Articles Tagged with: dance studio websites
The 4 Top Things You Should Do AFTER Your Dance Studio Website Has Launched

After weeks of tweaking materials and mind melding with your website designer, your site has launched. Congratulations! Now you can finally let it do its job and get back to fully concentrating on your dance studio.

But wait!! As tempting as it is to consider the project “done”, there are things you can do to take full advantage of your new site and ensure you get your money’s worth.

If need of a new studio website? Visit Studio of Dance .com to see whether we're a good fit!

Here are the top 4 things you should remember to do AFTER your studio’s website has launched:

1. Promote It
Hopefully there’s already a buzz that you have a new website, but make sure to promote it fully. Start by sending out an email newsletter and Facebook post encouraging your students, dance parents, and friends to check out your new website and then to share it with their friends. Put your web address on flyers, show programs, signs, and anywhere else you can think of.

Consider offering a web-only special or coupon, to give people another reason to go to your website. People love to get a good deal, and once they’ve visited your site, it will be easier to get them to return.

2. Drive Traffic to It
As often as possible, drive traffic to your dance studio’s website from your social media channels. For example, when you upload a video to your YouTube Channel, make sure that the title or description of the video includes your website address. When posting to Facebook, give a ‘Latest News’ teaser, and then provide a link to the News page of your website for those who want fuller information. If you’ve added a batch of new photos to your studio’s website, tweet about it and include a link to your Photo Gallery page.

Get as much traffic on your website as possible, and you’ll have the forum to excite visitors about your classes, programs, events, and camps.

3. Link It
Improving your dance studio’s online presence through local directories is an excellent way to keep top of mind with those in your community. Start off by claiming your listing with Google My Business (commonly known as GMB, and formerly known as Google Local and Google Places), and move on to other local directories such as Yelp, Bing Local, and BBB.org.

Besides utilizing local directories, create online partnership opportunities where you can. Linking to and from other websites, when done in a thoughtful way, can increase your studio’s exposure, as well as establish important business relationships.

Reciprocal links can also help with your search engine optimization, as long as you aren’t seeking them out for that purpose alone. The important thing is to put your dancers, parents, and prospects first, and consider what they would be interested in and find valuable.

4. Maintain It
Think of your website upkeep as an ongoing discipline, instead of a performance that ends when the curtain goes down (aka: when the website launches). Maintaining, updating, and monitoring your website is a practice that will last as long as your dance studio does.

Not what you wanted to hear, right? It’s ok. There are things you can do to make maintenance easier.

Keeping your website up to date is the #1 way to ensure it remains the sweet little marketing engine that it is at launch time. Here are three ways to make updating easy:

a) Plan ahead to make it easier to deal with needs and problems when they arise. Keep a record of all your login information, as well as the contact details and support email addresses of your web designer, hosting company, and domain name company. If your website designer manages your hosting and domain as well as your site, then it’s that much easier to keep that info at hand.

b) As soon as your website launches, set a schedule to remind yourself to check in. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in studio life that you forget to perform maintenance or even glance at your website. Solution? This is a GREAT task to delegate to a trusted studio staff member. As with most things, though, if it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t get done. Just a month or two of neglect due to a busy competition schedule or recital prep, and suddenly that manageable task can feel daunting. Ensure success by scheduling maintenance sessions into the office calendar 1 or 2x per month.

c) Use maintenance sessions to remove outdated information from your website, add timely event details, revise your dance school’s calendar, update competition result information, and/or add a special contest or promotion. If you’re wanting visitors to take action on a certain page, make sure to add a clear Call to Action.

A few times per year, schedule a fuller review of your website. During these sessions, identify places where you can improve your site and create an intuitive, streamlined experience for prospects, parents, and dancers. Think about your overarching goals, and the mission and branding of your website as it relates to your studio. This type of session will also help you notice things you may otherwise have forgotten to update, such as a change in faculty or a photo needing replacing.

Think now about your website’s life post launch. Schedule time for social media, marketing, and maintenance, and you’ll set it up for long-term success. You’ll ensure that it remains current, professional, and your #1 tool for bringing new dancers into the studio, while also keeping existing dancers (and their parents) happy and loyal!

Best wishes,
Stacey

Your website is your dance studio’s #1 marketing tool. Is yours sorely in need of a redesign? Please take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!

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The 8 Best Image Creation Tools for Dance Studio Websites (Updated for 2020)

Concerned about getting new dancers into your studio? About keeping your existing students happy? Nervous about your competitors? Completely understandable, but take heart. Using the online marketing strategies that highly successful dance studios are using, you can address these concerns and thrive.

