Running a Successful Dance Studio

Marketing Your Dance Studio Effectively

How do people find your studio? Word of mouth, visibility from the main road, newspapers, TV, magazines, yellow pages, web site, local publications, leaflets, direct mail, workshops? All of the above.

It All Starts With a Logo
Geography
Pick Avenues that Target Your Audience
Repetition and Consistency
Web Site
Online Advertising
Run Workshops / Demonstrations
Track Your Marketing Efforts
Spell Check & Proof Read Everything

It All Starts With a Logo
A logo is important because it becomes your brand identity. The logo should be clean and simple and be instantly recognizable as something to do with dance. Dancers and ballet shoes are clichés but people get them. If you get too abstract with your logo its message may be lost.

Once you have your logo, add a well thought out tag line. It should be short and memorable but above all, meaningful. “Reach for the Stars”, is cute and most people will get it in conjunction with the logo, but “Promoting Excellence in Dance” is more direct and everyone will get it even if the logo isn’t present.

So think carefully and don’t rush the design. A logo stays with your company for life. Yes you can change it later but business cards, letterhead, adverts and above all, customer recognition all goes away.

Geography
Unless you run a chain of studios, local advertising will be much more effective than anything else. Online marketing is definitely more significant these days but you should still use other forms of local advertising such as local newspapers, yellow pages and other local publications such as parent guides or neighborhood news.

Pick Avenues that Target Your Audience
Evaluate the demographics of your current students. If you teach mainly young children then advertise in areas that are seen by parents such as parent guides. If you teach mainly teens and adults then consider local newspapers or magazines that are somewhat local to your region but may be more tailored towards active people or dancers.

Don’t make the mistake of publishing adverts in avenues that are cheap but don’t target your audience. It’s wasted money. You’re far better off paying a bit more knowing that you’re going to reach the people who are in a position to use your services.

Repetition and Consistency
Your adverts can change but you should keep certain things consistent. The fonts you use and the location and size of your logo. It’s part of who you are and you should be very clear and consistent in your look. You can’t be sleek and sophisticated one week and then fun and vibrant the next.

It has been proven time and time again that you need to keep running adverts in the same places a number of times before you get a reaction. Brand recognition doesn’t come on the first sighting of your advert but if people see your advert a number of times it somehow gets locked in their head and when they do require your services your name will be there. If you’ve been consistent in your advertising they’ll know they can get your contact information from the local paper etc.

Web Site
The one advantage of a website is that once you’ve invested the money in designing a professional site, it’s there for everyone to see 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Your advert might not be in the paper the week they’re looking for a dance studio but your web site will be. It’s also easy to find through a search engine meaning they don’t have to know what page in which paper your advert appears to get your phone number.

Your web site needs to be consistent with your other branding and should reflect the style of your studio. Home made web sites can be a real turn off as the feeling is that if the web site is cheap, the studio will be cheap too. The second mistake is that you need to keep the content current and up to date. Change your schedules as appropriate. Remove old information that’s no longer relevant.

Use your web site to communicate important messages and promote upcoming events.

Take advantage of the search engines by making sure you have all the keywords you expect people to find your studio through are mentioned many times throughout your site.

A lot of people forget this, but put your web site on everything. Every advert you do, every piece of paper you produce, every promotional item you create.

Online Advertising
There are many online advertising programs available such as Google’s Ad-Words advertising or banner ad placements on web sites. These are great and many are inexpensive, but the same rules apply as for other forms of advertising. Think about your geography, be consistent, be truthful about the nature of your studio.

There’s no point running a cheap advertising campaign if the adverts get shown in China but your studio is in California. Unless, of course, you’re trying to attract foreign dance students to join your dance program.

Run Workshops / Demonstrations
What better way to promote your business, show off your teachers and have fun at the same time than to offer a local workshop or dance demonstration at a local fair, school, library, you name it.

Track Your Marketing Efforts
Whenever somebody new contacts your studio, ask them how they heard about you and keep a score sheet of the responses. If like many studios you have a limited budget for advertising then knowing which arenas bring you the most business is important.

Spell Check & Proof Read Everything
It may seem like you don’t have the time to proof read communications, but you can’t afford not to. Bad grammar and bad spelling reflect your studios image. Spell checking takes seconds to do, so there’s no excuse not to run a spell checker on everything.

Proof reading takes a little longer but it’s important to check dates and times especially if you’re recycling bulletins or memos from previous events. Is the communication short and to the point? Is the important information towards the top of the content and does it stand out?