Career Tips and So Much More

It is not an easy task to think of ways to market a business service especially if or service the product you're offering something that's outside the basic necessities of people. Here's what I did.

Building a business greatly anchors on creating and impressing a need. If your target customers don't see a need, they won't buy the product or service. It's that simple.

It was the start of the summer in 2005 and I was trying to recover from my teaching hiatus after giving birth to my second child. Expenses were catching up on us and I had to think fast. I badly needed to relaunch the studio.

I thought to myself, "How in the world will I convince parents that their children need piano lessons?"
In a country where the development of musical skill is the least of the parents' priorities, let alone classical music, private music studio teachers like myself have to either be really good at marketing the need or have to be well-known to get a sustainable number of students. I am not famous; so that leaves me with the other option.

That Eureka moment came when it finally dawned upon me that all parents wanted to have intelligent children. They will buy anything that will make their kids more intelligent and perform better than their classmates.

I made a back-to-back advertorial with articles about how music stimulates brain activity. The articles were supported by research findings and all those needed auxiliary data. I inserted a small text block in the middle of the page that contains my contact number and piano tutorial service offered. No hard selling, just information and a contact number. These were printed by Risograph and distributed by a guy I hired for the day to insert each folded paper onto the gates and mailboxes of each village residence. On some days, I had to do the inserting myself (talk about old fashioned junk mail and spamming!) thinking that soon enough the bills will be paid and there will be more food on the table.

After the Holy Week, my phone and our doorbell kept ringing. My small music studio schedule was full for the whole summer … and beyond. Most of them did not stop taking lessons until they entered college; some even stayed until just before they completed a bachelor's degree.

While I did not fully believe back then that music can truly stimulate the brain for better academic results, most of the students who took lessons for more than 5 years became scholars and graduated with flying colors. It was only years later that I have seen the results with my own eyes.