Minute for Marketing: Review of Philip Johnston's Promoting Your Teaching Studio

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series on advertising the independent teaching studio. Click here for all Minute for Marketing posts.

No series on marketing the independent teaching studio would be complete without a review of Philip Johnston's book The PracticeSpot Guide To Promoting Your Teaching Studio.

In general, I think this book's a worthwhile read. It will help you launch and maintain a full-fledged advertising campaign, as opposed to utilizing a few isolated marketing efforts here and there. Especially since most of us have spent more time learning how to play and teach well than how to advertise effectively, it provides a valuable education in how to think like a marketer. It's one of the only books about marketing geared specifically for piano teachers. The ideas range from yellow pages ads to community involvement.

Most reviews of this book praise it for the many ideas it presents for advertising the teaching studio. I think the book's greatest strength is not in the individual tips, but in the marketing theory which is woven throughout the book and which you'll assimilate without even realizing it as you read. Most of us could think up those practical marketing ideas - we see other businesses using those techniques all the time! But, I think we fail to realize that we can do the same things, or even need to do those things. By the time you finish Johnston's book, you'll be thinking of your teaching studio as a business that needs a marketing plan just like any other business, and you'll some good practical ideas for how to put your plan to work.

I do have a couple of criticisms. First, the book fails to address how to prioritize marketing efforts according to cost-effectiveness. Most of us have very limited advertising budgets. I think this should have been a major point, and it will be the subject of my next Minute for Marketing post.

My second criticism is that, even when it was copyrighted in 2006, the book was limited in its discussion of online advertising. The last chapter of the book, Using the Power of the Internet, is an advertisement for Johnston's own web service for teachers, PracticeSpot's webvertisements. While I don't blame him a bit for doing this (he's a savvy marketer and after all, the book's title is The PracticeSpot Guide to...), it does prevent the book from being complete as a guide to marketing the teaching studio. Even in 2006, the power of the internet for music teachers was certainly not limited to PracticeSpot. For instance, there's no mention of blogging, a medium alive and healthy in '06. By now, the book is sorely outdated where internet marketing is concerned as social networking, social bookmarking, and other dynamic applications are changing the game in a big way.

In short, I like the book and would recommend it to anyone looking for ways to grow a teaching studio, especially new teachers and especially those who are opening a large community facility. Just keep in mind that it's incomplete.

Minute for Marketing: Repeated Exposure With Signs

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series on advertising the independent teaching studio. Click here for all Minute for Marketing posts.

Marketing experts say that a potential client needs to see your advertising seven times before taking action on it. I suspect that notion of seven times comes from this amusing excerpt from The Art of Money Getting by P.T. Barnum, the father of modern advertising:

A French writer says that "The reader of a newspaper does not see the first mention of an ordinary advertisement; the second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion, he looks at the price; the fifth insertion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion, he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion, he purchases."

When I think back to my first attempts to advertise my studio by running a newspaper ad for one week, I realize how uninformed I was! Marketing is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process. But seven times? I can’t afford to run even the smallest ad in the newspaper for seven weeks. So what can the independent music teacher do to keep her name in the public eye for many repeated exposures without breaking the bank?

Consider yard signs and car signs. Yeah, I know – you’re afraid someone will mistake you for a plumber if you put a sign on your car. At first, I was worried that this kind of marketing would devalue my teaching. But, I’ve learned that when parents have lots of options for which extra-curricular activities they enroll their children in, they’re going to go with the one whose name they see the most. And when advertising is this cost-effective, it doesn’t make sense to pass it up.

Vistaprint offers full-color, double-sided corrugated plastic yard signs at around $12, and 17x11 magnetic car signs for about $20. Do you realize that you can have two of each for less than it would cost to run one business card-sized ad in one edition of the newspaper? (I have no affiliate agreement with Vistaprint. I just think their prices are amazing.) These signs can potentially last for years. For that reason, you should keep them simple – the name of your studio, assuming that the name of your studio communicates that you teach piano, and your web page or phone number. For your one-time purchase, you’ll get many repeated exposures. If you can afford to spring for aluminum signs, they’ll hold up longer, but expect to pay over $45 for a two-sided sign. Be sure to check your county’s sign ordinances before you put them out.

