Teachers & instructors — how to fill your classes with existing students

The word "marketing" makes some instructors feel uncomfortable... but it really just means education. When you do marketing, you're either educating your existing students or people who could potentially become your students about the services you provide and how you can help them or solve their problems.

Fundamentally, there are two kinds of marketing: "internal" and "external". This article is about internal marketing, which is the easiest way for independent teachers and instructors to fill their classes and bring up those attendance numbers.

What is internal marketing?

Internal marketing just means you're dealing with your existing customers, the people who have taken class with you before. For example, when you announce to your all regular students that you have a special workshop coming up, or when you offer your people a discount on a monthly membership — that's internal marketing.

External marketing is when you're trying to communicate with folks who have never heard of you, who have no idea who you are and what you do. So you're trying to attract new potential clients and get them interested in taking a class with you, and then from there to (hopefully) become a regular student. Running ads, putting up flyers, posting on Instagram or Facebook... these are all examples of external marketing.

Most teachers only think of external marketing when devising strategies to grow their business. But it's infinitely easier to engage an existing student who already knows you than to go out there and try different ways of getting random peoples' attention. Getting strangers to even just have a look at your offerings, let alone convincing them to sign up for an actual class with you... that's really hard!

Internal marketing isn't just much easier... it also turns out to be way more important for your business. If you have a decent number of students already, the return on investment (time or money) you get from nurturing, motivating, and engaging your existing clients will dwarf what you might get out of a hunt for new clients.

Why? Because teaching is very different from most other businesses like a running a shop, or driving a taxi. The big difference is that almost all of your customers are repeat customers. When was the last time you saw a new face in class? It's pretty rare, right? The vast majority of people you see in class on any given day are people you've seen before. They're your "regulars", and they're the source of most of your revenue.

Obviously, if you don't have your internal marketing working for you, then even when you do get a newbie showing up for their first class, you might never see them again after that. Unless you're able to engage new clients and get them to stick with you, your external marketing efforts could be all for nothing.

The goals for your internal marketing are to turn new students into regulars, and to turn regular students into "superstars", i.e. people who never miss class, who enthusiastically keep spreading the word about your classes to others, and who don't care what it costs to study with you.

OK, so what specifically can you do to do some internal marketing? Here are some ideas:

1) Be a great teacher

You probably know this one already... the first and most important thing you can do to get people coming back to class is simply to be a great teacher and to provide amazing value to your students.

Generally, this a matter of loving what you teach and loving the teaching of it. Working constantly to improve, preparing your lessons well, being an expert on your craft and always wanting to learn more.

But it's also a matter of being tuned in to your students, listening to their feedback, genuinely caring about them and their progress.

Having a little talent can help, sure — but for the most part, being a great teacher just takes time and a lot of work. The good news is that you probably don't mind the effort! After all, your love of teaching is why you do what you do, so working on being the best teacher you can be probably comes naturally to you, and you enjoy it even if it is a lot of work.

2) Motivate?and inspire existing students

With internal marketing, your students already know you, so you don't have to explain who you are and what you do for them. Instead, you basically just have to motivate them to come to class. Your main "competition" here is the couch, Netflix, beer with friends... all the everyday things that can get in the way if someone isn't motivated.

Well, it's not very hard to do this. You can easily motivate your students by simply reminding them how fun your classes are, or how life changing it can be to take classes with you. Or even just by reminding them that you exist and that your classes are happening!

Specifically, this means that you might send an email to your existing clients once a week (or at least once in a while) about your upcoming classes, or something related to the subject of what you teach. This can have a huge effect.

Depending on what you teach, in your emails you might also inspire your students in more basic terms that will make them want to come to class... for example by appealing to their desire to be healthier, or to be better musicians, or to fit into their old pair of jeans — whatever you think will resonate with them.

Whenever you communicate with students, you want to do it in a way so as to

• make them feel valued
• create a sense of community
• invite feedback from them so you can improve on being a great teacher.

3) Connect with new students

As mentioned, one of the top goals in internal marketing is to turn a new student into a "regular". So, whenever a new person signs up with you, send them a nice welcome email to not only thank them, but to ask them about their 'goals', or injuries, or background... or anything that you think could help you to help them.

Make yourself available to answer their questions or chat. In short: make your welcome email be all about them, not about you. Your mission is to absolutely wow them and get them "hooked" on your teaching. Go the extra mile!

Also, make sure new clients know where they can find your schedule, how to book a class, and how your tools and system work. Actually, you could put a link to your class schedule into all your e mails as part of your signature.

Last but not least, you might consider a special introductory deal for newcomers (and make sure every new student knows about it). For example, you could offer an introductory membership that's 50% off the regular price for the first month. Or a class pass for new students that's 50% off the normal price. Remember the mission: get them hooked!

