How do I get more pupils in my dance school?
Or theatre, performing arts or music school for that matters.
That is a question I get asked frequently. And when I put a poll out, uh, that was the top question that came back. How do I get more students in my school? So, here we go.
This is just one of the ways that you can get students into your school. Now this works particularly well. During a summer period. Because especially if you are not dancing all your regular classes during that time this can be a nice little incentive to get people back to dance. Now, that said it could also work at any time during the year.
My suggestion, as it is with most of what I do, is to plan it in. So, recently I did a big hour and a half marketing planning session with my members. (Scale your Studio with The Den Info HERE) Now, they, following on from that, they were then asked to plan in potential And I say it’s potential incentives into their yearly plan. Because sometimes an incentive will work brilliantly, other times it needs to be more strategically put out there with a longer build up in your marketing so that people are more aware.
It really depends on who or which, you know, audience you’re trying to attract. Hold off there, Sarah. What do you mean, which audience I’m trying to attract? Well, realistically, right, you have two audiences. You have your current customers and then you have the ones that are not your customers yet. Alright, so realistically you may want to create an incentive for your current customers to maybe invite them to take extra classes.
Maybe they’re not even aware of everything that you offer. Let’s just take a 60 year old for example. And the mum is bringing, or dad, is bringing that child on a regular class every single week. Now, that pupil or that parent is going to have their blinkers on. I bring my child at 4.30, I pick them up at 5.15 and I go. They don’t know what happens the rest of the night.
They don’t even know what happens potentially the rest of the time. I frequently have people saying to me, I didn’t realise your school was so big. Well, it’s because they’re not there on all the other nights I teach. So, let’s make them aware. So, your current customers, this strand, yes? The ones that are already in your school.
Let them know. Pop an email out to those six year olds that say, Did you know, at this age, they could also do, Bah, bah, whatever it is. So say they’re just doing ballet. Did you know they could also do acro or modern or tap or street? You’ve got options for all of these children. You know, maybe they could go to a specialist stretch class or maybe you’re starting a new competition team for this age.
Make them aware of all their other options that are out there. So that’s one trick that you can do with your current customers. And then you offer them an incentive to try the other class. Now. Hold your horses. I am not asking you to give away the kitchen sink. Absolutely not. This is not what this video is about.
However, if you say to your current customers, do you know what, I think so and so little Johnny would be perfect in this class. Did you know that we have these other options? If you would like to try these other options, here is Whatever your incentive may be, be that a two week free trial, or a two week trial at 50%, or a why not come and try this class and if you want to take it on board, then I will give you 50 percent or 20 percent off the uniform.
Yeah, little, little… hook To get them in to try that other class. And then, let’s just say you have four people try, and two people stay. Then they stay and pay for the term, and suddenly that class number has gone up by two people, but also your income has gone up by two people. And let’s remember, It’s not, this is pure profit on the bottom line for you, because you’re already running the class, you’ve already got the costs associated to it, whether that be the teacher, the hall, and all the auxiliary costs that I will talk about, um, in other videos.
But you’ve got all of those costs, so just an extra two people coming on is pure profit or pure income to you. Doesn’t cost you anything more. And just for offering that little incentive, you’ve gained so much more. So that’s your current customers. So what about your other customers, the ones that don’t really know you yet?
So you could also offer them an incentive. Now there’s a couple of rules to incentives. Now the first one is, you need to give it a time scale. It has to be like over a weekend, or over a week, or over two weeks. But it has to have a start and it has to have an end. Because otherwise… Well, it’s endless, isn’t it?
You may as well write it into your rules. An incentive is supposed to be there for a short period of time to encourage people to take action on whatever it is you’re trying to incentivise them for. So let’s just say you do page trials. So maybe you can say, right, for the last week of August, if you book in your trial classes for September during this week, I will give you 50 percent off your trials.
Little, little things like that that’ll hook potential people who may be sitting on the fence and going a bit like, Hmm, I don’t really know. Oh, they’ve got this offer on, well why don’t we just give it a go? And suddenly you bring them in. So, you’re talking, excuse me, little incentives to help people step over that line.
Whether they be your current customers, or the ones who are not your customers yet. So, think about that as a way of you pulling new pupils into your school. And let me know how it worked for you.
This was an live training, which happens monthly within my membership (info Here) As a certified business mentor, my speciality is dance and theatre schools as a dance business mentor and dance business coach.
