Wondering how much to spend on Facebook ads for your studio, which advertising metrics matter and how to turn more enquiries into enrolments? In this episode of Your Studio Podcast, Chantelle and Michelle share a real studio marketing case study, including a campaign that reached approximately $7.12 per lead, plus practical strategies for Meta ad testing, budgeting and lead nurturing. Tune in to discover how to make more confident marketing decisions and create a more consistent pathway to studio growth.
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Transcript:
Chantelle Bruinsma (00:04):
Welcome to Your Studio Podcast, sharing strategies for studio owners. I’m Chantelle Bruinsma here with Michelle Hunter, and together we’re the CEOs of Studio Evolution, where for over a decade we’ve helped thousands of studio owners around the world from dance, music, acting, art, yoga, and Pilates studios transform their passion into thriving profitable businesses. So if you’re a studio owner, grab a cup of tea and settle in. You’re in exactly the right place. Hello everyone. Welcome to Your Studio podcast with Chantelle Bruinsma and Michelle Hunter. And today you’re in for a treat because we are going to get into some data land. This is a rare opportunity for Michelle Hunter to truly geek out and geek out she will today, right friend? This is going to be a good day for you.
Michelle Hunter (00:53):
Thank you everyone for joining. I love geeking out and some of our signature clients can attest to when I get high is when I get to talk about data and statistics on your advertising and marketing. Look, I don’t know why, but I love it.
Chantelle Bruinsma (01:12):
We love that you love it. We love that you love it.
Michelle Hunter (01:16):
Ad agencies love me. People who report you. They love my enthusiasm for their reports. So someone’s got to be a little bit analytical.
Chantelle Bruinsma (01:27):
Just adorable. Just adorable.
Michelle Hunter (01:30):
But today I really want to dive into a bit of a strategy that we have rolled out with some of our signature clients and how I’ve kind of done a real life case study in a studio owner’s Facebook ad account and just not all of the bits and pieces because I don’t want to overwhelm you, but just some key points and metrics throughout the case study to keep in mind that might give you a few insights and some ideas with your paid marketing strategy.
Chantelle Bruinsma (01:57):
All right. So we’ve been, as you’ve mentioned, working with a particular studio owner who’s pretty close to your heart, shall we say?
Michelle Hunter (02:03):
Oh, pretty close to my heart. We say sisters by chance, but friends by choice.
Chantelle Bruinsma (02:11):
Oh, adorable again.
Michelle Hunter (02:14):
I bought her that magnet when I was like 16 and I think she still has it on her fridge. Oh really? Yes. Very, very, very, very, very sweet. But my sister Phi is a studio owner and back in the day I worked in the admin in that studio, cut my teeth there. But Phi runs a big music and performing arts studio. And the biggest blessing out of this whole situation is I actually got some real time data of doing this case study. So I was actually able to jump into her ads account, see her targeting and run some actual live ads to see what is working and what isn’t working in this studio space.
Chantelle Bruinsma (02:51):
And Phi was very like, “Yes, please.”
Michelle Hunter (02:53):
Well, I don’t think she was going to argue with her sister who manages ads accounts for a living to go into her studio ad account and do some optimizing. So where do we start Chantelle? Where do we start on this journey?
Chantelle Bruinsma (03:09):
Well, I do just want to do one additional little shout out. So Phi has been a client of ours for 14 years and it’s actually because of Phi. Phi was a client of mine first and when I was hiring for an executive assistant over 10 years ago, Phi was the one who said, “Michelle, you should apply for this job.”
Michelle Hunter (03:25):
And the stalkings again.
Chantelle Bruinsma (03:26):
And the stalking again. No, the life changing moments began from there. So again, Phi is very, very important to all of us here. I’m very grateful to her right now for being so generous in sharing this case study with the world. Thank you to Phi.
Michelle Hunter (03:41):
Thank you Phi. Thank you. Thank you so much. And before we started running this case study for Phi, in one of our previous episodes, we spoke about messaging and Ava, Phi’s avatar. And what we really started with was doing the work with Phi’s avatar and really getting her messaging dialed in. And Chantelle, did you want to speak to… Chantelle was actually very involved in this process as well from the messaging point of making sure that her messaging that we were going to put into her ads actually matched her call to action.
