As music teachers, we have a responsibility to build our marketing skills.
Marketing is how we find and connect with people in a meaningful way.
Marketing is how we teach people what a life-changing difference our work will make for them.
The problem is, most people don't understand what modern marketing actually is.
The word itself conjures the image of a pushy car salesman or an unwanted phone call from an insurance company. And we don't want anything to do with that.
But real marketing isn't like this at all.
Marketing is about creating change.
It's about connecting with the right people who are the right fit for the programs you offer.
It's about being clear about what you offer, why it's important on a deep level, and how to sign up.
It's about understanding where your prospective students are coming from, and approaching your communication with them from a place of empathy.
In this post, we'll explore 13 of the top mistakes most music studios and schools are making in their marketing every day.
And the solutions to them.
Just like music, marketing requires practice. As you get better at it, not only will you attract more students to your programs, but you'll be prouder of your work than you e
Mistake #1: Not Understanding What Counts as Marketing
Most people associate marketing with advertising; just trying to get the word out to as many people as possible.
Facebook ads, radio spots, newspaper ads, things like that.
But it's so much more than that.
Marketing is everything you say and do.
It's in the choices of font and color on your website. Those send a message about your personality.
It's the choice of words you use.
Not only in your advertising, but on your website, when someone picks up the phone, and when someone comes in for that first lesson or rehearsal.
It's in the level service that you provide.
All of these things communicate the change you are making in the world and how much you care about people.
If your definition of marketing is limited to ads, then you're not communicating effectively.
And when you're not communicating how people's lives will be changed through your work, then people are going to move on.
The solution: Consider everything you do on a daily basis marketing. For better or worse, like it or not, you're a marketer.
Make sure all of your touch points (advertising, your website, the front desk people, your teachers, etc.) are on the same page about the bigger message you're trying to communicate.
And if your school doesn't have a big-picture mission other than "quality music lessons," that's a great place to start.
Mistake #2: Thinking That the Marketing Stops After Students Sign Up
Many struggling studios obsess over getting new students through the front door while current students are leaving through the back door.
Your marketing continues even after the student signs up and starts paying you money.
On a regular basis, you must remind students and families why they chose you in the first place over your competition.
And, you have to make sure you're delivering on the promises you made in your marketing.
Because if your marketing says you have dedicated teaching artists, but half of your teachers are gone performing six months out of the year instead of teaching lessons, that makes you a liar.
The solutions: Always go above and beyond with the service you provide (that one's probably obvious).
And communicate with your current students about your bigger mission on a regular basis.
Students and families are busy. They need the reminders about why your work with them is remarkable.
Mistake #3: Not Understanding Who Your Marketing is For
This is a big one, especially for private lesson programs. Not understanding who you're talking to, and what's important to them.
Most websites are focused on a very generic audience. But most of us work with kids. And their parents are the ones shopping for a music program.
And so, a homepage geared towards parents will always do better than one targeted to everyone.
If you're worried about warding off other potential clientele (adult students, for example), don't. Because when you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.
The solution: Develop a clear idea of who is looking at your marketing, and make sure you're speaking specifically to them.
If you have multiple demographics of students you work with (for example, kids versus adults), create different marketing for each of these groups of people with messages that resonate with them.
A website, for example, should have a different page for each audience. One for parents and one for adult students.
Mistake #4: Talking Too Much About Yourself and Not Enough About Them
Most people don't care how long you've been in business, how many students you've taught, or where your teachers went to school or performed.
They care about how your program is going to make their lives better. They are the hero of their story, and they need you to be their guide. The Yoda to their Luke Skywalker.
When you focus on why you're so great rather than focusing on the hopes and dreams of your potential students, people move on.
The solution: Learn more about your prospective students' and families' deeper wants and needs.
On the surface, they may want piano lessons. Underneath, they may need validation as a parent who is trying to make the best extracurricular-activity choices for their kids.
Make sure your marketing efforts are focusing on these wants and needs, along with the successful outcomes they can expect from working with you.
Mistake #5: Assuming People Already Understand How Music Lessons Work
How would you write instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
Except...
The instructions are for someone who doesn't know what bread, peanut butter, jelly, or knives are.
So much harder now, right?!?
As music teachers and musicians, we're so close to our work that it's easy to take this for granted - that the rest of the world might not understand how it all works.
This is where that empathy tool comes in handy.
Many parents with zero music experience don't even understand that traditional music lessons are a once-a-week, one-on-one experience.
Without making it so clear, a caveman could figure it out, people will get confused and move on.
The solution: In your marketing, specify exactly how your program works. Everything from the weekly schedule to the practice expectations.
Even if you think it's already painfully obvious.
Mistake #6: Highlighting Empty Benefits
A vast majority of websites feature benefits like this:
High-quality music instruction.
Experienced teachers.
College-degreed instructors.
These are considered "empty benefits." They're meaningless.
For a couple of reasons.
First, most other music schools and programs are marketing the same benefits.
And second, these aren't differentiators.
In other words, it's not like your competition is marketing "mediocre music education," "inexperienced teachers," and "amateur teachers."
The solution: Figure out your positioning.
Positioning is a bit different from differentiation.
Everyone has their place in the market of music programs, and there are different fits for different people.
There's the music school for people who want to do competitions.
There's the music school for people who want to focus on pop music.
There's the music school for people who want the skills to be able to play long-term.
There's the music school for people who want the convenience of a teacher coming to their home.
What's your position in the marketplace?
Whatever your positioning is, highlight that in your marketing. That will resonate with the people you want to resonate with, and ward off those who aren't a great fit for you.
