The #1 Marketing Mistake You Can’t Afford to Make with Sara Campbell

Does This Sound Like You?

If you answer YES, to any of these questions then this episode was meant for you!

1. Do you ever feel like your spinning your wheels when it comes to your marketing your music lessons?
2. Have you been knocking out Facebook and Instagram posts for years but not really sure if it’s worth the effort?
3. Have you wasted hundreds of dollars on online ads with little to show for?
4. Do you feel overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all of the latest marketing trends?
5. Do you feel like you don’t even know where to begin when it comes to marketing your music lessons?
6. Do you sometimes wish you could just have someone else take care of all of this marketing stuff for you?

In this episode of Music Lessons and Marketing, I chat with business, marketing, and mindset coach, Sara Campbell of Savvy Music Studio about marketing strategy vs marketing tactics.

The #1 Marketing Mistake You Can’t Afford to Make

The #1 marketing mistake you can’t afford to make to focus on marketing tactics and ignore marketing strategy. As the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu once said…

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Tactics nestled in the framework of a strategy is a winning formula.

So How Do You Create a Marketing Strategy?

Strategy defines your long-term goals or your overall objective. A strategy is how you plan on achieving your objective. Your strategy defines your path to achieving your mission. (Which implies you need a mission. That’s a whole other conversation)

Tactics are much more concrete and are often the small steps you take to achieving your mission or objective.

What a Music Studio Strategy Might Look Like

A music studio’s mission might be to transform children’s lives through music. Its goal might be to acquire 10 new students a month and minimize student attrition. Their strategy might be a multi-pronged approach using social media, email, paid ads, and internal marketing.

Each strategic category will require tools and tactics. Your social media tools might be Facebook and Instagram but that’s just the beginning. You would then need to define how and when these tactics are deployed and what message will they convey.

Tactics are just a delivery system. They deliver your message. The message is painstakingly honed to resonate with your ideal customer.

Episode Highlights

Dave:

If knowing what you know now about business and marketing music lessons, if you could start all over again with your teaching business, what would you do differently?

Sara:

I think what happened when I decided to venture out on my own is I fell into a really common mistake. I looked at, “Okay, I can leave this place and I’ll be able to be in more control of makeup lessons, reschedules, all of these things.” So, that was my pain point at that time and I really wanted to solve those. And the trap that I fell into is that I felt that when I opened my own studio, I could not raise my prices too much higher than these other places. And so I really vastly undervalued what I was offering, not just from the standpoint of this is the time that you get with me, but also thinking about this is all of the extra work that I’m doing now that I have my own private studio. And the overhead that’s involved with that and all of the admin that was involved with that that I wasn’t dealing with before.

Sara:

And so my prices were far too low, and that caused not just issues with making ends meet and having to take on more clients than I really wanted, but also just setting myself up in a way where I was attracting some of the clients that they were not ideal clients. And so I ended up working very long hours and working even more hours because I had to deal with parents who were very picky about policies and who were asking for exceptions all the time, who would argue about refunds. And so if I could go back and wave a magic wand and appear to myself before I started to open that door, we would have a good conversation about understanding the value that I was offering.

I fell into the’ piano lessons and voice lessons for all ages and all levels,’ just because I wanted to cast that net really wide […] If we cast that really big net, […] we may catch some fish, they might be a lot of small fish, but what if instead of casting a net, you baited a hook?

Dave:

Let me ask you this, was your pricing when you opened your studio the same as the studio that you were coming from?

Sara:

It was similar. I did raise it a bit, but was very much in this fear mindset and this scarcity mindset that if I was 25% higher that nobody was going to want to come to me because they could call up another place and ask what their prices were. And I was thinking from the pocket of the client and thinking they’re really just price shopping and that they weren’t going to be looking for an experience, they were more looking for, “Well, what’s the price?” And of course, there are people that do that, that is true, but those were not the people that I wanted to work with and those were not the people that I could help the most. So, sad times.

Dave:

And what was your biggest fear in terms of the price? Other than people window shopping and looking at the price. Did you feel like perhaps that price if you went too high, people would perceive you in a negative light?

Sara:

I did have that fear. Not so much that the clients would, but I had a deep fear that other teachers would think, “Well, who the heck does this girl think that she is? Who is she to charge twice what I’m charging?” And it took some good mindset work to get through that and to understand I wasn’t doing a disservice to other teachers by raising my rates, in fact you look at it the other way, if you raise your rates and your higher than other teachers in your area, you’re giving them permission to charge what they’re worth.

