Student Funnel 01: A Service Leads People To A Product

Sara Lucy Miller recently shared with our group the magnificent retooling of her Alexander Technique teaching into Effortless Body Movement (EBM). She presents it in a style which makes it accessible and easily understood, and offers an "exercise programme" that people find more comfortable as a starting point. You can even get it on video. Half of the video for free at least - what we call a loss leader. She is positioning EBM as a product people want, then leading them down a path to becoming students. This is what we call a student funnel, aka as a Sales Funnel. It is a huge improvement on throwing a flyer up at the YMCA saying: "Private Lessons in the Alexander Technique. Ring here." Looking at Sara's materials, it is easy for people to understand what is on offer, easy to give EBM a trial run, easy to get slowly involved as she ratchets up the commitment level. This is an excellent student funnel. However, as far as I can understand, EBM is still positioned in the same niche as Alexander Technique itself, albeit in a way now highly more likely to draw in a multi-niche crowd. What is the Alexander Technique niche offering the crowd? These days it is a lot about pain relief, getting rid of tension habits, dealing with stress, finding ease and freedom - these kinds of things. It's a highly competitive market: Alexander Technique no longer exclusively offers these benefits - today there are literally hundreds of individual techniques that offer some (or all) of these benefits. Making your service appropriate, easy to understand and accessible all combine to attract students successfully into an Alexander Technique practice. And that involves creating a "service product" that people can buy if they want to. What Is A Service? A service is something you offer people that exactly meets their wish. Researching what people want, and crafting a service to meet that want, is one of the arts of creating a successful biz. The closer you can get to satisfying your students' wish, the more likely they are to pay you for the service, which is why I recommend drilling down into a niche that is big enough to support you, yet small enough to understand really, really well. What Is a Product? However, a person can be sold on your service, and hate your product. Your service is packaged into a "product" which can be a workshop, an evening class, a three month course, even a teacher training. Anything they like. This is all about giving the answers to these questions that students want to hear: -When is it? -How long is it? -Who is delivering it? -Where will it be held? -How much does it cost? -What do I need to bring? -What will you ask me to do? -Who else will be there? -and anything else! Any or all of these can be major concerns for new students. This was my situation in Japan until I took the courage to re-engineer my service to offer part-time "products" for time or money challenged people. Once I managed to achieve that - and it took the kind of effort I am guessing Sara has put into EBM - the large pool of people I had built over the previous 7 years, gushed out of their homes like an opening flood gate to sign up for my new products. I finally realized: for years they have loved my service, but hated my products. How about your people? Is your product matching what your market wants? In the case of EBM, the big question to answer is: who will buy the product? What's the niche? What's the avatar? For this new series on Student Funnels - let's start by everyone sharing the most popular product you have now (or in the past) in terms of the number of people who are buying it or it's profitability for you? Describe it for everyone... https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/