Amanda Barr 0:02
Hello friends, I'm Amanda bar. And I'm Rebecca Lu Brennan and welcome to Dance principles united the podcast. Together, we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio. Join us as we talk everything through marketing systems studio culture, motherhood, life and everything in between. This is the dance principles United podcast.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:30
Hi, friends, it is Bec here. I am so excited to be with all of you this week. And I have the incredible Nathan with me. How are you going? Nathan?
Nathan Barr 0:40
Good Bec, happy podcast day. I think I always say this at the start. But I always do love just jumping on and jamming and talking. All things studio growth building and everything with you on the podcast. love
Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:54
Love it so much. Now, I was just saying before we started, it's our one on one week in Studio growth Club, which is always the greatest week because we actually get to spend, you know that bit of individual time with each of our members. But oh my gosh, Nate, I had two calls today that were just epic. They have the biggest numbers, I don't think I've ever told you this, the biggest numbers that they've ever had in their studio, and it's only term one. They are both just absolutely loving all the things and crushing it. And I'm so proud of both of them because they're doing the things and we know that success doesn't come unless you actually do the things
Nathan Barr 1:34
and do them consistently. And that's what we were talking about as well, like, on today's coaching calls, because we had our call, we're there SGC members as well, today, some of them are hearing a lot of us, they might be sick of sick of our sound of our voice by the end of the week, right? But again, we were talking about just that consistency, and building, you're not going to add 100 students in a week ever. But if you just keep being consistent doing those 1% things every time that you're just gonna keep growing and growing and growing. And look at we also talked about as well that sometimes we go through seasons, and that, you know, sometimes yes, you might drop a couple of students over a short period of time. But generally, as long as you're moving up into the right over the long term, then you're going to be getting better and better. You're going to be growing, your student base, your revenues, your profits, and all the amazing things that come with that.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 2:23
All the things which is so amazing. Now, one of the things that we wanted to talk about today is the fact that we always get the question of what if we've talked about this before now? How do I grow a class that doesn't have any numbers? You know, how do I do that? And we've chatted about it before, but I thought I'd tell a little bit of my story today, though, we have a boy's hip hop class at PAWS. And I really fucked up this year. And I kind of forgot about it. I know that sounds terrible. But I really did forget about it. So we had a lot of our boys go up into our troop classes from it. We had a few drop offs, which is normal.
Nathan Barr 3:00
Yeah, it's been a great feeder into the studio.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 3:05
Yep, it is a direct feeder into the studio into hip hop troupe classes, because we've got the same teacher that does true. And you know, we had a few drop offs. And the class went from 20 to two. And I realized that weak run backs. Not very good on my point. But and I spoke to you about it, we kind of had this strategy, right?
Nathan Barr 3:26
Yeah absolutely. And yeah, like you said, like, and it's not just you know, you don't just have a junior on teaching your boys hip hop class, you've got Jacob, you're teaching boys hip hop, dance, low fame that comes with you know, because he's so incredible. He's one of the higher end teachers and we know, our incredible higher end teachers come with that higher price tag, right. So it's a, it's an expensive class to put on and run. And the question that we get all the time from studio owners is, you know, and like you said, we've talked about it before, like, how long do we give a class before we cancel it and all those kinds of thing, but that's why we want to get on and talk this about this specifically today? Because number one, we're all guilty of it. I know we did it at times during owning ds. And you sharing your journey today about Yeah, we all still make mistakes, right? Even you pause, but it's not about making the mistake, right? It's how we then fix it because everything's got a solution.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 4:18
Yes, absolutely. And I also think every empty class has a solution. I mean, apart from advanced to ballet, you know, we're not going to put an ad behind that. But boys hip hop with Jacob er, that has a great solution. And, you know, I think sometimes studio owners think that they're putting themselves out there, marketing wise, but they're not and, and you really have to ask yourself, when you look at the class that's empty, how much effort have I actually put behind it? And my answer when I asked myself that was zero, and then what can I do about that? And the answer is all the things you can do. No one knows about it unless you put it out there.
