Teaching Music Lessons at Your Music Store: 8 Strategies for Success

8:13

Are you looking for ways to increase revenue at your music store?

Music stores primarily sell instruments. However, creative business owners often offer additional products and services in order to boost sales. Some of these include instrument repairs, instrument rentals, and music lessons.

Teaching music lessons at your store creates an additional stream of revenue for your business — and it also allows you to share your love of music with others and teach valuable skills. But while teaching music lessons can be a rewarding venture, you need to have a plan in place before you begin offering them.

In this blog, we’ll offer eight strategies to help you prepare to teach these lessons, gain customers, and ensure that they have a great experience.

1. Offer a Variety of Musical Instruments

The more instruments you offer lessons for, the more students you can teach. However, to maintain the quality of these lessons, they should be taught by experienced musicians in each instrument. You can teach lessons for as many instruments as you’re proficient in, but if you’d like to offer lessons for additional instruments, you need to hire additional instructors.

You’ll likely sign up the greatest number of customers by offering lessons for the most popular instruments.

Some of the most popular instruments for lessons include:

Guitar
Piano
Drums
Violin
Saxophone
Cello

Do research to see if music lessons are being offered in your area and for which instruments. Then, determine what the most popular instruments are locally and try to capture this demand.

2. Create a Structured Curriculum

There are many decisions you need to make about the music lessons you offer. Will lessons be one-on-one or in groups? How long will lessons be and how often will students come in? Will you offer digital lessons or will all lessons be in-person?

You also need to create a curriculum. You can create your curriculum yourself or use free resources available online to develop lessons — be sure to create a series of lessons to fit various skill levels. This way, musicians of various abilities can start at a level that’s challenging and engaging for them, and each student can continually grow by gaining new skills.

3. Arrange an Effective Teaching Space

To effectively teach individuals or groups, you need a teaching space with all of the supplies your students need. This includes instruments, instrument accessories, maintenance supplies, and music stands. Ensure there’s enough seating for your students. You should also provide seating for parents who’ve brought their children to your music store for a lesson.

A spacious room will allow you to teach groups of students. Keep this room well-lit and at a pleasant temperature.

4. Find the Right Price

As you set prices, consider the competition. Look at prices for other music lessons in your region. How much are other music stores charging? How much are individuals charging for at-home lessons? While you may be able to charge a little more given your facility and resources, your prices need to be competitive with other teachers if you want to gain customers.

One helpful pricing strategy is to create bundles. Most teachers charge customers per lesson. This puts students and parents of students at ease, as they know they can cancel if they choose.

Selling bundles of multiple lessons or including instruments in bundles encourages customers to spend more at your music store. Discount these bundles from the price customers would pay for each lesson or instrument separately to provide greater value and incentivize bundling.

5. Promote Music Lessons

It’s important to get the word out about your music lessons, and there are a variety of methods you can use to do so. You can use traditional print methods like flyers, posters, magazine ads, or billboards. Use bright colors and consistent branding so your business catches people’s eyes and can be easily recognized.

You can also use digital methods, like creating a website, posting on social media accounts, and placing ads on sites like Google and YouTube. Social media posts help new customers find your business and keep your music store top-of-mind for current customers.

Increase lesson sign-ups by creating a referral program. If a current student refers someone else who begins taking lessons, offer the referrer a discount on their lessons or a discount on an instrument. These incentives motivate people to spread the word.

6. Establish Lesson Policies

It’s always best to establish policies about your lessons before you begin teaching, and to make sure students are aware of these policies. Create a document that outlines your lesson policies and provide it to every student you teach.

In this document, discuss payment, scheduling and rescheduling lessons, cancellations, and missing classes. Make sure expectations are clearly stated. If there are certain days you’re unavailable to teach or out of contact, include this information as well.

As you gain more experience teaching, you may think of additional policies to include. Regularly update your policies with these items to make sure your customers are informed.

7. Provide Organized and Flexible Scheduling

You need a system that keeps track of your appointments. If you have many students and especially if you’re working with multiple instructors, you need a record of who’s coming in, at what time, what instrument they’re learning, and who’s teaching them.

It’s also helpful to have a record of each student’s progress. Some point of sale (POS) systems offer this functionality to help you keep all of your information in one place.

While it’s best to keep lessons on a relatively consistent schedule, there will be exceptions. When conflicts arise, customers will ask to have a lesson earlier, later, or on a different day. Having a digital system where all of this information can be recorded and edited helps you accommodate these changes. Students and instructors will be on the same page, reducing confusion and missed appointments.

8. Host Recitals and Events

Hosting recitals allows your students to showcase their talents for friends and family, and motivates them to practice. It also fills your music store with potential customers. As guests listen to the beautiful music being played, it may inspire them to take lessons themselves and purchase an instrument.

You can also host other events at your music store and invite your students. Invite a local music act to perform, demonstrate instrument maintenance, or host an open mic night for anyone to play music. The more people you can get into your store, the more sales you’re likely to make.

Teaching Music Lessons With Music Shop 360

Teaching music lessons can help you increase revenue at your music store — and make a difference in the lives of your students. Offering lessons will bring more people to your music store, increasing brand awareness and awareness for music education.

To achieve your goals as an entrepreneur and music teacher, it’s important to have a detailed strategy and plan before you start signing up students. Determine which instruments to offer, create an effective lesson curriculum, set your prices and policies, and find creative ways to promote your store’s music lessons — including hosting events.

But to efficiently run music lessons at your store, you need an organized digital system that keeps track of each student, their schedule, their instructor, and their progress. The best way to manage this information is with a POS system.

Music Shop 360 is an all-in-one, cloud-based POS solution specifically designed for music stores. This platform has robust features for offering music lessons, along with payment processing, inventory management, e-commerce, and more.

Music Shop 360 will help you take your business to the next level. Contact us today to schedule a demo!