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Hi Jake,
Great post – absolutely, it sounds like a sensible and justified move. My broad advice would be (a) tell your students well in advance of a price change, giving a set date when prices change – the new year is always a good time to change the price, though that might be a bit far off at the moment (b) when informing student provide a good reason for the change, blaming it on third party factors is a good idea… (c) be prepared for a few students to leave – this is natural in a price change (d) know that the change of price might effect new enquiry numbers coming through, but those students who do take up future lessons won’t bat an eyelid at the price as they have never known it to be cheaper.
It is always worth focusing on the target output, which is for you to be 100% book up for all the hours you want to teach at the highest possible value price for those hours. Having a blank price increase might not necessarily help achieve that – however, when combined with perhaps a discounted daytime rate with your new higher peak time rate that might really help achieve that aim.
In addition, keeping a flexible approach to pricing is a really sensible way to go – if you find that enquiries dry up or throughout the summer it gets particularly quiet then having discounted rates during those times makes a lot of sense as holding out for a higher price if people aren’t coming to lessons doesn’t help. Alternatively, if enquiry numbers and student attendance stay roughly the same it suggests that you are entirely justified in the price increase as the market can take it – my feeling is that Bath is likely to be able to take a slightly higher price point as a location, whereas a location like Middlesborough might not be able to.
Last thing to consider is whether you want the change to apply to all students, or only all new students – some teachers decide to apply a change to all new enquiries, while others implement it across the board. There are pros and cons to both – my thoughts are if handled in the right way your students will be very understanding of a reasonable price increase.
So it is a balance of analysing the marketplace in terms of new student enquiries, implementing a challenging political change for current students and reviewing these changes over time to see if they were the correct ones to make – all while keeping the single focus in mind of having 100% lesson time booked out at the highest possible price.
Some teachers who have higher prices actually earn less overall income than teachers with a slightly lower price point who can attract enough of the marketplace to have consistent student numbers each week. I have seen this a lot in the UK with teachers who go past the £30+ mark, where sometimes – depending on the location and instrument – their overall teaching income can decrease by passing that threshold.
In terms of how to introduce it there is a great post in the MGR Music Tuition forum that might help explore that more (you will need to be logged in to view) – https://musicteacher.kinsta.cloud/community/groups/music-teachers/forum/topic/price-increase-tips/ – hope this helps. If you would like to explore it more then I am more than happy to Skype sometime as it is something that I have helped a lot of teachers implement.
On another note, exploring the possibilities of getting all students travelling to a single location might be a really interesting one to explore – this will allow you to increase your potential teaching capacity as you reduce your travelling time, as well as justify a price increase if the location is a genuinely nice location to teach from (though this might also be an additional expense as well). Would you be interested in having all students travel to you in the long run?
Kind regards,
Matthew
