Top Proven Ways to Fill Your Camps & Classes Year Round

As a dance studio owner, one of the most significant challenges you face is getting your camps and classed filled. As the saying goes, you're only as good as your last season! With numerous schools vying for the attention of potential students, it's crucial to stand out and effectively market your offerings. The good news is that you don't have to navigate this journey alone.

In this blog post, we'll explore various strategies to increase enrollment in your dance camps and classes, while showcasing how Enrollio can streamline your processes and elevate your studio's success.

With that said, here are 5 Powerful Methods to keep your camps and classes filled year-round! 👊

1. Fix Your Website

This one is so overlooked in the dance community and it is SO important. Fix your freakin' website! If your website looks like it was built in 1994 and families can't for the life of them figure out how to enroll on your website, you're in big, big trouble! Make your website EASY to navigate.

Try this: Ask a friend or family member to visit your website and try to sign up for classes. Ask them to honestly assess their experience. Pick that friend or family member that will never lie to you.

By having a clunky website that's hard to navigate, you're also very much affecting your SEO! Google and other search engines will reduce you in rank for important keywords based on site speed, relevance, visitor engagement, and more.

2. Auto Follow Up With Website Leads

If you're using a third-party platform for class registration, chances are you're losing a TON of potential enrollments. Here's why:

When families visit your website and then click the REGISTER NOW button to enroll on a third-party platform, they typically have to create an account before they can see pricing and class info. With our own dance studio, we found that 80-90% of those people clicking through to enroll were not enrolling!

🤖 DANGER WILL ROBINSON! 🤖

You don't have to abandon your enrollment software, but you should be capturing each website lead's information before they cross over into the point-of-no-return (i.e. your enrollment software). That way if they don't sign up right away, you can follow up with them!

This was actually the foundation of our software program, Enrollio. All website leads get captured and if they don't enroll within two hours, they receive a personalized, automated text, resulting in more enrollments every single month.

3. Flesh Out Your "Google My Business" Profile

Google My Business (GMB) is a powerful yet often overlooked tool that can help drive organic traffic to your dance studio, and the best part is that it's completely free to use! By fleshing out your GMB profile, you're giving potential students an easily accessible snapshot of your studio, including crucial information like your location, hours of operation, and contact details.

Here's how to make the most of your GMB profile:

• Claim and verify your GMB listing to ensure you have full control over your studio's information.

• Add high-quality photos and videos that showcase your studio's facilities, classes, and instructors. This will give potential students a taste of what they can expect when they join your dance community.

• Keep your business information up-to-date, including your address, phone number, and website. This helps establish trust with potential students and makes it easy for them to get in touch with you.

• Encourage current students and parents to leave reviews on your GMB profile. Positive reviews not only bolster your studio's reputation, but they also help improve your ranking in local search results.

• Post regular updates to your GMB profile, such as upcoming events, promotions, or news about your studio. This keeps your profile fresh and engaging for potential students browsing online.

By optimizing your Google My Business profile, you'll boost your studio's visibility in local search results and create a compelling online presence that entices potential students to join your dance camps and classes. Combine this strategy with a user-friendly website, automated follow-up for website leads, and the power of Enrollio, and you'll be well on your way to keeping your dance camps and classes filled year-round!

4. Launch Paid Ads

The question gets asked every day in social media groups and YES, paid ads still work! Facebook, Instagram & Google Adwords are all platforms that you should be advertising on, ideally year-round. We still live in a time where it is DIRT CHEAP to be seen as an advertiser on social media.

To put it into perspective, if you choose to run a 1-page ad with your local magazine they're going to probably charge you three to four thousand dollars. And the magazine probably reaches 50,000-100,000 people in the community. Very cool!

If you choose to run a paid ad and pick the targeting audience of your choice, it would cost you a tiny fraction of that. Current CPMs with paid advertising (CPM = cost per 1000 impressions) is usually between $8 and $20. Meaning for $100-$200 you can reach the same people on social media. So yeah, HUGE cost savings. And prices are only going up year after year, so get in now!

If you want to launch paid ads for your studio, but stress out at the thought, Enrollio includes a built-in ads manager so you can quickly and painlessly launch paid advertising for your studio using our proven templates!

Either way, start running paid ads! It's darn near a must.

5. Text Blast Your Current & Past Families

This is the secret weapon that only some studios know about which is why I'm saving it for last. If you're an established studio and have been around for at least a few years, chances are you have a pretty sizable database of contacts. And you're probably doing nothing with that list.

You should be texting your families and past leads at least 2-3 times a year! Once for getting more reviews (ideally after recital) and twice for Summer and Fall enrollment. The goal of the text is to just connect with them on a personal level and let them know that enrollment is now open! You don't need to give away your studio or offer a month free. Just send them a kind text.

You could do this manually and spend a few days tackling such a profitable endeavor, or you could use Enrollio! We have prebuilt text templates to send out to your families that have been proven to convert like crazy! And the best part is, the texts are personalized! So each person on your list feels like you're contacting them individually :)

Another powerful use of text campaigns is texting your families when you need to fill a specific class or fill an event. Look at past enrollments, waitlisted families, past leads. Send them a personalized text letting them know you're thinking about them and that you have the perfect class for them/their child!

Email is dead. It's the modern day fax machine. Just say no. And say yes to texting!

Congratulations on taking the first steps to ensuring your dance camps and classes stay filled year-round! By implementing these five powerful methods – fixing your website, automating follow-up with website leads, optimizing your Google My Business profile, launching paid ads, and leveraging text blasts for current and past families – you're setting your dance studio up for success.

Remember, you don't have to face these challenges alone. With the help of Enrollio, you can streamline your processes, elevate your studio's success, and focus on what you love most: teaching dance and making a difference in your students' lives.

The future is bright for your dance studio, and with these strategies in hand, you'll be well on your way to achieving your goals and enjoying a thriving business.

Now, get out there and make some dance magic happen! 🌟💃🕺