Marketing & Philosophy

Local Outreach & Flyer Design

If your goal is to get students locally, then there are a lot of ways to get this wrong from the outset. Here I'll introduce the principles of motivating your local prospective students to contact you & sign up.

When to comes to getting local students for in-person lessons, flyers are still the most effective way to do this — IF your flyer sends the right messages.

And what those messages are depends on who's going to actually see the flyer:

So for that reason, you really need to have 2 flyer designs. 

One is for places like the grocery store and community center bulletin boards, where literally anyone might see it. This flyer shouldn't have any music jargon - just basic things like "fun, learn fast, play your favorite songs," and other very general phrases that any non-musician can clearly understand.

The other one is specifically for the musician, and you can appeal to somewhat more specific musical terms. Generally, this flyer will be what you put up specifically only at music stores, so in a way this is probably what you'll consider your "secondary" flyer design, since the majority of places to hang flyers are NOT going to be music stores.

If the person is SEEING your flyer, then wherever you hung it up isn't that far from wherever they live. 

So — if you're only 5 or 10 minutes away from where that flyer is hanging up, SAY SO right on the flyer: "Only 5 Minutes Away!"

Which means, really, you might end up with not 2, but 4 different flyer designs — the 2 above, and then also a "local" version of each one as well. (It depends on how close you live to a music store, really; you might not need a "local" version of that unless you actually live really close to one.)

And while you might start to think "do I really need that many flyers? I'd rather just have one good one and not have to keep printing so many," remember that the purpose is to get people to actually contact you — and ONE flyer isn't going to PERFORM the same everywhere or with every audience. So the answer is YES, you do need to customize your flyers to the location and audience.

So just print out a few of each, and once you have one format that works well, then maybe consider printing a larger batch.

Color vs Black & White

Ultimately, this really doesn't matter. Both have their advantages. Color can look really great, but black and white can be equally effective. Color costs more, but black and white can seem "less professional." (or at least less "slick")

Tear-Off Tabs

The main function of these types of flyers are the tear-off tabs, so try to fit as many of them as you can, while still keeping the text large enough to be legible. The less text you try to include, the more tabs you can potentially have. Also, the longer the tabs, the less room you'll have for other information at the top, so it's a little bit of a trade off.

Big, Legible Title

Nice, big, bold text that gets the point across instantly. "GUITAR LESSONS" (or "LEARN GUITAR" or some other very short phrase) should be right at the top, filling the page, so that whoever sees the flyer knows right away from across the room what that flyer is for.

Bullet Points

Having some bullet points (especially with check marks) is where you really drive home what they're going to get out of your lessons, so spend some time thinking about (a) why people look for lessons in the first place, and (b) why people will especially want YOUR lessons, and list out between 4 to 8 of them. I've found that making 2 columns of bullet points sometimes helps fit them on the page without becoming too tall on the page.

Contact Info

Don't forget, all the tabs are going to get ripped off of the page at some point, so put your contact info ON the main (top) portion of the flyer as well, so that anyone coming along after everyone has already taken all of the tabs can still take a picture of it and get in contact.

Imagery

If you're going to have any images, make sure there's a guitar in it, and if it's a person playing it, make sure they either look COOL, or they look like they're having FUN (or both). It can be silly/fun clipart, or it can be a stock photo, or it can be a photo of YOU and/or your students. But the TEXT is the main thing so aim not to have the image become the central focus of the flyer. They'll be contacting you because of what you SAY, not because of the guitar image you chose for your flyer.

Paper Color

One option that can make black-and-white flyers "pop" is simply printing them onto colored paper. Simple as it is, this helps it stand out among a sea of white paper flyers. Yellow is nice because it's almost like you "highlighted" the whole flyer, but whatever color you use, stick to lighter shades. No matter what your flyer needs to be immediately legible, first and foremost.

QR Code

Totally optional, having a QR code on your flyer that leads to a special contact page or booking page is another way you can get people to reach out, and could potentially streamline booking an introductory lesson.

Really, ANYWHERE that has a bulletin board for hanging flyers, you should hang one there.

At first you'll just need to look around at places near you. You can search Google and see if anything comes up for your local area, although this won't always be reliable.

Also, in general, some places are very strict about who they'll let post flyers, and about what topics, while others are totally fine with whatever. So go in expecting some people to bark at you "HEY! You need permission to hang stuff on that board!" and just have your "Oh sorry, I saw your flyer board and I offer a service that I think your patrons would really appreciate" response read, and show it to them and ask if you can please post it. And if not that's fine too — either mark that place off your list as not viable, or if you're daring try again with a different manager. (If the first manager/employee sees your flyer hanging up they might still take it down themselves.)

Sometimes, they'll ask "are you local?," out of the desire to specifically support local businesses, to which your answer should be "Yes, I am."

That said, here is a list of a few types of places you can generally find flyer boards:

And ultimately, it's a good idea to create a Google Map or set up Guides in Apple Maps with all of the flyer locations you find, so that you can periodically check on them and replenish them once all the tabs have been torn off without forgetting any. You can even use that to plan out the most efficient route to update all of your flyers in a single trip (this is what I did for years).  

If you have a question, simply hit the "Contact Us" button to reach out to our team.

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