How to choose a martial arts school marketing agency: pass the safeguarding gate before you judge the leads

Illustrative example: it is Tuesday evening and the juniors' class has just finished. The agency has emailed a proposed Instagram ad built on a photograph of a seven-year-old mid-kick, taken at last month's grading. You cannot remember whether that child's parent signed a photo form, and nobody at the agency has asked.

What this reveals is a problem with the order of the questions. Enquiries and cost per lead arrive in a dashboard every week, while consent, copy and image handling arrive nowhere, so nobody scores them until a parent complains.

Part one: the pass or fail gate

Treat each check below as a yes or no; one fail stops the process, however good the lead numbers look. A written agreement alone is not enough: a pass needs the working document behind it, such as a consent tracker, a storage folder's access settings or the record of an image taken down on request, from another client's account, anonymised. An agency new to children's classes may instead set those documents up for your school and rehearse the process with you before any filming. NSPCC Sport's photography guidance asks a club to consider whether it has robust contracts or agreements in place with commissioned photographers, videographers or marketing agencies, which is the job these checks do. The NSPCC checks are UK good practice, not law; a martial arts studio in the US can apply the same tests, with check 6 covering the main federal rule.

1. Image terms and storage. NSPCC Sport says that when a club uses a professional photographer or filming service, the contracting process should agree who will own the images, who will have access to them and for how long they will be retained and used. Put those terms in the agency contract. Add the areas where no filming may happen, which the same guidance lists as toilets, changing areas and first aid areas. Ask where the agency stores the files, because the guidance sends storage questions to the Information Commissioner's Office, which provides guidance on data protection and data storage. It passes when the agency shows you the folder, who can open it and when each file is due for deletion, and fails if usage rights are left open-ended.

2. Consent and supervision on the day. On age, the guidance sets the line at 16: below it, a parent or carer gives consent, and does so before anyone takes a photo or video. It adds that a child over 16 who clearly understands the request may give their own consent. The school collects the forms, and the agency works from your list. Ask how its crew will tell which children have no consent, because the guidance says to inform the photographer how to identify children who don't have consent. For a commissioned photographer the same guidance says to issue identification to be worn at all times and to not allow unsupervised or one-to-one access to children and young people. The evidence is a past shot list checked against a consent list before filming, with the visitor named and a coach present throughout, or for a newcomer the same steps run in a supervised rehearsal.

3. Withdrawal and takedown. NSPCC Sport guidance says a child or parent can give or decline consent at any time and their wishes should be honoured, regardless of previous consents. The same page warns that once an image has been used online or in print, it will be very difficult to recall it if consent is withdrawn. Your approval of every asset showing a child, and removal deadlines, are the written part: same day for assets the agency controls; for copies elsewhere, removal requests and a status report within agreed days, recording copies it cannot reach. The test is whether the agency knows where each image has been used, so that a removal reaches every ad, page and post. Ask to see its asset register, from a recent account or set up for your school; without one, this check fails.

4. Copy, footage and audiences for young people. In the UK, the CAP Code, the advertising rulebook the ASA enforces, treats anyone under 16 as a child, and CAP's advice sums up its rule 5.4.2 as marketers should not actively encourage children to buy an advertised product. Check that every call to book in the agency's sample junior-class ads is addressed to the adult. When NSPCC Sport surveyed 213 parents and carers from across the UK in March 2026, 68% were very confident that their club could keep children safe, and parents wanted more information about concussion, supporting children during competitions, wellbeing and how to raise concerns. NSPCC Sport says the findings provide a snapshot, so treat them as a signal, not a measure of all parents, and ask for sample copy that covers those topics. CAP rule 5.1 covers ads addressed to, targeted at or featuring children, and rule 5.1.4 says children must not be encouraged to copy practices that might be unsafe for a child. The rule covers UK ads and does not mention martial arts, so footage of children sparring or breaking boards needs a named reviewer working to a written rule you have read. Meta announced in January 2023 that advertisers would only be able to use age and location to reach teens. A promise of interest-based targeting for a teens' kickboxing or judo class is a fail; check any plan against Meta's current help pages.

