Ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio | Simple ways for getting more students!
In this article I’m going to give you 10 ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio, and promote your dance classes!
Before writing this article, I went on other websites to see what kind of advice other people were giving as to how to increase enrollment in your dance studio, and most of the information out there was REALLY outdated.
So, I want to share with you current methods and ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio...
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10 ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio
Here’s a list of ideas that you can use to increase enrollment in your studio.
The ideas at the top of the list are your lowest hanging fruit.
Those are going to be your fast, and easy WINS, so make sure you do those first!
- Send a text message to your previous students
- Email your previous students and leads
- Improve your website’s SEO
- Social media advertising
- Social media organic posts
- Collaborate with other business doing giveaways
- Charity
- Networking events
- Flyers in restaurants
- Passing out business cards
I want you to notice that the first 6 items on the list are all internet based.
The reason for that is simply because the internet allows you to reach people, quicker, easier, and on a much larger scale than any in person method…
If you develop online marketing skills, you can metaphorically blow up your dance studio, and pack your dance classes with students really quickly.
That’s how the largest dance studios are doing it, and that’s why they are able to be so successful!
Ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio | The irresistible offer
Before we dive into the 10 ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio, I want to make you aware of something…
None of the ideas I’m going to give you are going to increase enrollment in your dance studio, unless you have an ‘irresistible offer’.
You see, when it comes to marketing, you always have to keep in mind that people are really busy, lazy, and it’s hard to get them to do anything…
So, in order to make your job of attracting new students easier, a good offer is essential…
So what’s an irresistible offer?
While there’s not a single way of saying what an irresistible offer is, it is a REALLY compelling offer you give to someone that makes them want to take action.
Here are a few examples:
- Get a free class
- Get 10 classes for $10
- Get a 1-week unlimited class pass
- Get 3 months free when you pay for 3 months in advanced.
- 2 classes for $2
- 5 classes for $5
- Get a private lesson for $25
- We’ll waive your registration fee
Essentially an irresistible offer is anything that can provide tons of value for either a significant discount or for free!
Now, as we move into the list of ideas to increase enrollment in your dance studio, keep this concept of the irresistible offer in mind because it’s going to make your job so much easier!
Without a good offer, you can have the best marketing in the world, but you won’t see good results from it...
It’s kind of like going fishing without bait. You might get lucky and catch something, but you won’t catch anywhere as much fish as if you had bait…
So, now that you understand that, let’s jump into the 10 ideas.
1. Send a text message to your previous students
If you have been in business for a while, this is possibly the easiest thing that you can do right now to increase enrollment in your dance studio.
Dance studio owners are always looking for NEW students, but the reality is that your database of previous students, and leads is possibly one of your biggest assets.
You see, when you talk to a potential new student, you have to start a completely new relationship with them, and get them to trust you.
On the other hand, people in your database are already familiar with you, they already like you, and trust you, PLUS you already have their contact information!
Just because they stopped coming at some point in the past, it does not mean that they won’t ever do business with you ever again, so reach out to them!
Grab your database and start initiating conversations with these people in your database, and invite them back to the studio with an irresistible offer.
You don’t have to invest tons of time into it...
This is what I would say “Hey Tina, this is Hervin from Latin Dance Movement. I want to invite you back to the studio! We’re doing a special promotion for our old students, and we’re giving away a few free unlimited class passes, Do you want one?
Something simple like this doesn’t feel pushy, and it’s an easy way to re-engage those contacts and get them to come back!
Time Saving Tip: We have a software that allows you to import your database, and mass text and start 2 way conversations with those contacts…
If you have a list of a few hundred contacts, or thousands of contacts, this will help you save A LOT of time!
If you’re interested in finding out more, book a free strategy session, and we can walk you through it!
2. Email your previous students and leads
For the same reasons I gave you above regarding marketing to the previous students that you have in your database, I’m going to suggest that you also focus your attention on email marketing!
This is another low hanging fruit that can give you good results with minimal effort.
While email is not nearly as personal as a text message, it still works…
Now, I’m not suggesting that you spend countless hours writing lots of newsletters everyday.
While newsletters can definitely work, they are time consuming, so we’re not going to focus on that right now.
What you need to do right now is take all those emails in your database of past students and leads, and send them a quick email with an offer inviting them back to the studio!
This is very similar to the text message strategy above, except that email doesn’t work nearly as well.