Dave:

Yes. Not only that, you’re putting them in a position that if you come in at a higher rate and you’re successful with it, not only are you giving them permission but you’re making them look bad if they don’t raise their rates, because people will go, “Well this lady’s charing 180 a month and these people are charing 110, clearly the 180 lady is doing something that is clearly a better quality.” And it’s interesting the psychology of pricing and how some people pride themselves on getting the best, and some people pride themselves on getting the best deal. And I think that maybe ties into the whole idea of the wrong client that you were attracting. What does that mean that you were attracting the wrong client? I mean, any client is a good client, right? And what can you do in your marketing to attract the right client?

Sara:

I love this question because I think initially when I opened up I really wasn’t clear on who exactly I wanted to work with. I was in what one of my coaches calls this, this comes from Michelle Marquardt DeVoe, she says, “It’s warm body mode that we just are going to accept any body that comes to us just so that we can fill those rosters and feel like we’re being successful.” Yeah, isn’t that a great term.

Sara:

And so back to the question, is it a wrong client, and I think this ties into some beliefs that we absorb, I want to say that we’re taught them but I think that we absorb them especially if we’ve gone to school and studied music that music is for everyone. And this is true, music can be for everyone and music education especially from a music ed background.

We want music education to be accessible to everyone when we translate that into the private teaching space and we take that with us and we think, “Okay, well anybody who comes with me should be able to sign on and be a client”, we are actually doing a really big disservice to those people because we might not be a good fit for them. And we’re not getting clear on what are their desires, what do they want to learn, why do they want to learn it? And if there’s not a matchup between what we can provide them and what we want, then we get unhappy on both ends. And so that’s what I think it’s really about, it’s understanding that there are music teachers out there that are a match for almost every single person, but you don’t have to be a match for every single person.

Dave:

I can see how someone listening to this, especially someone new in their business, is going, “Hey”, like you said, “I need warm bodies.” Why would you turn people away or why wouldn’t you want to broadcast the message of, not the message that you’ll accept anyone, I’m asking it wrong. How do you broadcast the message, who you want to attract? And how do you broadcast a message that’s going to attract the right people?

Sara:

Yeah, so then we get into who is that ideal client and how can we speak to them? This goes back to what I said earlier when I first started, I fell into the piano lessons and voice lessons for all ages and all levels, just because I wanted to cast that net really wide and be able to catch everyone. But what happens there if we think of like, this is going to be a really crappy fishing analogy, if we cast that really big net, it takes a lot of effort to keep that net fixed and together and we may catch some fish, they might be a lot of small fish, but what if instead of casting a net, you baited a hook?

And I know this is terrible, but hang with me. If you bait a hook with the right kind of bait and you go after that big fish, you’re going to be able to feed your business in a different way. So yes, we can create businesses that if we’re in warm body mode, and I do want to say that the teachers who are in warm body mode, there’s nothing wrong with being there. A lot of us have been there, and sometimes we need to stay there in order to survive.

Dave:

Especially now and especially at the beginning of a business.

Sara:

Yes. And so once we get to that point where we’re not just in survival mode, because I think a lot of teachers feel that way since we undervalue our services, we don’t charge enough, so we have to take on a lot of clients. You’re going to reach a tipping point where you’re full, you can’t possibly take on anyone else, but you’re still not at the level where you feel like you’re thriving. And that’s when a lot of teachers find their way to me. When teachers come to me, it’s normally because they’ve reached that tipping point, they know that something has to change or they’re going to burn out. And that’s when we really start delving into, “Hey, who do you really want to work for and what really excites you and lights you up?”

Dave:

Okay, so once a teacher defines that for themselves, how do they turn that into marketing?

Sara:

Yeah, so that’s my favorite part of the work. This is what I love about marketing, and I think a lot of this comes from having a theater background. So my undergrad was in vocal performance, so you get a lot of theater in and of itself there, but also I had a minor in theater and so I love being able to put on the shoes of someone else and to really think about what does that person feel and what does that person need? And so those are the types of exercises I think that when we’re looking at marketing we have to be able to become that other person and to really look at what do they need, what do they want? Their needs and their wants might not actually align, which is interesting.

Sara:

We look at what do they want? What are their pain points? What are their desires? And then we think about, “Well, how can I solve that? How can my special skill set solve those things?” And we start to get a clear picture of this is what their life is like right now, this is what their life would be like if they were able to work with me. And to be able to write that script, tell the story, what would that story look like for them? Marketing is really at the core it’s about storytelling.

