How To Get New Students During Lockdown

Stay-at-home orders are hitting music teachers hard. Many students are putting lessons on hold, maybe because of their own financial strain, or because they aren’t tech-savvy and are having a hard time with remote lessons.

It is still possible to sign up new students during this time (I am seeing it happen!), but people will have to be reached differently than usual. Since people are home it’s harder to get new people and have to be reached differently. All of these tips are great things to keep in mind even when not in a pandemic.

Referrals

The students and families you currently teach want to help and will be happy to refer others, they just need to be reminded that this is something they can do! Send out an email to your families or create a post on your social media account to see if anyone knows someone who may be looking to take lessons (after all, many people are picking up a new hobby or brushing up on skills while they are at home). Better Practice helps make this easy with our referral feature: you can craft the referral email explaining what you offer and include your contact information, then all parents have to do is tap to generate an email to anyone they are looking to refer.

Social media

Ads: Quick and easy

Everyone is at home, meaning a lot of people are spending extra hours on their devices scrolling through social media. There’s a few ways you can advertise through social media. The first is the more traditional method of buying paid ads. This is the fast and easy way to get your information out to a targeted audience, and the higher your budget, the more people will see it. I’ve noticed an uptick in ads coming my way from local businesses trying new things or offering discounts to keep customers flowing in, and I personally love it. I am finding out about all sorts of new businesses and get to support them while getting great deals. It’s a win-win!

Organic: Get people asking YOU for lessons!

The second way you can use social media (and something you should do in conjunction with the above) is the organic approach. Now is the perfect time to spiff up your social media accounts and put out to the world what you can offer! If you establish yourself well as a musician on social media, and people will be asking to take lessons from you. What are your unique strengths as a musician? Maybe it’s improv, maybe it’s playing a certain musical style, maybe it’s your personality and humor, maybe you’re great at arranging Disney songs, or maybe you consistently get X number of students to pass so-and-so music exam every year. Show it off, do some hashtag research & see what works, stay engaged & connect with others, and most importantly, keep posting!

NextDoor app: Let your neighbors find you

NextDoor is an app that connects you with your local community. You can post about events or offer your services. Many are finding and doing local commerce on here - it is worth checking out!

Postcard advertisements in the mail

Old-fashioned, but it still works especially now when people have time to go through their mail! Send out some postcard mailers with an offer to entice people who may be on the fence about taking lessons. You could offer a free trial meeting or lesson, or even better, a discount on the first few lessons (this keeps them coming back and you can build a connection with them).

Shareable content

Have your students record a separate track from home and create a compilation, or have students play the same song (perhaps even with separate parts) and stitch a video together. These are getting popular these days, and sharing to social media makes it easy for families to share with their family friends. Better Practice also has achievement badges you can share for the top stats in your studio. Sharing the results from the hard work of your students as well as your fun studio community is great advertisement.

Search ads

Buy search ads on Google or Bing, for example, “piano lessons in (your city name)”. Anyone searching for this will be directed to you in the search engine.

These times are forcing us to get more creative than ever, and it's great luck that we live in an era with tools that facilitate distance learning and connecting with others online. Try Better Practice to connect with your students online today, and check out our other articles on remote teaching on the blog!