How To Get Tons Of Guitar Students In The Summertime

How To Get Tons Of Guitar Students In The Summertime

by Tom Hess

The slowest time of the year for lesson inquiries is the summertime (as you probably already know). Although most guitar teachers know this, the overwhelming majority of them are unable to deal with it and struggle to make a good income teaching guitar. However, you can still attract a lot of students during the summer if you know the right approaches to take.

Nearly all guitar teachers who fail to keep their students in the summer do so for the same reasons. Here are those reasons and what you need to do to make sure you continue building your student base while other teachers lose their students:

Reason 1: Not Telling Your Guitar Students (Ahead Of Time) About The Value Of Taking Lessons During The Summer

Guitar students generally have a host of non-guitar activities that they want to participate in during the summer. As their guitar instructor, you must help them understand why guitar is so much more important than all those other things. You must help them realize:

A) The real reasons why becoming a great guitarist is much more valuable than doing other less important activities.

B) How important it is to continue learning guitar in the summer so that they do not ‘lose’ all the skills they gained, only to have to relearn everything again in the fall (costing them tons of additional time and money in the process). This is the same thing that happens every year for your students who go to public school, so they can understand this concept clearly (and know that you make a good point when you explain it to them).

C) How continuing lessons with you in the summer will be a very unique and valuable experience that simply can’t be missed. Here is one way (of many) you can do this:

Put together several killer programs/events that are exclusive to the summertime only. This could be a specialized metal guitar soloing training course, studio recording training or even a cool trip to see a huge band play live (that you use as inspiration for a unique course based on that band’s playing style). You can put together countless ideas if you simply sit down for a little bit and think about it. Just make sure that you tell your students about your programs many months in advance in order to ‘build them up’. After doing this, your students will be dying to get started once the summer starts.

[Warning: Just make sure not to do the absolute worst thing possible (what most guitar teachers do): Reducing your lessons rates in a pathetic attempt to keep your students longer. This WILL backfire and cause you to lose most of your students when the summer arrives (and in general), because it lowers the value of your lessons in their eyes –they will simply choose to spend their time on other things.]

Reason 2: Having Weak Methods For Attracting Guitar Students (In General)

Previously, in articles I wrote about teaching guitar lessons, I talked about why the majority of guitar teachers use bad marketing approaches that simply don’t work. This causes them to only gain access to a small percentage of the income they could be making and keeps them from helping more students reach their musical goals. If you can’t effectively attract students in general, you will really struggle during the summertime.

To make sure you don’t hold yourself back due to poor marketing, get guitar teacher coaching and gain tons of new students all year round.

Reason 3: Having A Poor Guitar Teaching Policy

You will lose your guitar students fast by implementing a weak guitar teaching policy (or not even having one to begin with). Most guitar teachers do this and their students take advantage of them by doing things like quitting without notice, showing up late, not paying on time or taking time away from lessons for summer vacation (while the teacher doesn’t get paid). One of the reasons why this happens so much is guitar teachers create a policy of charging students on a lesson by lesson basis.

Truly successful guitar teachers charge their students per month, NOT per lesson. And if you want to get paid on time and not get taken advantage of... you should too! In addition, you don’t need to accept it as a loss when your students leave for summer vacation. To get ready for this situation, think of creative ways to train your students when they are unable to meet with you in person for a lesson. Learn many ways to do this by downloading this free guide to earning money as a guitar teacher.

Reason 4: Failing To Promote Your Guitar Teaching Business In The Summertime

Most guitar teachers are already aware of the fact that students inquire less about taking lessons in the summer than in any other season. As a result, they simply stop promoting their lessons in the summer. This is good news for you because it means YOU get the opportunity to market your lessons to all the students that everyone else isn’t paying attention to. Although there are less people seeking guitar lessons in the summer, they ARE out seeking lessons. You can easily increase the percentage of new students you add to your schedule during this time by simply marketing yourself to them (since no one else is even bothering). This will make the summer a huge success for you (rather than a ‘slow period’) - helping you to stay productive and grow your business.

Find out how to get tons of guitar students not only during the summer, but throughout the entire year and build your guitar teaching business larger than ever.