Selling the benefits of martial arts to ‘older’ students
Over the past few decades, we have seen a significant shift in the demographics of martial arts students.
When I (Callum) started training over 40 years ago, most of us were young men with a scattering of young women. Most martial arts schools did not accept children, and there were only a handful of students over 40. Nowadays, we see schools with 95% of their membership or more consisting of children under 12 years old.
Adults in their late teens and through to their 30s are training more in MMA or a sports martial art style than in a traditional style, but we are seeing more people over 40 starting to learn martial arts. If you run an MMA school or more of a sports-based style, we will cover retaining students past their competitive prime in a future article.
In our school, our target market is the 40-plus age group. And they make up about 25% of our membership. There is an excellent case to be made to target these people. Older adults are more settled in their careers, their children are of an age where they are less dependent on them, they have most likely settled in your area and are unlikely to move, and finally, they want to maintain their health and fitness for as long as they can.
The reasons why people should train in martial arts after the age when most people have given up on other physical sports and activities are:
- maintain or improve physical fitness
- maintain or improve functional mobility
- lose weight or change BMI
- reduce stress
- maintain or build self-confidence
- learn self-defence
- socialise and network with like-minded people
There are many other benefits that I have missed as well. These can be used in a newsletter flier or social media when targeting this group in the public domain.
But the best place to find these people is your wider membership, especially if you train children. We have a large group of children (40% of our membership), and the best way to gain new members in our target market is to target their parents, as they already know you and like what you are doing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have enrolled their children in the first place!
Getting these people onto the mats can be challenging as they probably haven’t done any organised sport or other activity for a while and are self-conscious about it. These people can be gently eased into training by inviting them to join a simple warm-up at the back of a class – particularly a small informal class and asking them to train at their own pace. You can then invite them to join in some light pad work and teach them some basic self-defence.
This process will gently bring them into training and build their confidence. We do not try to get them to join as members; instead, we let them decide for themselves. Quite a few do, and about half of our 40-plus group and many of our black belts came from the ranks of the parents (in fact, most of our CMAS Team started their martial arts journey as parents watching their kids train!).
Whatever your target market, another way to attract new members is to simply ask members in your target group to bring a friend. If the friend signs up, you can offer a small reward, such as a month’s free training or a voucher.