Simple Tips for Hosting a Successful Parent’s Night Out

Parent’s Night Out is a great way for martial arts schools to increase revenue, increase word of mouth about their school and encourage parents to stop in more often. Essentially, it’s a night of babysitting in a location that parents trust, allowing kids to have a great time and engage in plenty of fun activities while their parents get a night to themselves.

If you’re planning a Parent’s Night Out event for your martial arts school, make sure that you take these simple steps into consideration to ensure you’ll have a successful event.

Pricing

What are you going to charge for the time the kids are with you? Are you going to offer specials for current students, or will current students and new attendees have the same price? You may also consider offering a discount for current students who bring friends to the event.

Marketing

How are you planning to get the word out about this event? The goal of a Parent’s Night Out isn’t just to have fun with your existing students, though that’s certainly a bonus. It’s also to raise awareness of your martial arts school and bring in new students. Consider these marketing opportunities:

• Spread the word on social media. You can offer discounts to students and their parents who help you spread the word. Consider offering a free child enrollment to a random parent who shares the word on social media.
• Provide existing students with flyers or cards sharing more information about the event so that they can spread the word to their friends. By printing these on business cards, students can give them to their friends to redeem for discounted admission.
• Make sure you have signs and other information about the event inside the school so that current students and their parents can discover everything they need to know about the event.
• Promote this in your newsletter to current students, as well as in an email to prospective students. Consider including an offer that if they mention the email, they can receive a discount on their admission.

Activities

What are you planning to enjoy during the event? Since you’ll have new students attending the event, you might not want to dive in with sparring or grappling. You may, however, consider offering demonstrations, especially for older students.

What other activities will be part of your Parent’s Night Out event? Try to keep them martial arts themed, such as making homemade nunchucks out of toilet paper rolls or playing the Karate Kid or 3 Ninjas, in order to get your students interested in and excited about martial arts.

Staffing

You need to be sure that you’ll have enough staff on hand to handle the event no matter how many kids show up. Make sure that you’ve brought in plenty of staff members and older students to handle all of the activities you have planned.

If this is your first event, always err on the side of having too many staff members on hand. While it may cut into your profits a little, too many kids and not enough staff members can quickly lead to chaos.

Introductory Specials

With any luck, your event will bring plenty of new students into your school. If they come to the school as a result of the event, will you be offering an introductory promotion? This could include things like a free first class or a discounted gi if they attended a Parent’s Night Out before their first class.

Parent’s Night Out is a great way to raise interest in your school and increase your revenue. The more you can spread word about your school and introduce students to a fun, exciting environment, the more likely they are to fall in love with your school and your art. By following these tips, you can raise the odds of a successful promotion.

Looking for additional ways to drive new students to your school? Get your copy of our free eBook, An Insider’s Guide to Student Recruitment.