Nathan Barr 4:59
100% And that's where we got together, you got together with your Facebook ads guy, which is me and developing a bit of a strategy but also with you know, I always get Shay and Taryn, I always go Ty and Sharon, but it's not. But but also like, it's because they're in charge of your social media accounts, which are absolutely crushing at the moment, too. But building the whole strategy around it, right, like, okay, what are we going to do on the organic socials and you build a plan around that with them? What are we going to do in terms of getting our current parents? Because, you know, a lot of the dancers at the studios would have little or an older brother, maybe? Who might be right for that boy's hip hop class, what are we going to do on band? What are we going to do? Sending emails? What are we going to do going back through old lead, like, all the things and then as well as investing in some Facebook ads on top of that, right? Absolutely.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 5:50
A nd we also took flyers to the local primary schools. And I think that's a game changer as well, because a lot of parents may not know that there's boys Hip Hop classes available, you may not even realize that so we did that as well, which I think was a game changer, too. Absolutely.
Nathan Barr 6:08
And so look, we started out, you know, and we always talk about this, because people always ask, you know, like, how much do I spend on Facebook ads, and, and those lots of questions around those sorts of things as well. And we I always preface whenever I talk about anything that we do around the Facebook ads side of things, is that, you know, everybody's budget is different, we completely understand that. But where we went with this was in like our initial discussions, because I know quite a bit about Facebook ads, and running them for dance studios specifically. You know, I know that at PAWS, we're looking at an average of about $20 per lead that comes in, because you're in Penrith, which is a highly competitive area for Facebook ads, loads of people not just spending money, not just dance studios spending money, because I think that's what sometimes a lot of people forget that we're not just competing in that space in the social media paid advertising with other dance studios, we're competing with the swim schools, the soccer jerseys, the karate schools, the music schools that like, if you're in a densely populated area, then your Facebook ads are going to cost a bit more, right, just like in years gone by the newspapers would have the radio ads would have all those sorts of things. Whereas we're seeing like if somebody asked you to growth club members, because we take care of a lot of the give them all the templates and build out their Facebook ads and things like that for them. Some of our studio grade club members and more regional areas, we're getting like four to $5 a lead, because they're the only ones in their towns running ads, and absolutely crushing, right. But yeah, we know, for pause, it's about $20 a lead, right. And we also know that we've paused because you've got an amazing team, that follow up your inquiries, that it's about that within those leads that come in, one in every two enrolls because you just get such a high volume of leads. And we know that number, and it's we're really confident on it. So basically, to enroll a kid in a pause class costs about 40 bucks. And for us for you, I know that you see that as a great return on investment. So 100%. So you're willing, like we started off the ads so far, like the ads campaign has spent about $650. But for that $650 There's been 29 leads come in. And your team has been working those leads and I we were talking the other day. Like what's the boys hip hop at at the moment?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 8:35
Well, the boy deeper burpee that 10 At the moment, but I was one of those leads could at that specific time. A lot of the leads couldn't do that specific time. Yes, fine. So three boys now we have in six and under Hip Hop troupe. People might have done dance before. But we were like, oh, try the 692 Hip Hop troupe. So three boys in that. So they've kind of filtered a couple into circus acro. So, you know, the cool part about following up leads properly and talking to people is you can talk them into going to other places in your school as well. Amazing.
Nathan Barr 9:09
Yeah. Because that that one, because they might not have thought of dance before. It's been presented to them in a different way. Because like, let's be honest, the majority of your school is female. So a lot of the the graphics and the videos around it, do show that and so therefore you attract mostly females. So looking at those ads, you can understand why sometimes more boys wouldn't reach out or the parents of boys don't respond to those ads. But then they see this one. They're like, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Cool. Lots of boys go. They're amazing. Then they reach out, then you're filtering them into by the time they get into those two pluses, right? We're talking loads of revenue from that. So from that, like I said, I know it was a big spend we talked about like $650 but within that there's been what another at least eight enrollments into the boys hip hop, it's gone 5x In Add size from two to 10. And it will keep growing while everything's still running, but then you've also got what another three to five enrollments throughout the rest of the school as well. So what is mostly eight, I think, eight other enrollments through the rest of the school. Yeah. So we're talking about 16 enrollments from $650. In spend, right? And the way I always look at it that way, like we always talk about it, and I'm sitting here, I really should have done the math on this before. But if we just do that, you know, how I always think about it is the 650 divided by that 16 is literally right on that $40 per enrollment that we talked about, right? Yep. $40 for every one of those boys that come through, and what's the absolute minimum that somebody can spend? If somebody just comes in back and does one class a week? What's the minimum that they're spending at ports?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 10:52
17 dollars a week?
