Advice please - advertising dance studio

I attend a dance studio (I am not the owner, nor a partner or anything), which I really like, but which has a very small turnout. I would like to suggest to the owners ways to increase their membership. If anyone is a dance studio owner, do you have ideas that you would share about free or very-small-cost-ways to increase business. I want the studio to do well in general, but also selfishly as I want there to be many people with whom to dance. Thank you. (Being new to dance forums, and not being the personality-type to make a lot of posts, I don't think, following the advertising guidelines noted, it would be appropriate for me to mention the dance studio in this forum - so other ideas are appreciated.)

dldbm said:

. If anyone is a dance studio owner, do you have ideas that you would share about free or very-small-cost-ways to increase business.


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have owned schools in large metro cities and small towns ( like now )
Oddly enough, of all the forms of advertising I have used, yellow pages always brought more new business... expensive.. but cost effective.

For current situation, the simplest ones that are cheap to do.. Fliers inserted in local paper deliveries... s/market notice boards... guest incentive, offer 2 free classes for each new person they bring to the school .

Approach local buinesses and see if they will let you put small poster in window .
Laundromats are also high visibilty traffic, and of course local and " throwaway " papers .
If there is a shopping mall, ask them if they would be interested in the school putting on a free dance recital .

And last but not least.. are you aware, that if there is a local tv station, the public broadcast channel quite often will accomodate a one off, or weekly half hr show .

Craigslist has gotten us some good response, at least on teacher search. Can't remember if we've done any regular advertising on there.

I will still use the Yellow Pages from time to time, but I usually do Web searches for businesses. Aside from word of mouth and posting flyers, I'd say get a *good* Web page set up. I've seen some dance studio Web pages that were so badly designed that I gave up trying to navigate them and never bothered to check the studios out.

I hand out business cards from my studio every chance I get. I don't think anything has come of it, but at least they're out there and will possibly be referred to in the future.

Besides a web pag for your site, look to see if there are other sites, particularly locally focused ones, that you can get the information on. I know that I've found out about a LOT of socials and studios, etc, from ballroomchicago.com. If there's a similar site where you are, definitely be worth looking into (I don't know if it costs, or if so, how much, just using that site as a dancer, not for my studio )

Or you can go the chain route... They hold a 45 minute guest party each week, and give the students a free lesson as an incentive to bring in guests. I have always been surprised how many students do this.

This chain also does telemarketing, using high school kids, again selling intro packages at a low cost with the hopes of turning them into long term students.

i think its great to offer advice as long as its done in a respectful manner. don't give the impression that what they're doing is wrong, peoples feelings can be easily hurt

I think most studios are finally catching up with the times and abandoning paper in favor of electronic.

I don't even HAVE a yellow pages book in my house and probably haven't for about 5 years.

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I do. It comes in handy when I have to call the power company to tell them the power's gone out in my 'hood. 'Cause you know, if you don't have power you can't check the number online. Unless you have one of them fancy-schmancy phones like Sam's.

Besides, the yellow pages people keep leaving new phone books on my lawn each year.