How to encourage more people to attend dance classes?

This is the main question I was asked by Antony Holeksa owner of Ballroom and Latin American dance school, Learn to Dance in Buckinghamshire in a recent Zoom conversation.

Established for nearly fifteen years and like countless businesses, it been suffering the effects of the pandemic despite having all the correct procedures in place to keep students safe.

Antony wanted to know how to engage more people to attend classes, especially existing students. He wanted to know which ideas would be best to implement and which ones would continue to work after the pandemic.

The main issue has been how to get more students into classes and to reassure them that the dance school is complying with government guidelines, restrictions and social distancing regulations.

Can you provide a new and better experience?

Many popular museums now offer a less crowded experience than before, because of the restrictions on the number of people within given spaces. So we discussed different ideas for the dance school, by looking at some of the advantages that the pandemic is throwing up in terms of providing a new, different and possibly a better experience than before. Then these ideas would need to be communicating via a video walk round the studio or filmed live once a week for new starters.

Emotional branding

We also touched on some of the emotional barriers that new students have to overcome, especially men. I suggested a way of documenting them and then communicating these issues in a helpful and thoughtful way, either by creating a new web page, a short Q&A or a reassuring video clip that addresses each of them.

GREAT for physical, mental & social wellbeing

Dancing is wonderful for everyone’s physical, mental and social wellbeing, especially at this time, when we all have less contact with each other. So we discussed some ideas for using dance lessons to help companies with team building, by creating experiences to be shared by employees in the safety of their own homes, but still feel emotionally closer to colleagues.

Finally, people still want to celebrate important events or significant life milestones and are genuinely looking for new and different experiences that they can share digitally or in a safe, socially distanced way. So between us, we developed a number of ideas that would work.

The advantage of thinking differently

I’ll encourage you to think differently and positively about your company, brand or offer. Whilst saving you a significant amount of time by focussing on ideas that will make the biggest impact.

have a tricky challenge you'd like to share?

Contact Craig for a virtual coffee and chat via Zoom and he’ll explain how we’ll make your company or brand stronger and fitter in the future.