Consider posting a yard sign at an intersection near your studio, or ask permission to post it in a flower bed at the local grocery store, superstore, or home improvement store. Put them out for a few days, then move to another spot. The perfect time to put signs out is right before school resumes in the fall. Pick a busy Saturday. It can be very effective to put a sign out for several days, take it down for a while, then put it back in the same spot. I saw such a sign recently, made a mental note to look up the website, but I passed it several times without doing it. The sign disappeared and I forgot about it. A week or so later, the sign reappeared and jogged my memory. This time, I actually looked up the site. Why? Repeated exposure made me remember.

Magnetic car signs are great because you can use them when you’re out running errands or stow them in the trunk if you don’t feel like advertising that day. Remember that if you have signs on your car, people will size up your business based on the way you drive, dress, park, etc., so be on your best behavior. And, if you’ve headed back to the home improvement store to buy more paint in the middle of your big project, and you’ve got big splotches of “Maple Leaf Red” all over, that’d be a good time to take the signs off your car! I sometimes remember these things too late!

Photo by {platinum}.

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative-Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Minute for Marketing: Get Involved

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series about advertising the independent teaching studio. Click here for all Minute for Marketing posts.

Especially if you’re starting up a studio in a new town, one of the best and cheapest ways to let people know about your studio is to meet lots of people. In spite of the fact that I write a blog that hundreds of people read every week, I’m really a huge introvert. The need to market my studio has pulled me out of my shell, and I’m better for it. So is my enrollment!

1. Get involved in the local music teacher’s associations. You might think that since you’re competing with these teachers for students that they wouldn’t be supportive, but I’ve found the exact opposite to be the case. My local MTA is made up of a wonderful group of folks who are quick to offer advice, support, and student referrals. In fact, they’re my second best source of referrals after my current students.

2. Get involved in your church music program. First of all, it’s just the right thing to do, even if it doesn’t generate students. Secondly, it will introduce you to other people who are interested in music and help to build your reputation.

3. Get involved in your local arts association. If you can afford it, purchase a business membership for your studio. Not only will this will introduce you to other people who are supportive of music education, it displays that you are supportive of other arts ventures in the community. Your business name is likely to be listed on their membership and displayed on their website and other public listings. Join other arts groups, too. For instance, the American Guild of Organists is made up of organists and choral directors who work with young musicians at their churches, and you don't have to be an organist to join.

4. Get involved in almost anything that includes moms. Whether it’s a group that meets on a regular basis – a knitting group, book club, or bunco klatch, or whether it’s occasional get-togethers that you might have passed on, get out and go. Even those home sales parties offer opportunities to introduce yourself and tell others what you do. Be sure to take several business cards to those! Always be ready with an anecdote or comment about "my students." The other person will say, "Oh, what do you teach?" And you're off...

5. Be involved in anything that allows you to play regularly in public. Play for your church. Volunteer to help out the elementary school chorus. Play for the residents at a retirement home. If you are not already contracted to play for a church, you might send a letter to some area churches indicating that you are available as a fill-in. Most places will be thrilled to know of someone they can call on when their regular pianist is on vacation. (Be prepared to tell them what you charge per service and rehearsal. AGO offers a salary guide for organists that is applicable for pianists, too. Choose a fee within the given range that is appropriate for your education, experience, and going rates among other local musicians.) The more you put your skills on display, the more you build your reputation and attract students. At the same time, you’re providing a valuable service to the community.

6. Strike up conversations wherever you are. It helps if you're Southern, like I am. We consider it downright rude if you don't pass the time of day with the person standing in line near you at the grocery store! Being chatty opens up lots of opportunities to tell people what you do. When I bought flowers at a florist shop recently for my recital, I mentioned to the cashier what they were for, and she now displays my business cards at her shop.

If you patiently keep up efforts like these, news of your studio will begin to percolate. Always have business cards ready, because there's nothing worse than a mom saying to another mom, "I met this lady at the book club who teaches piano, but now I can't remember her name..." Also, be sure to pace yourself in these efforts. I have made the mistake of moving into a new community and jumping into too many activities all at once and becoming overextended.The key here is patience. Building a reputation takes time, but in most cases, if you get out and become active in your community, you'll reap the rewards in enrollment within the space of a year.

