John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) talks with business and marketing coach Sara Campbell of Savvy Music Studio about using your existing student relationships to transform your marketing. Instead of inventing ideal client personas or copying flashy social media tactics, Sarah shows how the language you already use in lessons and the real progress you see every week are your best marketing tools.
In this episode:
- Why inauthentic tactics (fake scarcity, polarizing posts, product-style marketing) feel icky for music teachers
- How focusing on truth, trust, and niche specialization attracts better-fit clients.
- Why authenticity in communication is more effective than marketing jargon, and how to niche down to find your unique voice as an instructor
- Practical tips like capturing small lesson moments, asking students what mattered in a lesson, and marketing to your current families as much as to prospects.
This episode offers clear, actionable advice for studio owners who want to market more authentically, improve retention, and grow by leaning into what already works in their studio.
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Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.493)
Welcome to Rock School of Proprietor podcast. My name is John Kozicki and joining me today is the founder of Savvy Music Studio where she helps music school owners with business strategy and marketing. And she’s also the owner of Sarah’s Music Studio where she teaches voice and piano, Sarah Campbell. Hey, how are you today?
Sara Campbell (00:25.142)
Great, John. I’m so excited to have this conversation.
John Kozicki (00:28.633)
Yeah, me too. In particular because I have been following you on socials for, I don’t know, like a while. And every time I see you have like shorter posts and then you have longer posts. And when I get into those longer posts and I read them, I think, man, there’s something like very authentic about those posts that you share.
And it’s also very effective because I feel like your personality really comes through in those longer posts. It’s no wonder that you help music school owners and instructors with their marketing because that stuff is great. And that’s what I wanted to talk about today. In particular, you you shared a post on Facebook a few months back about marketing giving
music school owners or instructors, “the ick,” as you say. Yeah. Well, I loved it. I loved it. And but first, I guess we’ll dig deeper into what that means. The ick, right? But it feels I mean, the short version is that marketing and promoting yourself, I think sometimes feels maybe gross and inauthentic. Why do you think
Sara Campbell (01:31.063)
Yes, “the ick” was one of my… that was a fun rant.
John Kozicki (01:55.587)
Music school owners and instructors have such a hard time when it comes to marketing.
Sara Campbell (02:01.336)
Gosh, there’s so many layers to this. think for many people, marketing feels very performative. And because of that, they feel like they have to put on this persona, or they have to be at a certain level of professional. And so there’s that aspect. I think also, it depends on your background, but many people feel uncomfortable with marketing because it’s essentially tooting your own horn. And depending on how you were raised, that is something you were told not
John Kozicki (02:08.09)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (02:27.375)
Yeah.
Sara Campbell (02:30.762)
to do. So that can feel icky too. And then I guess, you you read it in my post, but there’s just a lot of crappy advice out there about marketing. And a lot of it does not translate well into a service based industry, which is what we are. And so when people try to take that advice, much of which is really like old school, outdated stuff that doesn’t work anymore.
John Kozicki (02:42.17)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (03:00.234)
And when they try to take that and bring it into our industry, it feels gross. Like some of the things that people learn to do, doesn’t feel authentic. doesn’t feel, you know, it feels like it has to be loud and trendy and polarizing. that it just doesn’t feel good to market in that way.
John Kozicki (03:07.3)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (03:17.954)
Yeah. Right.
John Kozicki (03:24.494)
Well, yeah, and in my when I when I read that post, that’s when I initially reached out to you and I said, let’s talk about this. I would love to talk about this on the podcast because my take on it and and obviously expand on this if you’d like. But my take on it is that most music school owners went to school for music and that’s what they know. And they don’t know
about marketing. so as a result, what they have to do is they have to learn. They have to learn quickly. So what do you do? Well, if you’re going to market on social media, you’re inundated with other people trying to sell you things and like it or not, your your algorithm has already been been established for you to give you certain things. And what we see on social media
is very polarizing. You use that term and it’s exactly designed to be that way. So we see a lot of divisive things and tactics from people trying to sell us things. And so if you don’t know, you just assume like, OK, I guess that’s what I have to do because social media is designed that way. And cutting through that is difficult. But I think to shine a positive light on this,
Well, yes, that’s what we see mostly on social media is the divisiveness and the polarization.
