Should I spend money on paid advertising? | Live and Teach Guitar

There are so many different paid advertising options available today. But should you spend money to try and attract new students? The easiest way to answer this is to go through each main type of paid method and look how effective they are in attracting new students.

Print advertising

Local newspapers and magazines used to be an effective way to attract new students. Unfortunately they're not anymore. We've talked to many guitar teachers over the last few years who have tried using print advertising and not one teacher felt the money was well spent. Quite often a teacher would spend $100+ on a newspaper ad for a month and not receive a single inquiry as a result.

We do not recommend spending money on print advertising.

The reason print advertising isn't effective anymore is because when somebody wants to find a guitar teacher, they no longer check out their local newspaper's classifieds section. The first option people go for today is to simply search online. Some studies have found that around 80-97% of people now use online search to find local services. So if you're paying money to advertise in a local newspaper, unfortunately your ad isn't going to be seen by potential students.

'Premium' teacher listings on online teacher directories

There are quite a few online teacher directories that allow you to list your services for free. Some of those directories also give you the option to pay a monthly fee to receive a 'premium' listing. The idea behind the premium listing is that your listing will be shown in a prominent position and will stand out above all the other local teachers.

Our general recommendation is to avoid spending money on premium listings.

The reason is that the free listing can be just as effective and can reach the same potential students. The only time we might suggest paying for a premium listing is if the directory for your area is so full of competitors that it's going to be impossible to stand out otherwise. But for most teachers that won't be the case.

The reality is that most directory profiles we've looked through were poorly written. If you write a profile that focuses on the potential student's goals, you're automatically going to stand out from the crowd. Check out BMK-04 for advice on teacher directories.

Facebook Advertising

If you use Facebook you would have seen the ads that appear in the newsfeed or in the right hand column. Facebook ads have been popular because they can be effective and are affordable. But while they can be effective, it does take time and effort to use them properly. It's very easy to waste money on a poorly created ad and unfortunately we've seen quite a few teachers create a poorly written ad in haste then end up with poor results.

Our general recommendation is to avoid spending money on Facebook ads until you understand exactly how to use them properly.

BMK-14 & BMK-15 explain the basic process to setting up a Facebook ad, but it will still take a bit more research and effort to achieve the best results. We recommend going through the Marketing 101 Course and read through BMK-21 before you even consider setting up an ad to learn some essential marketing principles. The more you understand the principles behind effective marketing, the higher your chances of succeeding with Facebook ads. It can be done, but it isn't easy.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords can be effective but they're very hard to get right. We've only dealt with a couple teachers who have managed to create ads that resulted in a positive ROI (if you're not sure what ROI means, don't spend money on advertising until you learn marketing principles). AdWords can give you excellent control to target your ideal potential students. But while AdWords are extremely flexible, it is hard to get right. Just like with Facebook ads, it's very easy to get things wrong and waste your money.

Our general recommendation is to not spend money on Google AdWords until you complete the following courses & workshops:

Consider this the minimum required before you consider AdWords.

Our Overall Advice

You can see that our general recommendation is to not spend money on paid advertising because it's incredibly hard to achieve good results for your money. While some advertising options such as Facebook Ads or Google AdWords can be effective, they still require a fair amount of research and effort to get right.

The other reason why we don't generally recommend paid advertising is that there are plenty of effective free promotional methods you can use. It's far easier to achieve good results on free methods than paid methods so check out this Q&A for a starting point.