Chantelle Bruinsma (04:11):
Yeah. So what was really interesting was that Phi had launched a new program and it was a Broadway based program and it just wasn’t quite getting traction. And I went to the landing page of the website. So she had a dedicated page on the website devoted to this Broadway program. And I looked at the copy, it’s like, “I get it. I know we got to start here.” And again, remembering when we’re talking ad strategy like this, there’s multiple blocks that have to come into a line. There’s ducks, there’s little ducks sitting in the line that you have to have in the right spot in the right position. And the website page copy needed to be dialed up. So I kind of rewrote that and the primary hook was that we are landing both on the landing page and the ad. Now, one of the most important bits of strategy that I can teach you right here right now is that the ad copy that they see on their feed must match preferably explicitly the copy at the top of the website page.
(05:04):
So again, I’m not talking about the homepage, I’m talking about the particular page we’re sending them to for a particular program optimally, ideally.
(05:15):
The hook was along the lines of, “Hey, Campbelltown,” like the suburb that V kind of operates in. “Hey Campbelltown, do you have a seven to 11 year old who loves to perform?” So again, we’re getting very, very explicit on age range, loves to perform and in the suburbs. So again, when you’re doing advertising, it’s all about filtering. Do you live in Campbelltown? Yes. Do you have a seven to 11 year old? Yes. Do they like to perform? Yes. You’re kind of wanting them to be able to go, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, this is me. And then I can proceed. So I rewrote to the website to really make sure that it was emotive and also really stacking the value, what we like to call the burger. You want it to be like, yes, I want to add cheese and yes, I want an egg and yes, I want tin pineapple, which is what we put on burgers in Australia, which is very weird, but we do it in beetroot and lettuce and I want caramelized onions and I want bacon.
(06:03):
I want a burger with the lot. I want to see every bit of detail, every bit of value that you give in your programs. I want to see it on your website. Don’t hide that you give twice yearly feedback sessions with the parents or don’t hide that you give them grippy socks. Really bring it to the front. So the most important thing that we can do is make sure the website was an explicit detail of the emotions they’re going to experience, what they’re going to gain, and then so much value stacking of what they’re going to get. So once the website was done, she actually saw an uptick in results in enrollments just from that, but then Michelle stepped to the front and took it to a whole nother level.
Michelle Hunter (06:41):
This is where the fun, well for me anyway, really, really started to begin. So now that Phi’s messaging and her avatar was all set in and she knew what kind of copy she was going to target and imagery, that was all really locked into her messaging and she had an enrollment page that she was going to run ads to and that she emails out to her database, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that all really fits the messaging. What I really wanted to test along with ads to that enrollment page was testing ads to a lead form. Now, when you scroll through any ad, you have the option in paid Meta to run an ad to a lead form, which pretty much when they click the ad, a form just pops up majority of the time on their phone and it auto-populates their information. So it’ll have the name and email, boom, and it literally can take five seconds.
(07:24):
It’s the quickest way to transact some contact through a paid ad strategy and then it comes into a little bank in the backend of your Facebook ads management center. Now, I’m not going to go into this, but you can have links, CRMs, kind of technology and integrations, which can pull all those leads into a system where you can send autobated emails, you can do all this targeted marketing to them. But basically a lead form, our goal is to run an ad, get their details and get as many leads in the bank as possible. So I was saying, this is a lead game. The more leads I can get you, the better. The messaging is going to make sure they’re the right leads and we’re going to test. We’re going to test different types of ads. We’re going to test the right type of leads. And then once we land on that testing, we can pull the levers down and try to get as many leads as we can into the system.
(08:15):
So we started this phase of testing different types of ads, didn’t we Chantelle? We did video types of ads, we did static images, we did even studio owners talking to the camera. And what I like to do is test probably two ads. You can go to three if you want, but I’m testing these ads to go to the lead form as well.