Because we’re offering a service, the people who want to use our service really want authenticity. They really don’t want that polarization. So I think it serves us to try and figure out, how do we be authentic and reach those people and kind of reject those tactics that we see on social media?
Sara Campbell (05:22.881)
That’s so true. you know, I think one of the things that gets music teachers kind of into trouble with marketing too, is that we automatically equate marketing with social media. And like, that’s our first thing that we think about. And so then we start thinking, we have to like, we have to behave like influencers. We have to, you know, do that.
John Kozicki (05:39.099)
Yes.
Sara Campbell (05:48.898)
do that kind of style of marketing. And that can feel like pretending. And the second that marketing feels like pretending, your brain tends to go into rejection mode. And you just don’t want to do it because it feels awkward and weird and salesy and kind of gross. So I think one of the things that I like to tell people is social media is just one tool in your toolbox.
John Kozicki (06:00.623)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (06:17.675)
you when it comes to putting together marketing strategy. And I, I often will, you know, when people come to me, they’ll say, I need help with my social media for my marketing. And I said, well, let’s look at all your other marketing first. Let’s examine what’s going on and, know, figure out, you know, do you know who you’re talking to? Do you know what you’re selling? Do you know how to, you know, speak to the people that you want to attract?
John Kozicki (06:32.229)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (06:45.069)
And, you know, let’s take it off of social media for a second and look at some of your other marketing channels and see what’s going on there.
John Kozicki (06:53.561)
Yeah, yeah. And I think getting into that idea of the different marketing channels, I can definitely see where all this stuff gets messy, right? And I’ve actually mentioned this on previous episodes, but I think it’s worth mentioning in context here. Marketing’s like this huge umbrella. And underneath that umbrella, you’ve got your brand.
and your strategy, and then you’ve got tactics like social media, right? Facebook’s different than Instagram, Instagram’s different than TikTok, and email’s different than all of them. And if you’re going to do direct mail, that’s another tactic, and you might have to, you know, switch things up. So when you sort of look at all those channels, things start to get really messy. How do I deliver my message? But you have to have that message first.
you have to understand like, well, what is it that’s kind of at the top of the umbrella? So that way everything sort of flows down into those different channels.
Sara Campbell (07:57.326)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (08:01.643)
Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s where people get stuck. They don’t have their messaging in place and they don’t really understand what they’re saying and who they’re saying it to. And if you don’t understand that, it doesn’t matter what tactic you choose, you whether you’re, you just named a whole bunch of them, you know, if it doesn’t matter which one you choose, if you can’t be really clear about what you want to say and who you want to say it to.
John Kozicki (08:27.768)
Right, so what would you say are, I mean, we talked really generally about those icky social media posts, right? What would you say are a few that as service providers, we should maybe avoid?
Sara Campbell (08:38.039)
Yeah.
Sara Campbell (08:46.253)
Okay, this is a good question. think social media kind of trains us to think that, you know, results are going to be quick. It trains us to expect quick wins, know, viral moments, you know, these extreme examples of things that people post and
John Kozicki (09:04.398)
which can work if you’re selling a product.
Sara Campbell (09:07.853)
Yes, exactly. It can be great for selling products, but the way people buy services is not the same way that people buy products. And I think especially with music, depending on, know, because there’s so many different types of music lessons out there, there’s going to be a different, you know, length of, you know, the sales process and, you know, buyers are going to come in differently. So
What are the things that we should avoid? What are the things that feel icky? I think it’s when we try to market people who are selling products and we rely on things like false scarcity. So for example, saying things like, we only have two spots left, when that’s not the truth, that’s going to feel awkward coming out of your mouth. And it’s going to feel awkward when you write it.
John Kozicki (09:45.722)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (10:05.195)
So I think false scarcity is one of those things. And I also think that leaning too far into pain points. So just to define that, really digging into what is it that people are struggling with. And this applies more to people, I think, who teach adults.
John Kozicki (10:16.42)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (10:30.509)
Not so much, a six-year-old who wants to explore piano lessons does not have a pain point. Their parents, their parents might have some pain points about like getting, it’s a struggle to get them to practice or it’s hard to fit things into a schedule. But I think leaning too far into pain points can feel kind of disingenuous. And those things.
