I spent years running my business struggling to bring in new students. And it had nothing to do with my teaching, I was terrible at marketing.
In fact, most guitar teachers are terrible at marketing because our backgrounds are music, not marketing.
But once I learnt how to market my lessons my business exploded and now I have a full timetable and a waiting list.
It’s not too complicated. You just have to learn how to do it and then implement it in your marketing.
So, here are the top five mistake guitar teachers make in their marketing and how to fix them.
1. Don’t know who they are marketing to.
Most guitar teachers are happy to teach everyone and anyone. But in marketing this doesn’t work.
If you try and appeal to everyone you will appeal to no one.
What will appeal to a mum looking for lessons for her daughter will not appeal to a metal head that wants to master sweep picking.
You should know your target market inside out but you can easily split them into two groups
Parents looking for lessons for their kids
Adults who want lesson for themselves.
Now, this doesn’t mean you’ll only teach one group. But when you produce an advert it should be targeted specifically at one of these groups.
This will not only tell you what to include on your advert but also where you should put your advert.
There’s no point advertising lessons for adults in a school newsletter but it’s an ideal place for kids lessons.
2. Teach all styles to everyone.
This is the same as the first mistake.
The vast majority of people learning guitar want to learn pop/rock songs, that’s it.
In fact, a lot of students are happy for you to choose songs for them as long as they are learning.
In your marketing you should be talking more about how you can help them and get them learning guitar as quickly as possible,
And if you are a specialised teacher of Jazz, Funk or any other niche genre, you should be just talking about Jazz or Funk.
The amount of people you would be able to teach is going to be smaller but you can charge a higher price and there’s less competition.
Now that online lessons are a real thing it is very possible to market yourself as a specialised guitar teacher.
But putting Teach All Styles To All Ages won’t convince anyone to start taking lessons with you.
3. Put up posters and wait.
You can replace “put up posters” here with hand out business cards, send out a tweet or post, ask people to like your business etc.
You are randomly sending something out and hoping that someone responds.
Overtime you will get a few students this way but it’s not very effective.
Even if the right person sees this a lot things have to come together for them to actually take action and ring you.
I know this because whenever people found out I was a guitar teacher there’s always someone that wants to learn or knows someone who wants to learn. I’d talk to them and hand out business cards so they could call me to book a lesson.
They never called.
Even if they genuinely wanted lessons they’d forget, lose the card or feel too awkward to ring up a business. And I wouldn’t get the new student.
With this style of marketing you have to put in a lot of time, effort and money and then hope someone else takes action.
4. Don’t invest in online marketing.
Marketing online, especially through social media is a much better way to advertise. You can get your advert out to the right people and you track what works and what doesn’t.
But, here’s the mistake most guitar teachers make. They only use free advertising or invest very little into an online ad.
These companies are here to make money, they want you to pay for advertising.
If you post through your Facebook page only 5% to 10% of your likes will see it.
5% to 10%! And you probably only have a few hundreds to start with, and a lot of them will be friends and family who liked your page to help you out.
If you do invest probably in online advertising these companies will give you incredible tools to use. You can choose exactly who sees your ad based on age, gender, location, interests etc. And for not that much money you will have your ads seen by thousands of your target market.
So why don’t more people do it?
A lot of guitar teachers don’t have an investment mindset. You have to invest money to grow your business.
If I told you that you could spend $200 on Facebook ads and you’d get one new student (you actually get more like 5 new students), would you do it?
A lot wouldn’t want to risk the money or thinks it not worth it.
But that students could you give thousands of dollars over the years, and once that student has paid for $200 worth of lessons you can reinvest and get another student.
And so on and on.
That’s how you can control your marketing and grow your business
5. Don’t collect leads or follow them up
Most people are not walking around with a guitar in hand desperate for someone to teach them.
It might be something they’ve been thinking about or they might have a guitar at home they haven’t played in a while.
If you’re putting out an ad and all you offer is a number to ring for free trial lesson, they probably won’t respond to your ad.
But if what you are offering is a free ebook, brochure or just even a bit more information about guitar lessons in exchange for their phone number they are much more likely to respond to your ad.
This is a much more effective way to collect leads. And once you have their number you are more in control and speak to them directly.
These are the people that might have seen your ad but never rang you. But when you ring them and talk to them directly you’ll find it much easier to get them to sign up for a free taster lesson and then turn them into a paying customer.
So, how many of these mistakes are you making?
By making a few changes to how your advertise your guitar lesson for you will see a huge increase in leads and new students that you can get.