The hardest thing about email is getting someone to open it, so when you’re typing your email out, make sure that you give a lot of thought to your subject line.
Your subject line is what is going to make or break this strategy…
If you have a weak subject line, then not many people will open your email, and they won’t get to see your offer…
On the other hand, if you have a good subject line, then you will get more people to open the email and respond to your offer…
With that said, what makes a good subject line?
One word: Curiosity!
If you can build curiosity on your subject line, you can get more people to open up your email…
So here are a few examples of curiosity driven subject lines:
- “Hey, here’s a invitation for you”
- “Did you miss this?”
- “RE: Registration successful”
Subject lines like this that are meant to build curiosity and get someone’s attention are more likely to be opened!
Now, once you have their attention, and you got them to open the email, what do you write in the body of the email?
The body of the email should be simple.
Tell them you’re reaching out to all your students and doing a special promotion for the next 3 days.
Give them an irresistible offer so that they come back to the studio!
3. Improve your website’s SEO
Over the years that I was teaching dancing, and ran my own studio, SEO was by far the thing that brought me the most amount of students!
You see, once you set up your website correctly, it will allow you to show up at the top on the first page of the google search results, which means that whenever someone searches for dance classes in your city, they will find you first above all the other competitors.
Unlike advertising, SEO is free which means that you don’t have to pay google anything to appear on top of the search results…
Plus, SEO is long lasting which means that it will keep bringing you students in for a really long time!
Once you set up your website is showing up first on Google results, you want to make sure that people see your irresistible offer so that they come to your studio!
If you want to learn more about how to do SEO for your dance studio, start with this blog post here:
“How To Promote a Dance Studio Using SEO – Part 1”
4. Social media advertising
I know lots of people that still think that social media advertising (facebook, instagram ads) don’t work…
In fact, you might have tried running some advertisements in the past, without much results…
The thing is that making social media ads work is not simple, but when done right, social media advertisement is BY FAR, the FASTEST way to grow your dance studio.
While there are too many components to include here in this blog post...
If you want to learn how to do social media advertising for your dance studio…
Start with our blog post here that teaches you how to write social media ads, even if you’ve never written an advertisement before.
“Dance Studio Ad: Recipes For Writing Your Dance School Advertisement”
5. Social media organic posts
Posting on your social media pages, and personal profile can be an effective way of getting new students.
The good thing about this strategy is that it is free, but the downside is that unless you have someone helping you with creating and posting all your content, it is very time consuming!
If you want to be able to delegate this task to a studio staff member, then you need to create a system for when to post, and what kind of content to post about.
One way to do this is to create a content bank, and a posting schedule.
Content Bank
Part of what makes social media posts so time consuming is always trying to come up with new ideas…
Rather than doing that you should create a content bank, which is a place where you are going to store different types of content and group them into different categories...
Here are a few examples of different categories of content:
- Students testimonial
- Students interviews
- A day in the life of a dance teacher
- Success stories about your studio
- Funny memes
- Your “studio family” picture
- Student highlights
- Inspiring quotes
- Fun dance videos
- Videos of students dancing
- Videos of competition
- Videos of packed classes
The reason why you want to have this content bank is because you’ll be able to delegate this task to someone, and give them the responsibility of posting this content to social media.
Once, you have the content bank, then the next thing to do is create a content calendar.
Content Calendar
This is going to be the framework that you follow when posting your content for example:
- Mondays: Student highlights at 1pm, and students testimonial at 6pm.
- Tuesdays: Inspiring quotes at 3pm, and videos of students dancing at 9pm.
- Wednesdays: A day in the life of a dance teacher at 1pm, and students interviews at 6pm.
- Thursdays: “Studio family” picture at 3pm, and videos of packed classes at 9pm.
- Fridays: Funny memes at 1pm, inspiring quotes at 6pm.
- Saturdays: Fun dance videos at 3pm, and videos of competition at 9pm.
- Sundays: Videos of students dancing at 1pm, and inspiring quotes at 6pm.
In this example you can see that you (or your staff) will be posting twice per day.
If you’re going to be doing this strategy of posting content on social media, you need to be consistent, you need to do it often, and you need to have structure!
Last, you want to make sure that at the END of every post, you invite people to take you up on your irresistible offer!
6. Collaborate with other business doing giveaways
I learned this strategy from a dentist who used it to increase the amount of patients in her practice really quickly!
