Why High-Volume Flyers Still Work (When You Get Enough Out)

Every so often an owner tells me flyers “don’t work.” And almost every time, the real problem isn’t the flyer—it’s the volume. Flyers, door hangers, windshield notes, door-to-door drops: they all work, and they’ve always worked. But they work on the law of large numbers, and most owners quit at 500 flyers and decide the whole channel is dead. Let me reset your expectations, because this is some of the cheapest, most reliable marketing there is.

My favorite format: the Post-it on the car window

The version I like best—and I stole this from Dr. Greg Moody—is a Post-it note, that size or a little bigger, stuck right on the driver’s window. We’ve also done hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of two-sided 8.5×11 flyers under the windshield wiper. Both work, but I like the Post-it a lot better. (Just make sure you don’t have a 12-year-old scraping a belt buckle down somebody’s Ferrari. That would be bad.) Here’s how I’d run it: you always have assistants in every class. When a class is light—five students and five assistants instead of 25—four of those assistants are out putting notes on cars in the Target parking lot. Do it aggressively enough that you’re half-expecting the annoyed call from property management. Then you apologize, wait a few months, and do it again.

Everything has a low return rate—that’s not the point

People get hung up on the low response rate of flyers. But here’s the thing—most things have a low return rate. I go to a live event with 5,000 people and I get a hundred appointments. That’s a tiny percentage; there are 4,900 people I never even talked to. And that’s fine, because I got it out in enough volume. Flyers are the same. They’re cheap, they’re easy, and they convert at a low rate that becomes a lot of students when the volume is high enough. We’d have days where we put out 5,000 flyers and got zero calls, and another day we’d put out 2,000 and get five calls. High-volume, labor-intensive, and absolutely worthwhile.

The 100,000-flyer lesson

The story I’ve told a hundred times: I was at one of YK Kim’s events, talking with a very nice Korean gentleman from Chicago who mentioned he was doing 50 enrollments a month. Nobody had bothered to ask him how. So I asked, “What are you doing to get 50 enrollments a month?” He said, “Oh, we just do flyers.” I asked to see the flyer—it was nothing special. So I asked how many he put out a month. He said, “Oh, a hundred thousand.” A hundred thousand flyers, every single month. Of course that works. Domino’s Pizza was built on door hangers and flyers in the dorms around colleges. Volume is the whole secret.

How I built my first schools

When I opened in Denver, the first momentum I got—100 students in the first month, 200 in the first 90 days—came in part from going door to door with masking tape and 8.5×11 flyers, putting them right on people’s doors. I had a satellite map, and every neighborhood I’d mark yellow, then green, then red, then blue, so I knew I’d hit that neighborhood once, twice, three times, four times. At my very first school I was putting flyers under every door in the big apartment complex behind us—until I annoyed the property management so much that they started putting my flyer in their monthly newsletter instead of making me slide it under the doors. That saved me time and made them happy. You just have to get a ton of them out. Don’t order 500, stick them on car doors, and conclude flyers don’t work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do flyers still work for martial arts schools?

Yes—in volume. Door hangers, windshield Post-it notes, and door-to-door drops all work when you distribute thousands, not hundreds. The response rate is low, but so is every channel’s; volume is what makes it pay.

How many flyers do I need to put out?

Think thousands per week, not hundreds. One school did 50 enrollments a month on 100,000 flyers monthly. Track your neighborhoods so you cover and re-cover them systematically.

What’s the best flyer format?

A Post-it-style note on the driver’s window is my favorite. Two-sided 8.5×11 flyers under the wiper or on the front door also work well. The format matters less than the volume and the consistency.

About the Author

Stephen Oliver, MBA and 10th Degree Black Belt, is the Founder and CEO of Mile High Karate and Martial Arts Wealth Mastery, CEO of NAPMA (the National Association of Professional Martial Artists), and Publisher of Martial Arts Professional magazine. A martial arts school owner since 1975, Stephen and his coaching team — including Grandmaster Jeff Smith and Dr. Greg Moody — have helped school owners across the country build $1M+ schools.

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