Mistake #7: Avoiding the Pain Points of Not Signing Up
We don't like to be negative. But without generating just a little tension in your marketing, prospectives don't feel a sense of urgency to consider your program.
As much as we music teachers talk about how much society needs music instruction, the consequences of life without music are rarely expressed in anyone's marketing.
The solution: Figure out what your prospective students are losing by not signing up for your program. Mention this in your marketing.
Are they looking at an education without creativity?
Are their kids going to be among the many adults who wished they took music lessons as a kid?
Don't go too far to the dark side; just a few words will do. Showing your prospective students a little of what life will be like without you will inspire some urgency to take action.
Keep in mind, we're not doing this in a manipulative way.
A term I like to use is "healthy tension," because we know we're helping them make a decision that will make their lives better.
Mistake #8: The Signup Process Isn't Clear
If it takes more than a few seconds to figure out how to sign up, you're going to lose people.
And if you ask for too much information up front, you'll lose them too.
Not many families are comfortable giving a home address, birthday, and credit card number when all they want is to sign up for a trial lesson.
The solution: Create a bright orange button on your website or other marketing materials highlighting what the first step to sign up is.
Bright orange might sound ugly. But, it will make the first step stand out in such a way that they literally can't miss it.
Schedule a phone call.
Schedule a free trial lesson.
Sign up now.
You get the idea.
The earlier in the process they are, the less information you should ask for. Once they're ready to sign up and pay you, then you can collect all the extra info you need.
Mistake #9: Being Unclear About the Journey from "Total Stranger" to "Sign Me Up"
If you're spending thousands of dollars to work with a branding strategist, but the front desk person isn't returning phone calls, you've got major problems on your hands.
Similarly, Facebook ads that try to take people from "total stranger" to "sign me up for piano lessons" are also a tough game to play.
Without an awareness of what's often called the "customer journey," you're going to lose potential students.
The solution: Create a "customer journey" map and keep refining every stage of it.
If you run ads to total strangers, try getting them onto your email list to build a relationship that leads to signing up for your program. And if that doesn't work, try building that bridge another way.
If the typical new-student sequence goes something like this...
- Prospective finds website.
- Prospective makes phone call.
- Prospective schedules trial lesson.
- Prospective takes trial lesson.
- Prospective signs up for lessons.
...then test, refine, and check every step of the process to make sure everything is running as effectively as possible.
Mistake #10: Prioritizing Design Over Clarity
It's easy to pay a designer thousands of dollars for a beautiful website that still doesn't deliver on new students. Too easy.
A website may be beautiful, but if the message is confusing, the audience isn't clear, and the visitor can't figure out how to sign up, then none of that will matter.
The solution: Start with the words.
Take a blank piece of paper, and sketch out your website using only words. (Or "copy," as the marketing lingo goes.)
Keep tweaking this until you have messaging that you believe will be compelling to your target audience. You can then give this to your designer.
Or better yet, consider building your website yourself. It takes some practice, but the long-term benefit of learning this skill is that you can tweak any part of your website anytime you want.
In the end, a plain website with clear messaging will always win over a website that's artistic but with weaker messaging.
Mistake #11: Trying to Be Clever Rather than Clear
We're going to work that empathy muscle once again.
Some folks like to come up with catchy tag lines or catchphrases. For example, a piano studio might pitch something like...
Making Beautiful Music Since 2014
But remember, your prospective student or parent doesn't know you. Or your business. It's the peanut butter and jelly instructions all over again.
Messaging like this could sound like you're a performing arts center. Or that you're a producer. Or even that you're a composer. And when people are confused, they go places that are less confusing.
The solution: Start with clear. It's less sexy, but it will do the job better than clever.
Even something plain like, "We give piano lessons that are clear, fun, and meaningful" will do better than "Making music since 2014."
You can tweak your messaging as you go, but you'll never lose when you start with clarity.
Mistake #12: Assuming People Will Read Every Word on Your Website
A website with large blocks of text will always struggle to win students. Most people are looking through websites in a hurry. And on their phones, yet.
And did you know the brain burns calories?
You know that feeling you get when you see a lengthy email? That auto-response that says, "We'll try this later?" Right before you close the email, only to completely forget about it.
That's what goes through your prospectives' minds when they see large blocks of text on your website.
The solution: Use headlines for each section of your website. And organize the text in small, easy-to-digest chunks.
This makes your website scannable for the busy visitor.
Overall, this makes for an easier reading experience, and is more likely to keep your reader from leaving the page.
Mistake #13: Not Testing Everything
Most people's marketing is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. We come up with what we hope is a good idea, launch it, and then let it ride indefinitely.
But unfortunately, we can never know if our marketing works until it has been tested with the market. Many studios have spent thousands of marketing dollars on ideas that didn't work, yet they kept running with it.
The solution: Make a practice out of testing.
When you run Facebook ads, run three different versions for a copy test. Then do the same thing for an image test, and then a headline test.
On your website, find software that can do A/B testing. This is where you can run multiple versions of a homepage, but with one variable changed.
Think like a scientist. When you run a test, only test one variable and have a clear metric of success.
You'll be amazed at the difference in results from something as simple as using a picture of a child versus a picture of a teacher in the hero section of your homepage.
Want More?
If you found this helpful, sign up for the Musiciative mailing list today! Musiciative is all about giving you the tools to build your marketing, productivity, and financial skills to make the difference and live the life you always wanted as a music teacher.
And feel free to comment below with any thoughts or questions.
Cheers to your success in music and life!
