Dance studio marketing is critical to expand your dance community and generate more revenue for your business. With a strong marketing strategy and dance class promotion ideas, you can spread the word about your amazing classes, attract new students, and keep current students and dance families in the loop.
To effectively reach your target audience, you must use the right platforms with the right messaging. We’ll go over the top dance studio marketing strategies to take your business to new heights:
| Social Media | Direct Mail | Local Sponsorships |
| Customer Referrals | SEO | Text |
| Pay-Per-Click Advertising | Telemarketing | |
| Branded Merchandise | Flyers | Dance Studio App |
Social media posts can skyrocket your reach, giving your studio a larger platform to market your services. Plus, over half of U.S. teenagers spend at least four hours a day on social media, making it an essential channel if you run a dance studio for kids and teens.
Meanwhile, their Millennial and Gen X parents and guardians (your paying customers) spend an average of 2 hours and 16 minutes per day and 1 hour and 22 minutes per day on social media, respectively, proving your current and prospective customers are likely using this channel regularly.
If your studio hasn’t already, create a business account on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn, and TikTok. Upload a professional photo of your studio or a high-quality logo as your profile picture so prospective clients immediately understand who you are and what you do. Be sure to update your location, business hours, and contact information on your profile so interested followers can easily get in touch.
Consider the target audience most likely to use each platform when creating your posts. Here’s a breakdown of top social media platforms and the generations they appeal to the most:
Sources: Sprout Social, Statista, and Pew Research
Generate posts that appeal to students’ parents on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, and create content that appeals to younger demographics on Instagram, X, and TikTok.
Additionally, there are two different types of social media posts to consider: paid and organic. Here are the differences:
Experts recommend combining both post types for the best social media results. You can develop your organic audience for free while devoting some marketing dollars to paid advertising for a more intentional strategy. Be sure to track your posts' analytics to assess their effectiveness at converting leads into customers.
Additionally, ensure you leverage the strengths of each social media platform. For example, Instagram is all about high-quality, authentic photos, while Facebook prioritizes original (not reposted) videos and posts made within Facebook groups. Consider these factors to strengthen your studio’s social media presence.
Using DanceStudio-Pro, you can send push notifications to your current dance students and families, encouraging them to promote your studio on social media. You can also use the app to gather content ideas or user-generated content (UGC) from your students to feature on your social media accounts (with parent or guardian permission) and make your social media presence more authentic. Lastly, using DanceStudio-Pro Elite, you can add and track social media campaigns within the Lead Center to assess your customer acquisition efforts.
Word-of-mouth advertising through customer referrals is one of the strongest dance class promotion ideas at your disposal. This type of marketing is so powerful because people respect recommendations from friends and family, with studies showing that 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel.
When your current students recommend your studio to their cousins, friends, neighbors, or classmates, they tell them all about the fun events at your studio and how much they’ve learned in your classes, inspiring their peers to get involved. This method can exponentially grow your student community when each current student reaches out to multiple new prospects.
While this marketing tactic is completely free, we recommend offering students an incentive to encourage them to recommend your studio. For instance, offer a tuition discount for customers who bring in new students. This will help get more students on board with referrals and, ultimately, get more new students into your classes.
To incentivize customer referrals, you can message dance students and families and set up tuition discounts via DanceStudio-Pro.
Did you know that the average open rate for an email marketing campaign is 36.5% and an even higher 41.8% for recreational businesses like dance studios? Focus on building email lists for both prospective and current clients to entice new customers and retain the ones you already have. Here’s how to engage each segment:
According to Deep Sync, acquisition email marketing is “the process of using email campaigns to grow your customer base.” Create an email segment for prospective clients separate from your communications to current students. Then, follow these best practices for communicating with prospects via email:
Be sure to strike the right balance between giving your prospects the information they need to get involved and not annoying them by spamming their inbox with messages.
Once you’ve acquired some new leads, keep them engaged via email so you can ultimately convert them into customers. Using lead management tools, you can follow up with leads at different stages:
By staying in touch with leads, you'll ensure they show up to their trial class, communicate that you genuinely want them there, and boost the chance they'll become customers.
