Getting What I Planned ForBelow is a semi-complete list of things that I did to attract students during my first five years of teaching music:
- Post business cards on bulletin boards all over town
- Sponsor a baseball team
- Read tactical marketing books that taught general advertising concepts
- Ran newspaper ads
- Ran incentive programs where I would pay current students to tell their friends about me
- Made brochures and door hangers and went around all the local neighborhoods hanging them on doors
- Paid several thousand dollars to have postcards mailed to 3000 homes in my area
- Posting in random Yahoo! Groups for my city in 2004 hoping that someone would see them (I was about 10 years early on that strategy… because that really works now on Facebook)
What was the outcome?
Did I get the results I was looking for?
Well, not really.
I can’t remember what I was expecting (it was so long ago), but...
When you do ineffective things…
you get ineffective results.I got exactly what I planned for.
Having worked with studio owners for many years now, I know that this is the experience of most studio owners, too!They try a tactic… spend money on ads… pay or barter with someone to build a new website… join a cheap or free “studio business support group”.
They think it’s going to go well… and then:
Nothing. Or worse.
It doesn’t have to be that way.