In today’s digital world, online marketing is an essential component for the success of music schools.
Online marketing has become increasingly complex in recent years, with new opportunities and trends emerging and new social networks arriving, causing changes to the rules for the “new media”. Older disciplines such as search engine optimization and email marketing have experienced a resurgence.
How can music schools keep up?
This is where digital marketing expert Holger Kurz comes in. He has adapted his concept for efficient online marketing for music schools. This blog article summarizes the four most important phases in a nutshell:
Let technology work for you! I’ll show you how it works.
Think in systems
What does a self-running online marketing system look like?
To do this, we must first change our mindset and stop constantly starting new advertising campaigns. Instead, we build a single system that we can improve as needed.
It consists of four phases:
- ATTENTION: We awaken interest in learning an instrument
- INTEREST: We show why our music school is the right choice
- DESIRE: We reach people with arguments when they are open to them
- ACTION: We help our customers have the best possible experience
Now we are getting more specific.
1. Attention
With social media advertising, we address a roughly defined target group with timeless content. The content shows how life could be when using the product category.
Music school case:
Learning an instrument opens up a completely new hobby, new interests, new circles of friends and maybe even a career. Therefore, we do not advertise with concrete information at first, but show in pictures and texts what wonderful things can happen as a result of several years of lessons.
2. Interest
In a second social media campaign, we use various images to talk about the reasons why our music school is the right one. The target group is now people who are already interested in learning an instrument.
Music school case:
This is the first time that the special advantages of your music school come into focus.
- Do you have any well-know teachers?
- particularly many teachers?
- Do you teach online as well?
- Is your location accessible by public transport and do the students not always have to be taken by car?er mit dem Auto gebracht werden?
3. Desire
In addition, we create blog posts that go into more detail and are optimized for specific search terms so that Google’s existing interest is also directed to our website.
Music school case:
In German-speaking countries, people search for “learning guitar” on Google about 15,200 times a month. Does your offer appear in the first results? No? Then you are missing out on up to 15,200 potential customers. Potential customers also enter their unanswered questions into Google:
- what is the best way to learn sheet music?
- what kind of guitar for beginners?
- which guitar for 5-year-old-child?
- which guitar is good for beginners?
- how hard is it to learn to play the guitar?
Does your website answer these questions? No?
Once interest is there, we offer two options to the target group.
The primary option is to successfully recruit new students via the contact form on the website or to book an online taster lesson via services like Calendly.
But not everyone will take this option directly. The secondary action gives the undecided a chance to just find out more for now.
E-Mail Marketing
Anyone who submits their email address on the website receives a once-defined e-mail order. Why once?
Because most email readers will have similar questions. You also want to know more about them so you can tailor your message to them.
For example, who is interested in your local piano selection if they actually want to learn guitar via video calls?
Example of email content for music schools:
- Quotes from students and parents
- Discount promotions
- Rental of instruments
4. Action
The reputation of a music school also depends on recommendations. That’s why your student body should not only consist of satisfied customers, but also of referrers.
Offer as much as possible to your group of students:
Create a group on Facebook.
Offer useful lesson plans, checklists, templates to download from your website to support learning and teaching.
Involve your students and offer encouragement to recommend your school to others.
Sounds like a lot of work? Well, it is – but only that one time.
We set it up as a one-off project – this way, this stable online marketing concept doesn’t have to be changed all the time. And you’ll have more time for the important things: making music and teaching.
This is where you can apply such an online marketing concept
Holger Kurtz, M. A., has been an independent cultural digital manager since 2021 and supports cultural organisations and companies in the digitalisation of their marketing. He already founded the specialist blog kulturdata.de on this topic. Previously, he worked as an online marketing manager for concert promoters in DACH and studied culture and music management at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, where he is now a guest lecturer.
