Results Of Study Reveal Why Many Guitar Teachers Don't Get A Lot Of Students

June 26, 2010 (PRLEAP.COM) Entertainment News
Guitar teacher trainer Tom Hess publishes results of a worldwide study about why guitar teachers find it difficult to consistently attract a lot of students.

"In addition to training hundreds of guitar teachers how to teach more effectively and to build a successful guitar teaching business, I offer several free guitar teacher surveys on my website that allow guitar instructors to test their effectiveness in various areas of their business. One of these areas is getting new guitar students. From analyzing the survey results, I found that most guitar teachers make very similar damaging mistakes in this area of their teaching."

Hess released his survey findings in the article about how to get guitar students.

Among the most common reasons why guitar teachers do not get a lot of students, Hess identified the following:

1. Relying on a single promotional tool to bring many new students. Most guitar teachers invest a lot of time into making a great ad, or perfecting their teaching website, their business cards, or other aspects of marketing. Hess says: "Although doing this is better than doing nothing, refining and using advertising tools in isolation as most teachers do, does little to help bring a lot of guitar students. One of the reasons why this is so is because any single advertising medium is limited in what it can do to bring large numbers of students consistently and reliably. When only one tool is used, it will work with a small percentage of all guitar students, but many more guitarists will never decide to begin lessons."

2. Copying marketing tactics from other teachers. Because most guitar teachers receive no training whatsoever on how to teach guitar, their main tactics for marketing themselves come from copying ideas from other guitar teachers in hopes that this will work for them. Hess says: "Problems with this approach are very similar to the ones that occur from focusing too much on only a single method of finding guitar students. In most cases, a specific advertising tactic (even if it is truly great) will not work all by itself to consistently bring a large number of guitar students. What is needed instead is an understanding of how the tactic fits into the big picture of the marketing strategy that is tailored to one's specific guitar student market, situation and goals."

Since most guitar teachers do not have reliable ways of consistently getting new students on their own, when marketing ideas are copied from one teacher by another, the result, with a few rare exceptions, is "the blind leading the blind".

3. Trying to impress a potential student with irrelevant credentials. Contrary to popular belief, guitar students do not look for guitar teachers with the most advanced music degree or with the most skills as players. Hess states: "Guitar students only decide to take lessons to solve their guitar playing problems and to overcome their musical frustrations. So any successful guitar teacher knows to avoid flaunting their own musical accomplishments and instead is quick to show undeniable proof of being able to create massive results with guitar players. After this is demonstrated, getting more guitar students becomes much easier."

Hess' guitar teacher survey about how to attract more guitar students can be found on http://tomhess.net