Last year, Sensei Gustavo Larrea wrote this “KILLER” 4-page direct mail marketing letter for use during the back-to-school season. According to GCI President, Rob Colasanti, "When I first read Sensei's letter, I thought it was impressive. And it must've been pretty darn good since his mailing of just 4,500 pieces resulted in 90 new student enrollments for his single location school in New York!" More specifically—he mailed the letters in increments of 500 pieces during August, September and October. He did it this way so he wouldn't tie up too much money at once and to also minimize his risk IF the letter did not perform ...
Read More

Here, social media "Game Changer," Hersh Sandhoo gives us a valuable tip on integrating your school's blog with its Facebook Fan Page. "If you have a blog for your school (which you should) the best way to share it on your Fan Page is to manually cut and paste the full link as an update," says Hersh.  Click the link below to download the PDF now! Viral Marketing Series—Tip #6 ...
Read More

This month—social media "Game Changer," Hersh Sandhoo, reminds us how to use Facebook's event feature. According to Hersh, "This is great for open houses, Halloween costume parties, holiday get-togethers, belt ceremonies, demonstrations, and tournaments." He also recommends you link your school’s Fan Page to your personal timeline as work history. “This allows people who visit your personal profile to see your Fan Page listed as the place you work. You should have your staff do this as well,” adds Hersh. Viral Marketing Series—Tip #5 ...
Read More

In Hersh Sandhoo’s Viral Marketing Series Tip #4, Hersh discusses the importance of tagging photos and videos on Facebook. Click the link below to access the tip. Viral Marketing Series—Tip #4 ...
Read More

Recently, Master Bryan Zarnett of Durham Modern Martial Arts, authored a very valuable special report for you titled “Facebook for Lead Generation and Social Proof.” The feedback we received was impressive. In fact, one GCI member even wrote us stating that he implemented the strategies Master Zarnett receommened, combined them with the sample artwork examples contributed by Master Dusty Everson, and enrolled 37 new students. Nice! This month, we bring you Part 2 of Master Zarnett's report. Study this extremely well written 10-pager and you will discover: How to get your advertising message on Facebook Ideas for setting your advertising goals Suggestions for ...
Read More

The holidays can be an excellent time to market for new students. That's why GCI, with the help of Master Korbett Miller of Miller's Martial Arts Academy, has provided you with the following holiday marketing campaign that offers you the flexibility to implement it in a variety of different ways. Ultimately, it is designed to help you generate quality leads during December that you can convert to paying students at the beginning of the New Year. The concept is to use online and offline marketing to sell a gift wrapped uniform and a gift card for a month of classes at your school ...
Read More

Social media "Game Changer," Hersh Sandhoo reminds us how to invite friends to "like" your school's fan page. ​ He also explains how you can use incentives to get your students to "Check-in" on your fan page from their mobile phones to share with friends that they are at your school training RIGHT NOW.   Viral Marketing Series—Tip #3 ...
Read More

This fully editable Halloween marketing campaign from GCI is so awesome it's SCARY! To help you turn Halloween into a valuable school-growth opportunity, we've created some fully editable guest passes and post cards for you. Simply adjust the copy as needed. Add your school's logo and contact information. Then have the components printed in color or black & white. We recommend you give plenty of the guest passes to your students/parents...and ask them to place them in Trick or Treat bags on Halloween night. Plus, we suggest you distribute the passes at haunted houses or other Halloween related events in your community. Or, if you prefer direct response ...
Read More

Marketing your school involves many different strategies. According to GCI client, Master Bryan Zarnett, "An Internet-driven strategy uses social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and your website are the fundamental tactics in your marketing arsenal while other tactics such as referrals, promotional events and print advertising are second." His goal is to use the Internet to drive qualified students to e-mail or call for more information and/or an introductory lesson. In fact, he believes that one of the best tools for generating new student leads is Facebook advertising. In this excellent 10-page strategic report, Master Zarnett reveals the first half of ...
Read More

In this tip, Hersh suggests using "Shares" to encourage viral marketing for your school. He also suggests including a link to your fan page when updating your Personal Timeline Status. Click the link below to download the PDF and learn how it's done. Viral Marketing Series—Tip #2 ...
Read More

GCI member, Master Dusty Everson, operates a quality school in New Jersey that grosses approximately 700K per year.  Master Everson also has a knack for marketing. Plus, he's a giver, too. In fact, he has contributed this excellent Back to School ad to the GCI community for the benefit of all. With Master Everson's permission, you are welcome to model his ad...or modify it for your own school by reworking the editable Word file provided. To access the ad...simply click the link below. Thank you, Master Everson! Editable Back to School Ad ...
Read More