Chantelle Bruinsma (08:37):
Now with that, when you’re saying two different ads, is that the same copy but different images or different copy, different images, like two completely different hooks and angles or do you keep one thing the same?
Michelle Hunter (08:47):
I try to keep the one thing the same to start. So I test the same headlines and copy, but I have different media sources. So once I would do a video and one I do a static image. And then if one tends to outperform the other, I just kind of stay with the winner. But if the spend is still quite high per lead, so there’s a term called CPL, so cost per lead, our goal is to have that as cheap as possible because it’s a bidding system. If we can have that as cheap as possible, the more leads we can get with our budget because Meta requires you to set a daily budget. So I like to start simple. I know ad agencies can test 20 ads, but I just like to start with two and then try and find a best performer. And then if it is really expensive, you can play around with the headlines and the copy down the track.
Chantelle Bruinsma (09:39):
And this is again why the messaging is really important because if the game is as many leads as possible and we’re kind of doing a strategy that’s based on mass volume lead gen, if we’re not filtering through the messaging, then again, we’re going to get lots of leads, but they’re not actually going to be quality leads. And that is the most frustrating thing in the world. So you must have the messaging support, the strategy.
Michelle Hunter (10:00):
And I can’t explain how important this is because in the meta world, and if you’re geeking out, the quality of lead is so important. We have had clients who have run ads and go, “I keep on getting them from 50 kilometers away, even though I’m setting a 10 kilometer radius around this area.” What stops that is being so specific, like calling out the suburb, calling out the age gap, speaking to the specifics of the decision maker because it just weeds everything else out. And then when you get to your targeting dimensions in Meta, you don’t have to pick the brand that likes Lululemon or get that specific. You just want to pick probably gender, age, and location. I don’t even do interests at this point because our messaging
Chantelle Bruinsma (10:43):
Is so
Michelle Hunter (10:43):
Specific.
Chantelle Bruinsma (10:45):
It’s really smart actually. Very, very smart. And again, that just allows you to be much more optimizing of how we’re going to be doing the ads.
Michelle Hunter (10:53):
Exactly. So once we run the ads, we were testing the ads. Let’s talk about budget.
Chantelle Bruinsma (11:00):
Let’s talk about the budget. Does everyone just sit down? Does everyone sit down and take a slow breath? This is the bit that gets everyone.
Michelle Hunter (11:10):
Yeah. When you are testing a new campaign or a new… This was a program that Faye was going to be probably running ads for, for a good six to eight months. And when we did this, it actually completely changed the trajectory of her enrollments. So I want you to look at launching a campaign that you’re going to get six to eight months of before the costs get too high. So if you’re looking at something to six to eight months, I think in my opinion that it’s really worth testing and putting some substantial spend behind. So I like to go by the rule of thumb of $30 per day, per ad for seven days.
Chantelle Bruinsma (11:47):
So it’s an upfront significant investment. It’s an upfront build out.
Michelle Hunter (11:57):
I’m so open to this. If you’re working with an agency, they can actually bring that cost right down. They can go, oh no, we can test at five to $10 a day, but they’re not getting any leads. They’re actually just reading all these other metrics such as impressions, watch time, video watch time. What I’m interested in is how much it costs for someone to actually click your ad and give them your details. And if you can put in $30 per day per ad, what that is going to allow us… If your cost is bonkers for a lead above $30, you’re not even going to get a lead. So we know that it’s really not optimizing, but even if you get a lead at $18 per lead, because it’s going to be high to start, as it comes down, you might get two leads or three leads.
(12:39):
But in saying that in the first 24 hours of running these ads, we got six to eight leads in the first day just for one of the ads.
Chantelle Bruinsma (12:46):
And this is the thing, many of you probably listen to this and I only want to spend $5 a day and you’ve probably been doing ads for a long time and seeing zero results and you go like, “Screw this, it’s too hard.” And the reason is there’s actually not enough. You’re not putting enough juice in the tank. There’s not enough fuel to be able to get the ad to run properly.
