Oops, I made a Mistake in My Studio...and How I Fixed It

Hello, friends. I'm Amanda Barr. And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principals United, the podcast. Together, we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio. Join us as we talk everything from marketing systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between. This is the Dance Principles United podcast. Well, hi, friends, it is Beck here. I am so excited to be with all of you this week and I have the incredible Nathan with me. How are you going, Nathan?

Good, Beck. Happy podcast day. I think I always say this at the start, but I always do love just jumping on and jamming and talking all things studio growth, building and everything with you on the podcast.

Love it so much. Now, I was just saying before we started, it's our one on one week with Studio Growth Club, which is always the greatest week because we actually get to spend, you know, that bit of individual time with each of our members. But oh, my gosh, Nath, I had two calls today that were just epic. They have the biggest numbers, I don't think I've even told you this, the biggest numbers that they've ever had in their studio. And it's only term one. They are both just absolutely loving all the things and crushing it. And I'm so proud of both of them because they're doing the things. And we know that success doesn't come unless you actually do the things and do them consistently.

And that's what we were talking about as well, like on today's coaching calls, because we had our, our call with our SGC members as well today. Some of them are hearing a lot of us. They might be sick of, sick of our sound of our voice by the end of the week. Right. But again, we were talking about, it's just that consistency and building. You know, you're not going to add 100 students in a week ever. But if you just keep being consistent doing those 1% things every time, that you're just going to keep growing and growing and growing. And look. Yeah, we also talked about as well that sometimes we go through seasons and that, you know, sometimes, yes, you might drop a couple of students over a short period of time, but generally, as long as you're moving up and to the right over the long term, then you're going to be getting better and better. You're going to be growing your student base, your revenues, your profits, and all the amazing things that come with that.

All the things which is so amazing. Now, one of the things that we wanted to talk about today is the fact that we always get the question of what if we've talked about this before, Nath, how do I grow a class that doesn't have any numbers? You know, how do I do that? And we've chatted about it before, but I thought I'd tell a little bit of my story today. So we have a boys here hip hop class at pause and I really fucked up this year and I kind of forgot about it. I know that sounds terrible, but I really did forget about it. So we had a lot of our boys go up into our troop classes from it. We had a few drop offs which is normal.

Yeah, it's been a great feeder into the studio.

Yep. It is a direct feeder into the studio into our hip hop troop classes because we've got the same teacher that does troop and you know, we had a few drop offs and the class went from 20 to 2. And I realized that week one back. So it's not very good on my point. But and I spoke to you about it, we kind of had this strategy, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, like you said, like. And it's not just, you know, you don't just have a junior on teaching your boys hip hop class. You've got Jacob Yah teaching boys hip hop of, you know, dance life fame that comes with, you know, cause he's so incredible. He's one of the higher end teachers and we know our incredible higher end teachers come with that higher price tag. Right. So it's a, it's an expensive class to put on and run. And the, the question that we get all the time from studio owners is, you know, and like you said, we've talked about it before, like how long do we give a class before we cancel it and all those kinds of thing. But that's why we want to get on and talk this about this specifically today because number one, we're all guilty of it. I know we did it at times during owning ds and you know, you sharing your journey today about, you know, we all still make mistakes. Right. Even you at pause. But it's not about making the mistake. Right. It's how we then fix it. Because everything's got a solution.

Yes, absolutely. And I also think every empty class has a solution. I mean apart from advanced to ballet, you know, we're not going to put an ad behind that. But Boys hip hop with Jacob Yar, that has a great solution. And you know, I think sometimes studio owners think that they're putting themselves out there marketing wise, but they're not. And you really have to ask yourself when you look at the class that's empty. How much effort have I actually put behind it? And my answer when I asked myself that was zero. And then what can I do about that? And the answer is all the things you can do, all the things no one knows about it unless you put.

