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Marketing. Lead generation. Advertising music lessons. However you want to put it, whatever words you want to use, it all comes down to the same question:
How can I find more private music students? How can I advertise the private lessons that I offer?
When you research how to advertise Private Music lessons, it can feel like the possibilities are endless (read: overwhelming), and it’s hard to know where to even start. Just a little bit ago, word of mouth and posting your contact bulletin boards in local churches and coffee shops with the title “Music lessons!” would do the trick. But in today’s ever-evolving and extremely digital world, those tactics just don’t cut it. More often than not, you need an online presence to fill your teaching schedule – you need to know how to sell music lessons online.
That’s where this handy little guide comes in!
We are going to go through the main online avenues to advertise private music lessons, and the best practices, applications, and resources for each one. Let’s dive in!
How to Advertise Private Music Lessons with Social Media
Best Practices
When it comes to Social Media music marketing, or advertising music lessons on any platform, you have two options: turn your personal account into a business account, or make a brand new account for your business. I personally like to keep my business and personal accounts separate, but if you turn your personal account into a business account, you get a head start with followers and content.
So this turns into, “What is the best practice for me?”
Now for a real, true-for-everyone best practice: Social Media Platforms like consistent content. So whether you’re advertising music lessons on facebook, pinterest, or instagram, you want to be sharing things and interacting with the platform regularly. The more engaged you are, the more engaged your followers will be – and the more people the “social media gods” will show your information to.
The last “best practice” is a simple one – make sure your profile is complete. A profile picture, information on the services you offer, and contact information are essential to making your profile welcoming and easy to use.
A “shortcut:” paid social media music lesson advertisement
If you are wanting to run ads on social media (a completely valid and often very profitable vehicle for music lesson advertisement), Square has a wonderfully easy marketing tool for social media music marketing, especially for lessons and services (John and I use it for scheduling piano tunings and lessons – read why we chose Square in this post).
Learn how Square integrates with all platforms for easy social media music marketing here!
Applications
How to advertise music lessons on Facebook
Facebook is a great go-to for in-person music lesson advertisement. You can post in local groups, set advertising for specific areas and interests, and create local events for your music studio. Facebook is set up to encourage community, often based in geographical location. It is also possible to advertise remote music lessons (or Skype music lessons), but we like to use Facebook for local recruitment – we’ve found it most effective for those in-person lessons!
How to advertise music lessons on Instagram
As I’m sure you know, Instagram is a photo- and video-based social media that can be used to reach a fairly wide audience. It is an awesome platform you can use to share photos of your practice space, videos of you (build up that reputation as an awesome musician and teacher!), and even videos of your students – with consent, of course – that ultimately help advertise your music lessons.
One of the things that makes Instagram unique is how important hashtags are to reach a wider audience. You tag these hashtag phrases in your captions, and people who follow those hashtags – but not necessarily you – get to see your content.
If you aren’t familiar with hashtags for private music teachers or hashtags for your specific instrument, check out this great list of music teacher instagram hashtags!
How to advertise music lessons on Pinterest
I am going to start this one off with a caveat:
If you only offer in-person lessons, if you don’t have a website, blog, or Skype lessons, Pinterest marketing likely won’t help your business much.
Why?
Let me counter with another question: Would you ever go to Pinterest and type in the search bar: “Music lessons near me”?
No. You go on Pinterest to find online resources. Whether that’s blog posts, pictures, worksheets, or online music lessons, they’re all housed on the internet. In-person lessons are not – so as far as in-person music lesson advertisement goes, pinterest is not the way to go.
Let’s say you have one (or more!) digital products to offer. Now Pinterest could just be the thing you’ve been looking for. You can share your blog posts, sell resources for music students or other private music teachers, and even network with other private music teachers with an online presence.
I’ll say that there are two different things you will need to successfully grow your music teacher business with pinterest: A graphic design program and a pinterest scheduler.
At C&S, we use Canva.com to make our images. The premium account is only $12 a month, but they also offer a free option! They have stock photos, templates, icons – they make graphic design easy, even for the complete beginner. If you join Canva using this link, they’ll give you a credit for a free premium photo!
For scheduling, we LOVE Tailwind. There are SO many different features that make it worth the money (Like groups of people sharing similar content – called tribes. They even have ones specifically for Private Music Teachers! It makes it incredibly easy to get your content circulating on Pinterest.)
Tailwind has grown so much over the past 4 or so years I’ve been using it – so much so that I can’t fit all of the ways it’s helped grow my business. I wrote a whole blog post outlining how and why to use tailwind as a musician; click here to read it.
There is so much more to Pinterest for Private Music Teachers that we just can’t fit here, but if you’re interested in learning more, let us know by signing up for our newsletter below! We’ll let you know when our Pinterest Guide for Private Music Teachers goes live.
I loved when you said that whether itβs Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram, you want to be sharing things and interacting with the platform regularly. My daughter loves music and singing. I will be enrolling her in Private online music lessons to boost her full potential.
This was super helpful for me just starting out! Thanks a lot Alyssa & team π
That’s great to hear!
Really helpful info. Thank you.
I’m so glad you find it useful!
Hi I’m a fiddle teacher and jazz pianist who’s interested in having some students. Play standards and Irish music
That’s wonderful! Have you ever taught before?