One of GCI's biggest advocates is Melody Shuman of On the Mat Martial Arts and Skillz Connect. Melody is an expert at hosting profitable birthday parties at her school in St. Petersburg, Florida. Many GCI clients have expressed an interest in learning a simple (yet effective) birthday party system that gets real results. That's why Melody graciously contributed this outstanding special report titled How to Host Successful Birthday Parties. In addition, Melody has has included a handy birthday party planner for you, which provides a two hour itinerary of suggested activities. Plus, an editable birthday party application. Now...there are a ...
Read More

Master Bryan Zarnett is a GCI client and martial arts school owner located in Canada. He has a knack for growing his school using Facebook. For the benefit of the entire GCI community, Master Zarnett graciously took the time to write this excellent, step-by-step, 9-page strategic report—coaching you on exactly how he does it. Read Master Zarnett's report and you'll learn how to advertise on Facebook to drive traffic to your school's website landing page, where you can get prospects happily involved with your trial offer. Here is a solid example of how sharing knowledge can help all GCI clients ...
Read More

In this tip, Hersh focuses on how to use "Likes" and "social plugins" to get your school's marketing to go viral. Click the link below to download the PDF. Viral Marketing Series—Tip #1 ...
Read More

This Mother's Day, make your students' moms smile with 30 days of complimentary lessons in any available programs at your school. Hand out these professionally designed flyers in class, or place them at your front counter. Or, run our display ads on your website, in your student newsletter, on Facebook or wherever else makes sense for you. Simply click the link below to download the campaign now. Download Link Click to Download the Mother's Day Campaign ...
Read More

Original "Game Changer," Mike Bidwell, has contributed this potent Spring Marketing Hit List for your benefit. Read his "fantabulous" report and you'll walk away with a gamut of low cost ideas for increasing income and generating new student leads at your school during spring. Mike covers: Birthday Parties with Pricing Suggestion Buddy Night Themes & Marketing Tips Internal Referral Contests & Prize Recommendations Monthly Springtime Events & Family Add-on Specials Academic School / Daycare Demos and Classes with Promotional Ideas We suspect you're fully aware of activities such as the aforementioned. However, Mike gives you many creative suggestions for enhancing ...
Read More

Are you wondering why marketing that used to work so well for you in the past, suddenly stopped drawing new student leads? If so, you're not alone. To understand why that can happen, you must read "The Success Formula"—an in-depth research report, custom-created by GCI marketing partner and advertising veteran, Jackie Wells Smith. According to Jackie, "In the martial arts industry, many of the marketing programs used by school owners are based on what has worked before, or the success formula model. A school owner does well and decides to sell his or her success formula to help other school ...
Read More

Many GCI client schools offer summer camps. Camps provide a helpful service to the parents in your community and they can be highly lucrative for your school! If you already offer summer camps (or if you're wanting to add this profit center to your school), you'll find these professionally created marketing materials very useful: Our Summer Spectacular Day Camp Campaign includes: A flyer for internal or external marketing A poster A sign up sheet Editable Microsoft Word files Simply click the link below to download the Zip file. Summer Spectacular Day Camp Campaign ...
Read More

Should You Friend Students? The decision to friend parents and students is a personal one. The pros for doing so is that you create a more personal relationship with them, can tag them in photos, build trust and a personal connection. For example, you can comment, give encouragement and interact with them on their personal status updates. The downside is that they can access your personal life and the information you put on your personal profile, which some school owners may not want. If you do friend students, parents or have most posts public you must act like a role ...
Read More

One of the most effective inter-school promotions you can do during the year involves giving one-month free holiday gift certificates to your students so they can, in turn, give them to their friends and family as stocking stuffers. GCI has provided you with a professionally designed gift certificate campaign including the certificates, a table tent, a flyer and a poster. It is all found in the artwork section of this site. Now, we’d like to give you some expert suggestions on how to IMPLEMENT what we’ve given you. In episode #4 of Mind Your Business, Mike “Secret Weapon” Bidwell gifts you ...
Read More

In Episode #3 of Mind Your Business, Mike “Secret Weapon” Bidwell gives you 16 low cost marketing ideas in under 8 minutes! This fast-paced video features valuable tips on how to market your school INEXPENSIVELY using: VIP passes for referrals Gift certificates for a month of lessons Road signs Free pizza parties Safety tips handout sheets at academic schools Martial arts programming for daycares during the holidays Holiday camps Refer a friend contests Free self-defense clinics Plus, Mike gives you a series of highly creative strategies that are designed to increase student interactions and lead generation on your school's website and ...
Read More

