Speaker 1 0:00
Bar Hello friends. I'm Amanda Barr and I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan, and welcome to Dance principles united the podcast
Speaker 2 0:08
together. We are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio
Speaker 1 0:14
Join us as we talk everything from marketing, systems, studio culture, motherhood, life and everything in between. This
Unknown Speaker 0:22
is the dance principles united. Podcast,
Speaker 1 0:31
well, hello everyone, and welcome to the dance principles united. Podcast, I am joined yet again by the amazing Nathan. Today it's back here. How are you? Nathan,
Speaker 3 0:42
hey. BEC, another another week going really, really well. We are ticking along. We've got lots of exciting things happening, both in dense principles, tribe and studio growth club land, welcome lots of new members over the last month or so. So really exciting. They're getting to know those new studio owners and all the things that go with that. How about you? How's everything going in studio life?
Speaker 1 1:08
Yeah, it's great. We're doing dance for sick kids this week, which is such a fun week. I love it so much. And raising money for that. We had a really great call today with our new tribe members, actually, about employment and all the things, but Facebook ads, which is what we chatted about last time, did come up quite a few times. And I probably said this in the last podcast episode, but I'm going to say it again. You know you, if you're not advertising on Facebook and Instagram, how are you thinking that new people are going to come into your studio. I think that's a interesting thing, of we have to keep marketing. And what I said to them with their staff, I'm really ranting now, but what I said to them with their staff, Nathan, is no one ever could be expected to have 100% retention, right? Like you're never going to keep every single child in a class, it is absolutely not possible. So as a studio owner, you have to be then marketing to get those people in, because, you know, there's going to be that little drop off, yeah, 100% and
Speaker 3 2:11
that's something that I've really been talking about a lot lately. BEC, what you were saying about we just can't expect like students to stay with the one activity. And we often see studio owners at the moment lamenting that, you know, things aren't what they used to be, you know, when we were growing up and all those sorts of things. But there's been a march shift in the last five years, especially, right, that students are jumping between activities more and more. They're not necessarily staying as loyal to one sport or activity as they used to, and whilst Yes, on one hand, for our studios, that presents a little bit of a problem, but it also presents a huge opportunity. So if we can get more in the mindset of the huge opportunity that presents us, and the amount of students that are going to be out there consistently looking for new activities, then there's an absolute gold mine there. And exactly what you were saying as well, that, how do we expect people to find us? We know that there's lots of ways that are out there and that for so long, organic socials was, you know, a massive shot in the arm, and we didn't need to do much paid work on socials, but Facebook and Instagram have turned off that tap now. They've got us all they've got us all hooked. They've got us all addicted. We saw the the power that it can have, but now they've just raised the rent on it. You know, they were giving us free rent for years and years. And the reality of it in 2025 is that they is that they're going to charge us for it now, and we can still get such good value as local businesses by doing that.
Speaker 1 3:40
I love what you just said, that it's an opportunity, because I think we need to change our way of thinking and really realize that and think about it like that. You know, it's we always talk about it in our tribe, and SGC is that it's like your shop window, your social media is your shop window. And yes, people have a lot more choices, because there's a lot more shop windows out there that they can see now, but at the same time, you have the same chance as everyone else to show everyone what the amazing things that you're doing in your shop window, right? Yeah,
Speaker 3 4:12
and it's such a cheaper way to do it like I think I was saying last week, or I always say it so I can sometimes forget when, when I've said it when I haven't. But, you know, we used to have to pay, like you said, for the shop window on main street frontage. We used to have to pay exorbitant amounts in rent, whereas if we were sort of out in the industrial area, then we were at a bit of a disadvantage. But that physical location disadvantage has completely disappeared in 2025 and it's been replaced by what we can do with our websites, our socials, and the gateway to that now is having to pay for that access to our socials to get the kind of the kind of reach that we want to be able to generate consistent new leads, absolutely
Speaker 1 4:52
now, one of the things that I noticed, Nathan, it kills me when I see this, is that, you know, I'll be. Scrolling away on Facebook, and I'll see an ad come up for a dance studio. And I'm like, Yay, they're advertising good on them. And then I look at the location, and it's the North Shore, which would be a good hour and a half from me at peak hour, but probably an hour in non peak hour. Obviously, I'm not looking for a local activity that's going to be an hour away. I don't know about you, Nath, but I tend to pick the swim school that's three minutes away as opposed to 10 minutes away, because I want to spend the least amount of time traveling in my car. So where are they going? Wrong?