It out there a hundred percent. And that's where we got together. You got together with your Facebook ads guy, which is me. And developing a bit of a strategy, but also with, you know, I always get Shay and Taryn, I always go Tay and Sharon, but it's not. But. But also like, because they're in charge of your social media accounts, which are absolutely crushing at the moment too. But building the whole strategy around it, right? Like, okay, what are we going to do on the organic socials? And you built a plan around that with them. What are we going to do in terms of getting our current parents? Because, you know, a lot of the dancers at the studios would have a little. Or an older brother maybe who might be right for that Boys hip hop class? What are we going to do on band? What are we going to do? Sending emails? What are we going to do? Going back through old lead, like all the things. And then as well as investing in some Facebook ads on top of that, right?

Absolutely. And we also took flyers to the local primary schools and I think that's a game changer as well because a lot of parents may not know that there's boys hip hop classes available. You may not even realize that. So we did that as well, which I think was a game changer too.

Absolutely. And so look, we started out, you know, and you know, we always talk about this because people always ask, you know, like, how much do I spend on Facebook ads? And. And those. Lots of questions around those sorts of things as well. And we, I always preface whenever I talk about anything that we do around the Facebook ad side of things is that, you know, everybody's budget is different. We completely understand that. But where we went with this was in like our initial discussions because, you know, I know quite a bit about Facebook ads and running them for dance studio specifically. You know, I know that app Pause, we're looking at an average of about $20 per lead that comes in because you're in Penrith, which is a highly competitive area for Facebook ads. Loads of people. Not just spending money, not just dance studio spending money. Because I think that's what sometime a lot of people forget that we're not just competing in that space in the social media, paid advertising with other dance studios. We're competing with the swim schools, the soccer joeys, the karate schools, the music schools. Like, if you're in a densely populated area, then your Facebook ads are going to cost a bit more, right? Just like in years gone by, the newspapers would have, the radio ads would have all those sorts of things. Whereas we're seeing like some of our studio growth club members because we take care of a lot of the. Give them all the templates and build out their Facebook ads and things like that for them. Some of our studio growth club members in more regional areas were getting like four to five dollars a lead because they're the only ones in their towns running ads. And absolutely crushing. Right? But we know for pause, it's about $20 a lead, right? And we also know that with pause, because you've got an amazing team that follow up your inquiries that it's about that within those leads that come in, one in every two enrolls because you just get such a high volume of leads. And we know that number and it's. We're really confident on it. So basically, to enroll a kid in a pause class costs about 40 bucks. And for us, for you, I know that you see that as a great return on investment. So you're willing. Like we started off the ads so far, like the ads campaign has spent about $650. But for that $650, there's been 29 leads come in. And your team's been working those leads. I know we were talking the other day, like, what. What's the boys hip hop at at the moment?

Well, the boys hip hop is at 10 at the moment. But a lot of those leads, because it's a specific time, a lot of the leads couldn't do that specific time, which is fine. So three boys now we have in six and under hip hop troop who've never done dance before. But we were like, oh, try the 600 hip hop troop. So three boys in that. So they've kind of filtered a couple into circus acro. So, you know, it's the cool part about following up leads properly and talking to people is you can talk them into going to other places in your school as well.

Amazing. Yeah, because that, that one, because they might not have thought of dance before it's been presented to them in a different way. Because, like, let's be honest, the majority of your school is female. So a lot of the graphics and the videos around it do show that. And so therefore you attract mostly females. So looking at those ads, you could understand why sometimes more boys wouldn't reach out or the parents of boys don't respond to those ads. But then they see this one, they're like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Cool. Lots of boys go there. Amazing. Then they reach out. Then you're filtering them into. By the time they get into those troop classes. Right. We're talking about loads of revenue from that. So from that, like I said, I know it was a big spend. We talked about like $650. But within that, there's been what, another at least eight enrollments into the boyship hop. It's gone 5X in its size from two to 10. And it will keep growing while everything's still running. But then you've also got what, another three to five enrolments throughout the rest of the school as well. So what?

I think it's actually eight, I think today.

Eight other enrollments through the other rest of the school.

Yeah.

So we're talking about 16 enrollments from $650 in spend. Right. And the way I always look at it, the way like we always talk about it, and I'm sitting here, I really should have done the maths on this before, but if we just do that, you know how I always think about it? Is the 650 divided by that 16 is literally right on that $40 per enrollment that we talked about, right?

Yep.

$40 for every one of those boys that come through. And what's the absolute minimum that somebody can spend? If somebody just comes in back and does one class a week, what's the minimum that they're spending at pause?