5. Safeguarding claims that match your paperwork. A line such as "DBS checked coaches" or "Safeguarding Code club" is an objective claim, and CAP rule 3.7 says that marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective. Sport England says its Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts will recognise clubs and providers who've demonstrated that they've reached and maintained good safeguarding standards, and tells others how to register and start working towards the code. Working towards the Code is a different status from holding it. The government's DBS sport guidance, written for checks in England and Wales plus the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, warns that any changes to a role, or the activities that a person carries out, can affect the level of check that is applicable. The agency passes if it asks for your proof before it writes any such line, and words the line to match the certificates you hold.

6. Children's sign-up forms in the US. The FTC's guidance on COPPA, a US federal rule, says operators the rule covers must provide direct notice to parents and obtain verifiable parental consent, with limited exceptions, before collecting personal information online from children, and that the rule was designed to protect children under age 13. Ask the agency to list every form it will build and who fills each one in. If any is aimed at children under 13 or takes a child's details directly, take legal advice before it is built. It passes when the list comes first.

Part two: children's places and adults' places

Some schools can stop before hiring anyone. If you run a single children's class and need a handful of pictures, an authorised coach can take them. NSPCC Sport guidance says that only people authorised by your organisation, with an appropriate reason and appropriate training, can take photos or videos, and this could include a member of staff. A consent form and a modest ad budget may do the job before any retainer. An agency earns its fee when several programmes need filling and measuring at once.

Those programmes are the fit test. A school sells at least two different things, a child's place and an adult's place, sometimes a teen's place too, to different buyers. Ask for trial bookings, trials attended and enrolments for each programme separately, because the parent who enquires about a junior class still has to bring the child to a first session. One blended cost per enquiry hides which class is paying for itself.

Ask how the agency will build a children's trial page. The choice between a single page and a full site, covered in landing page vs website, is where the consent and form questions above land. A fuller account of how enquiries, trial classes and safeguarding proof fit together is in marketing for martial arts schools and dojos.

Ending the contract when the pictures show children

Ask four questions. How many months is the first term? How much notice ends it? What happens to the ad accounts, pages, audiences and tracking at the end? Who pays for work already booked? A short first term with rolling monthly notice suits a school still testing the gate and the numbers.

The harder exit question concerns children's images. The NSPCC contracting list covers how long the images will be retained and used for, so put an end date in the contract. An end date does not recall an image that has already travelled. A photo can sit in an ad library, a parent's shared post or a photographer's own portfolio. So the contract should name those places, require the agency to switch off ads and delete or return its copies, its subcontractors' copies included, and send you the asset register showing what was removed and what it could not reach.

Agree what "not working" means at the start, using the per-programme figures, with a review date. Add one trigger that has nothing to do with numbers. If a parent objects to an image, or a post goes up without your approval, the asset comes down the same day wherever the agency controls it, and the agency tells you in writing what happened and which copies remain. A repeat is grounds to end the contract at once.

An email to send to shortlisted agencies

Subject: Questions before we shortlist

Hello [name],

We run [school name], a martial arts school teaching children and adults in [town]. Before we talk about price, please send the following.

Show us how you have handled children's images for another client, with names removed: the consent tracker, where the files are stored and who can open them, and the record of an image you took down on request. New to children's classes? Then send the tracker, storage plan and asset register you would set up for us, and rehearse the process with us before any filming. Tell us who from your team would visit our classes, and who stays with them.

Please also send two sample ads for a junior class, written to parents, with the name of the person who reviewed the footage. Finally, send your first term and notice period, and say what happens to our accounts and every copy of our students' images when we part.

Thank you, [your name]

If you are planning marketing for a children's programme, tell us about your business.