Dave:

Yeah, and I love your analogy with the theater. I don’t have any experience in theater, but you have to get into the mindset of the character that you’re portraying which is really challenging because your character is fictitious or maybe you’re playing somebody historic but you don’t have the opportunity to speak with them. Whereas in marketing, we have the luxury of being able to go to our customers and survey them and say, “Why did you come here and what were you hoping to gain from music lessons and how did you hope that music lessons were going to change and transform your life?” And your customers can write your marketing language for you.

Sara:

I love that you mention reaching out to them and really getting their opinion, because when we do that some really magical things can happen. Some of the answers that come back to you are things that you never would have realized that’s what they wanted, and that’s what they got.

Dave:

There’s this, and I mention this video all the time, Los Rios Rock School, are you familiar with them?

Sara:

I am. They’ve popped up in forums and things like that, yeah.

Dave:

So they made a promotional video and at the very beginning, I assume it was the owner, said, “What do you appreciate most about Los Rios Rock School?”, and it’s all these clips of kids and parents. And I’m like, “There’s all the marketing language they need right there.” And it was interesting, I did a whole podcast on this, only one person talked about the music lesson, no one talked about it, everyone talked about the relationships. And I’m like, “Well, that’s what we need to focus on. It’s not about the music lesson. The music lesson is just one piece of what we’re selling.”

I would argue that it’s not the least important piece but people are obviously looking through transformation through the music lesson but it’s kind of everything that’s happening around the music lesson is what keeps people there. It’s the relationship that they have with their teachers and that’s all people were talking about in this video was the relationship with the teacher and how they feel in the space. One mom said, “Los Rios Rock School has turned into a home away from home for my daughter.” I’m like, “that is marketing gold right there.”

Sara:

It is. And when we can think of music lessons as being the vehicle and that the journey that happens in that vehicle, if you’re going on a road trip and you’re in a car, you’re not thinking, “This is a great car”, and you’re not just thinking about the car, “Look at all the features of this car”, you’re thinking about the experience that you’re going through when you’re on that road trip. So music is a beautiful vehicle for change.

Dave:

Ooh, there’s some marketing language right there. I love it. Well, and you know what’s so hard for us to get, is that we really don’t understand our customers in terms of we are the exception, we are the ones that went to music lessons and loved it. Like I was practicing nonstop before I ever started music lessons, I was that kid that was trying to sound things out on the piano, and my mom said, “You know what, you probably need some lessons.”

Then when I tried to start teaching, I assumed everybody else was like me and that they were going to respond like me. And I realized no, most people are not going to connect the way that I connected. And I had to dig and explore and find out that what’s motivating and driving them is completely different than folks like us, because folks like us, most of us felt like music when we discovered it, it’s this thing that we had been looking for in our lives and we finally found it and we became musicians. Most people that we’re teaching are not looking to become musicians, they’re looking to be a better version of who they are. And I think it’s hard for us to understand that, and by talking to our customers we can be able to relate and connect to them a lot better.

Sara:

I think you’re totally right, we are the exception. And you may find, of course, every once in a while you’re going to find that diamond, you’re going to find that student who music is just in their soul, it’s who they are and you know that that’s going to be a path that they follow for the rest of their life. But for the most part, that’s not why people are coming to us and so we need to learn, why are they coming to us? So you do the surveys, when I do ideal client work with people, we don’t make somebody up, that’s a mistake. Don’t make up an ideal client because you don’t know if that person actually exists. You have to start with somebody who’s real, so you do the ideal client work thinking about, “This is the person that I have in my studio right now, if I could duplicate this person 10 times, that would make my life amazing.”

Dave:

Yeah, and do you ever think about, well why are they ideal? What about them? Sometimes it can be like, “Oh, because they’re really easy to work with.” Yeah, that’s like you were talking about the people that complain that are asking for the refunds and that’s certainly a part of it but you’re really digging deep into the character of that person and literally pulling that person aside and interviewing them. And I’m just curious, did you literally, you talked about on your old marketing message of all ages, all levels, all skill levels, was that really something that you would say?

Sara:

That was literally on my website and on my social media for a while. And what’s really funny is, in what we do is we constantly have to revisit our marketing, to look at the messaging, to look at, “Is this really connecting with who I am right now as a teacher?” And about a year and a half ago, I was going through some copy on, I think it was a Facebook page, and I found that remnant, it was still there hidden in this one setting that I hadn’t visited in long time, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there it is, there it is”, and that is now gone. But the nice thing is that phrase lives on in my marketing now, it lives on in the marketing that I do for teachers and when we’re branding ourselves, that’s one of the things that I say, “Hey, if you’ve ever fallen into the trap of piano lessons for all ages all levels, I want you to know, hey, I started there too and it’s okay.”

