.
The instinct is to turn the budget up, or to switch the campaign off and start it again clean. Both of those buy you more of whatever is already breaking.
Before you touch the account, there are three numbers to look at, and none of them are in the account. They're in your own building.
What should I check first when bookings drop?
Booked. Showed. Enrolled. Last month and this month, side by side, then one bit of division: showed divided by booked.
Those six figures are sitting in your messages and your sign-up sheet, and between them they tell you which of four completely different problems you have. In order:
- Showed against booked fell. The break is between the booking and your door. Nothing upstream moved.
- Showed held, enrolled fell. The break is the first class and what happens at your desk afterwards.
- Booked itself fell, and your area has changed. Something happened in the town.
- Booked itself fell, and your area hasn't changed. Your message and your offer are the thing to look at.
Work down that list in that order. It's tempting to start at the bottom, because the ad is the visible part and the walk from the car park to your mat isn't. A family who booked a class and never came is a problem that happened after the advertising had already done its job, and there's no sense fixing something that isn't broken.
The sheet to fill in before you change anything
| Last month | This month | |
|---|---|---|
| Families who booked a trial | ||
| Of those, how many walked in | ||
| Of those, how many enrolled | ||
| Showed divided by booked |
Then send it to whoever runs your ads, before you change a single thing in the account:
"Comparing last month to this month: booked went from __ to __, showed from __ to __, enrolled from __ to __. So my show rate went from __ to __. Nothing has changed at my end except ____. Where do you want to start?"
If you can't fill the sheet in, that's this week's job and the campaign isn't. You can't fix a stage you aren't counting. We wrote up the full weekly version of this sheet, including the column for why families said no, in the numbers to send your marketing company.
If your show rate fell, leave the ads alone
A booking is a family who chose a class time. They wanted to come. Something in the hours between that and Tuesday evening stopped them, and whatever it was, it happened after every bit of advertising had already done its job.
Online records stop at the booking. After that the only record is the one you keep, so this is the one number nobody can hand you.
What moves it is unglamorous and all yours. Reply to every message a booked family sends you, because an unanswered text is a no-show forming. Text rather than ring, from the number their confirmation came from, so it doesn't read as spam. Have an actual conversation about why they booked, rather than letting the automated reminders carry it on their own. Put the address, a map link and an add-to-calendar link in those reminders so their own phone nags them. Give them something they only get by coming to the class they booked.
Speed matters here more than it looks. In its March 2011 magazine issue, Harvard Business Review published "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", and its finding was that most companies are not responding to potential customers' online queries nearly fast enough. A booked family is further along than a query, and the same thing holds: a reply that lands while they are still thinking about you beats a better one tomorrow.
There's a nervousness in this that's hard to see from behind your own desk. The Aspen Institute's National Youth Athlete Survey, run with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University, asked 3,827 young people aged 10 to 17 from all 50 states and the District of Columbia about their experience of sport. Among the children who had never played an organised sport, the places they said they would most want to play were public sport facilities (47%) and their own school (45%). Private facilities came in at 30%, and travel sports at 8%.
Your school is a private facility. The family who booked with you did it on the strength of an advert and a form. That's what the warm message two days before class is for. The long version of all of this is in why booked trial students don't show up.
What if they're showing up and not enrolling?
Then your marketing worked and your Tuesday didn't, and that's better news than it feels like, because the first class is the part you control completely.
Look at two things. The first ten minutes, which is where a child decides whether they are the worst person in the room, and which is all in the first ten minutes of a trial class. And whether you actually made an offer on the day, at the point the child is still buzzing, rather than at the end of a four-week trial when the excitement has flattened out. That's the day-one enrolment offer.
One more thing from the same survey, about the adult rather than the child. Among children currently playing organised sports, 86% had parents who attend their games or practices. Among the children who had played and stopped, it was 58%. The parent sitting in your car park on their phone during the trial is a weaker enrolment than the parent you pulled into the room, introduced yourself to and talked to about their own child. The parents in your lobby is the longer argument for that, and for what else it earns you.