Photo by CraigMarston.

Minute for Marketing: Do Something Newsworthy

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series on advertising the independent teaching studio. Click here to find all of the Minute for Marketing posts.

If you’ve got at least a handful of students, you can do something that will attract media attention and result in free advertising for you. Here are a few ideas that are worth doing even if you don’t end up getting the publicity.

1. Present a community outreach recital at a retirement home, hospital, or nursing home. If you don’t have enough students yet to make much of a program, consider inviting another teacher’s studio to participate. This has the added benefit of teaching your students to share their music with others.

2. Busk for charity. (A “busker” is a street musician.) For instance, set up your digital piano at the entrance of a grocery store. Put up a sign that says, “Music Feeds the Soul, but Food Feeds the Hungry! Please Donate to Our Food Drive!" Donate the collected food to a local food bank. This is good for the charity and good for you! (Be sure to secure permission from the store first.)

Or, consider participating in a program like this one: Musequality’s World Busk starts next Monday and lasts a week. It raises money for music projects that benefit some of the poorest children in the world.

Be sure to have a second poster up with the name of your studio, and possibly the names of your performers. In my case, I'd probably also post a picture of myself teaching a student on my studio piano just to show potential students that I don't routinely teach on a digital!

3. Participate in another community event that will publicize your involvement. For instance, my studio once participated in a Children’s Book Festival sponsored by the area library system. We presented a recital at the local library, choosing pieces that would coordinate with books by the authors featured at the festival that year. My studio’s name was on all of the library's publicity for the book festival. You could do this with even 5 students, giving each one 2 pieces and playing something yourself.

Now, how do you get it in the newspaper? Write a press release about your upcoming event and submit it at least a week prior, and follow up with a phone call. If you're lucky, maybe they'll send out someone to cover it, but be prepared to play the role of reporter yourself. Take a camera and get good digital pictures. Afterwards, write another press release, and submit it with your pictures the morning after your event, if not the same day. Newspapers don’t like old news. Be sure to include the names of everyone in the pictures. (How to write a press release.) Keep your press release short and proofread it like crazy. The less work involved for the paper to edit your work, the more likely they'll bother with it.

Of course, you should also publicize it yourself on your blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter where you've been steadily building local connections.

If you use your imagination, you can come up with good ideas for doing something unique and newsworthy. Have any of you ever done something unique that attracted media attention?

Photo by Matt Callow.

Minute for Marketing #6: More on Self-Promotion

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series about advertising the independent teaching studio. Click here for all Minute for Marketing posts.

My students will tell you that I'm incapable of making a point simply, but that I drive it home with too many words. Maybe that's what I'm doing here, but hey, it's my blog! My last Minute for Marketing post, in which I related my personal experience in overcoming fear of self-promotion, has attracted more email feedback than anything else I've written here, so I want to spend some more time on this topic. We all find it difficult to overcome the "yuck" response we have to marketing ourselves as teachers or performers. We associate any kind of advertising with the worst kind, and even though we're selling a product worth its weight in gold, instead of feeling good about it, most of us feel like a smarmy used car salesman.

I received a very encouraging email from Greg Sandow who writes for ArtsJournal and teaches at Julliard and Eastman. He tells me that my message (that you can be an authentic person and still market yourself) is exactly the one he's trying to convey to his students. He writes "...they'll sometimes say, 'Well, I'm not sure about marketing my concert because that would detract from the dignity of the music.'" The more I think about that notion, the more it bugs me. We seem to believe that if we actually have to work at getting people to come to our concerts or sign up for our lessons, then it looks like our "product" is so worthless that we have to beg people to buy it. In other words, if we have to employ marketing tactics to sell it, it must be a lemon. "Oh no," we say, "Our Art is Sacred. We aren't going to reduce ourselves to selling it (ewww); we'll just wait around until those people who already value it come and ask for it and offer to pay for it." Well, here's the thing: if we don't market what we do, then we pass up the opportunity to educate people about how sacred and dignified it really is! And many of us can't afford to wait around until an increasingly arts-ignorant culture decides to come to us on their own - we're still paying for our music degrees.