Nathan Barr 10:56
17 dollars a week? Yeah. So within the first term, they're spending $170 within their first 10 weeks, and then everybody at PAWS buys uniform? Correct? So we're talking
Rebecca Liu Brennan 11:09
at least $100 On that, I would say because they usually get the t shirt. Will all the boys get the same T shirt with a knife on the back. So and plus the shorts. Yep. And then they'll get a costume. Yeah. Probably worth another 100 125 depending on what we choose that year for the end of the concert, then concert tickets. Yep.
Nathan Barr 11:30
So like, absolute minimum, like without even thinking about concert tickets, right? So 395 is what we got to with those other things, times those 16. So we've turned that $650 into $6,300 of revenue plus concert tickets. Right? That's absolutely crazy. And that's the absolute minimum, right? Because like you said, lots of those. A few of those boys have gone into troop classes, which means they'll be doing two or three classes a week, or Yeah, it's that thing that we always ask. You know, I like and like I said, just before, like, I completely understand that not everybody has the cash flow to drop $600 on a campaign in the middle of the term, but what can you do? Right, what? And what can you do? And what making sure that you're then matching your expectations with that spend that you're putting in if you're spending? Yeah, what do we say like $100 over a week, they'd be looking for about five, five leads, and that's okay. But make sure please, please, please make sure to that you are doing everything possible to chase up those leads, don't just send them one message. Don't just drop them on email, don't just try and call them once. You've got to have something in place to be making sure that for that money you're spending that you're doing everything you can to get them in your doors to enroll in that class and start spending money in your studio. Right? Absolutely.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 12:52
And I wanted to tell you this story about Archie so I don't know if you saw my little Archie. My studio was the one who got the Taylor Swift hat was on Monday. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And it has been a whirlwind for that kid. Because he's been on every morning show. He was on TV. He was on radio stations theory, he was on the front page of newspapers, like it's been hectic anyway, that little boy started in boys hip hop. So don't I guess I'm just saying Don't disregard those ones to weekers. So he started in boys hip hop, he now does everything at our studio, as well as competitive dance. So he does two privates a week does every single class at our studio. And, you know, just got this whole Taylor Swift thing happening. And like, he's one of our most dedicated kids. And he started in that once a week class. So if you're good with your, if your staff are good, and they see the talent, they can go, Hey, you should try this, this and this. That's a game changer as well.
Nathan Barr 13:48
Yeah, absolutely. That's what like we always talked about with our students and our staff, sorry, they were always amazing at that is that it's our job to help teach them to love dance, right? It's our job to help educate the parents, it's our job to help let them know like, What parent doesn't love, um, and like your kids really good at that? Like, maybe maybe they could do with what, like, What parent doesn't love hearing that. And too often, you know, when I'm working with studios on their marketing and things like that, they're trying to market to people, they're thinking they're wanting to market to people that like dance, and a lot of the time with what we're running and like, especially with what we're talking about with that boys hip hop. We're really not marketing or trying to target people that like dance. We're trying to target people that are looking for a new activity for their boy to get him active, to get out and about to try something new. Right? And then that funnels and filters in and turns into something. Students that are absolutely super, super valuable and amazing in our studios.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 14:50
Absolutely. And I wanted to talk on that just for a second night because I actually spoke to one of our SGC members today. And they said, Oh, we don't have any footage of that class. Ask, there's only two kids in it. It's too awkward to have the footage. And I said, well just make something up, which is what the twins did for boys hip hop. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's on the story all the time. Every single day, it's on the story. This is a picture of two boys in their little hip hop costume from last year, and then they've done this really simple Canva template saying, Boy people, but don't be scared to post that every day on your story. It doesn't matter. No one's really thinking. Like, I just think people overthink this stuff and think I've posted it once. I can never post it again. It's totally fine to keep posting it because you're Amy that that new client who hasn't seen it yet anyway. 100%
Nathan Barr 15:41