$17 a week.

$17 a week? Yeah. So within the first term, they're spending $170 within their first 10 weeks. And then everybody at pause buys uniform.

Correct. So we're Talking at least $100 on that, I would say, because they usually get the T shirt. Well, all the boys get the same T shirt with their name on the back, so. And plus the shorts.

Yep.

And then they'll get a costume that'll be probably worth another 125, depending on what we choose that year for the end of year. Concert, then concert tickets.

Yep. So like absolute minimum, like without even thinking about concert tickets. Right. So 395 is what we got to with those other things times those 16. So we've turned that $650 into $6,300 of revenue plus concert tickets. Right. That's absolutely crazy. And that's the absolute minimum. Right. Because like you said, lots of those. A few of those boys have gone into troop classes, which Means they'll be doing two or three classes a week or. Yeah, it's that thing that we always ask, you know, and like I said just before, like, I completely understand that not everybody has the cash flow to drop $600 on a campaign in the middle of the term. But what can you do? Right? What? And what can you do and what. Making sure that you're then matching your expectations with that spend that you're putting in. If you're spending. Yeah, what do we say, like a hundred dollars over a week, then be looking for about five, five leads. And that's okay. But make sure, please, please, please make sure too that you are doing everything possible to chase up those leads. Don't just send them one message. Don't just drop them one email. Don't just try and call them once. You've got to have something in place to be making sure that for that money you're spending that you're doing everything you can to get them in your doors to enroll in that class and start spending money in your studio. Right?

Absolutely. And I wanted to tell you this story about Archie. So I don't know if you saw my little Archie from my studio was the one who got the Taylor Swift hat the other day.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. And it has been a whirlwind for that kid because he's been on every morning show. He was on tv, he was on radio stations. Sorry. He was on the front page of two newspapers. Like, it's been hectic. Anyway, that little boy started in boys hip hop, so don't. I guess I'm just saying don't disregard those ones a weekers. So he started in boys hip hop. He now does everything at our studio as well as competitive dance. So he does two privates a week, does every single class at our studio and, you know, just got this whole Taylor Swift thing happening. And like, he's one of our most dedicated kids and he started in that once a week class. So if you're good with your. If your staff are good and they see talent and they can go, hey, you should try this, this and this. That's a game changer as well.

Yeah, absolutely. That's what like we always talked about with our students and our staff. Sorry, they were always amazing at that. Is that it's our job to help teach them to love dance. Right. It's our job to help educate the parents. It's our job to help let them know, like, what parent doesn't love? Oh, man. Like, your kid's really good at that maybe they could do a bit more like, what parent doesn't love hearing that? And too often, you know, when I'm working with studios on their marketing and things like that, they're trying to market to people, they're thinking they're wanting to market to people that like dance. And all of the time with what we're running and like, especially with what we're talking about with that boyship, we're really not marketing or trying to target people that like dance. We're trying to target people that are looking for a new activity for their boy to get him active, to get out and about to try something new. Right. And then that funnels and filters in and turns into something or students that are absolutely super, super valuable and amazing in our studios.

Absolutely. And I wanted to talk on that just for a second, Nath, because I actually spoke to one of our SJC members today and they said, oh, we don't have any footage of that class. There's only two kids in it. It's too awkward to have the footage. And I said, well, just make something up. Which is what the twins did for Boys Hip Hop. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's on the story all the time. Every single day, it's on the story. It's just a picture of two boys in their little hip hop costume from last year. And then they've done this really simple canva template saying boys Hip Hop. But don't be scared to post that every day on your story. It doesn't matter. No one's really thinking, like, I just think people overthink this stuff and think, I've posted it once, I can never post it again. It's totally fine to keep posting it because you are aiming it at that new client who hasn't seen it yet anyway, 100%.

