 Music teachers aren't charging enough for Music Lessons.That's a pretty bold statement from someone who doesn't even know how much you charge, right? Every music teacher I've ever talked to has priced their music lessons too low. The number one question music teachers ask in online forums is, "How much should I charge for music lessons?" Everyone comments an amount without knowing anything about you and your personal situation. Here are 5 things music teachers should factor into their pricing... 1. Music teachers should factor their geographical area into their pricing. What is the local demographic like? What's your town's population? What the average household income? Knowing this information will help you get a good price range for what to charge. Keep this info, we'll use it to get more specific. 2. Your availability. How many new students can you take? Do you have a waitlist? If you only need a handful of students, that's a sign that you can charge more than what you're charging. If the demand for your services exceeds your available spots, then you should consider raising your rates for music lessons. 3. Your competition. It's always a good idea to know what your competitors are charging. However, don't get stuck charging what they are. You don't have to have the same pricing as everyone else. But it's good to know what other people are doing so that you know where your music lessons compare. 4. What you offer.What makes your music lesson experience different than your competitors? Do you offer group lessons? A convenience for parents? Do you offer a practice lab? Recitals? Those are all things that make you unique and allow you to charge more than your competitors. 5. Know your worth. I'm not talking about your degrees or qualifications here. You have goals. A family to take care of and spend time with. All of that needs to be taken into account. Honestly, your worth should be the BIGGEST factor when determining your prices for music lessons. It doesn't matter if you don't have a music degree or if you're new to teaching...you need to charge what you're worth. What amount feels good? What dollar amount would make you "show up" 100% for your clients? Instead of dreading your lessons and resenting underpaying families? Now What?
Chances are, you're probably still really hesitant about raising prices.
You're worried all of your families will quit. We hear you. That's why, during Week 3 of our Music Teacher Bootcamp, we hash out ALL of this stuff together in a group coaching Zoom call, worksheets, and support via our Facebook group. And that's just one week! By the end of Music Teacher Bootcamp you will have: - goals - a policy that serves you - pricing that excites you - a website that converts - social media that attracts - new student challenge "Shane gave me excellent feedback on my website and encouraged me in establishing my price point...I highly recommended Shane and The Studio Challenge." - Kim O. Come join us and we will support you and figure out what price point excites you!
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 Studio policies aren't sexy. Music teachers either set their policies once and forget them. OR, they start teaching without a policy. Guess what? Music teachers NEED a policy for their music studios. Why? How many times have you had to argue with a parent over your tuition policy? Or the parents that get mad when they want a makeup lesson, and you don't have the time to offer one. These conversations usually lead to conflict, and they're not fun. But that's exactly why music teachers need to have a policy for their studios. Miss Congeniality said it best, "People care about people who care about themselves." You want to show parents that you're an actual business. You want to answer their questions, establish boundaries, and have guidelines to fall back on when you're caught up in the moment and don't know how to handle a certain situation. We're going to tell you the basics that every music teacher should have with their studio policies. 1. Every Music Teacher Needs a Written Policy.You need one. Bottom line. It can't just be the policy you've made up in your head either. (Parents will bother and annoy you if they don't understand what the expectation is for make ups, payments, etc!) It has to be written either on paper or electronically. This makes you look more professional than those music teachers who don't have studio policies. It also shows your parents that you take music lessons seriously. 2. Music Teachers should make their Policies Easy to Understand.Your policy for your music studio should be very clear. Too many words, and your parents are going to be confused or they won't read it at all. If you confuse people, you lose people. Music teachers should make their policies less than one page long. They should be easy to read with bullet points and as little text as possible. 3. Your Policy should be Accessible.You want a nice clear system on making sure that the parents in your music studio get the policy when joining. You also want to make sure that they can get back to it easily if they ever need to reference it. When a student joins, how do the parents get your policy? Is it printed? Part of their new student packet? Is it on your website somewhere? Make your studio's policy easy to get to! 4. Music Teachers need to Uphold their Policies!At the end of the day, your policy exists to serve you. If you don't stick with it, you're likely going to end up being very frustrated and losing money. So make sure you're sticking to what your policy says. If your policy says that your studio doesn't offer make up lessons, then you should stick with that. If your policy says that there's a charge if tuition is late, stick with it. Of course, it's your business and you can bend any "rules" you want for whoever you want. But remember, your policy exists to help you live the best life. These are the very BASICS of what a music teacher should consider when creating or redoing their studio policies. Writing a studio policy can be overwhelming and often times, gets shoved to the back of our to-do lists. It's not fun. We get it. If you need help creating or revamping your Music Studio's Policies, we are helping music teachers with that in July's Music Teacher Bootcamp... We spend a whole week talking about everything policy-related and will work together to ACTUALLY write it! We also cover a TON more like: - goals - pricing - websites - social media AND at the end of our 6 Week Bootcamp, we do a 5 Day New Student Challenge to get you five new students in five days! What are you waiting for?  