Speaker 3 5:36
Yeah, absolutely. And that was, like, you know, we touched on a few points, few key points in Facebook ads in part one of this last week, and definitely one of the key things we wanted to touch on this week, because it's an absolute key pillar of running those successful, paid Facebook and Instagram ads, is making sure that we've got our audiences correct. And to be honest, this has been in the past, one of the things that has understandably caused studio owners and local businesses in general a lot of pain around it, because the Facebook ads environment is just this huge, especially the back end where we set up this ad, where we set up these ads, is a huge tool, and there's just so many moving parts and audiences used to be a really, really confusing part of that. So people would go in, they'd try and set up their ads. They've watched a couple of YouTubes and maybe listen to a few podcasts, and heard about the importance of audiences, and then just got a bit lost, because it did used to be really complicated. But the good news is for us as dance studios, like you said, Beck, like you're only driving three minutes to the to a swim school, right? We have a specific circle, essentially like a geographic net around us that the overwhelming majority of our clients are going to come from, yeah. So that actually makes it a lot easier for us to pick the right audiences to show our ads to. We used to have to like, I said, like, even within our local areas, we used to have to get a little bit technical. We used to have to like, do what is called retargeting, and try and like, warm our audience up by getting them to watch our videos and then doing all these fancy things. But the good news is, with 2025 especially sorry, with AI in 2025 we we have been able to save ourselves a lot of time and money. And Facebook's getting and Instagram is getting better and better at showing those ads to the right people, just generally, right? Like, and all the big companies guys are starting to clue in on this. You like, I know, I don't know about you back, but I've noticed like, and look, I probably tune in more than others, but I've noticed that like, the quality of ads that I'm getting for like, products that I'm really interested in on my social feeds in the last six months just seems to have got more and more. I'm not if I'm just a bit nerd, or if you've noticed self starting similar, Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 8:06
I think there's, there's always new stuff coming up on my feed that I'm clicking through to which means I'm interested in it. And that's like, yeah, I've even opted into quite a few new brands lately because they're really targeting me so well. So I totally agree with that. Yeah, 100%
Speaker 3 8:25
and then when you click through, then their algorithm gets boosted, then they know that you're interested, then you're like, they're like, The platforms are getting better and better at doing that heavy lifting for us and saving us lots of time. So yeah, with your audiences, the number one thing, like you said, BEC, is to make sure that we've set that specific radius around our studio. So when you're setting up your audience, guys, the key thing is to make sure that it's not set still to all of Australia. Because you said, like, sometimes you saw one the other day on the north shore. The other day, I saw one in Queensland. Now I'm two hours south of Sydney, so I'm obviously a long way from Queensland, so I'm not going to be taking my kids up to Queensland. You're not going
Speaker 1 9:05
to take a 12 hour drive up to Queensland to go for a dance class. Maybe not, probably
Speaker 3 9:10
not, probably not. But like I said, it's a very common and very easy mistake to make, and the problem with it is is it just wastes you a lot of money, because basically how Facebook and Instagram ads work, is you pay for every set of eyeballs that get on that ad. So if you're showing your ad Australia wide, it's literally seeing 1000s of 1000s of sets of eyeballs that you're paying for right to see your ad that are never going to be interested in. So making sure, like I said, look for it in the locations bit. It defaults to Australia for everybody when you first go to set up it, and it's done at the ad set level. Make sure that you you can just, like, type in your town. But if you're going to do that, you make sure you type in all the surrounding suburbs. So what I always like to do, and what I coach our members on, is just to you can drop a little pin, and you can just. Set a radius of a circle to be five kilometers, 10 kilometers, 15 kilometers, depending on whether you're a metro or a regional area. So that's like, super, super important within audiences.
Speaker 1 10:11
I love that. No, I love how I know I always harp on about this with you. Nathan, I love how easy you make this stuff for our members, because I know for me, like, I find this stuff really tricky. You know, give me an elite ballet student, and I can correct that any day of the week. But, you know, this stuff for me is really hard to understand, but you on the videos for our members just make it seem so simple.