Dave:

When I see that as a marketer or someone who’s a student of marketing, I say, “Ah, you don’t know what to say in your marketing.” It’s the equivalent of going to a restaurant and you open their ad and it says, “We serve appetizers, main courses and dessert.” It’s like, it’s a given, of course you teach all ages and all skill levels, it’s a given. And maybe there’s some questions about that, but I don’t think that’s the number one burning question on people’s mind. What’s the thing that they’re really thinking about? Okay, so what does your message now sound like?

Sara:

Well to be entirely honest, my focus right now is not primarily on my studio and in fact I’ve been actively working to make those numbers decrease over the years. But in doing that it has allowed me to really think, “Okay, who are the people that I want to continue working with?” And so I have both piano and voice, so the messaging is kind of different for both. As a voice teacher, I specialize in working with teens and adults.

I decided I’m not teaching young ones anymore because my specific skill set is really rooted in allowing them and helping them to get to the stage. So my favorite place is to work with those musical theater people and also doing contemporary work as well and to work with people who feel like they’ve reached a certain point and they don’t know what to do now. Or they feel like something’s a little bit broken and they’re at the point that if they don’t work with somebody who’s capable and able to help them through that pain and to help them through those challenges, they might walk away. And so I love to work with people like that.

Sara:

And then with the piano students, I work with highly creative pianists. So I’m not the type of studio that does exams, I’m not a method book stickler, I work with a lot of really creative and smart kids who want to compose, who have goals to play in the jazz band and to do gigging on their own. And so I work with these people who are really driven.

Dave:

And so in your language, how can through your wording or through your language send those signals to those types of people?

Sara:

Good question. So when I would approach this on a sales page, or taglines and things like that, so on a sales page let’s focus in on the voice students for a second. So if my goal were to up enrollment with, let’s say, the high school crowd and I wanted to tell them, “This is what we do here”, it would probably open with a question. Like, “Do you have a burning desire to be on the stage?”

Dave:

Well, there you go. If the answer’s no, next.

Sara:

So you can make it this short little thing and ask them, “Is this what you want?”

Dave:

And maybe it’s like, “Well I don’t know, my kids are only eight”, so that’s great, I love that. So, questions.

Sara:

Questions are great. And writing from a standpoint where you’re shifting the language because I see a lot of teacher websites that are very ‘I’ based, to say, “I teach this, I do this, these are my qualifications”, but we really need to make those pages all about the client. And if you see a bunch of ‘I’s’ on your page and ‘me’s’, it’s time to shift that language into ‘you’ and to talk to them about what they want. And it’s a hard thing to do at first, but it comes back to that acting and being able to put yourself in their shoes and to understand who they are.

Dave:

Well, and I love that question, “Do you have a burning desire to be on the stage?” You could then follow it with another question that’s going to go more niche, “Have you been singing for years”, or something where you begin to signal, like, “Have you been taking lessons but you haven’t been able to accomplish this yet? Well guess what? You’re in the right place.”

Sara:

Yes, exactly, you’re telling their story, you’re telling about where they are right now, what is the pain that they’re experiencing? And then once we start to dig into that, we bring in the transformation. We ask the question, and this sounds very trite, but, “What if life didn’t have to be like that?”

Dave:

There’s the transition.

Sara:

There’s the transition, and then you start talking about what would it feel like if you could walk out on that stage at the audition and know you are going to nail that song, you’re going to nail the acting, I can’t help you with the dance, and I would probably even put that in there in a footnote like, “Does not teach dancing.” But to be able to tell them what life will be like after they make that decision to join you and to really paint that beautiful picture. That is what gets people to sign on.

Dave:

Yeah, right. Creating this story and like you said, painting this picture and telling their story. Yeah, if you tell someone’s story, they’re going to go, “Oh, she gets me.”

Sara:

100%. And that’s the work that I’ve been doing the last couple years working with teachers but also working for myself and writing my own copy because I relaunched a website this past year and rebranding is serious business. Kristen Coffey Rondo is one of my go-to’s, I was like, “Kristen, look at this copy, tell me what you think of it.” And being able to create that story and make that so apparent that when somebody lands on that sales page, they should be able to message you afterwards and say, “I felt like you were talking directly to me.” And when you reach that point, you know your marketing has gotten to a good point.