In his email, Mr. Sandow went on to say, "They don't understand that they can market their dignity and integrity, not to mention the music." Right on! And they don't understand what James says so plainly in the article I linked to previously at Men With Pens:

Marketing and sales does not equal snake oil screw-you tactics. Yes, there are those who abuse the knowledge they have and take it to extremes for their own gains, but even the most innocent and acceptable marketing and sales tactics come from the same knowledge. Let me repeat it in shorter words: ethical marketers use the same tactics that smarmy marketers use.

The fact that I've thought hard about how to work a plug for my studio into a conversation doesn't reduce my sincerity. The fact that I want an income from my work does not reduce the dignity of my work. Do people end up perceiving me to be a smarmy used car salesman? No. I almost always end up finding connections and sharing stories about music making. If I don't end up with a student, I end up with a friend. Now, you can certainly promote yourself in a way that comes off as smarmy, but that's not a very effective way to market anything, and my belief is that we need to get over our fear of doing it at all so that we can learn to do it well.

If you think that promoting your teaching makes you look too much centered on Me Me Me, then I think you haven't thought it through very far. The biggest reason you need to be promoting your work is that it isn't about You You You. It's about the work, the value of the work, the value of the education that allows you to produce the work, and the value of having such things in our culture.

If anybody in the music industry needs to be successful at marketing, it's the people who teach young kids (and therefore, families) how to appreciate and play good music. If we don't make ourselves knowledgeable about using effective marketing tactics and get over ourselves and our sacred dignities enough to use them, then the students who might have studied piano will sign up for cheerleading because their advertising was more effective. (My students: you can sign up for cheerleading! Just take piano, too!) Instead of growing up into adults buying season tickets to classical concert series they'll be buying tickets to something else. In the last place I lived, the orchestra went bankrupt and the best music store in town closed its doors. More families involved in independent music study might have changed that. You are not just marketing yourself.

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative-Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Photo by Victoriafee.

Minute for Marketing #5: Don't Be Afraid to Self-Promote

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series about advertising the independent piano studio. Click here for all Minute for Marketing posts.

When I studied music in college, nobody taught me about self-promotion or entrepreneurship. This didn't concern me much because I didn't realize how badly I would need those skills later on. When I started up my first two studios, I lived in small towns, and in both I was lucky enough to play piano or organ for a large church. Even though I was a shy fish, I was a big fish in a small pond. Recruiting students was as simple as mentioning to a few people that I’d like to have some students. I filled my openings in no time.

My third location was another story. It was a suburb of a good-sized city. I had decided not to take an organist position since I had a baby, a husband working changing shifts, and no family in town to help babysit. Nobody knew me. I was a small, shy fish in a big pond. Even so, I thought that if I told my neighbors that I was accepting students, ran an ad in the newspaper, and put out a few flyers, the students would just roll in as they had before. I did those things, and over the next two months, one child signed up. If I wanted to teach, I was going to have to be a little more serious about advertising. But, as I considered what sorts of techniques I might use, I found that I was very reluctant to actually do them.

I hesitated to chat up a new friend about my business because I was afraid they’d think I was only being friendly so they'd sign their kids up for piano. Instead of taking deliberate action to promote buzz about my studio, I waited for random opportunities, and even then, I was often too shy to take advantage of the moment. I was embarrassed to put a decal on my car or a yard sign at a street intersection. I had something extremely valuable to offer - a lifetime of making music, but I was afraid that advertising would make others think I was arrogant or pushy. My fear of marketing was essentially a fear of personal rejection. Sometimes the best advice is simply, “Get over yourself.” If you’ve got something of value, share it, and stop worrying about what people might think. As with anything else, your first attempts might be awkward. But, practice makes better.

Advertising, especially verbal advertising, is a lot like performing. Long before the performance, you need to devise a strategy for accomplishing what you want to do and then carry out that strategy with patience over a long stretch of time, even when you aren't seeing immediate results. Advertising efforts, like practicing, can sometimes seem futile even when they are slowly, gradually, making an impact. When the curtain goes up, you need to give a performance that is confident, competent, sincere, and engaging. When the chance comes to talk up your business, you need to be ready to do it in a sincere, confident, engaging way.

