The M1 motorway skirts our home city of Sheffield as it stretches from London to Leeds.
There used to be a home-made sign on a main road approaching it: “Last Eggs Before The M1” with a big, jagged arrow pointing off to the side.
It was meant to entice you to pull over and grab a fried egg sandwich from a food truck parked in the layby.
Thing is, by the time you could read the sign – at 70 miles per hour on a dual carriageway – you had no chance to stop.
So was the sign terrible marketing? A good message in the wrong place. If it appealed you’d already shot past it before you could become a customer.
But perhaps it was more clever than that. Because there were always lorry drivers parked, munching merrily. Maybe the owner of the food truck only wanted drivers who used the stretch of road regularly to pull in? Perhaps they didn’t want to get over-run by new, one-off customers who might never come back, but would make it harder to offer consistently great egg sarnies to their real target market of lorry drivers.
Four things to take on board for music teachers’ marketing:
- Understand your market isn’t “anyone wanting to learn your instrument” – go deeper into who you want to give lessons to.
- Make your message specific. The food truck didn’t say “last food before M1,” it used the word “eggs” deliberately. We can imagine the taste and smell and texture of eating a fried egg butty.
- Demonstrate a problem. Once you hit the M1, you might be hungry for a while (there used to be a lot less motorway service stations than there are now). The sign made it clear, this was your last chance saloon.
- Make sure the marketing message is in the right place at the right time. This can really appeal to your target market, and repel people who aren’t the right fit.
Off for some lunch now. Anyone know where I can find some eggs?
What next?
- Would you like more tried and tested advice about effective marketing for music teachers? There’s plenty in our free 29 tips for a thriving music teaching business. With the marketing and business development strategies we describe Claire developed her music teaching business to her full capacity – and built a waiting list for private lessons in a city saturated with excellent music teachers. Request our series of tips for music teachers today.