Doing Demos That Count
My kids are on a demo team for tae kwon do, which means that they perform tae kwon do demonstrations in our local area. Usually they demo, along with their teammates, at local area businesses, clubs, etc. As a parent, I’ve encouraged the kids to perform demonstrations because I think it helps them with their confidence and forces them to perfect their techniques. After all, if they can perform in front of thousands of strangers at a tae kwon do tournament (which they have), they certainly have enough confidence to do a lot of things that are outside most people’s confort zones (which they do).
As a business owner and marketer, I totally understand why the demo team exists… to solicite new members to our dojang!
It’s a sound marketing strategy, in theory, but something happened over the weekend that really got me to thinking about the whole thing.
Our family got hornswaggled into performing a smaller demonstration at a place called “Crane House.” We were asked as a special favor to our Grand Master, told there would be a lot of performers in addition to our own Korean Demo Team, promised that it would only last an hour, and assured that it would be a great cultural experience for the kids. Okay, we’ll do it!
Now, you need to understand two things…
- It’s an hour for us to get to town roundtrip because we live in the country.
- We already know that our Grand Master tends to exaggerate from time to time.
So, we got all gussied up in our finest dobaks on a Sunday afternoon, piled into the demo team van, and drove to the “Crane House.”
I should have realized what a lark the whole thing was going to be when the “Crane House” turned out to be a small conference room at a small public library… but that’s okay, maybe there’s going to be a lot of people there. After all, there were supposed to be several other cultural demonstrations.
We arrived at the library about a half an hour early in order to set up our display, run through what each of us was going to demonstrate, and introduce ourselves to the other demonstrators. As I watched the clock waiting for the croud to start filtering in, the other demonstrators arrived… an accupuncturist, tai chi master, karate demo team (three people), someone from Kroger doing free blood pressure screening, and a Turkistani dance group (who were very interesting, btw).
Two o’clock… time for use to do our demo (we were the first demonstration).
No one, apart from the other demonstrators, was at this little gathering… no one. In fact, there were no kids — tae kwon do’s target market — at the function.
No one signed up for a trial lesson or even looked interested in tae kwon do. It was a complete waste of time… and my Sunday afternoon! In fact, we had to stay for all the demonstrations (it would have been rude to get up and leave), so the whole endeavor took a whopping five hours (including driving time)!
Do I sound bitter?
Okay, maybe a little flabbergasted. Why would our dojang even bother to do this kind of demonstrations?
- It makes our dojang look like it’s hard up for cash if we do these go-nowhere type demos in the community. That’s not good for business at all, in my opinion.
- Tiny demos like this just burn out the demo team so that they won’t want to participate in the bigger demos.
- Doing demonstrations for elementary school assemblies, scouts, day cares, children’s fairs, etc. would be a much better use of the dojang’s time and resources.
What does all this have to do with you?
Okay, I realize that this was a pretty long story to use just to illustrate my point… but here it is.
Know your target audience!
Yep, that’s it!
If you do demonstrations in the community, don’t waste your time doing demos for people who really aren’t interested in what you’re selling. It will be complete waste of your time and resources.
If my Grand Master truly understood his target audience, where he can find them, and how he can reach them, then he wouldn’t have set up a demonstration like the one I described above.
You may be asking yourself at this point why I didn’t explain all this to my Grand Master… two reasons:
- His culture and background wouldn’t have allowed him to take business advice from a woman… his loss.
- He didn’t ask. I never give unsolicited business advice to friends and family… our dojang is very much like a family.
There’s one thing I can tell you for sure… our family will never do another one of these small demos again!
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The target market is very crucial in marketing but we dont get it right all the time.