Are you looking for a virtually guaranteed way to add more students to your school? If you answered YES to that question, then this new Mind Your Business episode presented by "Game Changer" Mike Bidwell might just be the answer to your prayers. During this fast-paced, information-loaded, 12.5 minute segment—Mike teaches you exactly how to set up profitable after school programs in local academic schools. Best of all he shows you how to get the job done "grassroots-style"…which, of course, means on a shoestring budget. Watch and you'll discover an avalanche of strategies, tips and action-steps in four key areas: How to easily ...
Read More

< Introducing the debut episode of Mike Bidwell's exclusive "Mind Your Business" video series for GCI clients. To put it mildly, the "Secret Weapon" came out swinging and totally CRUSHED IT with this hard-hitting segment designed to help you make your post summer months a raging success. In summary, Mike gives you four powerful and proven action steps that will enable you to profit handsomely from the back to school AND fall seasons. His suggestions include: Various back to school seminar strategies with tips for optimizing these types of events. How to collect and donate school supplies. Then, how to ...
Read More

Mike "Secret Weapon" Bidwell has provided you with a proverbial gear bag full of clever ideas on how you can finish off your summertime marketing/lead generation/revenue creating efforts with a BANG! As he points out in the report, "Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start." Now if you've been running a school for awhile, some of these end-of-summer ideas may not be new to you. But hey...even champions need a reminder once in a while. Right? The question really is—do you have the discipline, desire and drive to IMPLEMENT what the "Secret Weapon" ...
Read More

Summertime can be one of the most profitable times of the year for martial arts school owners…if you plan it out properly and execute the correct strategy. This month, Mike "Secret Weapon" Bidwell went all out to help make this summer a HUGE WIN for you. For starters, Mike created an excellent strategic report that walks you through a step-by-step method for incorporating a "Summer Martial Arts Enrichment Program" into daycares, churches, academic schools or any other facility in your area offering camps for kids this summer. In the report, Mike gives you many valuable tips on scheduling the classes, ...
Read More

In Part 2 of Building Strategic Alliances, Mike Bidwell further reinforces the importance of mastering this powerful, but often underutilized concept. So if you'd like to discover how to create profitable alliances with like-minded people/organizations in your community...and make the most of school growth opportunities such as Cinco de Mayo and Mother's Day...then you must study and implement this new grassroots marketing report written by "The Secret Weapon." Click the link below to download the PDF. Building Strategic Alliances Part 2   ...
Read More

Game Changer" Mike Bidwell uses strategic alliances to his profit-packing advantage at his Tai Kai Martial Arts school in NY. It's just one of the many reasons why he maintains an active count of at least 400 students year round. In the following "grassroots" marketing report, Mike helps you understand the concept of creating strategic alliances and how to leverage these relationships to generate new leads for your school...just as he does. Click the link below to access the PDF. Building Strategic Alliances Part 1 ...
Read More

Mike "Secret Weapon" Bidwell has discovered several clever strategies for increasing student enrollments and retention using Facebook. Click the link below to dowload his latest PDF report and  learn how he does it. Making Facebook Work For You ...
Read More

In this meaty, end-of-the-year "grassroots" marketing report created by Mike Bidwell, "The Secret Weapon" gives you 15 important action steps to do PRIOR to the New Year. Implementing the strategies found in this report is a must for any GCI client who wants to finish the year off strong. End of Year Marketing Report ...
Read More

This outstanding Fall & Winter Marketing Campaign written by Mike "The Secret Weapon" Bidwell features six "grass roots" activities you can do to generate an avalanche of new student leads for your school. Click the link below to download the report PDF...and then IMPLEMENT, IMPLEMENT, IMPLEMENT! Winter Grass Roots Marketing Report ...
Read More

We created these handy VIP passes for you to use in conjunction with Mike Bidwell's Halloween marketing report found on this site. For your convenience, one of the files is editable. Simply click the links below to access them. October 2012 Halloween VIP Passes- Editable File October 2012 Halloween VIP Passes - PDF  ...
Read More

If you're wanting to make October a huge success at your school this year, then you must study this timely Halloween "grassroots" marketing report created by Mike Bidwell. Why? Because when it comes to Halloween marketing, "The Secret Weapon" knows virtually every TRICK in the book. In the following 10-page Marketing Campaign Special Report, you'll discover a wide range of simple, yet effective strategies for distributing your school's VIP passes to: Prospects via Your Current Students Daycares, Churches and Elementary Schools Local Businesses Grocery Stores Haunted Houses Halloween Stores Halloween Parties Inside the report, you'll also find a sample Halloween Party ...
Read More