Speaker 3 10:37
Oh, thanks, BEC. And look, to be honest, if I have the elite ballet student in front of me, then, you know, that's why we have different strengths, right? But, yeah, and that, like I said, the key thing with audiences is to make sure, number one, we get that geographic circle right, and then there's not much else we have to have to do really. We generally try, especially if you're in a metro area, we try and, just like, dial it in a little bit to show there's like these things called interests that we can pick. And a common mistake I see people making with interests is you can write things like that. This your potential audience is going to be interested in dance classes or jazz class or ballet or things like that. And if you do that, what you're doing is you're making your audience smaller and smaller. Now the thing is, is that with a lot of new pit like people that we're attracting through our social media ads are often brand new to the world of dance. Yeah, of course, when they get into our world and we dazzle them and show them what an incredible community we are, then they're going to stay involved in the world of debts for a long time and paying us lots of money, but we're going to educate them on that over time. So we don't want to get like too narrow in the focuses they might not even think about liking those sorts of things yet. So we just put like one or two, like little, little interests, like parenting or children. Because what we want to do is we just want to give it the highest probability that somebody that sees our ads has kids and has kids, because if they have kids, they're more likely to going to be a potential client of ours. And like I said, we used to have to get quite like technical and nitty gritty with these things, but the power of AI in audiences, in the Facebook ads set up now just means that we can just be really broad and just show those ads to people within that area that are interested in pages to do with parenting or children, and away we go.
Speaker 1 12:39
I love that. I love that. And so if we set our ad up, how should we be checking in on it? Do we just set it up, leave it see what happens? Like, what do you think about that?
Speaker 3 12:50
Yeah. And so this is, like, it's a massive like, catch 22 we touched on it briefly last week, but it is something that is definitely worth chatting through. Again, the biggest mistake you can make is just putting them up and thinking down and letting them run for two weeks, three weeks, without checking back in on them, because but then the other side of that is people that are like, Well, I'm spending this money. I'm going to refresh the page every 30 minutes to see what's happening. Right? So we want to be we want to be nicely in the middle. We don't want to be sitting there, sitting there, refreshing the page all the time. But once we get our ads going, we want to give them a good sort of three to four days to find their feet. Because what the big algorithm is doing in the background is it's seeing what works and what doesn't, and this is why we were talking about last week as well, the importance of always having a couple of different things going on in your ads, so not just having one ad going at a time. So we set up a campaign with one ad set, but then within that ad set right we're right down at the bottom level. We were talking about this last week is at the ad level that we put two or three ads up at a time, because the beauty of that is, Facebook wants to get feedback for itself as well, but there's also a chance that we might just miss the mark with what we think is a great ad just doesn't resonate with our audience. And you talked about it last week, I know as well. Like, sometimes you've put up a video or a photo, you've put up, like, an epic one, an epic video and an awesome ad. And I'm like, Beck, I need a third one, please. And you're like, Ah, I'm not sure about I don't really like this one, but here, like, let's just put it up for now. And that afterthought one blows the other two out of the park. So like, it's, yeah, it is. Sometimes it can be crazy. Look, a lot of the time those awesome ones work as well. So like, please make sure we putting quality stuff out there as well. Please don't think that that's what I'm saying. But just making sure that we're always testing over those first three. Four days. And so then the feedback we get from our ads dashboard, and it'll tell us, like, which one Facebook thinks is performing better. So it's really important to like, yeah, to check back after a couple of days. Have your like, I said like, threes perfect. Like, we they always talk about the rule of threes in like, the Facebook coaching group that I'm in. So you might be testing like, two images and a video as like, three ads that are running at once. And then after four days, you come back in and you look at all your results and you're like, Huh, okay, that video is crushing both the images. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off the two images, and just let all of my spend go to the video for the next few days. And hopefully, yeah, they said, then check back in after another two days. Yeah. But it's yeah every, every couple of days, check back in and just see that those, those that feedback that you're getting from the market, from the people that are hopefully filling in your lead forms and contacting you about classes. Hopefully that's what you're getting back and we're listening to that feedback.
Speaker 1 16:07
And what would I be looking for to know that an ad is being successful?