Dave:

When people land on your sales page, they should feel like you’re talking directly to them. Or you said feel compelled to tell the author. Not that they’re ever going to, but that is successful marketing, is when you make your reader feel like you’re talking to them, is what you’re saying.

Sara:

Exactly. And if it’s really good, you know what? They probably will, they’ll send that message. Or, in your inquiry process and you onboarding process I would always ask, “What was it that moved you to take lessons here?” And you may find what is that key element I have that’s working really well for me and how can I make that happen more?

Dave:

I think people get frustrated with marketing, and they say, “Marketing’s not working for me. Facebook’s not working for me. Instagram’s not working”, and it all boils down to the words that you’re using. Facebook, all these different tactics are a delivery system, and you were saying how music’s a delivery system or music lessons is delivering transformation and these marketing tactics are delivering your message, but if the message isn’t there then Facebook can only do so much for you.

Sara:

100%. And I was so glad that you wanted to dig into the tactics versus strategy because, and this is what I see happening with teachers all the time, I do a lot of social media work with people, and part of that is going over to their Facebook page or their Instagram account and doing and doing an audit and making a video where I’m walking through and going, “Okay, here are the elements that are in place right now that do seem to be working for you, but let’s look at how you’re using this.” And the tactics that they’re using, when we’re talking about tactics we’re talking about, “Okay, this is a task that I can achieve.

This is something that I’m going to check off my list.” That tactic might mean I’m going to post on my Facebook page three times a week. Fine, but if there’s no strategy behind that, if you’re just like, “I’m going to post for the sake of posting just to make sure that there’s stuff on there. I’m to share something from somebody’s page, I’m going to link this YouTube thing.” But if you’re not being strategic with your messaging and really telling the story about, “Here’s what happens in my studio”, those tactics should not be like all of your things are sales. If everything that you post on your page is, “Join lessons now”, or, “special on lessons”, or something like that, people ignore you.

Dave:

Okay, right. So let’s separate or define tactics in strategy. So let’s say a tactic is I’m going to post three times a day on Facebook. Great. Now turn that language into strategic language.

Sara:

Okay. So the way that I see this and I’ve done a lot of thinking about this. We think about what are our overall goals, if your goal is to up enrollment in your studio, okay, great goal. Then we have to come up with a strategy for that goal. Well, that would be figuring out who are the clients that I want to work with, getting real specific about niching that and then thinking about, okay, my strategy is to be able to bring in three new students a month because that’s going to work with how I do my onboarding and doing those first lessons, because those take more energy than just showing up every week with somebody you’ve worked with for three years.

And then thinking about, okay, that strategy is, I need to be able to get the word out in these three areas. Part of that strategy will be looking for referrals. Part of that will be connecting with other local teachers who you know have full rosters and their waitlist is ridiculous at this point. And then maybe it’s okay, I need to hone my messaging on social media and on my website. Then the tactics are the tasks that we break down inside of that. But sometimes we skip the strategy altogether and we just go straight to the tactics and then we wonder why they don’t work.

Dave:

It almost sounds like you have to do so much prep work before you even roll out your first marketing tactic. Before you say, “Okay, I am now going to run an ad”, it’s like you almost have to go through this whole checklist. I love what you said, like, “Okay, what’s the goal? What’s the message? Who are we broadcasting it to? What are our different delivery systems going to be? And in what variety can we create within those delivery systems?” It was like you were saying how you’re looking on someone’s social media and they’re selling all the time. Well, you can be strategic when you say every eighth post will be at selling and everything before that is going to be, and then maybe you define what those seven post types are going to be. And it’s getting really granular, getting really strategic and almost thinking of it as an army getting ready to attack. Before you can attack, you’ve got to do so much planning. And one thing, I love referencing D-day a lot, as it was the most awesome military expression ever and they spent over a year planning for one day. And it’s like your marketing is like that too, where it’s like yeah, if you just go and start shooting off your message without any strategy, you’re just throwing stuff out into the wind. And you wind up going, “I guess marketing doesn’t work.”

Sara:

Bingo. That’s exactly it, because when we’re not strategic with this, and think of that like a tactic, we think, “Okay, I’m going to post more on my Facebook page”, and you’re not getting any engagement, like zero engagement or maybe one like because it’s from your great aunt and she happens to be on Facebook. And then you think, “Okay, well marketing doesn’t work.” Well, that’s not true. The strategy didn’t work because there wasn’t a strategy. And I know that a lot of you who are listening right now are going, “Okay, my brain is spinning and I don’t even know where to start.”

