Regardless of whether you’ve been running your dance studio business for days, weeks, months, or even years, it’s never too late to start promoting and marketing your dance studio.
If you want to make sure your dance studio is profitable, knowing how to market and which platforms to tap into could be the difference between having fully booked classes and not. In this blog post, our team of marketing experts will be going through some of the marketing basics.
What Is Dance Studio Marketing & Why Is It Important?
If you've been running your dance studio successfully for years with little to no marketing in place, you might be wondering why you need it at all. After all, word of mouth has likely been a powerful driver of enrollments for you.
While word of mouth is undoubtedly an effective and organic way to attract new students, it’s not always the most reliable or scalable method. That’s where having a marketing plan, however basic, comes into its own, with various benefits including:
Reaching new customers who wouldn’t have otherwise heard of you (people who have just moved to the area or someone wanting to start a new hobby, for example).
Ensuring that your dance studio is coming up on Google and Social Media ahead of your competitors.
Helping to increase revenue, more revenue means more money that you can invest back into your business, students, and teachers.
The more students your school has, the more opportunities you can afford to offer, including events, competitions, and more.
First Things First: How To Get Started With Marketing
Like with anything, you can't just go into marketing all guns blazing. Set aside 5-8% of gross revenue for dance studio marketing, with newer small businesses sometimes investing 10-12% to grow faster. There are a few things that we recommend you have in place first, such as defining your target audience before choosing channels or campaigns:
A clear USP helps your studio's brand stand out, should shape your marketing strategies, and lets you tailor your marketing tactics to what sets you apart from other arts businesses. Consistently implementing marketing efforts around a focused segment—whether that means young dancers, potential students, or the paying customers who make enrollment decisions—will make your digital marketing more effective with prospective customers, prospective students, and other new leads in your local community. This also helps dance studio owners reach potential customers with the right message, focus marketing dollars more effectively, and turn interest into enrollment.
Strong Brand
Why is having a strong brand important for your dance studio? Having a strong brand is fundamental in the world of marketing, and it helps your studio’s brand feel consistent and memorable to prospective customers and paying customers alike—something your team, students, and families can buy into, feel a part of, and be proud of. Having a strong brand helps to increase trust and authority within the dance community.
A brand will often consist of:
A logo
A studio name
A colour scheme
A Tag line
Your USP and branding should appeal to your target audience, especially local parents and young dancers.
These things will then feed through to your website, flyers, signage, social media, branded merchandise, and more. Companies such as Pineapple Dance Studio, Dancewear, and Royal Academy for Ballet have extremely recognizable and well-put-together brands. That their customers buy into and place their trust in. (Learn more about how to name your Dance Studio in our blog post: 'How to choose the right name for your dance studio'.)
Set Up A Social Media Marketing Page
The easiest way to get in front of your customers is to meet them where they are. In most cases, that means using the right social media platforms, where both prospective students and existing families spend time. This is why it is important to ensure that you've got a social media presence with active social media accounts, whether on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or all three. Facebook is effective for reaching local parents and sharing event updates, Instagram is ideal for routines and student successes, and TikTok features short videos that can increase visibility, including clips of students performing.
Over half of U.S. teenagers spend at least four hours daily on social media, and millennial parents spend an average of 2 hours and 16 minutes there too.
Top Tip: When creating a social media account, it's important to ensure that you're setting up a business page and business profile. This way, you will be able to see insights, control comments, and have access to additional features and information. Include a clear call to action and website link in your profile, and keep followers informed with your class schedule and upcoming events.
Use social media strategies that mix regular social media posts, Instagram stories, and user-generated content to boost engagement, and pair organic content with paid social media posts for the best results.
Online Vs Offline Marketing
When thinking about marketing, it's important to know the difference between digital marketing and offline marketing, what you can do for both, and how it can benefit your dance studio. Referral programs are a low-cost marketing tactic, and customer referrals plus partnerships with local businesses are two low-cost marketing strategies because 88% of people trust recommendations from friends and family. Working with your local community through schools and events can also raise visibility, and local partnerships can increase visibility for dance studios through community events. These marketing efforts are usually more effective when you are consistently implementing a few tactics well instead of trying everything at once.
Offline Marketing
This, as the name suggests, is any marketing that you do that's not online, including:
Word-of-mouth marketing
Creating flyers, postcards, and other direct mail for local distribution, including targeted direct mail campaigns with your studio name, class schedule, and a website link; 57% of consumers say direct mail prompts them to visit a brand's website
Newspaper advertising
Partnering with local schools, suppliers, or community centres
You can also post flyers on community bulletin boards in places like grocery stores, with permission, and add a QR code or tear-off strip so potential customers can respond easily.
It also helps to work with community centers and local businesses that can cross-promote your studio to the local community and reach prospective students as well as other potential students.
Offline outreach can also promote free classes or a trial class to reduce barriers for new families, since free trial classes often make it easier for prospective students to sign up.
Online Marketing
Digital marketing is the complete opposite of offline marketing and covers everything you do online. Including, but not limited to:
Social media marketing and social media posts, with a clear call to action and a website link that helps attract potential students and prospective students
Website creation and search engine optimization, using relevant keywords
Google Business Profile creation and updating (more on this later) to improve visibility on Google Maps and support online reviews and positive reviews
While this can all sound overwhelming, it doesn't have to be. We recommend focusing on only a couple of these aspects to start marketing your dance studio.
Search engine optimization helps your studio appear higher in search engine results pages for a search engine using terms such as "dance studios near me," which can create a steady stream of traffic and support new leads. Since 71% of clicks occur on the first page of Google and only 0.63% of searchers click results on page 2, ranking matters, and regularly posting blog content can help.
Paid advertising, such as Facebook ads, can support organic efforts, and a strong trial class offer can help convert new leads into paying customers.
Local Marketing
Nine times out of ten, if you're a dance studio owner, you're not going to want to market UK-wide; you're just going to want to focus on your local catchment area. To help with this, there are a couple of things you can do. One of the main ones is setting up a Google Business Profile, then optimising local SEO so your studio appears in Google Maps and nearby search results. Another is email marketing, which helps you nurture new leads and retain existing students. It’s worth using because education emails average a 28.5% open rate, and recreational businesses see 41.8%. Segment your list by target audience, use automated welcome emails for prospective students, and tailor messages to potential students interested in specific classes. Preschool-aged children are especially valuable for many studios, so focused messaging to those families can be very effective, and positive reviews plus online reviews also help build visibility with local parents.
Learn more about local marketing in our webinar here. Book a demo with our team, or create your free account here.
