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Week 3 Clarify Your Message

If you confuse, you lose.

Donald Miller – StoryBrand

It’s all very well to have a pretty looking website, featuring a lovely picture of you or a video of you performing on stage. But the real question here is “does it convert your web visitors into paying students?“. Because, ultimately, this is what we want: to use our website as a tool to make money. Now let’s take a step back for a second and think about how you search for something online. It is very likely that you already have something in mind before you’re typing your search words on to Google. Now imagine this is your potential student. What do you think they would put in on into the Google search box to find you? Say they type in “Beginners tango online classes.” Will Google list your website on the result page to them? Will it be on the first page or buried deep on the 10th or 12th page? Understand that Google is crawling for relevant words. Pretty websites don’t sell things, it’s the words that sell things. Then let’s assume people are able to find you (how they can find you is a completely separate topic). What we’re learning here this week is how we can shape our message to persuade our web visitors to stay on a bit longer on our website, so that they can learn more about us and hopefully then convinced to purchase one of our classes.


Here’s this week’s Daily Prompts:

Day 1: Who would you like to serve? Be specific.

My dance classes are good for everyone‘ is not specific enough. Aiming your messages to the average mass will only make you fall into mediocrity. In our Marketing Course we talk about creating a Student Persona, but we can start today simply by having a think about it. Who would be your ideal student? What’s their age range? Where do they live? Then go beyond their demographics. Where do they hangout on social media? What’s their lifestyle like? What’s their outlook on life? What characteristics they have that make you love teaching them in class? Getting to know your ideal student is like getting to know a real person, your actions towards them will be different once you know them a little bit better. Your message to them will be different. Hence being specific will help shaping up your brand message.

Day 2: Discover what your ‘superpowers’ are.

Go back to day 2 prompt on week 1 about finding your unique selling point(s), and then try to dig deeper into it with your ideal student in mind. What ‘superpower’ do you have that will make them happy? When your superpowers align with what your ideal student are looking for, when your superpowers can help them solve their problem, you’ll be raising your chance of getting them signing up to your dance classes and keeping them for a long time.

Day 3: Create a clear and simple tagline for your header/subheader.

Using the image of your ideal student we defined on day 1 and your superpowers from day 2 prompt, now create a tagline that is compelling to your web visitors. Keep in mind the quote above – that if your message is confusing, you will very quickly lose your prospects.

Some examples:

“Liven up your social life by learning Salsa with us.
Fun, energetic, and very social Salsa classes from Beginners to Advanced levels.”

“Learn Salsa in a relaxed atmosphere.
Drop-in classes. No need to book in advance. No need to come with a partner.

“Learn to dance Salsa at Edinburgh’s favourite Salsa school.
We have a structured course, two beginners classes weekly, and free taster classes!

Hope you can see from the examples above that each one has a different target market and unique selling points. Take your time to play with the words. Copywriting is not easy. But keep trying until you find something you are happy with, or reach out to us if you need extra help.

Day 4: Create the text for your homepage.

Now that you have your header/subheader sorted, let’s have a look at the rest of your website. Your homepage should at least include the following:

  • A compelling Header/Subheader – to persuade your web visitors to stay longer on your website and find out more about you.
  • A Call To Action (CTA) – to tell them what to do/ where to go to purchase your classes.
  • Display of Success – to give them visual images of what their life would be like once they join your classes.
  • Categories – to organise your content so that it’s easy to navigate for your web visitor.
  • Links to Social Media – to help them get to know you even better through your social media posts.

For further explanation on the above points, download this FREE ebook: 5 Things Your Website Should Include.

Day 5: Create better Social Media posts.

Now that we have our ideal student in mind and understand that we can offer something of value that can help make their life better, we should be able to create better social media posts. Remember that we need to be social on social media (by definition), it is not a sales tool. Hopefully now you can see why only posting about our classes timetable on Facebook, like what most other dance instructors do, are simply not enough and won’t work. Write your social media posts as if you’re talking to a real person (ie. your ideal student) with the intention of helping them make their life better by using the ‘superpowers‘ you have. Make sure you follow the 3Es rule – that your posts should either be Engaging, Educating, Entertaining, or any combination of those. Now go back to your Social Media calendar in 90 day marketing plan and start creating your great posts.


Keep practising refining your message. When you have a specific target market in mind and know what message you want to convey across, you will attract the people who are interested in you and what you have to offer. You will start with quality prospects. Don’t worry about trying to convince people who aren’t interested in the first place, focus on serving your own tribe and you’ll do well.