But here’s the encouragement, just because a tactic didn’t work, there are two things that it doesn’t mean, it does not mean that it can’t work in the future, or that that avenue cannot work, that does not mean that Facebook can’t work for you, it doesn’t mean that Google Ads can’t work for you, and the big thing is it doesn’t mean that your goal is not achievable. It just means that you have to take a step back and think about, “How am I going to achieve this and what do people really need to see?” People want to get to know you as a human being.

Sara:

We think of ourselves, we think that we’re product-based, a lot of teachers think that we’re product-based because we’re selling lessons, but we’re really service-based. And when we’re in a service-based industry, it’s all about human connection and it’s like what you said with that studio who did the interviews and they weren’t talking about lessons, they were talking about relationships and the community that they were experiencing. We need to be able, as marketers, to communicate that to people. So if people are not seeing that on your website or they’re not seeing it in your socials and they don’t understand this beautiful experience that you’re providing, then they’re not likely to sign on. So it’s a scary thing to put yourself out there like that though, and I understand. It’s like allowing someone to have a little peek, to see what happens behind the door, what happens behind the curtain.

Dave:

Right, I think it’s scary to even to do anything especially on social media because you’re making yourself vulnerable, and people know that when you post something, they show their approval by a like or a comment and you put something out there and you get crickets and it can really give you a sense of defeat and it’s finding this belief that it’s just a matter of time. You just haven’t crafted the right message yet.

What do you say, and this is a question I get all the time, “Sara, I just don’t like this marketing stuff. I just want to teach but I need to grow my studio. I’ve tried marketing, it doesn’t work, I just don’t like it”, and this business of, “I don’t like.” What words of encouragement would you say to somebody?

Sara:

This is a really good one. So I think the first thing is that we have to define the difference, and I know that you’ve spoken about this inside your Facebook group and on the podcast, there’s a difference between marketing and advertising. Most likely what they don’t like is the advertising part. They don’t like having to sell things, but if we could shift that and to really reframe ‘what is marketing?’, coming back to what we said earlier, it’s telling a story.

People love to tell stories about what happens in their studios. When I sit down with a teacher and I tell them, “Tell me about your students. Tell me about the fun things that happen. Tell me a funny story that happened last week. Tell me about a student who came to you and went through this amazing transformation.” And when we can tap into that and really think about, “What is the difference I’m making in the lives of my students?”, then all of a sudden they go, “Oh, I guess I don’t hate marketing. I just felt like marketing was making sales. But marketing’s telling a story.” And if you tell a good story, the sales come on their own.

Dave:

And I would think marketing your music lessons, well music we know is such a creative expression and it’s a soulful expression and so is marketing. I think there’s so many similarities between music and marketing. It’s all about connecting with people and building relationships with people. So many think of marketing in terms of attracting, the same with music, you want to attract the listener, with marketing you want to attract customers but then you want to keep those customers and that’s ongoing marketing or really relationships building. If we could substitute the word marketing with relationship building, how do you build a relationship and what are the stages that a relationship goes through?

Dave:

It’s like when you’re dating somebody, that’s one part of the relationship and it requires effort and that’s the easy part, the dating, the courtship. But then when you’re married and you’re 10 years in, sort of like the student who’s been with you for five years, you still have to work on that relationship, you still have to market to them. And it’s just like the old married couple, they always ask the old man and woman they’re like 95 years old they’ve been married for 200 years and they say, “What’s the secret?” And the secret is they made effort in the relationship and it’s the same with that piano student you’ve had for five years, it’s easy to take him for granted. But no, what are you doing today to make them feel as special as they felt when they came to their first lesson?

Sara:

That is really beautiful. I think that’s a huge thing that we need to consider, the client retention. We think about attracting new clients but one of the most powerful things that we can do to create a healthy business is to have really good retention rates. And you’re so 100% right about this, we think of marketing and advertising as to just new people, but really that marketing is in the large part to our current clients and that’s why I tell people, “Hey, rather than just sharing that post from Classical FM that has the funny meme, fine, those are great, rather than doing that why don’t you post a picture of one of your kids and tell a story about something that happened in lessons? Maybe it’s a funny story, maybe it’s a heartwarming story.” And that becomes, first off, the parent of that student is going to feel so proud and we all say, “Hey, have your social media release forms”, and all that jazz and all the permission, but that parent’s going to like it, they’re going to share it. They’re going to leave reviews on your socials and testimonials for your website and that’s amazing client service right there.