Simple Dance Studio Marketing Plan

Dance Studio Marketing Plan | Foundations

In this article, I’m going to show you a big picture overview of a simple dance studio marketing plan, so that you understand how to bring in more people into your studio FAST! Now, you’ve probably done some research…Maybe asked a couple of people…

How do I market my dance studio?

Now, don’t get me wrong…While I am trying to be a little funny, all of those methods can certainly work, but the real question is…

How much effort do you want to put in (as part of your dance studio marketing plan)?

Back when I had my own dance studio, I definitely tried most of those… (Except for the lead box… I mean, come on).

I went to the mall and different restaurants, and passed out about 300 business cards! 300 Hundred cards is actually not that much, but it took me around 5 hours to pass them all out…

I’ve done the corporate events and charity events. Without exaggeration, between the business cards, the charity and corporate events, the posters and flyers pinned up on restaurants… And every other marketing strategy that I've tried…

I probably got a total of 4 new students over a period of a few months.

To be fair, I wasn’t very consistent. Either way, I said to myself:

“There has to be a better, more simple way to market my studio!” And that is exactly what I want to share with you in this article…

I want to introduce to you: 

The 80/20 Dance Studio Marketing Plan

“HUH? What’s that?” You might be thinking…

If you’ve never heard of the 80/20 principle, let me take a moment to explain…

In simple terms, the 80/20 principle says that 80% of outputs (or results) come from 20% of inputs (or actions)...

Let me show you a few examples I found on google...

“That’s cool, but what does this have to do with a dance studio marketing plan?”

Well, the thing is that this 80/20 principle can be applied to anything…

Including your marketing…

Here’s how: 80% of your marketing results come from 20% of your marketing efforts! Let me say this another way: There are lots of things that you can do for your marketing, but only a FEW things will get you MOST of the results… 

And if you were to figure out what those things are, and focus on them…

You would be able to work less, get more students, and make more money…

“So, what are those things?”

Well, like I said at the beginning of the article…I’ve tried a lot of marketing ideas, but I’m going to share the 2 main ones that turned out to be a staple in our own dance studio marketing plan:

SEO and Facebook Ads

1. SEO as part of your Dance Studio Marketing Plan

 You see, every month, there’s a certain amount of people that type in google “dance studio near me”.

We’ll call this group of people “HOT”. These people are ready to go, because they WANT dance classes. But they probably haven’t heard of your dance studio.

With the power of SEO (search engine optimization) you can show up in their google results.

And the best thing is that once your website is ranking high on the search engines, you will keep getting a steady stream of people visiting your page. Despite the fact that you won't have to do much to maintain that position, it will keep bringing you new students for a really long time...And it’s FREE!

[Even though I don’t have a studio anymore, I’m still getting calls everyday from people looking for dance lessons because my old dance studio website still ranks high on Google…]

The Downside Of SEO

Now, the downside about SEO is that you can’t control it.

SEO is like the wind: Imagine you lived in a house that uses a windmill for power...

What happens on the days that are not as windy? Well, you won’t have as much power…

The same thing applies to SEO. The amount of people that search for studios on google varies from month to month. On top of that, just like you can’t control which way the wind blows...You can’t control which classes people search for on Google.

This means that if you have specific classes that you want to fill up, but they are not as popular on the google searches (like a foreign, or little known style of dance), you might not get much benefit from SEO.

2. Increase Your Dance Studio Enrollment Fast with FACEBOOK ADS

There are a couple of groups of people much larger than the “HOT” group of people actively searching for a dance studio near them. This is the group of people that could potentially be interested in dance classes for their kids or for themselves, but they haven’t started the research process.

This group also includes the people who just want to have their kid do something fun, but they don’t care if it’s dance, painting lessons, or karate.

We’ll call these 2 groups: 

WARM and COLD...

The thing about these 2 groups of people is that if your advertisement were to show up in front of them with a good offer, they might take you up on it, to try out your dance studio. But, how can you show up in front of people who are not searching for a dance studio?

That’s where Facebook Ads come into play. The difference between SEO and Facebook ads is that with SEO, you’re reaching people who are looking specifically for dance. However, with Facebook ads, you’re doing something called  “interruption based marketing”.

This just simply means that your advertisement shows up in front of people who are hanging out on Facebook without any intentions of looking for anything.

And when done right, you can get these people to get up from their couches and join your studio!

The best thing about Facebook ads is that you can decide when to turn them on or off. So, if you’re just starting your dance studio, social media Facebook ads are the perfect way to fill up your classes. In addition, using this as part of your dance studio marketing plan will increase your student enrollment FAST!

Or, if you are an established dance studio, but you have certain specific classes in your studio that you want to fill up…running Facebook ads would do that for you.

Thanks to the detailed targeting possibilities of Facebook, you can choose to show up in front of people near your dance studio.

And present them with an offer that gets them interested in trying your studio or that specific class you’re looking to promote.

CONCLUSION

If you want to grow your dance studio, get more students, and have packed dance classes…

Instead of trying to implement lots of different marketing ideas as part of your dance studio marketing plan, and waste your time and money on things that don’t bring you results...

Focus on the few marketing efforts that are going to bring you 80% of the results…

That’s SEO and Facebook marketing…

Now, with all of this said... 

SEO and Facebook ads for a local dance studio are not too difficult. But it does take time investment and knowledge to get the search engines to rank you higher!

Facebook ads can give you fast results, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up wasting thousands of dollars and not see any results.

Thank you guys so much for reading…

Leave a comment down below with any questions you might have!

See you next time,

Hervin.