The thing I finally learned is that you really can promote your business and still be an authentic person - not manipulative, deceptive, insincere, arrogant, or any of those other things you’re afraid of being perceived as. Almost every time I speak up about my studio or hand off a business card, the other person has a story to tell about childhood lessons, a family member who played the piano, or some other such thing. People are actually interested to hear that I teach piano. I'm not shy about mentioning it any more because I've found that I enjoy the conversation that always ensues! I also find that it's easier to promote my studio when I remember how much I believe in my product - it's not about me, it's about the value of music making.

Are you shy like I am? Do you find it hard to talk up your studio? How did you get over it?

Good reads:

Are You Afraid of Marketing, Or Do Sales Just Turn You Off?

Conquering marketing fears I and Conquering marketing fears II

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Photo by theparadigmshifter

Minute for Marketing #4: Business Card Design Tips

Minute for Marketing is a weekly series about advertising the independent music studio. Click here to see all of the Minute for Marketing posts.

At least until every person has a smart phone, business cards remain the best physical tool for supporting word of mouth advertising. They're one of the most cost-effective advertising tools. They have the potential to be used over long periods of time and passed around from person to person. For what you'd pay for one newspaper ad which will be lining your bird cage tomorrow, you can print hundreds of cards which have the potential to ride around in wallets indefinitely. They can almost replace the need for flyers or brochures when they point a prospect to your web page. If you're using Twitter to promote your business, they can recruit more followers there as well. First impressions matter, so here are some tips on designing an effective business card.

1. Don't print them yourself. Thin, homemade cards say “I’m not a professional, and you won’t have to treat me like one.” It's worth spending a little money.

2. Use a local print shop if you can afford to. Creating a relationship with another local business is a marketing effort in and of itself. If their prices are out of reach, check some of the resources below.

3. Decide what kinds of students you want to attract and design your card to appeal to that target audience. You may feel that black script on a pristine white card best reflects your classical training and good taste, but if you will mostly teach children, a very formal card doesn’t communicate that you relate well to youngsters. It won’t catch anyone’s eye on the bulletin board at the coffee shop, either. Design an eye-catching card. If you use graphics, be aware of the message they send. For instance, if you use cartoony artwork or a photo of a child, it might suggest that you only teach young children and that you aren’t adept with more accomplished students.

4. Avoid glossy cards that smear if you write on them. (Pet peeve of mine!)

5. These days, marketing with Twitter is a hot topic. I admit that I'm not up to speed with it. So take my thoughts here with a grain of salt. Before you list your Twitter address on your card, I'd consider some things. 1) What image do you project with your tweets? 2) Do your tweets provide something valuable to your potential clients? 3) Are your potential clients tweeting? I can definitely see that if you are tweeting, say, the dates for kid-friendly arts events in your community, you might be well served by listing your Twitter address. (Is it called an "address?") But, if you're tweeting the menu from your dinner, maybe not.

6. Make sure that strangers can tell by looking at your card what you actually do. If your studio name could be confused for a music store or some other business, then add a tag line to explain. (Allegro Music, Piano lessons for all ages)

7. Make your cards useful. Your prospective parents probably have lots of refrigerator art, and magnets are useful! You can buy sheets of adhesive magnets and attach them yourselves. It is an extra expense, but if you do it strategically, it might be worth it. Other possibilities for creating useful cards - a calendar on the back, web addresses of local arts organizations, performance dates for a local concert series, a tip calculator, etc.

Here are some resources for printing and designing cards.

VistaPrint. Great prices. I’ve ordered from them and been pleased.

Zazzle. Quite a few piano-related designs, some in the mini-Moo size.

Moo MiniCards. Memorable and a little trendy without being over the top. Creating a buzz about your card is a good way to get your name traded around more.

How to find completely free images for business cards, flyers, blogs, etc.

30 Sites to Download Free Stock and Royalty Free Images.

For inspiration, a set of over 900 photos of business cards at Flickr. Some of these are quite creative. Remember, if it won't fit into a wallet, it's probably headed straight for the trash!