A popular strategy is using image creation tools to easily create visually rich content. Incorporating super strong visuals into your dance studio website and social channels will grab visitors’ attention and share information in a way that is simple and easy to digest.

The idea of creating strong visuals is not new. We’re all accustomed to seeing lots of images on websites and social media. But despite their importance, it’s very common for photos and other graphics to be left until the last minute when we create new content. They can be seen as an afterthought, or even a nuisance. Website design and Facebook page launches are often delayed or even abandoned because of them.

At the very least, image-centric marketing can feel like one more time consuming “to do”. Well, keep reading! I’ll be sharing 8 free tools you can use to create marvelous images and graphics for your dance studio.

The Power of Images

The human brain is wired to respond to images. In fact, 90 percent of all information that we perceive and that gets transmitted to our brains is visual. Communicating through imagery means you can communicate more value, more quickly to visitors skimming your website or social media.

Happily, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to learn some simple tricks and techniques that will punch up your studio’s website and grab the attention of your social media audience.

Don’t get me wrong or let the pendulum swing too far – Text is super important! Many people still research and yes, READ, getting a full sense of a dance studio before making their decision to sign up for classes. It’s just that graphics, in conjunction with text, can provide visual examples, emphasize relevant points, and portray emotions that support your message.

Language takes more time to process than image elements. Consider the example below. From a website visitor’s perspective, would it be easier to understand a dance position that is described, or shown?

Image-centric marketing for your dance studio

We not only more quickly absorb information that is visual – visual elements also affect us emotionally. Which of the following is more effective in portraying the warmth of a dance studio?

Visual elements affect us emotionally

 

8 Best (and Free!) Image Creation Tools to Create Marvelous Images and Graphics for Your Dance Studio

1. Quozio.com

Quozio isn’t fancy, but it sure it easy to use. Just go to www.quozio.com and enter your quote or other text, and then press “Go.” They will automatically format it, but if you don’t like what they give you, you can easily select a different background.

Then, you can either right-click on the image and select “Save image as”, in order to add it to your website, or you can share it to your social networks. Easy & fun!

Quozio

 

 

2. Keep-Calm-O-Matic

With Keep-Calm-O-Matic, you can create your own Keep Calm and Carry On themed posters. You can easily change the text (Keep Calm and Jeté On?), upload your own background photo and change the text color to coordinate with your studio’s brand palette. When you’re happy with your creation, you can share it on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter, or buy products such as mugs, t-shirts and phone cases featuring your custom design from their online shop.

Create fun graphics for your dance studio with the Keep-Calm-O-Matic

 

 

3. Stencil

Here is another awesome, free tool for making beautiful images of quotes and sayings. With Stencil, you can convert any highlighted text into an image. You can upload your own images, or use theirs. Once the image is created, you can download the image or share it on your social media accounts.

Their free account level allows you to create and save up to 10 images per month.Stencil Image

 

 

4. QuotesCover.com

With QuotesCover, you select whether you’ll be using the image as an Instagram story, Facebook update, Twitter header, etc so you easily start with the appropriate size. After typing in your desired quote, you can change your font and background combination to suit your needs. A number of their options require an upgrade to a paid level, but the free level still offers enough flexibility to get many jobs done. 

QuotesCover isn’t quite as simple to use as those above, but is still a valuable (and free!) tool with which to up your image game.

 

 

5. Canva.com

This graphics tool is just bad-ass (pardon my French). It gives you a ton of options – layouts, banners, grids, shapes, and frames – to get you going. With Canva, you have the option to create Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter & Instagram graphics, Facebook cover photos, and much more.

The user interface is wonderful to use, although it’s easy to spend a lot of time tweaking your image and text into the perfect combination. Some of their photos and templates cost $1 to use, but many are free. If you’re signed into Facebook, Canva can pull in your own photos, or you can upload photos from your computer.

Canva

 

 

6. Pixlr.com

Pixlr is a fantastic tool for those who want to edit their dance studio’s photos without delving into Photoshop or another high-end graphics program. It’s an internet based program (so you don’t need to download it to your computer).

Pixlr is not as easy to use as the options above, but it can do so much more and is worth looking into. Here’s a blogpost I wrote on How to Easily Crop, Resize, & Add Effects to your Dance Photos using Pixlr.com.

 

And 2 Fun Options for Pinterest Lovers!

I found both of these to be super easy and fun to use.
7. Pinstamatic.com
[Editor’s Note: Unfortunately Pinstamatic.com is no longer in existence… I’d recommend using Canva, as outlined above]
This site was designed to be used mostly with Pinterest, but you can also create great graphics to share on other social media networks.

