Advertising Part 1
Today you’re going to work on creating some business cards. We’ll be using them for a variety of different purposes over the next few days so we’ll work on preparing them so we’ll have them when we need them.
Creating the Business Card –
On your business card you’ll want to have the following –
Name – contact info (phone / email etc).
What you’ll be tutoring. The area of students you can tutor. How you are qualified to tutor their child, and A sales bit.
John Smith Tutoring
Call 555-5555 or email us @ me@mymail.com.
Tutoring High School Math (Algebra, Precalc, Calculus and more).
We have a bachelors degree in Math, we would love to make your child our next success story. Bring this card and get the first tutor session free.
If you use Microsoft Word you can find some really nice business card templates here –
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT010253223.aspx
I like to use black and white since these are cheaper to print. You’ll want to make about 50 or so.
Make a List –
Now you want to think about friends and family members that you know. First you’ll want to concentrate on people who live within your tutor service area. On your list you’ll want to put the easiest way to contact them – by phone, email, facebook etc.
Start contacting the list – phone those you can first, then email the others. When you call them after catching up a bit, let them know you’ll be tutoring. Something along the lines of….
I’m starting a tutoring business this fall, we’ll be focusing on High School math. I was wondering if you could help us out.
(wait for response) – they’ll either say yes or no with an excuse – usually the excuse revolves around their kids (our kids are in kindergarten or college). If that is the excuse you’ll then ask them if they know anyone who lives in your service are that may need some help.
If they say yes then ask them if you can give them some business cards. Even if they say no you can ask them to take some business cards for you.
If you’re on facebook you’ll want to announce it there as well. Keep it simple and non salesy. Something like – Hey friends wanted to let you know we’ll be tutoring High School Math this year for students who live in the (your county / district) area. If you have a student that needs some help (or know someone that does) we would love to help them. You can send us a message. Thanks much.
We talk quite a bit in our tutoring business guide about using facebook to get students, but this is a wonderful place to start.
Patricia S McNeil says
CAN YOU HELP DIRECT ME IN THE AREA OF SOME FORMAL TRAINING AND HOW MUCH WOULD BE SUFFICIENT? AS I STATED EARLIER ENGLISH/GRAMMAR IS WHAT I’M BEST AT…OR IS THE BOOK THAT YOU’RE OFFERING WHAT I COULD USE TO GET STARTED?
The-Apple says
Hi Patricia,
We have two things you can use if you wish. Or you can use the free advice we have and work on getting a few students first.
We have a pdf and videos – http://www.cleverapple.com/howtostartatutoringservice.html
We have the pdf, videos, and a series on online tutoring – which takes you through the process of building a website, getting traffic to it, tutoring online etc. http://www.cleverapple.com/onlinetutoringguide2.html