like not everybody sees it. That was what Jade who was the amazing photographer, a lot of people and videographer a lot of people would have seen it Expo last year is a social media expert presented at Studio growth club conference last year up in the Gulf Coast. And that was her thing. She repurposing and repost stuff. Sometimes every three months, she'll take the same reel and repost it every three months, once that work, because she knows that only like, if you if you don't look at the stats, if you're not a nerd like me, it's such a tiny percentage of your followers actually see posts that you put up. And then an even smaller fraction of that actually watch the videos all the way through. Like I was speaking with one of my one on ones this week, and we were looking at amazing ads that they'd had that would have performed really well. And they take a lot of pride in the creative that they put up there for that, and stuff like that. And look, the video was absolutely epic. And we stopped for a second and like, and like I said it had led to great results. $15 a lead, which is awesome, really like under average, which we're absolutely stoked about. And it was a 30 Odd second video. And I'm like, that's really cool. And we were talking about like what you wanted to do to try and get some ads back up. I'm like, cool, don't reinvent the wheel. What you're gonna do is you're going to take the back 15 seconds of that video and the front 15 seconds that video and swap it. And I could see the thing. No, no, we can pull it. No, we got to, we got to create something, we can do that. But then we looked at the stats, because you can see this on when you do your Facebook ads through ads manager. Let's have a quick look at how many people actually watched up to me, you can see like, how many people have watched something like 29,000 people had started playing that video. How many people do you reckon got to the like eight second mark? Oh,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 17:31
goodness, say 8000 to
Nathan Barr 17:38
2000? Sorry, 2000. Not two people. But and then in terms of like, how many people got to the end of the video? It was like 200. And like I said, guys, this is the video that outperformed what we usually see on Facebook. It was epic. It was incredible results. But that's that's what's happening on our socials at the moment. Right people? Very few people see it number one. And then very few people actually watch the whole thing because we all do it. We just scroll Scroll, scroll flick scroll, like,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 18:06
yeah, yeah, we'll lose like, Isn't it the average that someone will watch is like, not even 12 seconds, though you have to get I can't remember what is it like so small? What? actually watch? And I'm the same. Oh, what's your second flip to the next thing. That's what we do. It's what we're programmed to do,
Nathan Barr 18:24
especially and that's what we always talk about, like I see loads of studio owners that were working that I'm working with when they're doing their they've got this great videographers come in and created epic videos and stuff like that. But the first four seconds, I've animated a logo on top for the studio logo on top. And I'm like, okay, that's fantastic. I agree. It looks awesome. But if you see if you've got an animated logo, we know that nobody interacts. Yeah, you've got you've got the first two seconds to grab somebody's attention and get them to stop. And if you don't, if that's a logo, they're gonna flick straight on by so I know so many of you out there would have that. But if you ever using it for any sort of ads or promotions, just cut that first little logo off.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 19:07
So smart, so smart. And I think we really need to make sure if you're spending money on something on social media and I know I say this all the time that you are consistently posting it on your socials. It's so if I was an I've been advertising boys, people, obviously, if I then didn't have it on my story and didn't have any boys in my feed, people are automatically going to think that there's no boys there. And so it's really important that I'm showing the boys in the studio and doing all the things and you know, having pictures of boys so that that parent sees the boys and thinks oh yeah, that's cool. There's boys there. So important.
Nathan Barr 19:46
100% 100% Well, as always big. we digressed. We went off on tangents. But the the key things that we want you to take away from today is that helping fill those empty classes is you've got to give it some time. Like I said But you've also got to invest in it a bit, invest some of your time in terms of getting organic socials all over the place, investing some money in it, to try and get those leads in. And then as well as like we said, doing all the things, the emails, the post your current parents going through old leads finding them. You can't just put up a couple of posts or send one email in one story, and then say, oh, no, I've tried and it's empty. So let's just cancel it. Especially like if you've got teachers coming in like, it's, it's a big thing, right?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 20:32
Yeah, I think hard work always equals success. And I think people seem to think that things just come easily, but you know, that that hard work has to happen for you to succeed in anything.
Nathan Barr 20:44
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, everybody for listening. As you listen to this, we are only a few weeks out now from dance teacher Expo, which we are super, super excited about. So if you haven't already, jump on, grab your tickets. We will put a link in the show notes for this and it would mean the absolute world to us. We know we don't ask for this enough. But if you could leave a like or a comment and please subscribe to the dance principles United podcast wherever you're listening. It helps others find the podcast and get some value and insights from it as well.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 21:19
Absolutely. Thanks friends! Come and see you at the expo. Bye.
Nathan Barr 21:22
Thanks, everybody. Bye