 

8. Pinwords.com

[Editor’s Note: Unfortunately Pinwords.com is no longer in existence… Try Canva or QuotesCover]

Simple and fun. When you are done with your graphic, you have the option to pin it, post it to Facebook, tweet it or email it to yourself.

 

Using visually rich content can help optimize your dance studio marketing efforts and give you an edge over competitors who mainly publish written content. Give one or more of these image tools a try, and improve your visitors’ website and social media experience!

Best wishes,
Stacey

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Are you tired of your studio’s website? Ready for a website overhaul? Please take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!

 

How Content Marketing Grows Your Dance Studio

Content marketing for your dance studioPeople are actively looking for targeted, compelling, and relevant content to expand their knowledge and help them make buying decisions. This holds true whether they’re deciding upon a new phone to buy, a new hair stylist to visit, or which movie to see on a Friday night.

We live in a world where people want to make up their own mind about what they need to solve their problems. To that end, they’ll likely spend quality time on your dance studio website (and those of your competitors) before they first register for dance classes.

Creating content related to the topics your prospects could be searching for is called “Content Marketing”, and it’s one of the best ways to separate your studio from your competition, build authority, and attract (& retain) new dancers.

And a big bonus: Regularly creating worthwhile content on your website can help your dance studio rank higher in search results. (More on that below!)

Why Content Marketing?

By educating prospects about the world of dance and providing them with advice and recommendations, you are delivering indispensable information before they even call or walk through your studio’s door. This relationship will make it FAR easier for them to make their decision to sign up for classes, and much more likely that the decision will be that your dance studio is a perfect fit for them.

Content marketing not only builds your reputation in the community and positive relationships with your prospects and customers, it generates more traffic to your dance studio’s website in the first place.

Most dance studios have yet to discover and use content marketing. You’ll have the edge over your competitors if you deliver great content to your current and future customers!

What Types of Content Work Well?

So what types of content will drive more traffic to your studio’s website? There are many answers to this question, but here are several types that work beautifully:

1. Product Reviews

Is there a new leotard style or dance accessory that you’re excited about? Share it with your dancers and with the community at large. Is there a new dance hobo bag that people are chatting about? Check it out for yourself and share your opinions on your website.

2. Q & A

These are easy to come up with and add to your site. Think of the top questions asked of you and your staff by prospects, current dancers and parents. Just present the question as your heading or title, and the answer as the content.

3. How To’s

These are fantastic, and immediately position you as the dance expert that you are. How To’s can range from “How to Pick a Dance Studio” to “How to Execute a Perfect Piqué Turn”.

How To’s on performing dance steps are tailor made for video, and are wonderful additions when embedded on your website.

4. Success Stories

Share a story of how a student went from a tender 5 year old tapping for the first time to an accomplished dancer now entering college. Explain the challenges she had to overcome and the solution you and your studio provided. People love stories, and the benefit to using these is that they demonstrate the success dancers have if they join your studio.

5. Interviews

When you interview a respected dancer or choreographer, you gain respect from your customers and prospects, and often, gain large amounts of traffic. After you invite someone to be interviewed and are accepted, the easiest way to do the interview is by email. Sure, an audio or video interview is fantastic, but keep it simple when starting out. Simply provide the interviewee with a list of questions, along with your thanks for participating, and then post their reply on your website.

Think in terms of what will be helpful, interesting, and/or amusing to your website visitors. We are speaking of WEBSITE content here, by the way, but your social media channels will also benefit when you link the two together.

For example, when you’ve written a new product review for your website, write a blurb about it along with a link and post about it on Facebook. Tweet about a success story, with the link leading folks to the full article on your site. A video embedded on your studio’s website will also reside on your YouTube channel.

Can adding informative, educational, and/or entertaining content also help your SEO? Short answer = YES!! The key is to write content not to improve your search engine optimization, but to share knowledge. When this is the purpose of content generation, great exposure and improved ranking are generated naturally.

By providing answers to what potential clients are looking for online, you’ll not only create value they’ll be grateful for, you’ll also establish your personal brand, leading to a wealth of new opportunities and new dancers through your doors.

Are you getting started with content marketing? Let me know what challenges you’re facing in the comments below!

Best wishes,
Stacey

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Are you embarrassed by your dance studio’s website? Ready for a site overhaul? Take a look at our dance website portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!

How to Get Prizewinning Testimonials for your Studio

Through your website, you can (and should) give visitors information about your dance studio’s mission, history, upcoming events, and classes offered. When it comes to the big sell, though, it’s far better to let someone else do your bragging – namely your dance parents and/or the dancers themselves.

But how do you get testimonials that will benefit your school the most? Here’s how to obtain high quality testimonials that will draw more new dancers to your studio.

