Create a better studio with Mission Marketing

One of the biggest challenges we face as studio owners are producing new ideas time and time again. How many ways can you spin a Jazz class or competition studio? What do you do if you have 3 studios on the same block as you? How can you differentiate your dance studio from the others?

How can we all continue to create content that excites and resonates with our audiences (and makes the internet a more useful place for everyone)? Product-based marketing puts some pretty serious limits on the topics you can cover. However, there’s a wealth of content that you can produce when you start thinking about mission-based marketing.

For example, Dance Studio Web Designs’ mission is to help studios grow enrollment. (We do make great websites, but our mission goes beyond that!)

What is mission-based marketing?

Mission-based marketing focuses on creating content that furthers your mission, instead of making content that sells your product. Mission-based marketing is not new. Large B2C companies like Red Bull and Nike have been relying on mission-based marketing forever. Nike is not just selling shoes, they are selling the idea that anyone can be an amazing athlete. Historically, they’ve relied on advertising to disseminate their messages, but more recently, those ads have been morphing into content.

Ultimately, mission-based marketing ends up attracting families who care about your mission and have a slew of related problems to solve. Some of those problems will be solved by your studio (as they will find out), but many others will be solved by the content ecosystem you create. Here are a few of the reasons mission-based marketing is so awesome: it’s way easier to come up with ideas for content and ways to sell your classes.

Here’s an example from a company you probably have never heard of HR software company BambooHR. Their tools are very valuable, but like video hosting, they’re not that interesting. What’s a lot more exciting is BambooHR’s mission: to help employees lead more enjoyable lives both inside and outside the workplace.

How do you define your mission?

It’s easy to take advantage of mission-based marketing right now. Here are some steps you can take to get started:

Write down your mission
What are you trying to help your students do? If you haven’t already written down your mission, you should. This won’t just benefit your content strategy: it’ll help make your whole studio stronger.

Establish an idea pipeline. For example: what are you selling to parents/students?

  1. Life lessons: Dance can teach hard work, patience, teamwork, organization, planning, deadlines, respect, health.
  2. What does music do for the brain?
  3. What does dance do for the body?
  4. What does performance do in terms of training children for the future

Instead of selling a great tap class, be selling your mission: We help your child prepare for the future by giving them mind, body, spirit skills

Ask your audience what other problems they have:
Chances are, your customers have lots of problems that you can help solve with content before you can solve them with your product. For example, does your child need stronger math skills? Believe it or not, music can help!

Great product marketing is extremely valuable, but its appeal is limited to people who are ready to buy. There are only so many analogies we can use to sell our products in interesting ways—while there are an unlimited number of things we can do to sell our missions.

Get your new website today! Perfect timing for back-to-school enrollment! Affordable prices for every budget!