4 Ways to Grow Your Studio Outside Your Community
In this episode I share with you 4 things you should 100% be doing to have studio growth outside of your community!
Not only is it possible for you to have a thriving studio business but it’s also not rocket science. These are tips that you can start applying today and I can’t wait to see you have success with them!
Enjoy this week’s transcript!
In today's episode, I'll be sharing four tips for expanding your studio beyond your community. I thought this would be a really great topic because if you are teaching online and running a studio, you have the flexibility to teach outside of your community. And I think if you've been teaching within your community for a decade or 20 years, then you can feel a little bit stuck in that community because it's where people know you. It's probably where you get a lot of your referrals from. And you've heard you could have a global studio, but how do you get there? What are some things you could do to start getting students in other parts of the country or in other parts of the world? So I'm going to go over four ways that you can start doing this, and I hope that you'll feel inspired to maybe make some changes in how you market your studio.
Number One: Register your business on Google. This is something that takes just a few minutes to do. Something I found really interesting teaching a webinar recently, was that hardly any of the teachers were a registered business on Google. I mentioned registering during this during this webinar and out of the 40 teachers there, less than half of the teachers actually had. And that was a little bit surprising to me because it's free. It really only takes you about two minutes to register your business on Google, and they will send you a pin number in the mail to verify your address. You actually don't need to have your address public, though. You can just have your Google business set up. So if someone Googles your name, your business shows up and they'll be able to see the reviews. So it’s nice to have a place where you can collect reviews. You can reach out to your students and start gathering reviews.
You've probably heard me talk about reviews a number of times because I think reviews provide a proof about your business that doesn’t come from many other things. So that should be the first thing you do—go register your business on Google. But once you do that, you need to take the next step to add some photos of your business. Whether it’s pictures of you teaching your students, or your students taking lessons, it’s giving them confidence in your business. Then reach out to your students and make sure you're getting reviews on your Google business. It's going to help validate you as a teacher, and it helps index your business a little bit higher in the search results. If you have more reviews, glowing reviews, you’ll be easier to find. So if someone is searching for a piano teacher in Colorado, yours comes up much higher than someone who doesn't have any reviews.
Number Two: Modernize your website. I really believe that every music teacher who has an online business should have a clean, professional website because you can. It’s not too hard for you to build one within a week or two. You can actually build one, and that way if someone finds you on social media or Google, you can send them to your website. So once you have that Google Business set up, you link your website and that's where the student will reach out to you. They will send through an inquiry for lessons or an inquiry for booking a trial lesson with you. So it's basically coming up with a client journey. You want them to find you and then to know exactly where to go so that they can learn about you and actually reach out to you and make contact. If they're just seeing you on social media, it's harder for them to take that next step without some kind of call to action or going over to your website. I mentioned this before, but if you would like to listen to the webinar I did on how to build a website or how to update your website, just send me an email carly@teachmusic.online and I will send you a link so that you can watch that webinar. And one last thing about your website, I just think that having a website with professional photography is something that's too important to skip or to put off, especially if you are planning on teaching online for a number of years.
If you have this dream of building the flexibility so that you can travel or that you can be this global teacher, or you can move to another country or teach from other countries, this is an easy step that feels overwhelming. And so many teachers skip it inside the Teach Music Online Membership. For those listening that are members, I have a course, a brand new course, Studio Website Builder, where I provide templates and I have videos where you can watch me build a website specifically for a studio within Squarespace. So if you're a member, go check that out. It's going to shorten the process for you and kind of help you skip ahead so that you're not either trying to hire someone or figure it out all by yourself.
Number Three: Raise your rates, stop charging a tiny amount for your time and raise your rates. And I feel like you should raise them a lot. I don't know that I believe in raising your rates once a year and doing this like, oh, we're going up $2 or $5 this year. I don't think that that is totally wise. If you've been doing it and you're comfortable with that, that's fine, but I think what you should do is use a rate calculator like the one I've created for you. Figure out what your dream income is and do the math. So there's an episode on this as well where I walk you through this. But basically whatever you want to make, subtract the expenses and then divide it by the number of students in your studio. And what is that number? What should you be charging to make what you should be making as a music teacher, as a piano instructor or guitar instructor? We don't always do that. We kind of do it backwards where we go, well, ‘So-and-so is charging this. And they live down the street. So that's what I should charge’. Or ‘I don't have a graduate degree in piano, so I'm not going to charge what so-and-so is charging’. None of that really matters. All that matters is your confidence in being able to help a student achieve something. And if you have an amazing studio where students are coming to you and you're getting referrals, it's because you have value that you can offer.