The first step to using testimonials on your website is, of course, to collect them in the first place. While getting testimonials is pretty straightforward (be bold and ask for them from your most satisfied parents & students), collecting the information needed for really persuasive testimonials requires a slightly different process.

Guide Dance Parents into Giving a Focused, Specific Testimonial

Although you can certainly ask a dance parent while they are at the studio, sending a testimonial request by email or personal note is more thoughtful. When you do this, be aware that the specific questions you ask your dance parents will play a major role in the quality of the testimonials you’ll receive.

For example, consider the following two testimonial requests:

“Hi Rebecca,
I’m so glad to hear that you enjoyed the recital! I’m always looking to feature feedback from happy dancers and dance parents on my website, so could you please send me a short paragraph describing what you like best about the studio?

Sincerely,
Elena (Studio Owner)”

vs.

“Hi Rebecca,
I’m so glad to hear that you and little Jenny had a wonderful recital experience this year! I would love to feature feedback from happy customers like you on the studio’s website.

If you’re willing to share your experiences, please send back your responses to one or more of the following questions (or feel free to write your own message).

  1. What about the recital did you enjoy the most?
  2. Has taking dance helped Jenny in other areas of her life? If so, what are they?
  3. What is Jenny’s favorite thing about coming to the studio?
  4. What have you enjoyed about your experience at the studio?

I’d love to use a photo of you and Jenny (which we can take in the studio if you’d like), or a photo of Jenny in a costume on recital night.

Thanks in advance!
Elena (Studio Owner)”

The second email increases the likeliness that a specific benefit or positive result will be brought to the attention of new prospects. These types of testimonials are much more powerful than generic compliments. To demonstrate:

The first request above might result in a testimonial that sounds a little like:

“We love Figtree School of Dance. It’s awesome in every way, and the recital was wonderful. Thanks Ms. Elena!”

The second request might result in something more like the following:

“Before our daughter Jenny began dance classes at Figtree School of Dance, she was shy and uncomfortable around other children her age. She has really blossomed through taking dance and has made many new friends. She is learning wonderful dance technique, but also is becoming a positive, confident young woman thanks to the staff and community at Figtree!”

Encourage specifics from your customers, and they’ll provide the much-needed social proof that can turn wavering prospects into new dancers in your studio.

You don’t have to use the entire testimonial!

Sometimes the kindness and enthusiasm of a customer results in a loooooong testimonial. As wonderful as testimonials are, to do their job they need to be readable. Nothing says you have to quote an entire testimonial on your site. Consider shortening it to five lines of text (or less). As long as you keep the overall impression the testimonial gives, it’s perfectly fine.

If a dance parent gives you a very long, but awesome, testimonial and you want to use more of the comments, you can break it up into several segments and scatter it throughout your site.

And the best spot to place testimonials is…

It’s an excellent idea to have a testimonials page on your dance studio’s website – having one can really impress parents considering dance studios in your area. In addition, though, add a testimonial here and there throughout the site. It increases their impact when you interweave them with the content on your webpages, giving them a better chance of being read by more of your site visitors.

If your testimonials are focused, specific, and well placed throughout your website, this powerful technique will convince new prospects of the benefits of their children taking class at your dance studio. Which means more new dancers coming through your studio’s doors!

Best wishes,
Stacey

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Are you tired of your studio’s website? Ready for a website overhaul? Please take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!
3 Quick Tips to Optimize your Studio Website’s Title Tags

Did you get a chance to read my blogpost on how to improve your dance studio’s website ranking by optimizing your title tags? It gives you the lowdown on title tags, and an easy method to make them FABULOUS.

Here are 3 quick additional tips on improving your title tags:

Improve your studio's title tags1. Use a different title for each page
For best results, use a different title for each page. A good title tag for an ‘About the Classes’ page might be: “Ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, and lyrical dance classes in Seattle, WA”. A nice title tag for an Online Registration page could be: “Register online for dance classes or summer dance programs”. You get the idea.

2. Don’t put your studio’s name at the front of your title tag
Putting your studio’s name in your title tags may be a mistake. Why? If your studio’s name is Figtree Academy of Ballet and that is the full title tag of your homepage, newbie parents searching for a studio in your area would have to type in ‘Figtree’, ‘Academy’, and/or ‘Ballet’ for your title tag to do you any good. If they don’t yet know your studio exists, how will they know to type your business name in a search query?

A better choice would be a title tag that says, “Dance classes in Springdale, CA – The #1 Dance Studio in Corvallis County”. You can certainly add ‘Figtree Academy of Ballet’ to the end of it, but those more important keywords should be at the front.

