You might still be shivering, but its time to turn up the heat on your marketing plans. Before you know it summer will be here. That means now is the right time to start promoting your summer programs. We have a strong feeling that this summers attendance may be exceptionally high because of the current economic conditions. Unfortunately for so many people, summer vacations are being postponed or canceled. With more families likely to stay home and sleepaway camps being cost-prohibitive for many, we believe families will be looking more to local businesses that can offer a fun, cost-effect alternative for their child. Normally we dont spend that many dollars promoting our summer programs. We traditionally have a great turnout for our preschool camps and summer intensive. Our plan is always to get these brochures out early to our current clients, and the programs tend to fill up pretty quickly. We usually get a small amount of new clients, but we never typically put our energy, our focus or our summer advertising dollars on trying to attract new students. This year, however, our plan is to expand our summer programs and to market them to new clients. We feel that its important to expand our summer series to better serve our community, both the parents we know and new parents who are looking for interesting and creative outlets for summer fun for their children.
Programs Beyond Plie
To attract the attention of both current and new clients, we recommend that you try fresh ideas for creative programs that will really stand out. Resist offering the same curriculum that you do during the regular season. Fantasy Ballet Camps, Hip Hop Summer Slams and Special Workshop Series are all programs that will get peoples attention. Think about a Flamenco Workshop or a Choreography Intensive. Have each series end with a small performance. It can be as informal as just having all the parents come in to watch the last hour of the final class or arranging to perform at a local venue.
Marketing Madness
As part of our overall marketing strategy, we offer some of our summer programs for free to our current clients. Thats right I said FREE! Here is the catch. They will need to bring in one new, not current paying student who signs up for the series. Lets take a look at the math. If you have 30 people signed up and 10 take you up on this offer, youre teaching 40 for the revenue of 30 students. But its only for this one short series AND you will have an opportunity to get 10 long-term customers. Plus if any of these new students sign up for an additional summer series, you gain that income as well. Now its important to note that we do not make this offer for our 2-week Summer Intensive; that is too long a session for a 2-for-1 offer. We have a different strategy altogether for the 2-week session: If you have a company or competition group, you can make attendance at a 2-week summer intensive a prerequisite for students who want to participate in a group during the upcoming season. It is a great way to get everyone in the company or competition ensemble off to a running start. The best thing we did with our intensive was to move it to the final two weeks of the summer. Most people are done with their vacations or family gatherings by then and it is a great way to prepare your better, more dedicated dancers for whats ahead.
Spreading The Word
Sending an email blast to your current students is a great way to promote your free offer. The key, however, is not to stop at one email and leave it at that. You will need to do a series of emails that have a sense of urgency about them. Decide on a timeframe for clients to take advantage of your offer. Then coordinate a series of five to six email blasts plus a post card during a one-month period. Once this effort is completed, youll have an idea where you should spend your marketing dollarson the programs that need more students. At this point I recommend doing a mass post card campaign to families in your area. You can and should target it to a certain age group. You can get a list of names from your local printer, if you work with one you are happy with, or from a company like Info USA. If you want to build your younger student programs, buy a list of names of families with children ages 2-7. If you have a newspaper that has brought you good results, consider placing an ad. Note that in the current environment, you have a lot of leeway negotiating ad rates. (Especially if you advertise in a paper that loves to print articles about local business and local families, this would also be the ideal time to send in a news-related press release.) Always stress in your ads that space is limited and offer a special incentive to sign up before a certain deadline. We have sometimes offered to waive our registration fee or to give a free T-shirt with our studio logothats free advertising! As youre designing your ad, remember to use headlines that include Special Series or New Workshopskeep the novelty of what youre offering front and center so that customers who already know you get the message that these are not your typical classes. Offer these specials in 1- to 2-week packages or a series of 1 weekly workshop over the course of 6 to 8 weeks. Of course, if you get a phone call from someone who wants to sign up for only 4 of those weeks, let them do it and prorate the fee. Thats called good customer service and you'll probably wind up with a great new customer wholl spread the word about how accommodating your studio is!
The whole idea of summer lessons this year is to entice new people to sign up for the fall and to have your current students try something new that they will want to add on to their class total in the fall. Now is when families are trying to figure out how they will navigate their summer. Let them know you are offering alternatives they will not want to miss!
