marketing Archives - Music Studio Startup

Episode 007 – Tara O’Brien on Manufacturing and Marketing a New Teaching Tool

July 11, 2018

Kickstarter, manufacturing, marketing, Note Match

Summary Today you’re going to hear from a piano teacher who noticed a problem and decided to do something about it. Tara O’Brien tells us the story of how developed a tool called Note Match to help her students learn to read music faster. Tara’s first Note Match prototype was hand-drawn on a piece of…

Episode 005 – Emilee-Mae Feely

June 27, 2018

Facebook groups, marketing, multi-teacher studio, online marketing, startup, travel teaching

Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Summary Emilee-Mae is an entrepreneur and piano teacher. We could have talked for hours about all of the music-related businesses she runs, but we limited our discussion to her travel piano school, Plume Piano. She’s only been running the business for a…

Music Studio Branding Lessons from Magnolia Market

June 25, 2018

branding, customer service, marketing, student experience, student retention, systems

Full disclosure: I have never seen an episode of Fixer Upper and couldn’t tell you much about Chip and Joanna Gaines beyond their names. My sister, however, is a huge fan. When she heard I would be in Waco, TX last week to speak at the Texas Music Teachers Association Convention she insisted I go…

Episode 003 – Regina Ngo on Teacher Development and Accelerated Learning Programs

June 13, 2018

branding, marketing, multi-teacher studio, professional development

Apologies for the scratchy mic noises in this episode! (Still getting the hang of this podcasting thing. 🙂 ) Summary Regina Ngo is the owner of Regina’s Music Studio in South Pasadena, California. In our interview, Regina shares how she went from teaching at a music school to travel teaching to teaching from her home,…

Episode 001 – Tasha Locke on Starting a Studio with No Personal Network

June 6, 2018

AdWords, marketing, online marketing

Summary When Tasha Locke moved from California to Virginia in 2016, she had to start her studio from scratch with no personal or professional network. A daunting undertaking! In this interview, Tasha tells us how she used Google AdWords promote her website and get her first student in only one week and how, less than…

Six Lessons for More Effective Studio Promotion

June 4, 2018

entrepreneurship, marketing, networking, online marketing, perfectionism, promotion, studio management

This post isn’t so much a list of marketing ideas (although there are some of those) as it is a list of studio promotion principals or lessons I’ve learned over the years of promoting my own music studios and other small businesses. If you can’t figure out why your marketing hasn’t gotten any traction or…

Sizing Up the Competition

April 30, 2018

branding, competition, focus, marketing, niche

If you’re trying to start or grow your music studio in a crowded market, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the other teachers and music schools in your area (geographic or virtual). These are your competitors. In this post, I walk through how to do a competitive analysis AND how to use the insights you glean from it…

Studio Photos Checklist: Make Your Website Come Alive

February 19, 2018

branding, marketing, website

As a freelance web developer, I’ve set up a lot of websites for clients and the images and content always seem to be an afterthought. Eager to get started, the clients often want me to create the whole website and leave empty boxes for them to fill in later with their own studio photos. I…

Three Questions You MUST Answer Before Designing (or Redesigning) Your Studio Website

February 12, 2018

branding, focus, marketing, new students, website

There are two kinds of “bad” studio websites: the ones that are bad because of poor decisions (color scheme, typography, font size, etc.) and the ones that are bad because of indecision. The first is becoming less common since we have website builders and templates that take a lot of the guesswork out of the…

Valentine’s Day Studio Promo + Printable!

January 29, 2018

holiday, marketing, promotion, social media, social proof

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and today I wanted to pop in to share a super easy way to promote your studio on social media and keep your brand top of mind in your community. Presenting the “I heart music lessons because…” Valentine’s Studio Promo! If you have 5 minutes between now and…

Using a Style Guide to Speed Up the Graphic Design Process

December 18, 2017

branding, graphic design, marketing, online marketing, systems

In the last blog post, I shared five SIMPLE ideas for marketing your studio to take advantage of the spike in students searching for lessons around the new year. Maybe you’ve already implemented some of the ideas (way to go, you!), or maybe you’re a perfectionist, like me, and you’re still trying to get that…

Mini Marketing Plan

December 4, 2017

advertising, increasing income, marketing, online marketing, website

Next to the beginning of the school year, January has always been the second biggest enrollment season for my studios. (Thank you, New Year’s resolutions!) And I don’t think my experience is unique. Check out this graph that represents Google search trends for “piano lessons” over the last four years: Do you see those peeks?…