Michelle Hunter (13:04):
No, no. And you bang on Chantelle. So if you want to do it properly, save. If you know that you’re coming into a new year where you can do a huge kind of bonker ad and you can probably set a couple of hundred dollars up for that initial period, save for that point. Just boosting here and there and running $5 a day. It’s not going to change. It’s not going to move the needle in your studio. So what I do is I set that budget and Phi was like, “Okay, I’ll eat rice and beans this week.” But what was interesting is even in the first three days, she’s like, “Oh, I’ve got 18 leads. It’s been two days.” I was like, “Great. Now I want you to call every one of those leads and tell me if they were good quality leads.” And they were, and if they weren’t, we can then go back and kind of change the location a little bit, maybe the radius at 20 miles because I think it does it miles, not kilometers for our Aussie peeps.
(13:56):
We can play with that kind of setting because you’re still going to get leads. And then what we do is we just watch for seven to 10 days and call the leads that come in, and then I compare those ads side by side and I can normally get a really good picture. And in the background of Meta, it can report for you and you can take screenshots of your account, put it into AI and say, “Do me a full report and it will give you a report of the best performing ad. Then what you can do is you can…” I’m just keeping this simple. What did with hers, I didn’t do any extension training or anything on this case study. I looked at her two ads and I turned off the one that wasn’t performing as well as the other, and that ad was still performing quite great.
(14:38):
So what determines a good performing ad, as I said before, is that cost per lead, is how much it costs to bring a lead in.
Chantelle Bruinsma (14:47):
And so just to kind of clarify as we dive into this, so you turn off an ad, so you’re keeping the one at $30 a day and you just stop spending… Or do you put that budget into the best performer? No, no,
Michelle Hunter (14:59):
No, not yet. Not yet. So I’ll give you because someone did this and completely killed, broke their ad. So what is interesting is the first thing is we’re looking at cost per lead. So if I was to say to you, “Chantelle, I’m going to give you a lead of a decision maker of your studio in the area. You didn’t have to set up anything at the local shopping center. You didn’t need to hand out one flyer. They already connect with your messaging. They’re your dream student. That’s $15, and I’m going to give you her phone number and her email address. Would you pay 15 bucks?
Chantelle Bruinsma (15:35):
Yeah, good to go.
Michelle Hunter (15:36):
Okay. So $15 is still pretty good. Would you pay $10 if I said I can get you a lead for $10?
Chantelle Bruinsma (15:43):
I mean we’re going in the right direction. This is sounding better and better.
Michelle Hunter (15:46):
Yeah. So then we’re going to get to a unicorn territory. So if you can get a cost per lead around the $5 mark, it is ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. For $50 a day, you can get 10 leads in. That’s the goal and the aim. And within two weeks of running these ads, we’re already sitting at about $7.12. And I have to say, dear Phi, I love you, but she called me the other day and she’s like,” My ads are sitting at $9 cost per lead. “I said,”You’ve had eight months out of this ad. You’re going good, but
Chantelle Bruinsma (16:20):
Phi. Oh my God. Take it and be grateful.
Michelle Hunter (16:24):
Take your $9 a lead.
Chantelle Bruinsma (16:26):
Because again, you have to think about this in the construct of the average annual student value, right? So on average, what we’re seeing is, I think for Phi’s Studio, it’s approximately, I think she’s going to make at least $1,200 a year from that student. So you spend $9 to get them 1,200 over 12 months. That’s under 0.01%, I think.
Michelle Hunter (16:50):
Very good. I was going to go there, but I was like, I just abandoned ship in that calculation in my head.
Chantelle Bruinsma (16:55):
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s about right. But it’s nothing. It’s nothing.
Michelle Hunter (16:58):
It’s nothing. Especially when that lead connects with your messaging, connects with your marketing. I haven’t just given you… I haven’t opened up a phone book and just gone, oh, that’s in the area and they’ve got a kid at this school. No, it’s an actual really vetted, they’ve connected with you emotionally lead. Now, what actually starts to happen is your costs might come down and there’ll be this beautiful period where your ad’s performing like a dream and you settle at a number.
Chantelle Bruinsma (17:22):
It’s the honeymoon. It’s the honeymoon stage.