There is one really simple way you can reach more potential students! And it's completely FREE... Music Teachers: Use LEAD MAGNETS to get more, well, leads! Lead magnets are free items or services given away. For you as a Music Teacher, it can be anything from a coupon towards music lessons, to books or articles that parents and students might find helpful. Whatever your lead magnet is, the idea is you would offer it in exchange for the other person's email. Here are two "lead magnets" we've created and used in the past:
To create these two lead magnets, I did some simple research and created an infographic for each of them in Canva. As a Music Teacher, you don't have to create lead magnets that are geared towards Music lessons! What you want here is something you think parents and/ or students would find beneficial! Think about the types of students and parents you have... Are they busy? Overbooked? Maybe you could research and create an infographic on ways to make scheduling after school activities easier! Are you a music teacher who tends to attract students who come from broken homes, or maybe struggle with depression or anxiety? Maybe you can do a lead magnet about "5 Ways Parents can help their kids overcome depression and anxiety." (You can just use google to research some things kids can do that are therapeutic. Don't forget to add one about Music Lessons being an outlet for kids to express their emotions!) You get the idea. As a Music Teacher, you can also create lead magnets that are not infographics! You can offer a coupon for "Free Registration" or "Free first music book when you sign up for a Piano Lab Class!" With any of these offers, make sure it's something that would be valuable to parents and students, but cost you little to nothing. Music Teachers: Would you like to receive instructions on how to do Lead Magnets?
I'll also send you a lead magnet you can use for FREE!  When trying to get new students, most music teachers put all of their time into advertising on social media. BUT... did you know you'd have a 3800% BETTER return on email marketing than social media? Here are 4 reasons why music teachers and music schools should do email marketing on a regular basis... 1. Music Teachers who do Email Marketing get New Student Inquiries to sign up.Did you know the average person has to hear about you AT LEAST 7 times before they even consider signing up for lessons? Think about all of the purchases and commitments you've made over the years. There is a "dating relationship" that goes on. Once a parent hears that you do music lessons, they become curious. They ARE NOT ready to openly commit to you yet! They need to get to know you. They need to get some sort of feel for who you are and the type of studio you run. This is where email marketing comes in! By sending routine emails this parent gets to see the types of lessons you offer, what your students are doing or saying about lessons, etc. Then, after they see your awesomeness a few times, they'll be ready to sign up. You've just got to get them there! 2. Email Marketing reminds busy parents and students to sign up for Music Lessons!Our music school in Alabama had a COMPLETELY different crowd in the Summer than the Fall and Spring. The local school systems were extremely hard on students and sports were basically a second religion so we had a ton of students who wanted to take music lessons, but couldn't because of school pressure and sports during the year. So, we'd keep these students on our email list and update them on our new classes and camps in the Summer. MOST of our new students every Summer came from our email marketing campaigns. Likewise, we had students who preferred to pack their schedules with extra curricular activities during the school year, then take the WHOLE Summer off from lessons! They were still interested in signing up for lessons, but we had to keep emailing them about when each semester was beginning and what openings we had. Students and Parents CONSTANTLY thanked us for these emails! They wanted lessons, but knew if we didn't send those emails, they'd forget and never sign up. 3. Music Teachers get more students through Email Marketing than Social Media.This one's kind of obvious, right? For one, when you advertise on social media, you're speaking to a crowd of people who are JUST hearing about you. They don't know you yet... but they'd like to! Second, if they're on your email list, it's because they are HOT leads! They already are, or have been interested in lessons. People who receive an email campaign are twice as likely to sign up for lessons than those who click on your social media or google ads. 4. Students prefer to hear from Music Teachers through Email.A lot of your social media posts will get buried, and people don't want to hunt for information. For many nowadays, Facebook and Instagram are strictly used to keep up with family and friends! In fact, according for MarketingSherpa, 70% of people prefer to be contacted by email. (Old school teachers: Less than 20% want to receive a phone call or text! Time to catch up with the times.) 
 The majority of music teachers are not using emails to sell music lessons.
