Summer continues here. It’s been in the 80’s here almost every day. Everything is starting to bloom and the trees are starting to get their leaves. Unfortunately the warmth has also brought out the waspers, snakes, and allergy season a bit early. I told my wife we’re either going to have a really hot summer or a cool one.
As the school year winds down we’re going to cover a few things you’ll want to make sure you’re doing.
We’re also working on making some changes to the site – offering some more things, additional payment plans, and other things. We should have that finished by Monday if things go well.
End of the school year tips
It won’t be long until the kids are out for their Summer break. Students are also preparing for Spring SAT / ACT dates. Final exams are also coming up. Here are some ideas that may help.
- The big thing you want to make sure you do is get some testimonials from your current students. Some business owners are afraid of asking customers for their testimonials. Don’t be. Ask them, and if you’ve helped them do better they will be happy to get you one. The best way to do it is to give your parents and students a form. Ask them to be specific about how they’ve improved. A great testimonial would be something like Tim’s tutor service helped Johnny improve his Algebra grade from a C to a A minus. He really cares about our kids The more specific and natural the comments the better. If you use a review service we’ll talk about using these in a future issue you can sit with them as they fill it out. Make sure you keep these on file and use them in your advertising, on your website, facebook page, and pull them out as you’re speaking to a future student.
- If you tutor high school students, now is an excellent time to think about holding some SAT / ACT prep courses. Here are some links for the next test dates.
http://sat.collegeboard.org/register/sat-dates
http://actstudent.org/regist/dates.html - Now is the time to start thinking about tutor sessions you’re going to have during the summer. We’ve talked about this before. You want to prepare now so you can let your current students know the dates and get them signed up. You can also ask your tutor students what their vacation plans are and schedule your sessions when most of your students will be in town.
Resources you can use
More ideas on testimonials although this is for a design company, you can get some good information here
http://www.cairril.com/articles/customertestimonials.html
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Bay State Tutoring says
Very relevant topic. I would say 50% of our students sign up for some sort of summer tutoring. Some weekly, some more than that. Various reasons. We aren’t attracting much new business. Any suggestions?
The-Apple says
Without doing some in depth study here are a couple of suggestions.
1. On each of your pages tell folks how to contact you / what to do next. I saw a nice button on the front page… you need to have it within the text of the individual pages. I would also get specific about prices. This helps to prequalify your customers. Tell them something like “To sign up for summer tutoring click here or call us @ 555-5555.
2. I think you only tutor within a certain area or location. You need to make this clear within the text of your pages – this could also help with your SEO results to bring more traffic to your site.
The site looks really nice. Good luck.