Michelle Hunter (17:25):
Oh my gosh, I really know what I’m doing. Now that might be $5 between five to 15. And if it’s between five to 15, I’m like, go you good thing. You should be celebrating.
Chantelle Bruinsma (17:34):
Be grateful and stop complaining.
Michelle Hunter (17:36):
Because you are industry standard of online marketers. You are doing such a fantastic job. A lot of agencies are saying you should happy at $21. So you’re doing really well, exceptionally well. Then what you are going to go is like, well, Facebook’s a bidding system. I’m just going to throw $100 at it. Won’t that give me 50 leads? Do not do that. Do not…
Chantelle Bruinsma (17:58):
Listen to the geek here. Listen to the geek. She knows what she’s talking about. This is very important to everyone.
Michelle Hunter (18:05):
So how Meta advertising works is you should only scale your spend by 20 to 30% around every four days. And the reason –
Chantelle Bruinsma (18:17):
I’m just going to repeat that. Let’s just repeat that. Write it down, team. Write it down.
Michelle Hunter (18:21):
Yeah. Do not increase your budget more than 20 to 30% every four days. Just please don’t. And because what happens is Meta obviously don’t… Look, they’re very helpful, but if I was an old Zuckerberg and I had billions of people on my platform and that they could make money from a bidding system, and then if they just quadrupled their budget, they could just make a… It could break the algorithm. So what it actually does, if you scale too quickly, your ad, if you’ve got a unicorn number from five to $15, you’ll pretty much see your cost per lead double overnight and your ad will die. It would no longer show up in people’s feeds. It will no longer be performing. Meta will place it at the bottom of the list, so it won’t perform well. And if you just scale slowly and have that best performing ad running, you should be able to get a good six months out of it.
Chantelle Bruinsma (19:20):
And this is even one of our clients just recently did this and they kind of doubled the ad spend and they’re like, “It’s broken.” And Michelle’s like, “What did you do? Did you raise this?” She’s like, “Oh yeah, I did that.”
Michelle Hunter (19:31):
Did you refer to the notes on page 12 of my case study?
Chantelle Bruinsma (19:37):
Follow the system is all we’re saying here. And I think what’s really interesting hearing you talk about this, Michelle, is a lot of people I think focus on the daily ad spend is the number that they’re focusing on. I’m spending $5 a day. I’m spending $30 a day. The real number for you to be very attuned to is the cost per lead. How much is costing you to get a lead? That’s the game. Yeah.
Michelle Hunter (20:00):
That’s the game. And then what should happen or for many of our clients is you’ll start to get so many leads. You’re not even worried about that cost per lead anymore. Now the focus is on how are we converting those leads? And if your ad’s performing well, pretty soon it’s going to pick up momentum and you’re thinking, oh, I’ve only got 20 leads. And then you might have a recital or a concert and the next week those 20 leads have probably gone up to 46 leads and pretty quickly your lead pool is growing and then the focus should be on how we are contacting these leads and nurturing these leads. Chantelle has a whole strategy behind this, but it turns into if you do this process well, it’s all in the conversion and the nurturing.
Chantelle Bruinsma (20:43):
Because you’re spending this money to get a lead. And remember that a lead is not enrollment, right? That’s the other kind of really important thing. It’s like we’ve hooked them onto the line, but we haven’t reeled them in yet. So they’re not home. So what we do have is we’ve got a little pond of a lot of fish. That’s the fun thing, right? We’re putting more fish into the pond and it’s easier for us to kind of go, but now you’ve got to go fishing every day. Now you literally have to go fishing every single day and fishing can be exhausting.
Michelle Hunter (21:11):
Oh my gosh. Fishings meant to be a form of mindfulness, not in this world.
Chantelle Bruinsma (21:18):
No, not in this case.
Michelle Hunter (21:19):
So Chantelle, if you were to simplify it now, you have a whole process, and we call this term lead nurturing in Evolution. If you’re listening to this podcast and there’s three things you could really focus on if you’re getting a lot of leads, what would you say are the most important ones?
