How To Schedule Music Lessons at Your Retail Store: 10 Tips

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Do you offer music lessons at your retail music store?

If so, you know offering music lessons is a great way to earn additional revenue and increase customer loyalty. However, you also know how difficult it can be to schedule music lessons, track student progress, set optimal prices, and take care of the other logistical tasks associated with offering these lessons.

If you can find an organized way to manage the music lessons your store offers, you’ll gain more customers, bring in more revenue, and free up time for you to spend on other areas of your business.

In this blog, we’ll discuss 10 strategies you can use to schedule music lessons more efficiently and create a great customer experience for students.

1. Use a Digital Scheduling System

To keep music lessons at your store organized, start by keeping all information in one place. Digital scheduling systems allow you to record who’s coming in, who’s teaching them, and what they’ll be learning.

You can use independent scheduling systems, or find a point of sale (POS) system that offers scheduling features in addition to other retail features. Some POS systems integrate with external scheduling systems, giving you access to the full features of both programs.

2. Optimize Room and Instructor Availability

Part of organizing music lessons is making sure you have enough instructors and space to accommodate all of your students. If you offer group lessons, you need more space to fit multiple students, music stands, and instruments, while one-on-one lessons require less space.

Ideally, these lessons take place in a separate room from the rest of your store. While you may not be able to completely soundproof these rooms, make sure the sound from the lessons isn’t too loud or irritating for visitors to the music store.

You also need to organize instructor schedules efficiently. You may choose to offer lessons yourself for instruments you play, meaning your employees will need to look after the music store while you’re giving a lesson.

If you’re working with other instructors, be respectful of their time by scheduling their lessons at convenient hours and close together. Balance the schedules of instructors and students, as well as your own schedule, to make the process as practical as possible.

3. Offer Flexible Scheduling Options

It’s important to balance convenient schedules for instructors with flexible scheduling options for students. The more options you can offer students for lesson times, the more likely they are to sign up.

Being flexible in how customers pay can also increase sign-ups. While some customers will commit to several lessons, some may want to test the waters first. You can offer the option to pay for each lesson one at a time or to pay for several lessons at once. Consider offering a slight discount when a customer pays for several lessons to encourage multiple lessons.

As you navigate these considerations, remember to set lesson policies from the outset.

Consider setting policies about the following situations:

When lessons can be offered
How much notice you need to cancel a lesson
Missed lessons
When payment is due

Be sure to communicate these policies to your students from the beginning so they know what to expect, and always be friendly and helpful as you provide customer service to both students and instructors.

4. Implement Online Booking

Online lesson booking systems make the scheduling process easier for you and for students. You can create a booking portal on your website where a customer can easily browse your available times and make a selection.

Be sure to include fields for a customer to enter their information, including their experience with music and with a particular instrument, so the instructor can plan a lesson accordingly. You can automate the scheduling process so new appointments populate in a scheduling program, resulting in fewer errors.

5. Leverage Email and SMS Notifications

By using a digital scheduling system, you can automate reminders to be sent to instructors and students to avoid missed appointments. These messages can be sent by email or text message. You can also use email and text messaging to send customers information regarding new lesson offerings or other information about your music store, or to handle customer service needs.

6. Encourage Group Lessons

Group lessons allow you to make more revenue in a shorter amount of time. They also allow students to learn from one another, collaborate on pieces of music, and make friends. You can increase the amount of group lessons you teach by strategically promoting them.

Wherever you promote lessons, include that you offer group lessons. You might even offer discounted rates if students register together to encourage more group sign-ups.

7. Create Lesson Bundles

Bundles encourage customers to buy more of a product or service because they know they’re getting a better deal. This can apply to lessons when customers pay for multiple lessons up front, or when lessons are bundled with physical products like an instrument purchase or rental or equipment related to their instrument.

If a customer is signing up for guitar lessons, for example, you might give them the option to buy a package of several lessons and include a guitar rental, guitar strap, and beginner guitar books.

8. Use Social Media To Promote Lessons

To fill up your music store’s lesson schedule, you need to get the word out. A great place to start is social media. Create social media accounts for your store on popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram if you don’t already have them. You can use these platforms to generate awareness about the music lessons you offer. Include which instruments are offered, scheduling options, and a link for people to sign up on your website.

Try creating videos showcasing your current students (with their permission, of course). You can create a before and after video showcasing a student’s progress over time after taking several lessons. Monitor these channels for questions and comments about lessons, and use your social media to communicate with potential customers.

9. Monitor and Adjust Pricing Strategies

To effectively compete in the music lesson space, you need to set reasonable prices. Research competitors to determine what others are charging, and remember to consider costs like materials, space, and paying instructors to make sure you’re making a profit.

To encourage sign-ups, try offering limited-time discounts. These might be effective at the beginning of the year and or in the fall when students are starting semesters of school.

10. Collect and Use Feedback for Improvement

Collecting feedback from your students helps you improve as a teacher and improve the customer experience. Ask for feedback from your students in person, ask them to send you feedback over email, or ask them to leave public reviews for you online. You can send out links to your students to leave you reviews for their convenience. Read student reviews and consider which suggestions may be helpful to implement.

Schedule Music Lessons With Music Shop 360

Adding music lessons to your music store’s offering may seem overwhelming at first — but with a sophisticated scheduling system, you can automate lesson scheduling reminders, payments, feedback requests, and many other aspects of this task. Adding lessons draws more customers to your store and improves customer loyalty, but make sure to develop a strategic plan before you start offering lessons so each customer has a good experience.

For best results in offering music lessons, you need a music-specific POS system — more specifically, you need one that integrates with a powerful scheduling system.

Music Shop 360 is a POS system tailored for music stores that integrates with My Music Staff, a program designed to help you schedule music lessons. With Music Shop 360, you have all the features you need to manage lessons for all of your students and instructors — along with general retail features that help you run the rest of your store.

To see Music Shop 360 for yourself, schedule a free demo today!