Build Your Audience
If you want to build your program, building an audience is a must. With an audience, you don’t have to worry as much about where new students or opportunities are going to come from. But to build an audience, you need to stand for something, create value, and find ways to communicate that to the world every day. Otherwise, you’re just another music teacher trying to get students.
Building an Audience Comes Down to Three Components
Stand for Something
People are excited by beliefs and causes more than just the lessons or programs. Find what you stand for, and people will want to follow you.
Be Generous
What can you share with people before they sign up for your program? Showing what you can do for people will bring them back wanting more.
Generate Trust
By showing up and giving generously, you will create trust over time. And when people trust you, they're more likely to sign up for your program.
Find Your Purpose
You probably didn’t go into teaching for the money. So, why did you? What is the change you want to see in the world through your work? If you can’t articulate this and communicate it, the world will see you no differently from the next music teacher. If this is new to you, these posts will help you figure it out.
Create Value and Trust
What is the value you bring to the people you work with? Can people only discover it if they pay for your services? By creating useful content, you draw people in with your work and create a community of fans. Overtime, this builds trust, which then builds enrollment and referrals to your programs. These posts will help you get started.
In the Digital Age, You Will Struggle if You're Not Building an Audience
Most of the “gurus” of music education marketing discourage the idea of building an audience or brand marketing. Instead, they want you to hustle and do direct marketing to bring students in right away. And while you’re at it, why not pay for their plug-and-play systems to do it for you?
Here’s the irony. You've likely discovered these people because they’ve been doing the exact work they’re suggesting you don’t - building an audience.
Here’s why these plug-and-play systems don’t work.
People sign up for your program because of the value you provide. Value is why people might pay $100 an hour for flute lessons when they could just as well pay $25 an hour with someone else. It’s not about the flute lessons. It’s about the perceived value of them.
These values are different for every teacher. To build sustainable programs, you need to find people whose values resonate with yours. The only way you can introduce these values to the world is by working to build your audience.
There is no "one size fits all" approach. Which is why templates and scripts won't help you.
By creating a community of fans whose values align with yours, you will have an easier time finding the exact people you want to serve. And people who want to work with you will know exactly why they do.
The alternative to building your audience is to take the hustle approach with ads and tricks to get more clicks. These might get you more clicks and more phone calls, but without a set of values for people to rally around, chances are slim that you will be attracting the right students.
Building Your Audience Helps You Grow as a Teacher and Person
Shortly after New Year’s of 2020, I started a daily blogging practice to start building our audience at the South Shore Piano School. I’ve also made videos regularly for over a year. As our audience has slowly grown, I’ve found that the work has impacted me as much as the people I seek to serve.
With time, I gained greater clarity into what sort of change I want to make in the world - to make music a meaningful part of students’ lives through skill-based teaching and community. To dispel the talent myth so more students and families believe music can be for them. And to serve families and adult students who want to make music part of their lives for the long haul.
As I’ve created and tested different content types, I’ve discovered what resonates and what doesn’t. What creates trust and what comes off as attention-grabby. I’ve become a more confident writer, and much more natural on camera. None of this would have happened had I taken the plug-and-play approach to finding students.
Getting Started
The best time to start building an audience was 10 or 20 years ago. But, the next best time is to start right now. Ready to begin?
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