Chantelle Bruinsma (21:38):
I think the most important thing is sustainability. The challenge is you’re in burnout, and this is what we see happen is that you get a good volume of leads. And if you’re getting eight a day, that actually builds up faster than you think, right? In seven days, that’s 56. And then you’ve got a body list of leads like, “Oh shit, I’ve got to call these people back, right? I haven’t gone back.” So we need to design a system that’s going to be sustainable. So my best recommendation is that this is something that you cannot hold by yourself. Full stop. It is best to have someone working alongside you in lead nurturing. Now what this can look like, and I actually just recently joined this new gym. It’s really great. It’s strength focused. Yeah, I know, right? It’s so good.
Michelle Hunter (22:26):
Let’s get strong.
Chantelle Bruinsma (22:31):
Michelle’s so proud of me. And out of my Pilates era, I’m still in my Pilates era, don’t get me wrong, in my Pilates era, supplementing now. Anyway, so this lovely gym owner, he was doing all the comms, but the man is maxed. The man is really stretched and he was taking a while to get back to me, and this is your life. But on the receiving end, it does give an impression, right? Now, this gym owner has the most amazing raving community I’ve ever experienced. I might do a podcast episode on that because it’s just phenomenal, the retention and the community that he’s built. It’s spectacular. And he has so many people who are raving fans who would be happy to help. So my question for you is, is there someone who maybe is on your team, maybe it’s one of your kind of students who could do five hours a week?
(23:18):
That’s all we need. We just need someone for five hours a week that you’re paying them to just love and nurture and re-tap in and connect in with those inquiries. And making sure that the speed of response is honored is incredibly important. It has to be quick. You have to get back to them as soon as possible. In fact, Phi really said that, that when she was like, “It’s go time. I’m spending a lot of money on ad spend. Thanks, sister. I have to convert them.” She would see it come in, she would call them. Literally, if you can do it within an hour, you’re going to see a greater result come through the other side because it’s in their head, come back to them three days later. So speed is really important. And then also having someone who can support you in that process.
(24:01):
And I recommend having a system built up probably on Trello where you can see, okay, these are the cold inquiries, and then you move them over to another column and it says like, “Okay, I’ve reached out to them. These ones have kind of gone a bit cold and these ones have enrolled or these ones chose not to proceed.” So having so that you can work in tandem and collaborate with someone on the lead nurturing, that’s going to help you wildly as well. That’s where I’ll probably start, Michelle. I think just making sure you can’t handle this by yourself because you’ve got to be running a whole studio and this is a job. This is a job and our clients get burnt out because of the volume of leads that they’re getting, and then we have another problem. It’s another level, another devil, right?
Michelle Hunter (24:44):
It is. It is. And there can be burnout. And also on the other side of it, it can also be substantial growth. It can really change the whole future of your studio. And it’s funny, we had a retreat in Thailand and they said, “Michelle, what advice would you give me? If I had to double my studio in the next six to 12 months, what would you do?” I said, “I would do this process and make sure you have your lead nurturer strategy and then have an amazing kick-ass email nurture system to also nurture those leads as you continue to go through the year that didn’t enroll from the first call.” And we see it and we see it time and when you have your focus there and you do it well, massive growth.
Chantelle Bruinsma (25:31):
So what this nurture process is, as Michelle just kind of indicated, ideally in my best case, and again, this is a resource game of how much time and energy you have, but sometimes it’s fricking go time, right? We got to get bums on seats. It’s like I’m all in on inquiries. Sometimes you just have to do it. You got to roll your sleeves up and get to it. My best case scenario would be that we get a lead form inquiry in, so through the Meta ads, we’ve got a really great ad, we’ve got a really great website, we get a lead in, they’re called within the 24 hours optimally. Some studios find this incredibly effective. Other studios find texting much better. Either way.
Michelle Hunter (26:07):
Texting great.