4) Reach out to students who disappeared

If you notice that a certain client hasn't been to class in a while, do reach out and check in with them. It's perfectly fine to ask them directly where they've been, why you haven't seen them in a while. Often, it will be for a reason that you can actually help with!??

For example, they might just have scheduling conflicts, so tell them about your classes on other days or suggest that they can access your class recordings (if you have those). If it's some kind of financial hardship that's keeping them from coming to class, make them a special deal or discount.

Of course, you don't want to be pushy or try to bully someone who's lost interest to come back. But don't just let people disappear without at least finding out why they're gone.?this way, even if they are lost to you, they can still help you with that "be a better teacher" thing.

5) Promote your packages & specials?

Passes and memberships (package deals) can massively boost your business and drive engagement with students. Especially when you price them attractively. But just having your various packages in place doesn't do much good unless your students know about them!

You should generally always be encouraging your people to buy passes or take out memberships with you. Some booking systems do this for you automatically, like on Ubindi where a person signing up for a particular class will see your available packages as options directly on their checkout experience. But you should also send out emails or other communications to make people aware of your offerings once in a while.?

One particularly effective strategy is to run special promotions occasionally. This is when you temporarily reduce the price of a package deal, or you create a new special package, perhaps on or around a holiday.

On the flip-side, if or when you plan to increase your prices, you can use this as a chance to create a compelling reason for people to purchase things before your prices go up.

Simply send out an announcement that a pass or membership is discounted by 20% during some limited time interval, or that you'll be raising prices for everything at the end of the month or in the new year, so people should take advantage of the old prices while they can. Teachers that run these sorts of specials have seen some really extraordinary results.

6)?Get new students via student referrals

I said earlier that getting new students is the realm of "external marketing"... but that's not entirely true. In fact, if you already have a client base, your existing students can be the biggest lever for new growth in your business.

In business lingo, getting new clients is called "customer acquisition". While there are lots of acquisition strategies you can try, none will be as powerful as "word of mouth". It's when somebody hears about something through a friend — they're much more likely to try it out.

This happens in your own life all the time: think of a movie, a book, a restaurant or a website that you checked out just because a friend recommended it. Word-of-mouth is the golden goose of customer acquisition because a) it costs you hardly anything in terms of time and money, and b) it works really, really well.

When your friend says to you, "try this out", you trust them to know what you like, you trust them to not be selling you something, and you trust them to have pre-vetted whatever the thing is for you. So you're much more likely to actually try the thing out! You're NOT very likely to try something out just because you saw some advertisement about it somewhere. You would probably never even notice a random ad.

For big brands or corporations, it's pretty difficult to make word-of-mouth marketing work because they don't really have any personal connection to their customers. Just imagine you get an email from Starbucks, asking you to recommend Starbucks coffee to a friend. You?wouldn't feel very moved to help this mega corporation out by telling your friends they should try Starbucks.

So, what do the big companies do? They get the word-of-mouth thing going by offering incentives in all kinds of referral programs which reward or even flat-out bribe their existing customers for bringing them new customers.

As teacher, here you have a huge advantage. You're ideally placed to leverage word-of-mouth, since you have a real and personal relationship with your students. You make them feel great, they keep coming back to you because they love you, and they will be more than happy to support you and your business... if you just ask them to! As students, they're already pretty used to doing what you ask them to... and their own class experience will also be better and more fun when they have other friends or family in class with them.

So your existing students are probably already inclined to help you out for free. But don't leave it there! Just like the big guys, you can also reward your people for bringing you new clients. For example, you can give them a free class when they bring a new student to class, and run your very own referral program!

Some admin tools have automated referral programs built in, so it doesn't even have to be a complicated or time-consuming thing to track referrals. For example, Ubindi has a simple referral program where you flick a switch and all your students get a code that they can share out with friends on social media, or in emails, or wherever... when a new person uses someone's code to book a class with you, the referring student gets a free credit, and the new student also gets their first class free. It's all automatic.

All that's left for you to do is to remind your students periodically that you have a referral program. This can really work wonders for you to grow your business and bring you a steady trickle of new clients every month.

Fill your classes with internal marketing

Spending a little time with these simple efforts is the easiest way to consistently fill your classes. Especially if you're shy or you don't like marketing in general Spending a little time with these simple efforts is the easiest way to consistently fill your classes. Especially if you're shy or you hate marketing in general: nurturing your existing students is the most comfortable way to bring up your attendance numbers and ensure you're earning decent money each time you teach a class.

Now go out there and make it happen!

This post originally appeared on Ubindi's blog, the independent instructor.