Email marketing is also important for engaging your current students and parents. To keep your current clients interested, you must:
Building strong relationships with students and parents through email marketing fosters loyalty and enhances engagement between classes. Following these steps will create a community-centered environment that values each client’s input and support.
Using DanceStudio-Pro’s Robo-Mailer™, you can email current and prospective students and families for both acquisition and loyalty email marketing purposes. Schedule these messages in advance, send attachments for additional context, or even email students in specific classes.
DanceStudio-Pro Elite also includes a Lead Center to easily track and communicate with leads. With our solution, you can create an automated email sequence that ensures you consistently follow up with leads, personalize your communications to where leads are in the conversion process, and implement discounts and promo codes that help seal the deal.
Who doesn’t love a soft, stylish t-shirt or fun branded mug from their favorite business? By offering branded merchandise with your logo and colors, you empower your dance community members to show off their pride in your studio!
Give students free merch when registering for classes, launch giveaways, or sell your swag at your dance studio store. When students wear or use your merchandise while out and about, they’ll expose a wider audience to your studio’s brand and may pique potential customers’ interest. Striking designs or stylish typography help your merchandise stand out and attract attention.
Beyond t-shirts or mugs, offer dance-specific items like duffle bags, water bottles, and dance gear. Your dance students can deck out from head to toe in your studio’s merchandise to market your business wherever they go. Plus, you can unify your studio’s brand by having everyone wear the same items.
DanceStudio’s Point-of-Sale system allows you to set up your studio’s Online Store. You can easily sell branded merchandise to your dance community members. Upload photos, add descriptions, and set your own prices with ease.
After receiving direct mail from a business, 57% of consumers visit the brand’s website, 53% search for that brand online, and 46% search for online reviews about the business, demonstrating the power of direct mail to inspire action.
By combining your virtual efforts with physical advertisements such as direct mail appeals, you can reach a wider audience of potential students and make your message stand out. The benefits of direct mail include:
Send postcards or flyers in your local area to promote your studio and encourage prospects to try it. Offer incentives like a free first class so potential students can see if your studio is a good fit before committing.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular digital marketing tactic businesses can use to improve their website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). Considering 71% of clicks on Google search results occur on the first page, you want to get your website content into the top ten search results for keyword searches related to your business.
To determine which keywords to focus on, put yourself in prospective customers’ shoes and think about what they would type into the search bar when investigating options for local dance studios. If you were a parent of a rambunctious seven-year-old with a desire to join a dance class, you’d probably type phrases like “dance studios for kids” or “dance studios in [your city].”
For instance, when users located near Atlanta, Georgia, search “dance studios for kids” on Google, here’s what they see. At the top of the SERP, there are several paid search ads (we’ll dive into these more in the next section):
Below the paid ads, there’s a map that features several dance studios for kids in the area. These maps and listings are highly valuable for consumers because they include necessary information like business addresses, phone numbers, hours of operation, and reviews. To ensure your studio appears in these listings and on Google Maps, create a Google My Business Profile.
Lastly, the rest of this SERP is filled with organic search results like these:
As you can see, once users scroll past the paid ads and business listings, there’s limited space on the SERP for the organic results. Therefore, you must develop a strategy that ensures your website is among the top results. Take these steps to optimize your Google rankings:
This is just a brief overview of SEO. If you want to explore this marketing option further, plenty of resources for SEO beginners provide a deeper understanding of the process.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an advertising model in which marketers pay publishing partners (typically search engines) every time their ad is clicked. You can choose to bid on keywords relevant to your target area. If your bid is accepted, your website link will appear at the top of the SERP for your chosen keyword.
Here’s an example of the PPC ads appearing when a user searches “dance studio lessons.” If your studio were to bid on this keyword and win, your website link would be one of these text-based ads:
Other types of PPC ads include Google shopping ads that appear when users search for certain products. Check out these ads for the keyword “dance shoes”:
By pursuing a PPC strategy, you guarantee your website will pop up when users search your target keywords, even if your organic website links don’t currently rank on the first results page.