The strategy goes as follows, go to your neighboring businesses and tell them that you’re going to run a promotion for your dance studio and are looking to partner up with other businesses by doing a giveaway!
Tell them that you’re going to be putting in all the effort in social media, and they are going to get lots of exposure for their business.
All they would have to do is give something away.
It could be a gift card, it can be a goodie bag, it can be some products, anything of value.
You tell them that you will feature their business name in the post!
Now, go repeat the same thing with as many businesses as you can!
Once you have at least 6 businesses giving something away…
Make a social media post about your giveaway…
Tell people that 6 businesses in their community have come together to do a special promotion.
Tell them there will be 5 prices:
- $50 cash
- $25 cash
- Gift cards
- Special Discounts
- Everyone who participates get your irresistible offer!
Now, in order for people to participate, they have to share the post with 2 people and comment on the post everyday.
Then, you tell them that on the 7th day you’re going to be picking the random winners.
Then after the 7th day, you make big announcements of the winners, and tell them that they have to pick up the prizes at your dance studio, which will give you a chance to promote your dance studio!
Then, that same day you want to direct message everyone who commented on the original post, and invite them to try out your dance studio with your irresistible offer!
This is a creative strategy to use giveaways to not only promote and generate buzz around your dance studio, but at the same time you’re also building good will in the community, as well as good will with your local business owners!
7. Charity
This is another strategy I learned from the same dentist who taught me the strategy above.
Pick certain dates out of the year to do a big charity drive for a certain cause, for example:
- Food to the homeless
- Toy drive around the holidays
- Clothes for children
Then you want to make a post about it on social media, and invite people to participate, and bring donations to your studio…
Whoever brings donation items to your studio gives you an opportunity to talk to them about your dance school, and invite those people to join by giving them an irresistible offer!
8. Networking events
This strategy is simple, and effective, but not very scalable because it requires people and lots of time to do them.
What you want to do is find events that are happening in your community, close to your studio, and offer to teach a free dance class there.
Networking event organizers always love to include some kind of entertainment for their event that will bring people together and help them network, and dancing is the perfect activity to do just that!
Look for places where your ideal clients are, for example:
- Charity events
- Chamber of commerce meetings
- Parades
- Holiday gatherings
- Meetup groups
Keep a calendar with all the events happening around your neighborhood, and write an email to the organizers telling them you want to provide free entertainment, so that you get a chance to promote your studio.
More than likely, they’ll be happy to do that, and they will most likely offer a chance to pass out business cards and put up your flyers!
And of course, make sure that you mention your irresistible offer before the class, after the class, and when you’re talking to people at these events!
9. Flyers in restaurants
Typically, most restaurants have places where you can put up flyers to promote local businesses…
Print out small flyers (typically they won’t let you place huge flyers), and anytime you go to a restaurant around your studio, put up one or two flyers at the restaurant.
Make sure the first thing people see in your flyer is your irresistible offer because not many people pay attention to flyers!
This strategy will not blow up your dance studio with new students, but you will get new students every few months, so it might still be worth printing out $10 worth of flyers for you to do this (don’t spend more than that).
10. Passing out business cards
We’re getting old school here, but business cards can be effective if you’re a social person that hangs out in the community quite often.
What you want to do, when you’re having your business cards printed is that you want to print out not just your name, number, and business name, but you also want to include your irresistible offer on the card.
The reason for that is because you’re giving the people a reason as to why they should take you up on your offer!
By the way, don’t make the mistake of investing more than $10-$20 on business cards. I’ve done that plenty of times, and I always have had to end up throwing a bunch of unused business cards...
$10-$20 should give you plenty of them to carry around in your pocket for a year!
Ideas to increase enrollment in dance studio | Where should you focus on first?
Great job for making it all the way to the end of the article.
At this point you’re probably thinking about how to implement all of these different ideas to start to increase enrollment in your dance classes.
My suggestion is that you first focus on the activities that are going to provide you with the biggest returns for your effort which are ideas 1-4.
If you dial those strategies in, you’re going to have more students than you even know what to do with, so start there!
Here’s a few articles to help you get started on your journey of getting more students:
This article will show you how to show up first on the Google search results!
In that article you will learn how to write advertisements that will get you lots of students!
Want us to help you get more students?
If you need help with attracting more students to your studio, book a free strategy call with us and we’ll be happy to help you!