Speaker 3 16:12
Yeah, without a doubt. So this is, this is the most important part, and what understandably, again, gets so many people thinking that Facebook ads aren't for them, because there is literally hundreds and hundreds of data, like specific, individual data points that you can look at for one ad. And when you're a multinational company, or you if you're an advertising executive, of course, you might be tapping into 3040, pieces of those data at a time. But good news is, as local business owners, we don't. I always talk to our guys about, there's really four that I look at, okay, and it's all about like, what are the things that we want our ads to do? Well, the first thing we need our ad to do is we need to capture people's attention, right? Think about how you yourself scroll your phone, right? How do you like, scroll your feeds? Do you sit there and, like, have like, five seconds looking at each individual post? Like, absolutely not. We all like, and I'm doing it like, if you're watching the YouTube, maybe you'll see but like, I'm flicking, like my thumb, like I'm scrolling my feet, right? We all just like, if something like, literally fraction of a second most of the time, if something doesn't grab us, we're on to the next one, right? So you've got to be thinking, that's how your potential audience is doing it. So what we need our ad to do is to stop the scroll. So the way that we do that is there's a metric in there called clicks, and then in brackets next to it, it's got the word all a double L. So I look at clicks all because that tells me, okay, like, how effective is this ad at stopping the scroll? Because when we click, that means that you know how like you can click see more on the text, and it blows it out to read the whole text. Or maybe you've got to swipe across, or you want to look at the image a bit bigger, you tap and you click on the screen. So every time that you do that, it's recording that as a click. And so that's why that that number, for me, tells me how effective it is at stopping the scroll. Now, you're going to need to run a couple of ads before you get a baseline for that number, because everybody's just going to be a little bit different, because then next to that clicks all you'll get a another metric called cost per click, and that really tells us, that's what gives us when I'm looking at ads that I'm running, that's what tells me, right? So is an ad effective? Like a campaign? The last pause campaign Beck, we were getting about $1 per per click, right? And that's what I look at for pause ads, yep. So anytime we're going better than that, I'm like, sweep, keep it running. Once that cost per click starts to rise a little bit, that's telling me maybe people are getting a bit tired of seeing this ad. Let's get some new stuff out there so that that cost per click is a key one, because that tells me all right, how engaged are people, and how effective is my ad at stopping people scrolling past and actually taking some interest? Love
Speaker 1 19:27
it is that all four, no, no,
Speaker 3 19:31
that was two. We're only halfway. That's okay. But then the most important one now, we talked about last week that there's lots of different objectives that we can set up with our Facebook ads, but for most people, I'd love you to start setting up leads campaigns. So whether that is we used to run messages campaigns, but we've seen the effectiveness of those come down Facebook. Lead formats at the moment is what all lead formats. They're called because we can do them on Instagram as well. Obviously, lead formats is what we're seeing being. The most effective and efficient for bang for your buck at the moment. So obviously, key one you're going to look at is just how many leads have you got in, if you've spent 200 bucks in the last 10 days, how many leads have you got in? Nice and simple, right? And then off the back of that is the the other metric that's that ties in with that is the cost per lead. So if you've spent 200 bucks and you've got 10 leads in well, you're 200 divided by the 10 leads, means you're getting about $20 per lead, right? And again, like people always ask, like, you know, what's a benchmark? What's a it varies place to place, right? So poor Studios is in Western Sydney, highly saturated market, with not only loads of dance studios, but remember, with our Facebook ads, guys, we're competing against karate schools, music schools, swim school, like anybody that's vying for kids activities, they're our competition in ABS land as well. So the amount of those things in the Penrith area is ludicrous. So if we can get $20 per lead for the pause ads, then we're stoked. But some of our members in more regional areas get $10 or less as well. So like, if they were getting $20 a lead, we'd be like, what's going on here? Like, there's something not working here. So you've always got, like I said, with all of these things, you've always got to, like, run a few yourself to get your baseline and then just be consistently trying to improve
Speaker 1 21:28
it. I love it, and I know as well, like, I know some people will think that that's a lot of money, and it is, but when you actually do the math on the fact that that person then enrolls and how, you know, even if they say, for a term, that you've just made $180 even if they do one class, it's just like, you've got to look, you've got to spend money to make money, right? I think I just, I want to really say that to everyone out there, you must spend money to make money. It's just so important to do that. Like
Speaker 3 21:59
I said, like that example where it's $200 and people like, oh, I only got two enrollments from that. Like, you own, you got two enrollments from that. Like you said that, like, that means you spent $200.02 times, 180s, three, $60 just in the first term. So you're already in front. Like that ad spend is almost double, like, paid for itself. And so, like, imagine what, like, once you get forced, if you got four or five enrollments from that, like, that number just starts getting exponentially bigger. And it's like, I said, like, hopefully, as a business owner, guys, if I said to you, like, hey, like, if you just give me $200 today, I'm going to give you $360 back in two weeks. I hope you'd take that on, because, like, that's what it is, right?
