Back-to-school season is a great time to hold an open house. But… people generally don’t get too excited about a “open house”.

So we never call one that. That’s “internal language”.

We through an Easter Egg Hunt in the spring and an Anniversary BBQ in the fall. And we max out registrations on both in no time.

A successful “open house” should bring in 100’s of leads, dozens of paid trials, reactivate some old members, and if you want to, some paid in full memberships.

They are free events, but we do require registration to keep our capacity under control. And we do want that contact info as well.

The Fall BBQ / Open House serves a few purposes:

• Builds community, this is big. Community fuels retention.
• Brings back the summer freezes. No one wants to miss a big party, so we get them all back right as summer comes to an end.
• Brings in referrals. We encourage members to bring friends, family, etc.
• Brings in new members. We invite everyone on all of our lists first. Members, former members, trials, leads, birthday party attendees… Lots of people that thought about it or experienced us at some point but weren’t ready to sign up then, but September is a great time for it.
• Gets us noticed. You can’t miss us, there is music playing, giant inflatable bouncers, everyone is outside as well as in the building. Lots of photo ops for people to post on social media. 

What we market it as is a free anniversary BBQ or a back-to-school BBQ.

We have multiple bounce castles, We rent a giant grill and buy 1000 hot dogs. We have a cotton dandy machine spinning (this year we are going to need 2 machines), drinks, chips, etc.

They play games in the gym, we do quick martial arts lessons with any new kids. Our students do some demos.

All free, but they have to register.

We raffle off some prizes. Including getting to soak their coaches with ice water in the dunk tower.

It’s an open house, but one no one will want to miss 🙂

Events are by far the best ROI on “ad spend” we ever get. Whether it’s big free community events, birthday parties, tents at festivals or anything else. The most important thing is being a part of the community that everyone sees.

The Kids Jiu-jitsu program is the only program designed to help grow your kids program and make your school explode. Book a free discovery call to see if we are the right fit for your school: https://app.calendarbridge.com/book/fQB4gaf