Your Yearly Playbook: 9 Martial Arts Promotions That Convert

You're probably reactive when it comes to marketing—most of us are. You scramble to throw something together right before back-to-school season hits—or you're tweaking it while signups are already happening, missing the wave when parents are actually looking.

Key Takeaways

• Shift to Proactive Marketing: Move from reactive planning to a structured yearly calendar to capture seasonal momentum.
• Leverage Seasonal Events: Utilize high-traffic periods like Back-to-School and New Years with specific, time-limited offers.
• Implement Evergreen Promos: Maintain consistent growth between seasons with standard, cost-effective signup incentives.
• Maximize Referrals: Use "Bring-a-Friend" events and reward systems to turn current students into lead generators.
• Funnel Strategy: Structure short-term courses (like self-defense or boot camps) to transition prospects into long-term members.

The antidote to this is two simple steps:

1. Use a core set of battle-tested promotion types
2. Put together a marketing calendar that clearly shows what promotions to run during the year, and when

This gives you a plan you can actually follow—so you're not up at night wondering what to do next to grow your martial arts school.

Below you’ll find nine proven types of promotions and how to design them for maximum effectiveness:

Kids Programs

Back-to-school specials

This is the bread and butter of kids' program promotions. Back-to-school specials are fairly well-established, but they still require some know-how to execute effectively. Pair one or more of these items with a membership signup:

• Free uniform and/or gear
• Reduced or waived signup fee
• Free or reduced-cost month of lessons
• School supplies raffle

Sure, advertise your back-to-school special everywhere. But the real win is partnering with local schools to get flyers in kids' hands and emails to parents.

Pizza parties & birthdays

Many instructors don’t like hosting pizza parties and birthdays, but these events are popular and cost-effective ways to introduce kids to your school.

Pizza parties work great as raffle prizes at events. Birthday parties? Your current members' parents will book most of them—though you'll get some from families who aren't training with you yet.

Occasionally, you’ll get parents who want to sign up straight from the party. But the trick is to gather contact info through your liability waivers and send kids home with something that reminds them of the fun—a sticker, a temporary tattoo, whatever fits your school.

That way, you can follow up with attendees right after the party, when they’re still excited about what they experienced. Don’t let these leads grow cold.

Bring-a-friend & parent referrals

Bring-a-friend promotions come in many forms, including day, week, and even month-long events. You provide free lessons in exchange for kids and their parents inviting friends to take advantage of the deal.

Once they see what you do, parents are way more likely to sign their kids up. Just ask.

Parents will talk to other parents about you—if your classes are great. Run classes that make the kids laugh and walk away with smiles on their faces, and parents will notice. Sweeten the deal—cool uniforms for both kids when a friend signs up, or nunchucks, or whatever makes sense for your school—and you've got referrals that actually work.

Evergreen promos

An evergreen promo is your default offer—what you run when you're not doing something seasonal. It looks more appealing than “just sign up,” but it will often cost you less than the big seasonal promotions in terms of free items or services offered.

At one school I worked at, we offered two free lessons and a free uniform year-round. Worked great—over 80% of people who walked in for a trial ended up signing up.

We advertised this at events, on social media, and through traditional marketing collateral around town.

Adult Programs

Intro self-defense course

Self-defense and personal safety are consistently hot topics.

Scary events close to home, or that make it to national news, renew local interest in personal protection skills throughout the year. For this reason, a basic self-defense course is an excellent way to get people through the door and promote your regular martial arts training programs.

The finite length of these courses helps encourage people to sign up, but your instruction and culture are what convince them to stay and sign up for regular lessons.

Self-defense courses can be as short as one two-hour workshop and as long as six weeks or more. You can even sequence these events like a funnel that moves prospects from a low-investment course (such as a seminar) to a higher-investment course (multiple weeks) to an ongoing membership.

Fitness bootcamp (boxing, kickboxing, MMA, or self-defense)

Following a similar logic to self-defense courses, fitness boot camps are a great way to get people through the door for a short-term experience at your school. Unlike self-defense courses, boot camps are all about getting people in shape—cardio, strength, the works.

You can run fitness boot camps with different styles without turning them into full martial arts classes.

You can run fitness circuits that incorporate boxing moves, kickboxing, MMA, or self-defense movements, mixed with calisthenics and bag and pad work.

To learn more about how to design, promote, and profit from boot camps in your martial arts business, check out our Gym Heroes episode with FitBody CEO Bryce Henson.

New Year’s specials

New Year's is huge for gyms and martial arts schools—people want to get in shape, and you should be ready for them. New Year's specials should be similar to your year-round offerings, but with an added element that makes them feel special.

Consider adding "razzle" with offers such as:

• Cheaper membership discounts
• Extended membership duration
• Limited edition training equipment not available year-round

Here's a smart move: promote New Year's specials as gifts during the holidays. You'll reach people who aren't actively looking for martial arts classes yet—they're just trying to find a good gift.

Adult student referrals

This works because people trust their friends. Teach great classes, treat your students right, then make it worth their while to bring friends in—perks for both when someone signs up.

Gymdesk’s software lets you automatically apply temporary tuition discounts when a referral signup is confirmed—saving you time and making the process seamless.

Or, you can offer pro shop discounts or free swag. You've got options here—just pick perks you can actually afford if a bunch of referrals come in at once.

For more information on developing an effective system, check out our article on building referral programs.

Evergreen adult promos

Like with the children’s program, your year-round adult offer just needs to cover the basics—whatever gear and uniform they need to start training. Nothing fancy required.

If you run a kickboxing program, for example, a strong evergreen promo would be a free set of 16 oz boxing gloves, wraps, and a school t-shirt on signup.

That covers everything a new kickboxer needs to get started—and they don't pay extra for it. It works because the first month's tuition covers the cost of the gear.

Conclusion

Look, putting together promotions doesn't have to stress you out. With these nine promotions, you've got everything you need—no more reinventing the wheel every season.

Map out your year—what promotion runs when. Update your ads and social posts a few weeks before each season hits. Do this, and marketing gets way easier.

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