The exception to this would be those of you whose studios happen to have the exact same name as the keywords parents are likely to type in, for example: ‘The Dance Studio’, or ‘Roseville Dance School’.

3. Make sure not to keyword stuff!
Using keywords is fantastic. There is a difference, though, between using keywords judiciously in a title tag, and ‘keyword stuffing’. It’s pretty self explanatory, but a keyword-stuffed title might look something like this:

‘Dance with us in our dance studio – Dance classes for dancers who love to dance!’

Google might view that title tag as trying to manipulate a better ranking by just repeating the word ‘dance’ a lot. There’s no hard and fast rule as to how many times you can use a word in a title… a couple of times should be fine. Just use your common sense!

Best wishes,
Stacey

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Are you tired of your studio’s website? Ready for a website overhaul? Please take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!

 

How to Improve Your Dance Studio Website’s Google Ranking

SEO for Dance Studio Websites: Title Tags

If your site isn’t coming up as high as you’d like in Google and the other search engines, take a look at your title tags. A title tag is the is the main text that describes a webpage – it tells search engines what your page is about. Title tags appear in browser title bars/tabs, and on search engine results pages. Like this:

Title tags are the single most important SEO (search engine optimization) element besides your overall content, and so tweaking them can help your dance studio’s website ranking.

A great title tag includes the most important keywords for your site and is relevant to the topic of the page. In this context, keywords mean: “specific terms used by a person to search for something on the internet”.

Here’s an example of a good homepage title tag:

“Drop-in dance studio for adults in Seattle, WA – Westlake Dance Center”.

If an adult in the Seattle area is looking to take dance classes, she/he would probably type in words like ‘dance studio’, Seattle, and adults, and Westlake Dance Center would likely show up nice and high in this scenario.

In our experience, some of the most important keywords to include are: dance, dance studio, dance classes, dance school, your city’s name, your state abbreviation, and the types of classes you teach.

Here’s How to Re-Do Your Title Tags:

If you decide to redo your title tags, you can start by creating a fresh text document on your computer. Then go to each of your website’s pages, and consider their title tags – are they accurate and concise descriptions of each page’s content? Do they include the most important keywords for each webpage? The ones you feel good about, leave alone.

If a webpage has a title tag you think is sub-par, write the name of the page in your text doc. Next to it, write out a new title tag. For best results, place your most important keywords for the page as close to the beginning of the title as possible.

Repeat this process as you go through all of your website’s pages — those that have decent title tags, leave alone. Those that need a revamp, revise in the text document.

For example:

Revised Homepage title –
Drop-in dance studio for adults in Seattle, WA – Westlake Dance Center

Revised Class Schedule page title –
Dance classes at Seattle’s premier dance studio: Ballet – Modern – Hip Hop – Tap – Lyrical

You’ve Got Your New Title Tags – Now What Do You Do With Them?

You may be able to change your title tags yourself through a content management system, but if not, you’ll need to send them to your website designer. If you take care of re-writing your title tags and send them to your designer ready to go, it will be a relatively quick and easy change for them to make, and so shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg.

You can likely also pay them for their input, and/or have them write optimized title tags for your studio, at a higher cost.

NOTE: If you’re a Studio of Dance.com website design customer, please note that changing title tags is not something you can do yourself with Simple2Edit. However, it won’t take long for us to update your title tags at our hourly rate (it would likely take just 30 minutes). Send your freshly optimized title tags my way, and we’ll get that done for you.

If you’re not yet showing up on the first page of Google with the keywords “dance studio” + your city (or are concerned that other studios may usurp your position), then it’s worth taking the time to revamp your title tags.

And the good news is – few studios are doing this, so it could really make a difference!

Best wishes,
Stacey

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Are you tired of your studio’s website? Ready for a website overhaul? Please take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!
Top 5 Ways to Make Your Dance Studio Website ‘Sticky’

Keep visitors on your dance studio's website - Make it sticky!A sticky website is one where people stay a nice long while and come back regularly to see what’s new.

How important is it to make your studio’s site sticky? Imagine parents in your community visiting all the dance studio websites in your area to determine where to take their daughter for class. Would you prefer they linger on yours or that of your competitor(s)?

Making your website sticky means encouraging visitors to spend some time there, which is not an easy task with the myriad of distractions online. Using the techniques below, however, can help keep visitors right where you want them — exploring your dance school through your website, and giving them ample reason and opportunity to act upon their interest!

1. Content is King!

The easiest way to keep visitors around (and coming back for more) is to offer well written, interesting and relevant content. Offer both dry but important information such as your studio policies and recital handbook, and punchier, fun items such as latest competition results and studio news.
Your website will ideally answer visitors’ questions effectively, lead them to important points, and entice them with calls to action throughout the site. What is meant by ‘calls to action’?