Chantelle Bruinsma (26:08):
Whatever you want, go for it. Texting within 24 hours. And again, we kind of started that conversation. Now, life happens, right? And you might text, then someone gets sick or you get called away, you want to take a holiday, right? You can’t respond as quickly as you want. So we want to also be supplementing with emails that are really designed to inspire them with the higher level intentions of what you do. What really annoys me and is very ineffective is when someone inquires and you just send them an info pack with details, that is the fastest way to overwhelm. It’s the fastest way to be generic and like everybody else, if you can have an email that goes back to them of like, “This is what we stand for, this is what we care about, this is the heart of it. This is what is important about how you feel and we want to know about you.” So what I recommend is the first email is an email along the lines of, “Can you tell me more about what you’re looking for?
(27:08):
Have you done classes before? What’s important to you in a teacher? Tell me about your kid, tell me about your kind of exercise history,” something like that. When you’re able to do that, it buys you time, right?
Michelle Hunter (27:18):
Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (27:18):
So they inquire, they get an automated email saying, “Tell me more about you,” and they feel heard and seen, “Oh, they care that my child is very sensitive and needs maybe a calmer, a teacher who can handle the fact that she might be dysregulated coming into class.” When you’re given that information, that also means that when you do get to have personal conversation with them, you can incorporate that into the feedback and the reassurance. And then so we have this lovely first email is like, “Tell me more about you and what did you important to you?” And then we have a high level thing like, “This is what we care for. We care about creating a space where kids can absolutely express themselves and this is why, because they’ll grow up to be these types of humans and do this for their family and really big picture.
(28:02):
And you add in little bits of detail, right? I recommend saying upfront, saying,” I’m going to send you five emails over the next five days to educate you on what this experience is so you can make the right decision. We’re going to be really clean. “And you might do an email that says something along those lines that here are the top five questions that people looking for piano lessons ask. And then you have an email about that. You might have an email saying,” Have a studio tool. Here’s a video click to watch, just think of here’s where you’re going to put your bag and here’s the front desk and then you’ll do that kind of really showing the facilities of the studio. So the benefit about this is that you’ve got really well thought out strategic emails that are going out, showing that you are invested in supporting them through this onboarding process.
(28:50):
And then on top of that level, you’re still also communicating, you’re still kind of texting or responding to personal emails. So you’re responding to them with their particular questions, but then there’s automated emails still coming through, which is another little taps, but kind of supporting them in the decision. This is the secret, my friends, you need automation plus personal touch. Full stop.
Michelle Hunter (29:11):
And then they’ll all enroll at different cycles. You might find the timeline for someone called within a date, boom, book, that’s me. If you respond to me quickly, take my money. I am all about that. But then there’s also the ones that sit on the fence and they watch them play and they watch from the sidelines and they’re like, “Yep.” And they join four months later and go, “Yeah, I’ve been watching you for a while and just come…” And now they’re ready. That’s why those leads are so important and we don’t want to let them die.
Chantelle Bruinsma (29:35):
And the other thing about leads, like this pond idea, right? So again, what’s so powerful about when you’re doing lead form strategy is we’re getting all these inquiries, we’re getting all of these leads in a pond, which then we then have their email details for. So next time you’re doing a workshop or a summer camp or it’s a big enrollment time, we are going to that list first. Because you’ve paid $9 or $15 or $21 or $30, I don’t care. You’re going to make money by optimizing every single person that came in, which means that we keep emailing and inviting. You keep inviting them. So every month there’s an invitation. So you send an email to everyone in that pond that you have the email for. Would you like to come to a private open day type thing? Or whether there’s this event coming up, would you like to come to this workshop?
(30:28):
Would you like to come and try this class? Just approach it from different angles to get them invited. You just keep inviting them. But if you tap that, if you fish in that pond every month, just keep going back to them, that’s where you’re going to see the greatest growth for the least expenditure. And that’s part of this too.
Michelle Hunter (30:48):
And a studio owner said to us recently, how much can you fish and send them an email before paying them off? And what do we say? Until they tell you to stop.
Chantelle Bruinsma (30:58):
Until they tell you to stop.
Michelle Hunter (31:00):
That’s right.