So think about those things and not just doing a little tiny raise and tricking your students a little by little. I think it's just better to say, hey, we're going up. And actually, when the pandemic first hit, we had several teachers inside of the membership that I coached who doubled their rates or increased them significantly. And I can remember talking them through that and coaching them through that and saying, just do it. You have to try in order to figure out what is the best solution for this. And one of our teachers lives in New York. She's from mainland China. Her name is Lily, and it was almost double what she was charging before. And she said she filled her studio faster with the higher rates. And I think that there's something there, with the perception of a studio owner who charges more is different than the studio owner who charges less. And you'll probably agree with me when I say if you're cheap, you get cheap parents who then cancel frequently or want you to show up for makeup lessons or I don't know, there's all kinds of things that happen when you don't charge enough. So the benefits to charging more are endless because you're able to work less hours and make the money that you need to make.
I know that might make you super nervous. That's why I provide some tuition calculators to kind of help you visualize what that looks like. I have another rate calculator that tells you, at a minimum, you should be charging this. If you do X, Y and Z, you can charge more. So I basically say, like, if you have group lessons or virtual recitals or if you attend conferences and you have professional development as a teacher, you can charge more. If you're subscribing to different things to make your studio better or are using certain apps, you can charge more. As a studio owner, it's less about your education and more about how you're providing value to your students.
Number Four: Post at least once per week on your Facebook business page. This is going to be a place where you can showcase the transformation that you provide your students who take lessons with you. And I have been talking about this for a few years now, starting your Facebook business and then posting at least once per week. That's something that's very, very doable. I recently had a teacher in our membership reach out to our community and say, I'm finally getting traction through my Facebook business page. She started getting way more inquiries and engagement on her posts. And she's been very consistent with posting weekly for about a year. So I do think it takes a little bit of time. This is not something you could do tomorrow and start getting inquiries right away. But this is what I think happens as you post weekly on your Facebook page, you're creating a Gallery of amazing content of you teaching and of students having great success. And it's stories, it's photos. Maybe it's passing off books or passing off songs or performances. And that way, when you do any kind of marketing on Facebook and they come and find you on your business page, they have a lot of ways to see that you're an amazing teacher. They can scroll through your feed and go, wow, this teacher is someone I really want to reach out to and connect with, versus someone that just has their business page and is kind of just like a business card.
So if you have a Facebook page, start posting content. I know a lot of you may be thinking, great, I have no idea what to share, or maybe you've never done anything like this. You're not on social media that much. So I totally, completely understand that can feel really overwhelming and feel like I have no idea where to start. So I've tried to help you out with that. Go find the episode on your Facebook Business page and get some ideas for the type of content you can share. And I also have a few episodes on time management. And in those episodes, I teach you how to just focus on social media one day a month and do all of your posts in that one day and schedule them in advance. That way, you're not having to think about this every single week. But it's just scheduled. It's ready to go. And I know a lot of teachers have had a lot of success with that because it's just once a month. And it actually can be really fun. It's something you can look forward to.
A quick recap on those four tips. Number one was to register your business on Google. Number two was to modernize your website. Number three is to raise your rates. Number four is to post at least once per week on your Facebook business page. I hope that you heard at least one tip that resonated with you or made you feel like that's something that's doable for me this week, or maybe all of them are doable and you can sit down and go to work and start marketing your business beyond your community. I know that at times it can feel extremely overwhelming and maybe a little bit daunting because you've been teaching for a long time and you know you're a great teacher and you know that you should be getting traction and you just haven't yet. I just encourage you to shift your mindset to recognizing how amazing you are as a musician and how valuable your lessons are and how lucky any student is to take lessons with you and that it's just a no brainer for them to start taking lessons with you. And when you can approach it from this mindset of confidence and I absolutely will fill my studio by the end of the year or before fall, and I'll start a waitlist. When you approach it from that mindset, things change and things can change so much faster and you will start seeing amazing results. And I know that sounds funny, like, why do we even talk about mindset? Or why does that even matter? It does matter, because you're putting out to the world a certain vibe and confidence, and that will change as you believe more in yourself and what you're capable of. So I hope that's helpful for you. Thank you so much for listening today. Reach out if you'd like to watch that webinar on building a website. My email is carly@teachmusic.online. I hope you have a great week and I will see you next week.
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