Case Study – Selling places on an adult’s art course

Selling specialist courses to a niche market. An exercise in customer profiling, copywriting and e-commerce selling techniques.

The Problem

When you want to launch something niche like an arts class to an unknown audience it’s difficult to know how to pitch it. Trying to appeal to everyone won’t attract anyone. 

Narrowing down your potential audience to an identifiable group means you can really target your marketing to them.

Arts teacher Jenny Wilson and her colleague Lynne Robinson were launching the new arts class at a local community centre. It was to run over six weeks in the evenings, and was priced at £60 per seat.

Discussions with Jenny Wilson revealed people likely to be interested in taking her arts course were those who had a creative/artistic interest earlier in their lives, but had put it on hold when work or family had got in the way.

They needed to sell a minimum of six places to make the course economically viable, but could take up to 15 people; a point which becomes relevant later.

Neil created a customer persona for someone who the course would appeal to. All the copy was aimed at a middle aged person who was probably frustrated about not being as creative as their younger self had looked like being. They’d put family and career before themselves for a long time, but now had some time available. They would need some guidance on where to pick up the threads of being an artist again.

This approach wouldn’t work for everyone, but for those it was aimed at, it would have a very strong appeal. This course was the thing they’d been waiting for all these years to get them motivated and back creating. 

The course was to create a craft art journal, a practical piece of art that could live on the shelf, yet be flexible with its subject matter and have many interpretations and uses.

The first image for the campaign was supplied by Jenny.

The campaign was launched on the community centre’s website, Instagram account and Facebook page with the following entry:

Do you want to create stuff but don’t get the chance? Did you used to paint, draw or be involved in some other kind of craft activity? Maybe you lost the habit because you just don’t have the time?

We all have busy lives and our creative urges can get lost somewhere between filing last year’s accounts and cleaning the kitchen floor.

Now it’s time to think about you for a change and do something for yourself.

Art, crafting, creating and making is good for the soul and makes you feel happy. We like that kind of thing because we want to make the world a better place. So, when Jenny Wilson of Jenny @Artreach and Lynne Robinson offered to run some arts courses we thought it was a great idea.

Jenny and Lynne will be running a six week arts course starting on Monday 24th of February right here in the Straw Bale Cafe. You will get tea and coffee, and can even sample some of our legendary home made cakes.

That seemed quite effective, and we managed to sell nearly half of the 15 available seats within a week. Then, sales stopped.

To give sales a second push Neil was to highlight what students would be doing on the course:

So what is a Creative Sketchbook? The quick answer is ‘whatever you want it to be.’ I realise that isn’t very helpful.

A quick way to describe it would be ‘an expressive journal.’ You use it to record a journey through your thoughts and emotions. 

This could be a journey in your mind, where you don’t leave your kitchen table, or it could be a journey through time documenting part of your life, or that of a loved one. You could even use it to record a physical journey, collecting objects and memories along the way. What you collect will bring back memories and trigger emotions. 

One of the biggest rules is, there aren’t any rules. You have complete permission to use what works for you as your art materials. Images, writing, scraps of material, paint, plants, lyrics, quotations as well as plants; anything that will fit in a book really.

Your artist’s journal is your free space to record and express yourself in any way you want.

It’s important not to compare your sketchbook to anyone else’s, or get hung up on any ‘mistakes’ you make along the way. Your sketchbook is your expression. It can sit on your shelf, or be brought out at any time to bring back memories of your journey wherever it takes you. It helps you develop your artistic practice.

Jenny and Lynne will be able to guide you through the process of making something uniquely yours.

Seats on this course are starting to sell fast, so if you want to start your artistic journey, book your place now.

Rather than put the remaining seats available all at once, we put the remaining seats on the site a few at a time. This introduced the notion of scarcity into sales. Is this wrong? Sometimes people fully intend to book onto a course or make a purchase, but they may be busy at the time and intend to come back to it. Though distractions they sometimes forget and the purchase doesn’t happen. By introducing the notion of scarcity, people book there and then, it helps them concentrate their thinking and make up their mind. 

On this occasion, it seemed to do the trick and within two weeks, all the seats were sold.

If you have a campaign you need help with or want me to suggest improvements for your digital marketing give me a call or email me now.