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Right so, ‘tis the season to get bombarded on Social Media by business coaches on how to market your dance studio, gym or boutique fitness studio.
Because let’s be frank, it is ALWAYS the season in coaching land 🙂
And I’m thinking, ok cool, but I look at the ad and don’t understand what the marketing actually is.
As in, what the F is marketing.
It’s a noun, the marketing, but what does it mean in a doing sense?
How do you do the marketing? How do you market? And ESPECIALLY how do you market a pole and aerial studio or classes?
So for years, I would see these ads and think, bollocks, not interested. Because I didn’t understand what it means, marketing.
Truth be told, it wasn’t until around this time last year that I finally understood what marketing is and how it pertains to my studio and can help me get myself sorted in biz, financially and as a business owner.
Marketing is pretty much just all the shit you put out in the world that makes people aware of your studio or classes.
That’s it. Pretty straightforward.
It’s your website, Insta page, FB page, TikTok (full disclosure, I’m not on it, too much pressure lol), other social channels such as Youtube, Google, you being listed on third party pages, any emails you send, whether it’s a newsletter or an automated happy birthday message, your students chatting to friends and fam about how epic they feel doing their classes with you.
That’s all marketing.
So what’s all the fuss about then with people saying here’s how you hack your studio marketing? Surely if you have an Insta and a website and you’re listed on Google, you have completed the marketing and that’s that?
Spoiler: the paragraph above is EXACTLY what I thought. I was convinced I needed zero improvement in this area as my studio had all these things and surely I was doing it perfectly and the fact that no new people were coming in was definitely not my fault. After all, I had a website and Insta and FB and Google, what more could I do!!!
What I did not understand was that marketing is a verb.
It’s not a static noun. It’s not a one time process of bam, here’s my website, I’ve done the job. Tick.
Instead, marketing is a constant and continuing process of putting quality shit out on all the marketing channels that allows
It’s also all the content, emails, blog posts, videos, giveaways, anything and everything that helps:
Once I understood this, it also did become clear to me that marketing my studio and classes is
a, an ongoing thing that helps peeps along all steps of becoming and being a student
b, something I could hugely improve in
c, one of the missing links to common goals in business such as longevity and still being here in 5 years time, or studio growth and expansion.
What I’m trying to do with this blog post is several things.
One is to say that we, as a collective of studio owners and instructors are already doing marketing. If you post on Insta, you’re marketing. If you have a website, bingo. If you send a message to your students, that’s right – marketing.
So we are all already doing the thing.
But the devil is in the detail and it’s the HOW that trips us up.
The fact that we confuse marketing with advertising (next blog along, wink wink).
That we do not know the difference between marketing and sales (or indeed what sales is and why we ought to be clued up about it if we want to run successful studios and classes – yet another blog along, smiley face).
That we struggle to really be proud of what we offer and tell the world how awesome our classes are.
That we are so IN our studios and classes, that we struggle to communicate what it is we do to someone on the outside. Who’s nervous. Who doesn’t wanna put their email address into the booking system site just to see when beginner classes are. Who doesn’t have 20 minutes spare to sift through the website to find out which class is best for them. Who doesn’t know why your drop ins a different to your courses.
You may have also gathered from this example that, the better and more clear your marketing, the fewer “silly” questions you get. When you put out more relevant info that speaks to your future and current students along all the steps they go through before and while taking classes with you, then you will have less admin overall as people will need to message in less and less to ask the same questions.
Ok so even if we do not know much about marketing, the take home is:
We can learn the marketing.
Just like we learned how to teach and effectively demonstrate progressions. Like we learned how to set up a booking system, or assemble 6 poles in 10 minutes or which way of “bring a friend” works best.
I am super excited to learn more about studio marketing this year – and sharing my new insights with you guys so we can grow together!
If this is an area you’d like help with and fancy some more free info on, head to my Spotify podcast:
Creating a Banging Landing Page that Slaps
