Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Start with your existing base. Why aren't they re-signing up for another class? Who has been your ideal student in the past few years? Where did they come from? How did they hear about you?

As a minimum, start building your online social media presence (Facebook, for example). Encourage your students to "Like" you. Consider a weekly contest: name the quotation/play, name the scene, video submission of you saying a line/speech, etc.

In the new communities, who can you co-market with? Can you offer classes (if for children) as after-school programs (held in the schools, for parents' sake)?

That lack of budget is always an issue, isn't it...

What Jay said about online came to mind for me immediately. If you don't have a budget, but someone has time, this is a great way to start. Make the Facebook page, get current students and alumni to like the page, get photos of activities there, get students and alumni tagged in them (so their friends get to see them having fun at the school), etc. Downside is that Facebook has a lower age limit (early teen) under which people are not allowed to join, so you may need to focus this on the parents of the kids rather than the kids themselves (but this may be better, as parents love taking photos of their kids).

A language school I have gone to has an offer that anyone who brings a new student to the school gets a discount on their registration fee. This could be useful.

Do you have a website? If not, that's probably where I'd begin. If so, then the challenge is getting more traffic and then converting some portion into paying students. Adwords (search and display network) is great for that, and you can manage the whole thing yourself if you have the time, and you only pay when you get the traffic. (You can set a daily spending limit too, so the budget is whatever you want it to be.)

You probably ought to begin all of this with some kind of marketing (and business) plan. Without one you'll never know whether you're headed in the right direction.

Peter's right about Facebook - it would have been amazing for you. You still have twitter, and that's great for getting a conversation going, in other words, engagement.

Done with some care, for your adult classes, you can use Facebook advertising. Perry Marshall's your go-to guy on this one (and his friend Tom Meloche). https://perrymarshall.com and there's a link to his Facebook page. You can also try his https://isfbforme.com to see how your ideas score in his online test. My reckoning is that you'd come out with at least a 7. Probably an 8. That is to say, it'd work for you. There is a learning curve to Facebook (as there is to Adwords) and Perry's books are an excellent shortcut to this.

Just following Mr. Goodman's advice would suffice in the short term - while you're reading up on the subject. There's nothing like dipping your toe into the pool, once you have navigated the interface (which is daunting in itself!) everything'll mean a whole lot more. You'll be diving into the dimensions tab without thinking "help!!! what if it all goes bang?"

Both Facebook and Adwords can be cost effective, and for new campaigns I never reckon to send more than $5 a day just to see how things pan out. You can also calculate the return on your spending too. If you're bidding on a keyword, there's nothing stopping you bidding a lot less than the suggested price. Google will whinge at you, but see what happens. I've entered markets with a $16 cost per click - and my bid was only $0.50. I was on page one, at the bottom - it did get me a serious CTR that nudged my placement up to #3.

If any of the terms are confusing, Perry Marshall's your man. Or Howie Jacobson, https://askhowie.com