How to find guitar students

1.       Why is it that some guitar teachers are fully booked often with a waiting list while most guitar teachers struggle to find enough students to make ends meet. Are some teachers just better than others? While I think some teachers are definitely better in terms of results for their students this factor alone does not explain why a small percentage of teachers have more students than they can possibly handle.
3. Finding guitar students can often seem like an elusive business but the secret to success is not in your teaching skills so much as in your marketing skills. Your teaching skills are important for keeping the students you have but those skills won’t bring students to you in the first place. Imagine a new restaurant opens in a small unknown alley way where no one ever goes. That restaurant can have fantastic food but if no one knows about it the word will not spread. For the restaurant to succeed and bring in customers it needs three things. 1. Exposure 2. Appeal. 3. Credibility.
5. Exposure - People need to know you exist. To know you exist requires some kind of exposure. In the case of guitar teaching you might have a studio on a busy street or you might do a local letterbox flyer drop or advertise on the internet and so on. 
7. Appeal - Once people see your ad it must appeal to them in someway. The attention of most people in today’s world is very short. If your ad doesn’t appeal to them in 3 to 5 seconds they will move on to something else. Google found that the average person spends only 10 seconds on a list of search results before returning to a new search if something doesn’t appeal to them. That means they are scanning the listings and literally spending only a few seconds on each ad.
9. Credibility - Once people know you exist and your ad appeals to them their first question is “Are you credible?” Your credibility will make all the difference. If they have no real way of establishing your credibility they are likely to check other options. Credibility in most cases is more important than price. In fact if you are cheap that gives them even more reason to believe you are not credible.
13. So how do you implement all three effectively? 
15. Exposure is pretty simple. You need to do as much as you can to put yourself in front of your potential students. These days there are two levels to exposure. Online and offline. If you are not easy to find online you will miss a lot of potential students. Establishing an online presence as I learned take hundreds and hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. You basically need to put up a lot of rich content that search engines like Google will think is valuable and than back it up with paid marketing. Offline is all about local marketing. As a local guitar teacher your students are most likely to come from within a 5km radius. The further out you go the less likely they are to enrol with you. It’s purely a matter of convenience. Any exposure you can get within in that area will be good. Letterbox flyers, school newsletters, a stall at a local fete are good examples of offline marketing.  
17. Appeal is a matter of effective marketing and presentation. There are certain rules to marketing which will give your ads the greatest appeal. Knowing what to include in your ads and what to leave out will make all the difference. For years I tested different kinds of letterbox flyers and had poor to lets say acceptable results. Through educating myself on the rules of marketing and then lots of testing I eventually worked out a winning flyer that got consistent results. With this flyer I was able to build 5 guitar schools with around 500 students in just 2 years. The flyer had just the right amount of appeal.
19. Credibility is a little more difficult and it starts with your website. A credible website again needs to possess certain characteristics. For example having some kind of system of teaching will help students to feel that you have a method or strategy to your teaching. They want to know you know what you are doing. Testimonials of course are always good. Seeing what other people have to say about your teaching helps to build credibility. Having a blog with well written articles will make a big difference because prospective students can get an idea about who you are and what you believe in. If your blogs seem credible so will you. These are just a few examples. 
21. Our first aim as a network is effective marketing. While there is no one perfect way to market your business our years of experience and dedication to the marketing of guitar lessons gives us a very powerful advantage. In nearly every case when guitar teachers join the our network they will have 30+ students within 6 to 12 months. Here is a summary of how we achieve that result.
23. Marketing - Firstly we include you on our website so students can find you. This gives you the exposure. Our website is designed to be appealing while also giving you credibility. As a member you need to live up to that reputation of course. We also give you custom made flyers as PDF’s which you can print and then deliver to people’s letterboxes in your area. They are designed to be low cost and highly effective. On top of all that we have email templates you can use to ensure the best results. It’s a complete marketing package.
25. Enrolling/Sales - There is no point in getting lots of inquiries if they are not turning into paying students. We will teach you what to say and how to deal with every step of the enrolment process to ensure you are enrolling at least 80% of all inquiries. This is a critical area that when done right will ensure your student numbers constantly grow.
27. Keeping students/Effective teaching strategies - Knowing what to teach and how to teach it will make all the difference to the longevity of your students. For some teachers they already have a good teaching strategy but there is always room for improvement especially if your average student is not with you for a minimum of 2 years.
29. Referrals - Lastly we will teach you how to get referrals. Your students should eventually become your best source of new students. The reason I was able to get to 500 students in 2 years was a combination of all the above factors but about 30% of those students came from referrals and as you grow that percentage increases.
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    1. G4 GUITAR Teacher Network
       
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    3. If you have any questions please contact me via the email below.
    6. Contact: My email address is g4guitar1@gmail.com.