This effort will require some marketing funds, but if your dance studio is a nonprofit organization, you could actually receive this advertising perk for free. Registered 501(c)(3) organizations are eligible for Google Ad Grants that supply $10,000 worth of monthly ad spending.
Either way, these ads can get your studio’s website on your target audience’s radar, even if your organic web presence isn’t quite where you want it to be.
Another non-digital marketing avenue you can use to reach new students is a good old-fashioned flyer. Flyers are a cheap dance class promotion idea because you only need a computer, printer, and ink.
Alternatively, you may print your flyers for a fee at a print shop or office supply store and use their higher-quality materials.
Ensure your flyer has all the basic information for your studio. Here’s a template that offers an example of what your flyers might look like:
Your dance studio marketing flyers should include your studio name and logo, your tagline (if you have one), a brief overview of classes you offer and your upcoming class schedule, your address, and contact information like your email, phone number, and social media handles.
Post your flyers on public bulletin boards with the owner’s permission. Here are a few popular places that usually permit businesses to hang flyers:
Hanging flyers in these locations exposes your business to the general public. Additionally, consider handing them out to current students so they can distribute them to their friends. That way, you’ll get your studio information directly in front of members of your target audience.
Sponsorships can be highly productive marketing opportunities because they accomplish several goals simultaneously. They help market your studio, allow you to network with other business owners, and position your dance studio as a supporter of local community activities and events. Let’s explore each of these benefits:
Here’s an example of what your booth might look like at a local event like a charity 5K, annual music festival, or sports tournament:
As you can see, this is a great way to prominently display your logo and attract the interest of event attendees.
Ultimately, through sponsorships, your dance studio will not only be able to do some good in the local community, but also share your message with the wider community and boost your PR image.
Reach out to parents via DanceStudio-Pro’s Portal App to identify sponsorship opportunities. For instance, one parent may need a sponsor for their child’s sports team, while another may be in charge of a local charity event looking for business partnerships. DanceStudio-Pro lets you leverage these connections by communicating directly with dance parents and guardians.
While SMS marketing is an extremely effective channel, only 39% of businesses use it. Make your studio stand out and reach dance students where they already are through text message marketing efforts. Use texts to share information about:
You may also use text messages to follow up with leads and encourage them to sign up for your studio’s classes.
To create an effective text marketing strategy, you need a way to send out mass messages to everyone at once to save yourself time. With Robo-Texter™ from DanceStudio-Pro, you can easily schedule and send messages to current and prospective students.
Create communication segments to speak only to students or parents. Tailor your message to appeal to each group (and save the texting lingo for the younger crowd).
With DanceStudio-Pro Elite’s Lead Center, you can also automate texts to leads to keep them in your pipeline and inspire them to convert into customers.
Similarly, conducting telemarketing efforts to advertise your dance studio also takes advantage of your audience’s frequent phone usage. You can gather phone numbers for your text and telemarketing efforts through:
Make an extra effort to contact prospective students who expressed significant interest in taking a class. A personal phone call can make all the difference in influencing them to make the leap and actually sign up. You can answer their questions on the spot and tell them exactly what they need to register for classes.
Take your digital marketing efforts to the next level by creating your very own studio app! With software like DanceStudio-Pro, you can develop a personalized app for your dance studio using your logo, colors, and other branding specifics. Students and parents download your mobile app right from the Apple or Google Play app stores. Check out this example of what your custom dance studio app log-in page could look like:
Use your custom-built dance studio app to:
Not all dance studio owners can say they have their very own studio app, so this can be an opportunity to set your business apart from competitors and offer something unique to your students.
You can develop a strong dance studio marketing strategy by using a combination of these approaches. Combining online and offline marketing tactics will yield the greatest results by helping you cast the widest net to attract new customers.
Once you’ve sufficiently spread the word about your studio and earned some new customers, continue running the best dance studio possible and offering valuable experiences to your students. One of the best ways to ensure you maintain a high-quality studio is by equipping your team with proper dance studio management software. When you and your team of dance instructors operate efficiently, you can continue to grow your dance studio and boost revenue.
Laura Cole, CEO of DanceStudio-Pro