Examples of effective calls to action are:

  • ‘Call us now for more information at (234) 555-6789’,
  • ‘Click here to register online now’, or
  • ‘Sign up for classes today, and receive a free studio t-shirt!’

Content is the key to a sticky website. If there is nothing there, then there is no reason for your audience to stay.

2. Keep it clean

What first impression does your website give? Although we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, appearance is the first thing people notice, and it sets the tone for their entire visit. Whether the tone is professional or amateurish, warm or cold, catering to adults or the younger set will make a real difference in the way people view your studio.

People will not remain on a studio website that is cluttered and confusing. We’ve all been on a site that overdoes it with colors, font styles, graphics and technical gadgetry. My personal first impression in such cases is usually irritation and a vague sense of disappointment, and I can’t get off those sites quickly enough.

It’s best to make your website clean, straightforward and consistent, with a uniform appearance. Using the same backgrounds, colors, navigation menu and site logo throughout your pages will help create a good first impression, and first impressions matter!

3. Make Your Studio Website Sticky, Not Stuck

A sticky website is one where a visitor arrives and finds it difficult to leave. You want people to spend time on your site, but not because it takes a long while to figure out how to navigate through it.

Ease of navigation is imperative and a vital component of a sticky site. Visitors will only click around so long to in order to get the information they are looking for. Once they become confused or agitated, feeling ‘stuck’, moving to another site becomes inevitable. Intuitive and consistent navigation bars help visitors feel at ease with your website and, by extension, your studio.

Every part of a successful website functions like a well-oiled superbly made machine. If parents can register online through your website, facilitate their passage through the process. Make it clear, step by step, what they need to do to successfully register and/or make payments online.

How easy it is to maneuver through your website is an indication of how easy and pleasurable it will be to belong to your studio!

4. Keep Your Site Fresh:

Does your audience have a reason to return to your site? The first time someone visits your site, everything is fresh and appealing. If they come back to your site and nothing has changed, you’ve missed a vital opportunity to market to them. And visitors will not keep coming back if they feel they’ve already seen it all.

It’s super important to update and rotate your content to attract new visitors and keep them coming back for more. If you’re having a difficult time thinking of ways to do this, try offering a dance-related quote of the week or “Teachers’ Tip of the Month” on your news page.

Have a production coming up? Have your students just participated in a parade? Are you offering a discount for those who register early for class? Have new recital photos to share? These are all opportunities to freshen up your content.

And in doing so, you answer every returning user’s question: “What’s new?”

5. Make it personal

People are more interested in connecting with a person than a collection of content. You can bridge the gap and help first time visitors feel comfortable making contact with your studio by personalizing your website. Doing so also results in return visits from your current students and/or their parents. You are building community, and giving your visitors something to belong to.

Think of your website as a personality, and as an extension of your studio. Make it welcoming, accessible and inclusive. Your customers (and newbies) will love to learn about and see photos of a teacher’s newborn or the ongoing progress of a studio expansion. Adding faculty photos, writing your newsletters in a personal tone, using video and including personal details and stories of life at the studio will help you engage with your website visitors and help them feel connected.

Because the internet can be cold and impersonal, personalizing your website can go a long way towards making people feel part of your studio family. And when visitors feel like they are a part of something, they’ll stay on a website longer.

Create a warm community feel to your site — a sure-fire way to increase your site’s stickiness.


Do you have suggestions on how to create a sticky dance studio website? Please share any thoughts in the comments section below.

Best wishes,
Stacey

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Are you feeling that your studio website isn’t worthy of your amazing dance studio? Please take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!
Is your Dance Studio’s Website Doing its Job?

Are you making the most of the marketing tool that is your dance studio’s website? The majority of business owners recognize websites as essential, but don’t use them to best effect.

Sure, your studio’s website may ‘pop’ visually and give visitors good basic information about your dance studio and its offerings, but does it give people a true sense of your school and what it’s about? Does it reach out and grab prospects, making it clear that there is no better studio in the world for them and/or their children?

Getting clear on the purpose and goals of your dance studio’s website will hugely improve the experience of those visiting your site, and that can mean more new students coming through your doors. To that end, here are three exercises that will provide some clarity. Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and dig in!

Is your dance studio's website doing its job?

Exercise #1 – Your Audience(s):

Consider your audience(s) – who visits your website? Obvious things that come to mind are existing dance parents and prospective customers. Also, students themselves may visit your website. And members of your community? Alumni?

Action: Take a few minutes to make a list of your audiences, either in a fresh text document or on a piece of paper.

