How to Make the Referrals Roll in Even with a SMALL Studio
When you're first starting out, filling your piano studio can feel like trying to run through mud. You may be doing all the right things, but you still don't have students lining up at your door. In this post, I argue that the BEST marketing strategy will force you to shift your focus from the students you don't have, to the students you DO HAVE: through student referrals!
Your Current Students are the MOST Important
Although your studio may be small, you still have students that for whatever reason wanted to sign up for lessons with YOU. And the fact that they are still with you shows that they find value in your lessons.
I cannot overemphasize this enough: it is much harder to persuade a stranger that you have value than to get those that already believe it to share it with their friends and family.
So your focus should be on making your current lesson experience the BEST that you can so that there is no doubt in your students' minds that they LOVE their lessons.
A few insightful questions to ask yourself are:
What are my teaching strengths? What do I know that I do well in my studio?
What lessons have truly made my students smile?
What have they or their families shared with me about their lesson experience so far?
Where do I know I can improve? What areas of teaching do I feel not as comfortable in?
Once you have answered these questions, you will have a good idea of what to do MORE of in your lessons, and what areas to refine and polish to improve your lesson experience.
Referrals Referrals Referrals
Let me reiterate the point I made earlier: it is much harder to persuade a stranger that you have value than to get those that already believe it to share it with their friends and family.
When students and families truly enjoy their lessons with you, they will naturally start sharing it with their friends through conversations and social media posts of proud moments like recitals or when their child plays a difficult piece.
Although they will start to do this naturally, there is a way to increase the frequency that they talk about it with the people they know!
Here are a couple of strategies I use to encourage my students and their families to give me quality referrals:
Be direct and ask for them. It's as simple as that: if you ask, they will be proactive about it. It's not awkward!
Provide a referral incentive. Including both parent incentives ($$ savings) and student incentives (prizes, fun activities) are IDEAL!
Plan a Bring a Buddy to Lesson Day! Just pull together your student-favorite games and activities to make for easy planning. For ideas with minimal prep, check out my NO PRINTOUT PLAYBOOK!
Encourage students to invite a friend to their recital. I charge for recital tickets, but this friend gets to come for free!
Build community through studio swag and events. Check out this blog post!
My BEST Students are Referred
In my experience, students that have been referred by their peers are more likely to be consistent and stay committed.
This is because they already have the beginnings of community through their friendship, which will keep them accountable and add to their excitement when preparing for recitals or attending community events.
A study of my current student pool revealed that 1/3 of my entire studio originated from student referrals.
And out of ALL of the referrals that have started lessons with me within the last 3 years, only one referred student has quit lessons.
In conclusion, referrals are your secret marketing weapon--regardless of your studio size! As long as you focus on making your current lesson experience the BEST that you can and employ key referral strategies, you will start to see an increase in the number of referrals you receive AND an increase in your overall student satisfaction!
As always, stay tuned!
(pun unapologetically intended)
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