John Kozicki (10:36.132)
Right.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (10:55.637)
doing the viral stuff, doing the stuff that we think is going to bring us quick wins, they often don’t work. And they can come across as desperate. And they’re not really communicating anything that clients really want to see. They really, mean, learning an instrument or learning how to sing is something that can be deeply personal to people. And
John Kozicki (11:03.064)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (11:14.124)
Right.
John Kozicki (11:24.13)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (11:24.663)
There needs to be a really solid level of trust for someone to go, OK, well, this is the person that I trust with my voice. This is the person that I trust with the injury that I sustained learning how to play piano in college. And now I’m scared to go back to playing. There has to be a level of trust involved. And that’s what we really need to be focused on.
John Kozicki (11:35.119)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (11:46.479)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (11:51.887)
That’s great. Yeah. But that’s exactly where it gets tricky, right? Because how do you get people to trust you? Well, you like people trust you when you are your authentic self, right? People don’t trust you when you when you like, kind of lie a little bit or create those like, like you mentioned, fake scarcity, or fear tactics, right? So the trust is going going to come from
us being our true selves. and authenticity is a big one with me. that really is part of what attracted me to the social media posts that I see that you put out there. It’s that, that real personality, like your real voice coming through. So what then conversely is obviously that’s what makes good marketing, but how, how would you say
a studio owner start to start to find their their true voice or their authentic self so that they can start to present that in their marketing rather than these really base level things like. OK, here’s a here’s a for instance I saw just this morning. I saw a Facebook post in a community Facebook group.
I’m a music teacher, voice, piano, DM me. That was it. You know, and I think, okay, if I were to analyze that, that’s like really like, yes, it’s bare bones. This is what they’re they’re offering. I would expect that the clients that that type of attracts might be the clients who aren’t really interested in finding out a little bit more about that person.
And as a result, the retention might not be so great with those types of students, right? So how would you say we start to find how to craft our marketing so that it feels more genuine?
Sara Campbell (13:55.885)
Hmm.
Sara Campbell (14:07.853)
And it’s so interesting. that post that you mentioned, it’s not, you know, they weren’t wrong. They were saying exactly what they did. But what was really missing there is, well, what is their approach? Who do they specialize in? And that sort of thing. I think that teachers struggle with that because we are afraid to say that we don’t know everything.
John Kozicki (14:13.016)
Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly.
John Kozicki (14:27.147)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (14:37.582)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (14:37.813)
and that we can’t work with everyone. There is this kind of expectation. And I think that it’s born out of the school system, talking about the university, especially if you’ve been in a music education degree, that we are expected to teach anyone and everyone. And I get the message that, yes, everyone should have access.
to music, everyone can study music, anyone can learn how to play, anyone can learn how to sing. But that doesn’t mean that you have to teach everyone. And a lot of teachers kind of skip over, well, who do I really love working with? What are my specialties? And we try to stretch ourselves into fitting the needs of anyone who comes our way. And what you said about that type of marketing attracting the people who aren’t really
John Kozicki (15:13.114)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (15:33.386)
interested in learning more about how do you specialize in things, they’re kind of shopping for products. They’re looking at music lessons as a product and not as something that’s, in most cases, highly personalized service. And so how do we get into putting ourselves out there that way? It requires a level of vulnerability in admitting these are the things that I specialize in.
John Kozicki (15:40.408)
Yes. Right.
John Kozicki (15:47.93)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (16:03.411)
And this is the way that I teach and understanding that when you do that, you are niching down. And that makes people so uncomfortable because it makes them feel like they’re saying no to some of the people who might be out there. And that’s this like scarcity thing that comes in our brains that tells us, well, if I specialize, if I really talk about the people that I love to teach, the people that I really excel at helping,
John Kozicki (16:03.578)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (16:12.527)
Yeah.
Sara Campbell (16:32.929)
that I am going to kind of narrow down my pool to a point where I don’t have anybody who’s coming to me.
John Kozicki (16:40.398)
Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think when you, I mean, this opens up another can of worms, but it runs parallel to what you just said.
The majority of parents shopping for music lessons, they also don’t really understand what they’re looking for until they start to dig into it. You know, they think music lessons, let me call the closest place. Let me call this place down the street and see. And then after they do that, then they think, I want to find a time that works in my schedule.
