Martial Arts Australia News page 3
Flat Economy = Flat Wallet or Flat out Working? NEWS 1 - NEWS 2

When the economy is down do you accept a drop in membership?
When the cost of living goes up (home loan rate, petrol, utilities, food etc) the majority of people cut back on their purchases and this will effect discretionary spending. Martial arts for many people fits into the category of discretionary spending which means a percentage of your students will drop off and there will be less new enrolments when money gets tight.

What we all need to do is change that mindset so your students and the public perceive martial arts as a vital part of their lifestyle and don’t want to give it up. For many we are seen as a sport and it might be said that we are in completion with other sports / recreational activities and therefore have to share what little money families allocate for their discretionary spending.

We know training in martial arts has more benefits than other activities but what are we selling?
We have some ideas below but would like to hear your thoughts and suggestions so we can put together a strategy to keep our industry moving. This strategy will consist of a number of things that will assist us in telling the nation why it is important to maintain training in martial arts or why now is a good time to take up training.

How this can be done is by focusing on the following benefits:
*Health benefits
*Educational benefits
*Motivational benefits
*Self defence / self preservation benefits

Health benefits – main focus
*Greater fitness equals more energy to do the things you want to do each day
*Reducing weight to fight obesity and diabetes which is growing in our society
*Increased circulation is good for the heart especially because we all do far too much sitting down
*Reduces stress which is another major killer
*Develops more body awareness so people are more in balance both physically and mentally

Educational benefits – main focus
*Develops greater focus, discipline, determination, stamina, and the ability to multi task.
*Martial Arts trained bodies have better circulation and the ability to more easily sit and study for longer periods therefore getting better marks at school.

Motivational benefits – main focus
*Develops greater confidence, self-esteem and the drive to give something a go and follow it through until it is completed.
*The ability to see positive things where others don’t

Self defence / self preservation benefits – main focus
*The ability to heighten ones awareness to sense and avoid conflict
*Feeling empowered to live without fear
*The ability to protect themselves and loved ones in the event of an attack

So what can you add to these benefits?
Your contribution is your pen to paper and ours is to use our team to put the best marketing tools together and launch a campaign to attract more people into all martial arts styles. Our delivery method has been expanding as new technology is released and our capacity to reach more people has been growing because of increased revenue from your memberships.

As many of you are aware Martial Arts Australia has a multi-media arm that allows us to reach millions of people through our website traffic, TV Channels (free to air, pay tv, mobile tv and on dvd), direct mailing, e-News broadcasts, SMS casting and linking with other media outlets. We still require your continued support in membership fees and we guarantee we will search the best ways to continuously blast out the benefits of martial arts to the public and drive people into your schools.

Is your membership due?  Not a member join now!
Free Advertising for Events- Feel free to submit any event in a MS Word / PDF and we will upload it to our website which receives loads of traffic per month. We are also happy to post your event wrap ups / news report so people can see what they missed.

FEED BACK It would be great to hear your thoughts on how you feel MAA’s service is going. We are constantly
introducing new services but is it enough or are they the right ones for you. Do we fall down in any areas and where can we improve. Please take the time out to drop us an email with your thoughts so we can keep improving our services. Please Download our Survey and return it to claim your FREE Martial Arts Action DVD