Like, not everybody sees it. That was what Jade, who was the amazing photographer, a lot of people and videographer, a lot of people would have seen it Expo last year, is a social media expert, presented at Studio Growth Club conference last year up in the Gold Coast. And that was her thing. She repurposes and repost stuff. Sometimes every three months. She'll take the same reel and repost it every three months. Ones that work. Because she knows that if you don't look at the stats, if you're not a nerd like me, such a tiny percentage of your followers actually see posts that you put up and then an even smaller fraction of that actually watch the videos all the way through Like I was speaking with one of my one on ones this week and we were looking at amazing ads that they'd had that would have performed really well. And they take a lot of pride in the creative that they put up there for that and stuff like that. And look, the video was absolutely epic. And we stopped for a second and like. And like I said, it had led to great results. $15 a lead, which is awesome. Really like under average, which we're absolutely stoked about. And it was a 30 odd second video. And I'm like, that's really cool. And we were talking about like what you wanted to do to try and get some ads back up. I'm like, cool, don't reinvent the wheel. What you're going to do is you're going to take the back 15 seconds of that video and the front 15 seconds, that video and swap it. And I could see you think, oh no, we know we got to, we got to create something. We can't do that. But then we looked at the stats because you can see this on. When you do your Facebook ads through Ads Manager. Let's have a quick look at how many people actually watched up to. And you can see like how many people have watched something like 29,000 people had started playing that video. How many people do you reckon got to the like eight second mark?

Gonna say 8,000. Two.

2,000. Sorry, 2,000. Not two people, but. And then in terms of like how many people got to the end of the video? It was like 200. And like I said, guys, this is the video that outperformed what we usually see on Facebook. It was epic. It was incredible results. But that's, that's what's happening on our socials at the moment, right People. Very few people see it, number one. And then very few people actually watch the whole thing because we all do it. We just scroll, scroll, scroll, flick, scroll. Like.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's like, isn't it. The average that someone will watch is like not even 12 seconds or you have to get. I can't even remember what it is. It's like so small what people actually watch. And I'm the same. I'll watch it for three seconds and flick to the next thing. That's what we do. It's what we're programmed to do.

Oh, especially. And that's what we always talk about. Like I see loads of studio owners that we're working, that I'm working with when they're doing their. They've got this great videographers come in and created epic videos and stuff like that. But the first four seconds, I've animated a logo on top for them, the studio logo on top. And I'm like, okay, that's fantastic. I agree it looks awesome. But if you've got an animated logo, we know that nobody interacts.

Yep.

You've got the first two seconds to grab somebody's attention and get them to stop. And if you don't, if that's a logo, they're gonna flick straight on by. So like I said, I know so many of you out there would have that, but if you're ever using it for any sort of ads or promotions, just cut that first little logo off.

So smart. So smart. And I think we, we really need to make sure if we're spending money on something on social media, and I know I say this all the time, that you are consistently posting it on your socials. It's so important. If I was, and I've been advertising boys, hip hop, obviously if I then didn't have it on my story and didn't have any boys in my feed, people are automatically going to think that there's no boys there. And so it's really important that I'm showing the boys in the studio and doing all the things and having pictures of boys so that that par parents sees the boys and thinks, oh yeah, that's cool, there's boys there. So important.

100%. 100%. Well, as always, bec we digressed, we went off on tangents, but the key things that we want you to take away from today is that helping fill those empty classes is you've got to give it some time, like I said, but you've also got to invest in it a bit. Invest some of your time in terms of getting organic socials all over the place, investing some money in it to try and get those leads in. And then as well as, like we said, doing all the things, the emails, the post to your current parents, going through old leads, finding them. You can't just put up a couple of posts or send one email and one story and then say, oh no, I've tried and it's empty, so let's just cancel it. Especially like if you've got teachers coming in, like it's, it's a big thing, right?

Yeah. I think hard work always equals success. And I think people seem to think that things just come easily, but you know that hard work has to happen for you to succeed in anything.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, everybody for listening. As you listen to this. We are only a few weeks out now from Dance Teacher Expo, which we are super, super excited about. So if you haven't already jump on, grab your tickets. We will put a link in the show notes for this and it would mean the absolute world to us. We know we don't ask for this enough, but if you could leave a like or a comment. And please subscribe to the Dance Principles United podcast wherever you're listening. It helps others find the podcast and get some value and insights from it as well.

Absolutely. Thanks friends. Can't wait to see you at Expo. Bye.

Thanks everybody. Bye. Sam.