GCI Client Chris Rappold of Personal Best Karate will feed approximately 2,000 families this year with his annual Turkey Brigade."How is this possible?" you wonder. Well, you now have the opportunity to find out. Mr. Rappold has graciously written the following "How to" report for you that comes complete with template letters and a press release that will allow you to model his wonderful example, if you wish to do so. According to Mr. Rappold, "The Personal Best Turkey Brigade is the centerpiece of our community outreach for the year. It has become, for our students, what Thanksgiving is all about. It has ...
Read More

Looking for a summertime ad that's getting proven results? GCI client Dusty Everson of Everson's Karate in New Jersey ran this ad in his local Clipper magazine. During the first week, the ad generated: 21 new leads 3  appointments 3 sign-ups Mr. Everson graciously sent GCI a PDF of his successful ad so that you...his fellow GCI clients...could model it. Thank you Mr. Everson! Summer 6 Weeks of Karate Ad - PDF ...
Read More

When you are part of GCI, you are part of a community. Along these lines, we strongly encourage ALL of our esteemed clients to share effective ideas with one another through the organization. That’s exactly what Master Bryan Zarnett just did by writing a valuable report called "Mapping for Marketing"…for the benefit of his fellow GCI clients. According to Master Zarnett, “Do you know where your customers live?  How about your “A” students? Do you know where are all your lawn signs are placed? What areas have you delivered your flyers and door hangers? Can you differentiate between the hand-dropped flyers ...
Read More

Your Vanity URL The vanity url lets people find your fan page easily. For example: http://facebook.com/webmation instead of something like facebook.com/pages/1202104920150125. Having a custom name makes it easier for prospects and students to type in the web browser and find you on Facebook. To setup your username visit http://facebook.com/usernameselect the page and follow the onscreen instructions. There are two thoughts on creating a vanity url: Have it short and consistent with your other branding Try to secure a url that has more SEO keyword value. Example: http://facebook.com/webmation is more branding but if we were trying to attract local web design business we might have our url ...
Read More

In this segment, Webmation CEO Hersh Sandhoo shares how to display your website url on your Facebook Timeline with a call to action to dramatically spike response rates. Note: if you have set your fan page category as a local business you will need to change it to the Company or Brand category. You still get the Google Map and Check-in capabilities just like a local business so you get more benefits by switching to the proper category ...
Read More

As Hersh Sandhoo explains, linking your school's Facebook fan page to your personal profile is an often overlooked way to market your school. Setting this up only requires a few simple clicks, which Hersh walks you through in the video above. Then, when you interact on websites and blogs—your title, company and fan page becomes visible to other visitors thereby allowing them to go straight to your school's Facebook fan page to learn more about what you do ...
Read More

Master Michael Dinoto spent nearly a year researching, testing, tweaking and implementing (with impressive results) the Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) program offered by the USPS and he now has it down to a science. In this outstanding webinar, Master Dinoto teaches you exactly what to do, what NOT to do, and how to do it. He shares his actual numbers and explains how he PROFITS handsomely using the EDDM system. (BTW— On a typical month he enrolls an extra 5 students worth $1,594 EACH, while spending less than a grand.) Master Dinoto's presentation could save you a fortune. It ...
Read More

From Hersh Sandhoo (Webmation CEO) Webmation founder, Hersh Sandhoo, is a wizard when it comes to using social media. In this special report for GCI members, Hersh reveals a variety of inexpensive ways to promote your school, build your prospect list and engage your students. Click to download the pdf ...
Read More

Jimmy Mack is an authority when it comes to placing rack card holders and lead boxes in local businesses. To help your school generate more new students FAST, Master Mack has given his precious Lead Pro Manual and DVD to all new GCI clients—though he normally sells it for $299. Implement his proven strategies and watch a boatload of new leads—and students—come sailing in! Lead Pro Marketing Manual ...
Read More

Looking for a proven effective way to add students to your school in the New Year? Then, this holiday season, give each of your current students one or two high-quality gift certificates to give as gifts to their friends and family. Below, you will find a professionally created artwork campaign consisting of: A Holiday Gift Certificate A Gift Certificate Table Tent A Gift Certificate Flyer A Gift Certificate Poster We strongly encourage you to add your school's logo where indicated and put these valuable marketing materials to good use beginning in late November. Gift certificates..they're the perfect stocking stuffers! Gift Certificate—Zipped Folder Poster—Zipped Folder ...
Read More

GCI has created another awesome marketing campaign to make your life easier! This bright, energetic, professionally designed artwork is perfect for any school that offers martial arts fitness training, or wants to attract more adult students. The campaign is ideal for marketing in the beginning of the New Year…or any time of year for that matter. It consists of: A Guest Pass (4-out from a letter-size sheet; 2-sides; edit side 2 with your offer) A Flyer (Can be used as a handout or small poster.) A Large Poster (24 x 36” with bleed; add your logo and contact info to the PDF file. Use ...
Read More