Chantelle Bruinsma (31:00):
That’s the game. Majority of you are emailing far and too less. You need to be emailing a hell of a lot more. So don’t even worry about it. But there is a lot of fear of being seen in that way and thought, oh, you’re sending annoying emails. We can tell you the more emails you send, the more money you’re going to make. And the problem is that when you’re not making enough money, you get nervous about doing that. And so then you send less. The secret is not that. It’s like time to put the pedal to the metal guys. If enrollments are slow, increase communication, increase frequency of communication. Send good emails, write them. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be sending at least one email a week to that pond.
Michelle Hunter (31:45):
Oh, at least. 100%. 100%.
Chantelle Bruinsma (31:47):
And in kind of launch time, when it’s the six weeks leading up to the start of the year or a big intake season, that’s when you can be emailing them two to three times per week, full permission. And when you start doing that…
Michelle Hunter (32:02):
Yeah. You can do first email, enrollment’s open. Third email, we’ve sold 40%. Third email, two hours till VIP closes. We’ve seen it and it works.
Chantelle Bruinsma (32:13):
You get this groupishop. Remember this, this is what this person loves about it. Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes. You just kind of approach it from every different angle and continue to tap them. Because I want you to think that you’ve made this investment. Your ad spend up until this point has been a significant investment. When you’re spending 30 bucks a day per ad, that’s a chunk of change, right?
Michelle Hunter (32:32):
Oh yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (32:33):
But it’s not one and done. Here’s the problem. A lot of people think it’s just one and done. No, that is your daily bread. That is where we are just fishing and fishing and fishing and fishing and we keep bringing more fish in. What I love is that you’ll find that people will enroll after being in your pond for a year. Now is the right time. It’s not a no, it’s just a not now. So oh my gosh, keep, keep inviting above all. And that’s what Phi’s been very, very good at. She’s been doing every month. She’s been very good at reaching out to everyone and kind of putting it out there again.
Michelle Hunter (33:11):
She’s had tremendous, tremendous success. But now she’s like, I’ve got to turn the ads off because we’ grown so
Chantelle Bruinsma (33:16):
Much.
Michelle Hunter (33:16):
I’ve got to dial in the retention. And then now we’re coming to the end of the year and we’re doing the process again.
Chantelle Bruinsma (33:23):
What else would you say Phi’s done really well through this process, Michelle?
Michelle Hunter (33:29):
She’s really lent in. So I think she time blocks lead call time. So she knows that she in the morning is her first and she just smashes through and she just knows that when it’s time to go, it’s time to go. She does really well. And then she sees the opportunity as well. So when their leads are in there and she knows that she’s going to run a workshop or something like this, she really sees that opportunity to re-market to that list. She does that insanely well.
Chantelle Bruinsma (33:54):
Bloody great. Bloody great. Okay.
Michelle Hunter (33:57):
That was a big one.
Chantelle Bruinsma (33:59):
I’m sure you’ll do that for a leisurely walk listening to this podcast.
Michelle Hunter (34:05):
So relaxing.
Chantelle Bruinsma (34:06):
You’re so relaxing.
Michelle Hunter (34:07):
So relaxing.
Chantelle Bruinsma (34:08):
Chantelle and Michelle just doused as the cortisol. But no, what we’ve been trying to share here is what is really working right now, what we see is most effective. Probably the biggest stumbling point again, Michelle, is going to be increasing that perspective around ad spend. Sometimes you got to spend money to make money, my friends. And shifting that relationship with ad spend is what is holding us back from growth is the truth.
Michelle Hunter (34:33):
Exactly. Exactly. Thank you everyone. And if you’ve loved what you heard today, please subscribe. We have loved every minute of it.
Chantelle Bruinsma (34:41):
Thank you, Queen Data Supremo. Grateful to you.
Michelle Hunter (34:47):
Bye everyone.
Chantelle Bruinsma (34:47):
Good times. Bye friends. Love what you’re hearing and want more? Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And the good news is that we’ve pulled together a bundle of our most popular resources from marketing and retention to pricing and systems all in one place for you to binge. Inside, you’ll find videos, tools, and templates waiting for you. Everything you could need to start creating growth in your studio right now. All you got to do is visit studioevolution.com/start and dive on in.
