What are your typical advertising costs per month? What have you found the most success with (other than word of mouth)?
Do you use AdWords? SEO?
In 
The thing to remember is most people will not drive a far distance to come train at your school unless you are someone like the Mendes brothers or Roger Gracie so trying to advertise in areas too far from your school is useless. Trying to market in your general area is the key thing.
I do not use SEO or other costly stuff. As long as I am on the top page in the search engines in my area I am good to go. Also word of mouth is very important so treat your students right and not be a fucking thief by selling shit they do not need or over pricing equipment.
Also Facebook is good too and free. The key thing is to have lots of Facebook friends on your school page that reside in your area and to always post things related to your school on a daily basis. This way their friends and family see what you post about the school.
Kids classes is where you will make a good portion of your money so make sure you have a great kids program. Kid last longer in Jiu-Jitsu than adults.
Adwords is awesome. SEO is mostly witch craft now a days and a waste. You should just do the seo basics of site design and promote your site to reach people and the rest will works itself out. Its not 2001 anymore you can't game google very effeciently.
Ernest Estrada -
The thing to remember is most people will not drive a far distance to come train at your school unless you are someone like the Mendes brothers or Roger Gracie so trying to advertise in areas too far from your school is useless. Trying to market in your general area is the key thing.
I do not use SEO or other costly stuff. As long as I am on the top page in the search engines in my area I am good to go. Also word of mouth is very important so treat your students right and not be a fucking thief by selling shit they do not need or over pricing equipment.
Also Facebook is good too and free. The key thing is to have lots of Facebook friends on your school page that reside in your area and to always post things related to your school on a daily basis. This way their friends and family see what you post about the school.
Kids classes is where you will make a good portion of your money so make sure you have a great kids program. Kid last longer in Jiu-Jitsu than adults.
Great feedback! How do ensure that you are at the top page in search engines in your area? AdWords? Do you pay for those services?
Make a google+ page for your gym. Get reviews, that helps a lot. List your gym in as many online directories as you can with links to your site. Have a site map. Google search for your gym on different devices and have others do the same. I don't know if that's all concrete or not, but it worked for us. Took a month or two but we're approaching the top of the front page and just recently got a pin on google maps in our area. Don't know how that works...
Reviews. On Google, yelp, etc... Word of mouth is key. 
Ernest Estrada -
The thing to remember is most people will not drive a far distance to come train at your school unless you are someone like the Mendes brothers or Roger Gracie so trying to advertise in areas too far from your school is useless. Trying to market in your general area is the key thing.
I do not use SEO or other costly stuff. As long as I am on the top page in the search engines in my area I am good to go. Also word of mouth is very important so treat your students right and not be a fucking thief by selling shit they do not need or over pricing equipment.
Also Facebook is good too and free. The key thing is to have lots of Facebook friends on your school page that reside in your area and to always post things related to your school on a daily basis. This way their friends and family see what you post about the school.
Kids classes is where you will make a good portion of your money so make sure you have a great kids program. Kid last longer in Jiu-Jitsu than adults.
I used to be a five mile radius
Depends on the city.
SEO is like entering a BJJ tourney. It's all relative to your competition.
You can enter a small tourney and win easy, enter the worlds and you're in for a world of difference.
If your competitors have their SEO on point your are going to have to be on your toes.
If you are in a big city you're going to have a lot tougher time ranking as opposed to somebody in a small town.
Tbh sticking to good SEO best practices, getting up all of your local listings, directories, social sites, reviews, natural link building and maintaining a BLOG are all you need once your infrastructure is set up.
For our industry of martial arts it's not necessary to use black hat tactics and try to Game Google. Trying to to cheat the search engines is probably the worst thing you can do.
I'm very proud of the video that pops up when you google "kids jiu jitsu classes in Los Angeles" lol
Lots of good free resources to learn SEO out there. My two cents is to educate yourself or speak to someone who knows SEO for local businesses.
DO NOT hire these companies that solicit your school. They are full of BS and "parlour style magic SEO".
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SELVABJJ - Depends on the city.
SEO is like entering a BJJ tourney. It's all relative to your competition.
You can enter a small tourney and win easy, enter the worlds and you're in for a world of difference.
If your competitors have their SEO on point your are going to have to be on your toes.
If you are in a big city you're going to have a lot tougher time ranking as opposed to somebody in a small town.
Tbh sticking to good SEO best practices, getting up all of your local listings, directories, social sites, reviews, natural link building and maintaining a BLOG are all you need once your infrastructure is set up.
For our industry of martial arts it's not necessary to use black hat tactics and try to Game Google. Trying to to cheat the search engines is probably the worst thing you can do.
I'm very proud of the video that pops up when you google "kids jiu jitsu classes in Los Angeles" lol
Lots of good free resources to learn SEO out there. My two cents is to educate yourself or speak to someone who knows SEO for local businesses.
DO NOT hire these companies that solicit your school. They are full of BS and "parlour style magic SEO".
That last line esp... I used to be heavily in the internet marketing community from 2000 to around 2007 or so. The good ones don't need to call you.
SEO is a must, follow best practices but to nothing is suicide