Why do parents sign their children up for music lessons?
The reason parents sign their children up for music lessons is because they want them to play an instrument…right? Well, yes, this is certainly true on the most basic level. But why do parents value music lessons in the first place? What’s the real reason parents want music lessons? In this blog, I’ll share with you how to reveal the best strategy for marketing your music lessons.
The Key To All Effective Marketing
In this episode of Music Lessons and Marketing, I apply a seemingly easy yet mind-bending exercise outlined in the book Made to Stick (Dan and Chip Heath), designed to reveal your customers’ core desire. The better you can speak to their core desire, the better you can connect to customers in your marketing.
Sell the Feeling Not The Features
A blue jeans designer might be inclined to talk about the materials she uses or how great you’ll look in a pair of her jeans. People don’t buy clothes because of how they’re made. They don’t even buy clothes because of how they’ll look wearing them. They buy clothes because of how they make them feel.
Speak Directly To Your Customer
Your marketing and messaging will have a greater impact if you can uncover your customer’s core desire and feeling that they seek. They might not even be aware of what that core desire is. By working through this simple exercise you will move from a practical desire…” I want my child to learn to play an instrument”…to a more emotional driver. Once you can identify that core emotion or desire you can craft your marketing to speak directly to your customer.
Reveal Your Customers Why
Question: Why do parents sign their children up for music lessons?
Answer: To play an instrument.
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to them because they believe music will help their child with their overall emotional health.
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to parents because an emotionally healthy child is likely to have a greater sense of self-confidence
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to parents because a child with a great sense of self-confidence is more likely to realize their potential
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to parents because a child who is able to realize their potential is more likely to be successful in life
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to parents because a child who is successful in life is more likely to be financially secure.
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to parents because a child who achieves financial security achieves financial independence.
Q: Why is that important to parents?
A: It’s important to parents because a child with financial independence will be able to take care of themselves after their parents are gone.
Getting to Your Customers Core Desire
Okay. So now we’re really getting to the core of why people sign up for music lessons. All purchases are made to fix a problem. All purchases are an emotional decision. You want to be able to identify what that problem is for your customer and what’s at the core of that desire and their emotions. It’s not enough to say, well, parents signed up for music lessons because they want their kid to play an instrument. Well, sure, but again, why is it important to, to that mean, you’ve got to keep digging based on what I came up with.
A Summary of Why Kids Take Music Lessons
Based on the Heath Brothers exercise: The real reason parents sign their children up for music lessons is because they want their children to have the emotional health and self-confidence to achieve independence, discover their true potential and live a happy life. That’s the real reason why. The only way I was able to come up with that by applying this exercise.
Now there are different roads you can take with this. I could have said music lessons are important to parents because playing an instrument will allow their child to connect with other people. That will fall under status. By playing an instrument, a child will be able to better find his or herself in the social order.
Establishing Some Marketing Language
The main ideas that were discussed here are confidence, potential success in life, financial security. You would not want to talk about financial security in your marketing, right? And you wouldn’t want to talk about how music lessons are going to help your child be successful in life because you can’t really guarantee that. How can we extrapolate some marketing language from this exercise? Confidence is an easy one. Everyone uses that when it comes to music lessons, help kids be more confident. The Heath Bros. exercise revealed the word potential. That’s also an easy word to weave into your marketing, “help your child realize his or her potential through music.”
Music Lessons That Help Children Succeed in Life
Success in life would be an unfair promise to say, our music lessons will help your child be successful in life. Prove it. Okay. So that’s a little tricky, but how do we define success in life? What makes a person successful in life? Good social skills, good leadership skills, and good communication skills. Those three ideas you can weave into your marketing, our music lessons, help kids develop these attributes. If you have a band program or an ensemble program, much easier to work these attributes into your marketing. You don’t want to make the promise of that. Their child will be successful in life through music lessons. Everyone has a different definition of what that means, but no reason why you can’t hone in on these three characteristics.
Let’s define financial security. Not that parents want their kids necessarily to be rich, but they want their child to have enough financial security so that when they are gone, that their child will be okay, that they’ll be able to carry on and raise a family on their own. So the keyword here really is independence. And that is something that you can weave into your marketing.
Understanding What Your Customers Value
Why is that important to the customer? Something I’ve talked about in the podcast before is I said, whenever you write a single sentence of sales, copy, ask yourself, why is that important to the customer? Why is it important to the customer that all of your music instructors have college degrees? And, and they’ll say, Oh, well, they, you know, uh, parents really value, uh, professionalism and quality. Why is that important? You can dig deeper with that. I don’t think parents really care so much that your music instructors have music degrees. I think they care about other things. First, they care about the impact your lessons are going to have on their child.
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