Photo: © Robertas Pėžas Dreamstime.com

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Minute for Marketing #3: Get a Website

I've started new studios in 5 cities and learned a few things along the way. Minute for Marketing is a weekly series about advertising the independent piano studio. Click here for other Minute for Marketing posts, and click here for all of my posts which reference marketing.

The absolute best advertising effort I make for the money is my studio website. Since I moved to my current town, nearly every student I’ve signed on or even had a phone conversation with has already visited my website, and this is exactly what I want. It reduces the number of people who call me just for price checking since my rates are on my online policy page, and it weeds out the less serious students. By the time they actually contact me, they’re a strong prospect. In fact, all of my other advertising is designed primarily to direct people to my website.

My site is free from Music Teachers Helper. If you want, you can pay for a subscription and use it to manage your studio, but that’s optional. (I do use it, and love it.) You can have a home page, post photos, post your policies online, have an email contact form, and a registration form – all for free. Since you create it yourself, you can also update it as frequently as you want for free. Creating your pages is as easy as creating a document in Word. You just type your text into a template.

In order to have a more professional-looking URL to put on my business cards and other materials (without musicteachershelper.com attached to it), I bought my own domain name from GoDaddy and have it redirect to my MTH site. This costs me $9.99 - for the year. I'd call that cost-effective!

Once you have a page, you're not quite finished. You've got to get people to visit it. I learned at the MTNA conference that most people who visit my website likely typed in the URL rather than finding it through a search engine. So I make sure that lots of people have my web address by giving out lots of business cards. (Business cards will be the topic of my next Minute for Marketing post.) But, you still want the search engines to be able to find you. One good way is to submit your site to local directories. The ones listed below are free and will certainly improve your visibility online. Also, by getting listed on these directories, you’re creating more links to your site. More links to your site improves your google page rank.

Google Local Business Center
Merchant Circle
Yahoo! Local
Yellow Pages
Local.com

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Minute for Marketing: Name Recognition

I've started new piano teaching studios in 5 cities, and in each one, I recruited as many students as I wanted within the space of a year. "Minute for Marketing" is a weekly series on ideas for advertising your studio. Click here for all of my posts related to marketing.

Idea #2: Come up with a name for your studio and feature it prominently on every single bit of advertising you do, no matter how humble. If you just present yourself as Sarah who teaches piano and you advertise your piano lessons instead of advertising your business, then you are losing the opportunity to gain name recognition. Name recognition is "the degree to which a brand or name has meaning to a consumer." In other posts, I'll talk more about creating meaning for your name, but before you can create the meaning, you've got to make it familiar. When consumers are faced with several choices, they often choose the brand that is most familiar, so the more times people encounter your studio’s name, the better.

Here’s an example. Someone has placed a yard sign on a street near my house that says “Music Lessons” plus a phone number. There's no name that I'll remember later. For the same money and effort, they could have made a sign that said “Sarah’s Piano Studio.” If I see an ad somewhere else for Sarah’s Piano Studio, then I’ll recognize it as the same business. I'll ask my friends about Sarah’s Piano Studio and someone will know someone who takes lessons from her. And months from now, when I decide to enroll my child in piano, I’ll have a sense of familiarity with her, and there will be some meaning attached to her business due to my friend's report about it.

Don't be tempted to be overly creative with your business name because you think it will make it more memorable. Your name needs to clearly express what you do. "Sarah's Piano Studio" is obviously a place where Sarah teaches piano. "Centre Con Espressivo" - not so much.

Don’t be too discouraged if you run an ad or try some other advertising means that doesn’t generate a student. You still may have built some name recognition that will pay off in the long run.

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Minute for Marketing: Ideal Place for an Ad

Here's the first post in a series of weekly ideas for advertising the independent piano studio. I've started studios in five different cities now, and often with little or no money to spend. Most of my ideas are free or cheap. This one, however, involves a little spending.

Idea #1: If you're going to spend money on an ad, put it in the playbill for the local children’s theatre, a concert program for the community children’s chorale, or a ballet recital program. You’ll be supporting the arts in your community and making contact with the parents who are most likely to be interested in piano instruction.

Minute for Marketing by Laura Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.