Exercise #2 – Your Website’s Purpose:

You may have a fantastic dance studio website design – an easy-to-navigate showstopper with all the bells and whistles. But are you getting your message across? What do you want people to KNOW about you and your dance studio by the time they leave your website?

Take a few good minutes and identify the mission – the purpose – of your website. Does it differ depending on the audience? Possibilities include:
  • Intriguing prospects enough that they reach out and contact you
  • Describing your dance classes and programs to people considering dance studios in your area
  • Impressing upon your website visitors your status as the #1 dance studio in your area
  • Reducing help requests by providing pertinent studio information on your site

Action: Write down your thoughts on your website’s purpose. If you had to choose only one main purpose, what would that be?

Exercise #3 – Visitor Goals:

People come to your website with a specific task in mind. If it isn’t easy to complete that task, they’ll leave. Identifying the most likely visitor goals for your studio’s website lets you gauge whether your website is serving them (and therefore you) well.

What are the top goals visitors want to complete on your website? For example, do they want to find out about class times? Figure out what their child should be wearing to ballet class? Register for classes?

If you’re not sure what visitors’ goals are, consider what questions dance parents and prospects ask most when they send you an email or call your studio. Ideally, you can talk to people in the different audience groups to determine what is important to them. I’m sure they’ll be happy to give you input.

Action: Write down your thoughts and findings, and then rank them. What is likely to be your visitors’ #1 top task or goal?

And now what do you do with your findings?

Now take the information from these exercises and take a look through your dance studio’s website.

Is the website a good match for your intended audience (or audiences)? Does is quickly and clearly convey your website’s purpose? Are the most likely goals of your visitors easy for them to execute?

If so, FANTASTIC… carry on. If not, consider how to modify your website to fix these issues.

Any thoughts on this topic? I’d love to hear! Please post any comments in the section below.

Best wishes,
Stacey

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In need of a new website for your dance studio? Take a look at our dance studio website design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!
Planning For Your Dance Studio’s Growth – Part 2

Let’s dive back in! In part 1 of Planning For Your Studio’s Growth, we looked at the importance of having a marketing plan for your dance studio, and started off by determining your marketing goals and objectives. 

We’ll continue now by creating a mini-marketing plan for your dance studio with these two activities:

 

Activity #2 – Designing a Promotional Plan:

Think about your customers and prospects and how to reach them most effectively. In which neighborhoods do your current students reside? How far might students/parents be willing to drive? Is there a weekly fruit and vegetable market in the neighborhood at which your students may pass out fliers? Is your studio located in a strip mall along with other small businesses (opportunity for cross- promotion)?

The possibilities are near endless when it comes to promoting your studio. For example:

  • Advertising — from neighborhood fliers and community newspapers to ads displayed in the shopping carts of the grocery stores nearest you
  • Publicity — from community festivals to nursing home performances
  • Internet marketing — from optimizing your studio website to linking with other local business sites

ACTION: Take a moment now to consider your customers and how best to reach them. Write down a promotional activity for each of your marketing goals, an activity that would move you closer to those goals.

Sometimes, one activity can provide a multitude of benefits. For example, a car wash can be an excellent fund raiser while simultaneously advertising your studio.

 

Activity #3 – Formulating an Action Plan:

It's time to create (or update) your dance studio's marketing plan!Lastly, for each of the promotional activities you’ve written down, lay out the details, such as when they should be accomplished and who will do them. Break each activity down into smaller “to do” chunks, and assign each one a completion deadline.

For instance, if you’ve decided that doing a postcard mailing would move you closer to your goal of making the people in the surrounding areas aware of your new studio location, you might ask yourself the following questions: What size postcard do I wish to mail out? What message do I want to convey? What quantity would be best to mail out? Then, break down the activity into smaller tasks.
 

Example: The activity is to mail out 500 promotional postcards

  1. Call local printers for quotes — by Wednesday evening — assigned to Claire, the studio office manager
  2. Call Bob, who does our graphic design, for a quote — by Thursday evening — assigned to me
  3. Drop my sketch, materials, and ideas off at Bob’s — by the weekend — assigned to me
  4. etc.

ACTION: Take just one of the activities in your Promotional Plan above, and break it down into easier to manage tasks. Assign a person to the task and a completion deadline for the job. If the breakdown goes quickly, do the same for one or more of your other promotional activities. Your promotional activities will seem much less daunting once they’re broken down into smaller tasks.

 

Wrapping It Up:

By accomplishing the above actions, you’ve created a “mini-marketing plan”, designed to give you a fresh look at your studio and goals. Depending on your dance studio’s type, stage of growth, and marketing objectives, you will probably also want to include: information about your studio and its current competition, the costs of your planned marketing activities, and the measurements used to determine success.