Or if they are, it's very basic and it's not where they'd like it to be. Email marketing is important for music teachers because it's so underutilized. Chances are, other music teachers in your town aren't using email marketing either. We get it. We've been there. You get caught up with email subject lines. You can't stay organized or get ahead. But the one complaint about email marketing that we hear most from music teachers is that they have NO clue what to write about. What if we told you that it's SUPER EASY for music teachers to come up with email marketing content? We're going to help you come up with a year's worth of email marketing. 1. Music teachers need to look at frequently asked questions from parents. Go back through your old emails, social media messages, and social media comments. What are parents asking? What questions keep coming up? Most music teachers are frequently asked things like: - How much are lessons? - Who is the teacher? - What age do you start lessons? There's three email subjects right there! You could write an email about all of the value kids and parents get from your lessons and tell them how much lessons cost. You could do a whole email telling parents about the different teachers you have in your studio. (Fun things, not just their accomplishments and degrees!) You could write a whole email on what age your studio starts lessons and why you choose to work with that age range. 2. Music teachers need to check their reviews. Go to your Facebook and/or Google reviews. Read through them and look for some keywords or themes that keep coming up. One of our Studio Challenge Members, Whitney Maxwell, has a TON Of reviews where people mention her Musical Therapy Dogs Charlie and Henry. The parents in her studio clearly value her Musical Therapy Dogs and that gives her an entire email subject to market her music lessons. 3. Music teachers can use some of these questions to help them brainstorm ideas for email marketing... What do you want to talk about, teach, share? What do you stand for in business and in life? What difference are you trying to make for your customers, community, or the world? What do you find valuable or worthy of having a deeper conversation about? What do you want to spotlight in your industry or your own story? What results do parents want for their child? How can you help your parents and students? What frustrates parents about extra-curricular activities? What do parents need to understand that they don't know to ask about? What information would help parents? What are some fears that parent's might have about music lessons? These are all great questions to brainstorm when trying to come up with email marketing subjects. Read through them and really sit with each one. Just remember to think of this as your ideal parent, not what YOU think the parent wants to hear about. 4. Make a list of every idea that pops up. As you go through the first three steps, make a list of any and every idea that comes to mind. This is part of the creative process. Write it ALL down, no matter how silly they might seem. The goal is to come up with 40-50 ideas. After you've come up with about 40-50 ideas, circle 12 of the best ones. Ideas that you know you can write a lot about and you can provide valuable information about. Congratulations! You now have one email per month for your new email marketing campaign! This is a great start for music teachers who are just getting into email marketing. Now it's time to get to work writing those emails! Write your emails and get them scheduled on your favorite email marketing program. Then, if you're feeling like it, you can start adding more. We've made a cool printable for you to organize your email marketing subject ideas as you go through this blog post. Get it here. We've also created a list of A Year's Worth of Email Marketing Subjects for Music Teachers you can grab here. P.S. If you need more help with copywriting, marketing, and growing your music lesson studio, Music Teacher Bootcamp is now open! Go sign up!  You're probably thinking,
"I'm a music teacher! I don't need TikTok!" Guess what... All of the other music teachers in your area are thinking the EXACT. SAME. THING. What if I told you we think that all music teachers should be jumping on TikTok? TikTok is a new social media platform where users can make short-form videos that are 15-60 seconds long. The music teachers that are actually using TikTok are CRUSHING it. We're going to give you 3 reasons why music teachers should be on TikTok. 1. Music Teachers Aren't Using TikTok Almost every music teacher we've talking to hasn't tried using TikTok for their music studios. That means your competitors probably aren't using it either. Heck, most businesses in your town probably aren't even using it yet. It's not just music teachers! This is the number one reason why music teachers should be using TikTok. It will make you stand out from your competition and show parents that you're current on today's trends. 2. TikTok is easy to use for creatives like music teachers. A lot of people are afraid to use TikTok because it means putting yourself out there in video format. OR, they don't know what to post and how to use it (keep reading, we're helping music teachers with all of that too!) But you guys are musicians! You're natural performers. This app was MADE for you! Just find a trend on TikTok and start creating! 3. TikTok expands music teacher's audience. With paid Facebook or Instagram ads, the wider your audience is, the more money you have to spend. To reach people nationwide, you have to spend a LOT of money. Not with TikTok. With TikTok, music teachers can advertise to people all over the world for FREE! We understand music teacher's hesitation to start using TikTok though. How do I set up my TikTok account? What kind of content should I post? Which hashtags should I use? Where do I even start? Start with our TikTok Masterclass. One of our members, Matt Johnson more than DOUBLED his music school in just 3 months using TikTok. He will be showing music teachers: - What TikTok is - Why music teachers should use it - How to set up your account - How to create content - And more TikTok tricks! Click here to register for our TikTok Masterclass for Music Teachers! |
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