4 visibility tactics for businesses in low-traffic areas
Nomad Krav Maga is a self-defense and mixed martial arts studio located in Las Vegas, and what better place? It’s the headquarters of the UFC and one of the nation’s top police departments in defense tactics. However, owner Shane Langwell has a challenge that goes beyond how well-suited the city is for his craft: getting new business. Nomad is located in a strip mall about a 20-minute drive away from the bustling Vegas Strip, and foot traffic is significantly lower than city center, making it even more important for him to effectively market his business to prospective customers.
“You’ve got to think about how [customers] are finding us and make sure you’re available for them to find you. You want to think about the process from them coming into your door for the first time. What needs to happen for them to actually come into the door for the first time? Then if they do come into the door for the first time, what’s going to be their ideal experience for you as the business owner and for them as the customer?”
Below, learn how Shane gets feet both in the door and on the mat in a low foot traffic area with high competition.
1. Your city is your superpower
Know your city’s history and what makes it iconic. You’re more likely to get noticed if you can highlight both your contributions to your city and your city’s contributions to your industry.
“At its heart, [Krav Maga is] a self-defense system that takes the best of all the martial arts and only puts in what’s necessary to teach people, from all walks of lives, how to defend themselves. But what we’ve done with Nomad Krav Maga is taking that next level further to where we’re really in the modern age.
“Being headquartered in Las Vegas, which is the headquarters of the UFC, there’s so much mixed martial arts going on—Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu fighters at the highest level. We’ve brought them into our gym. We’ve brought law enforcement specialists into our gym because the Las Vegas Metro PD are always top of their class nationwide in defensive tactics. As the owner, I am always training and being a student; I [learn] from all those sources. The traditional Krav Maga, mixed martial arts, jujitsu, bringing in UFC fighters—we take all that and put it together so that we’re having the most well rounded and modernized version of Krav Maga.”
2. Make your business name count
When someone searches for your primary product or service, ask yourself if your business name is guiding customers your way. If it’s not, someone might walk right past it.
“When people find us with Nomad Krav Maga, it’s something they’ve wanted to do for a long time. A lot of people actually do know Krav Maga. It’s very popular, or they know of the idea. So the people that know about the style of Krav Maga will search for us specifically. But for anybody that’s just looking for self defense in general, they’re most likely going to search ‘self defense.’ For us, [it’s about] just being synonymous with the words ‘self defense’ in everything that we say and everything that we market.”
3. Get more business when you cover more ground
Host events outside your flagship location to expand your reach while building community, and don’t forget to bring your customers with you.
“We’re always making sure [clients] have something interesting to do and there are also fun things to do outside the gym. We do monthly events to make sure that they’re able to meet outside the gym. And it’s not just something that they see inside this one building. It’s like, let’s go out into the community, support other businesses, as well as go out into nature, go hiking, and get some fresh air. We do all that stuff to make sure that we’re really fostering a community of people that are like-minded as far as what goals they’re trying to achieve—fitness, self defense—while also making sure they feel supported every step of the journey.”
4. Give your community something to talk about
Word-of-mouth recommendations can quickly gain momentum, turning low-traffic business locations into the talk of the town. In other words, that 5-star rating can go a long way.
“ Our overall approach on reviews is we just let them happen. However, they’re going to happen based on what experience this person has had… and how do we get good reviews? We really focus on our client experience. We make sure we do our very best every day in every aspect of the business to do everything that should deserve five stars.
“If you focus just on your processes and your delivery of your service or product to your customers and you always try to deliver the very best, you will find yourself getting predominantly 5-star reviews… we don’t do anything at all focusing on [getting] reviews; we just focus on delivering the best classes we can, making sure everybody feels like they’re walking into a family whenever they walk into the gym, making sure we care about every single member there. And then the 5-star reviews just happen.”
These lessons come from an episode of Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear from Shane, or visit the show homepage to learn about the show and find more episodes.