Speaker 1 22:45
Yeah, and it's, it's not seeing it as an instant thing either. Like, you know that student will most likely stay for two, three terms, hopefully for a lifetime. They'll buy costumes. They probably buy uniform. They probably opt into, there's so many other things that people opt into, then maybe they tell their friend about it, and their friend comes along, and it's just that follow on effect of that I was saying that to tribe members today, Nate like you just have to realize the follow on effect of really nurturing that lead, understanding that that person is probably going to bring so many more other people In.
Speaker 3 23:20
Oh, you were talking about, from your perspective, going to your gym, right? Yeah. Like, how many people have you taken along to your gym? Well,
Speaker 1 23:28
I'd say there'd be more than 10, at $65 a week. So, you know, there's probably 650 interestingly, Nathan, he's a smart business owner. He knows the power of, you know, having the local dance studio person there, and he's asked to interview me for an ad for his Yes Mark Of which, of course, I've said yes to, but I think that's exactly it like. And I see this even with some of our preschool parents. You know, they bring their preschooler in. Their preschooler starts loving it. Then the cousins start coming, then their friend from down the road starts coming, and then there's, you know, sibling comes because they've turned two now, and they started that's what I'm talking about. Like there's just so many people that come into the world because of that one person. And I was saying to the tribe members today, like just nurturing that lead when they come in and really talking to them, because that's what BFT did. They picked up the phone and spoke to me for an hour. They spoke to Tim separately for an hour, and we're so invested, but surely
Speaker 3 24:33
Tim's conversation would have been close to three hours, because Tim,
Speaker 1 24:37
I'm sure it was especially about a gym.
Speaker 3 24:44
Yeah, and then, like, it's like, you said, like, it's just like, so, so important. And this is what like, get your Facebook ad started. But this is what we really love, diving into with our members, to then zoom out and look at the whole bigger picture of, like, some. Something that you're super passionate about is consistently doing this BEC, because sometimes it's not, you know, sometimes they don't click directly through the ad and fill in that form. And so we don't get the little like plus one in our, you know, leads in the Facebook Ads Manager. But once we start zooming out and looking at our studio as a whole, over three months, six months, 12 months, and we look back and you're like, Okay, I've spent consistently over this last six months, Facebook says I've got this many leads through but when you actually zoom out, because what so many people do and like, I'm sure, so many people listening to this and that do as consumers, you don't necessarily click through the ad, but you click through to the Facebook or the Insta page, you have a little bit of a stalk around there. Maybe you drop them a DM, maybe you get on over through via their profile, you get on over to the website, and you put in a form through there instead. Like, so like, sometimes it's not all about that number that shows up in just in the ads manager. It's the amount of like growth that your studio then starts having over those three, 612, month periods by staying consistent with it. And
Speaker 1 26:09
we've seen so many incredible results with staying consistent. And I was just gonna shout out to Robin from prodigy, because I know when we first started working with her, I think she had maybe 150 170 kids, and she told us the other day that she just hit 700 and it is, and I know when we first met her, she didn't think that Facebook Ads work. She wasn't using them consistently, and it is and her area is so saturated, it's crazy. I think it's worse than Penrith. She has, I don't know how many dance studios over there, but there would be at least 20 or 30 within a tent.
Unknown Speaker 26:51
She's one in the same complex as
Unknown Speaker 26:53
her. Yeah, as well. Yeah, crazy, like huge.
Speaker 1 26:56
But that consistency of marketing and she is doing all the things. We always say that do all the things, but that consistency of marketing has just been such a game changer for her, and not just for her, for so many of our members that are just, you know, getting it right. First of all, you've got to learn. And in my opinion, Nate's the best person to learn from, and he does videos in tribe all the time. So getting it right, understanding it, and then just continuing to be consistent with it is the key. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 27:25
100% 100%
Speaker 1 27:29
Well, thank you so much, friends. I hope you have really enjoyed today's episode. If you are interested in learning from Nath on all things Facebook and Instagram ads, jump into tribe with us. We would love to have you come along the ride. It is an amazing group of studio owners, and yeah, we love supporting everyone and helping them out. So thanks. Nate, you are the best and a world
Speaker 3 27:51
of knowledge. Thanks so much. BEC, always love chatting. Thanks everybody. Bye. Bye. We
Speaker 2 27:58
hope you enjoyed this episode of the dance principles United podcast. If you'd love to learn more from us, we have a special offer just for our podcast listeners, go to the link in the show notes right now to get two weeks free in dance principles United tribe. We would love to see you there. You.
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