If you’re finding such exercises beneficial and want to take it up a notch, visit the wonderful resources on the CoSchedule website. There you’ll find marketing plan samples and templates to help you craft your studio’s marketing strategy. We have no affiliation with CoSchedule.

Do you need to write or revise your marketing plan? There’s a good chance that you’re due for an update, and before the new season begins is an ideal time for most of us to plan for the year to come. It’s best if a marketing plan is reviewed and updated at least annually, but if you do nothing other than take an hour or two to write out a mini-marketing plan, you’ll discover a refreshed sense of focus and purpose.

Certainly people will find out or hear about your dance studio and give it a try, without you actively promoting it. But hundreds of other potential customers may never learn of your business if you don’t develop an adequate marketing plan. Think of the new students you might gain if you have one!

 

In need of a new website for your dance studio? Take a look at our dance web design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!

 

Planning For Your Studio’s Growth – Part 1

 

It’s Summer! Time to Update Your Dance Studio’s Marketing Plan:

With the many roles dance studio owners have to inhabit – that of business owner, manager, artistic director, teacher, choreographer, and “one who placates the parents”, it’s no wonder that the role of marketing director gets lost in the shuffle. So often, we small business owners feel overwhelmed, and find that we’re solely working “in” our business instead of “on” our business. But by creating and implementing a marketing plan (or updating an existing one), it’s possible to not only grow your dance studio but feel calmer and more purposeful to boot.

Planning For Your Studio’s Growth

What is the purpose of a marketing plan? Why bother with it, when so much else is going on? To quote the Small Business Administration’s Women’s Business Center website, “A marketing plan helps you establish, direct and coordinate your marketing efforts. Often, simply embarking on the process of preparing a marketing plan guides you in developing a successful marketing strategy.”

It’s the difference between:

– A studio owner named Kerry, whose only promotion is a rarely updated website built 8 years ago, one that pales in comparison to her competitors (if it ever got found in the first place), and

– A studio owner named Vanessa, who has implemented a well-thought out plan that includes:

  1. an ad in a local parents magazine,
  2. a referral policy,
  3. promotional activities in and around town, and
  4. a dynamic, contemporary website with ‘calls to action’

Which of the above studio owners do you think is likely to garner the most new students?

 

The Mini Marketing Plan:

Many business sites, such as those of Entrepreneur Magazine and the Small Business Administration, give you an overall recommended format for a marketing plan. These sites can be very helpful and provide valuable guidelines. However, the format isn’t as important as the process of developing it. The process makes you think about your business goals and what your marketing strategy will be to achieve those goals.

Let’s work together through an abbreviated form of this process. We will determine your marketing goals and objectives, design a promotional plan, and lay out the action plan that will keep you on course.

 

Activity #1 – Determining your marketing goals/objectives:

A good place to begin is to think about the strengths of your studio, your “niche”, if you will. How is your studio different than the others in town? Has it been around since 1978? Tout its history as the longest running school in your area. Did it open just last year? Well then, emphasize its fresh, new perspective. Perhaps beginning students are your specialty, or adults, or at-risk youth. Perhaps your focus is ballet, or hip-hop, or hula.

Whatever it is, use your dance studio’s strength to your advantage, and incorporate it into your goals. For best results, make the goals specific and actionable. Here are some examples, using the make-believe studio owners from above:

 

Vanessa’s goals are to:
  • Increase her studio’s reputation as a mainstay in the local performing arts community, and garner at least 3 positive mentions in local news media in the next 6 months
  • Develop an ongoing referral policy that will benefit her studio, her current students, and those new students being referred. Announce the new referral policy by April 5th, with the goal of 10 new referred students for the summer session
  • Increase enrollment by 12% this season
Kerry’s goals are: 

  • Vague, involving keeping her head above water and growing her business
You can see what a difference having specific goals might make. What 3 or 4 goals for the coming school year can you come up with right now?

 

ACTION:
Jot down some ideas, and narrow it down to the few that enthuse you the most. Without a doubt, marketing goals are more effective when they are measurable. It’s much easier to track your progress when your goal is “increase enrollment by 12% this year” rather than “bring more new students into the studio”.

 

Here’s Part 2 of Planning For Your Dance Studio’s Growth!

Do you have any tips on determining a dance studio’s marketing goals? Please comment below!

Best wishes,
Stacey

Interested in more dance studio marketing tips? Sign up for our free Dance Studio Marketing Newsletter here.

In need of a new website for your dance studio? Take a look at our dance web design portfolio, and see whether we’re a good fit!

 

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