Nobody is enquiring at all. Has my town dried up?
Now, and only now, you look outside the building. Two questions, and the platform is not either of them.
What changed locally? A school opening up the road. A term date that shifted, so the week you are advertising into is not the week you think. A competing club running a free block in the local primary. If your area produced students for you before, the market is there, so something moved. Ask three parents and drive past the two retail units nearest you.
Has your message stopped matching your market? This is the one owners skip, because the ad feels finished once it is written. The offer doesn't land the way it did, the same families have seen the same thing twice, and the positioning blends into the other schools in town.
The families you haven't met yet aren't smaller versions of the ones already on your mat. In the Aspen survey, 24% of current players named winning as a favourite part of playing, but only 13% of the children who have never played said winning would get them to start. What that group wanted was to have fun (43%), exercise (37%) and play with friends (26%). Even among the children already playing, only 12% put earning a college scholarship or roster spot among their favourite things, against having fun (48%) and playing with friends (47%).
So read your last advert, and then your booking page, as a parent who has never set foot in a martial arts school. If the first thing they meet is competition, gradings, tournament photos and a trophy cabinet, you're talking to the children who are already yours. Write to the thing the parent is actually worried about, in their own words, and name your area while you're at it. Then look again at the words you put in front of them and at how the Facebook side of this works for a school. Format comes after the message, which is where the image against video question belongs.
Should I just turn the budget up?
Not as your first move, and not as your only one. More budget pointed at the wrong families buys you more of the wrong families: more no-shows, more tyre-kickers, more evenings spent texting people who were never going to come. Put the budget up when you know what a booking turns into at your school, because at that point it stops being a gamble and becomes a decision. How much a martial arts school should spend on ads is the proper treatment of that.
Cutting it isn't the safe option either. The budget is the wrong lever to reach for first in either direction, because it changes the volume of a process without changing the step that moved.
Restarting the campaign isn't a diagnosis, and neither is pausing. If what you actually have is more families than your timetable can take, that's a control problem: turn the flow down instead of switching it off.
The one thing to do Monday
Fill in the sheet. Booked, showed and enrolled for last month and this month, then showed divided by booked for both. Send those six figures to whoever runs your ads before you change anything in the account.
If you'd like a second pair of eyes on which stage actually moved, book a call and bring the sheet with you. Bring your timetable and the number of spaces you could genuinely take, and if we don't think we can fill them we'll tell you that on the call.
Questions owners ask
Why are my martial arts ad results down this month?
Work out which stage moved before you answer that. Put booked, showed and enrolled side by side for last month and this month. A drop in showed against booked is a problem between the booking and your door. Enrolments down on steady shows is a desk and first-class problem. Only if fewer families are enquiring at all does anything outside your building come into it.
I'm getting leads but fewer are enrolling. Where is the break?
Two different places, and the tally tells you which. If they are booking and not walking in, the break is in the hours between the booking and the class, which is follow-up. If they are walking in and not signing up, the break is the first class and what you offer at the end of it. Fixing the second one when you have the first one is a wasted month.
Should I change my ads or my offer first?
Neither, until you know the enquiries actually fell. If they did, look at the offer before the creative. A new image in front of the same worn-out offer is a slower version of the same month. Read your last ad as a parent who has never set foot in a martial arts school, and ask whether the first thing it promises is something that parent wants.
How do I know whether it's my marketing or my town?
Ask what changed locally and be specific about dates. A school opening nearby, a term date that moved, a competing club running a free block. If your account produced students in the same town before, the market is there, so something either moved in the town or moved in your own building. Both are findable. Neither is a reason to start from scratch.
Should I pause the campaign and start it again?
Restarting is not a diagnosis, and stop-start growth is harder to plan around than a steady flow you turn up and down. If you have a capacity problem, throttle it. If you have a stage that moved, fix the stage. Pausing to feel like you have done something costs you the weeks you could have spent fixing the thing that actually moved.