Sara Campbell (17:09.942)
Right.
John Kozicki (17:21.666)
And then they think maybe price could come into play. And after a parent who doesn’t think about all those things goes through all those steps, they may have already made their decision never even considering what’s going to be the best fit for my kid. So I think that is important for us to start putting out there so that our, audience starts to consider that.
Sara Campbell (17:39.191)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (17:50.137)
our audience considers things other than things like, and yeah, location and schedule and price are important, right? But let’s get them to think about these other things first. I mean, people have called me asking for violin lessons. We don’t teach violin lessons, you know? Sorry, I can make a recommendation for someone else. I think it’s important for us to start putting that stuff out there so that they do consider it.
Sara Campbell (18:18.125)
Yeah, they’re buying more. So I’ll back up and say a lot of parents, especially if they didn’t take music lessons, they just don’t know what’s involved with the process. They don’t understand that their kid is going to be learning so much more than how to read notes or how to make a sound, how to play a song. They’re learning really valuable life skills. And that’s
John Kozicki (18:37.496)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.
Sara Campbell (18:47.529)
something that a lot of teachers kind of leave out of the process. For example, when you have an eight-year-old that is taking voice lessons, and I know right now there are going to be some voice teachers out there that are going, eight years old is too young to sing. I’m not going to wade into that argument. Look up full voice music, and Nikki Loney will teach you that it’s possible.
John Kozicki (19:05.689)
Right? Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (19:16.757)
And when an eight-year-old takes voice lessons and they are learning how to sing, they’re learning how to read music, it’s not just that that they’re learning. They’re learning so many valuable skills about the fact that their voice is valuable, that they deserve to be heard. They are learning listening skills and how to communicate with people one-on-one. They’re learning how to interpret poetry. I mean, there’s so many skills that we are teaching.
And that is something that so many of us leave out of our marketing. And so many parents would love to hear that. I know that one of the big things many people talk about is that music lessons really can increase confidence. And I know that sounds trite, but it is one of the biggest benefits of learning an instrument or learning how to sing is that we become more confident as human beings and we can
John Kozicki (20:02.01)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (20:10.468)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (20:14.666)
you know, do things a little bit differently than we did before. That’s the kind of stuff that parents really want to hear. That’s the kind of stuff that adults want to hear.
John Kozicki (20:23.396)
Yeah, yeah. Similarly, now guitar has often come under fire because we don’t necessarily teach you how to read music, you know, in the traditional sense, right? That’s, mean, yes, in the beginning stages, many guitar instructors will teach, you know, beginning note reading, but then it gets really complex. And…
Sara Campbell (20:38.444)
Right.
John Kozicki (20:50.436)
There’s a very specific track for someone who wants to be able to read music while playing guitar.
Sara Campbell (20:58.08)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (20:59.758)
the majority of people who want to learn how to play guitar actually don’t want to take that track, right? So the first time I realized, because I would, in my early days of running a studio, I would get the phone calls from parents and they would say something like, well, they’re going to learn how to read music, right? And then would like try and figure out like, how am going to answer this question so that I give them a yes answer, right? And that convinces them to come to the studio.
One of the first times I decided to just sort of say, you know what?
They might, they might not, and have to try and convince a parent that it might not be that important for your kid and challenge their belief that that is important, you know, because for whatever assumption that, well, music, you read music. So if I’m taking music lessons, I got to make sure my kid is reading music. It’s not like school. It’s not like everywhere you go in life, you see
Sara Campbell (22:03.052)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (22:07.726)
musical notation, right? Like the English language. So the first time I came up against that and decided like, I’m gonna challenge this parent, it just felt so freeing to then lean into the conversation and say, well, why does your kid want to play the guitar? Why do you want your kid to play the guitar? And ultimately get to that point and that realization like, well, maybe that reading is not quite as important now. We can revisit it.
Sara Campbell (22:09.334)
Hahaha!
Sara Campbell (22:26.412)
Hmm.
John Kozicki (22:37.358)
maybe in the future, but right now, I don’t think that’s that important.
Sara Campbell (22:42.636)
That’s wonderful truth telling and that had to be a pivotal moment to think about how it changed the way you talk to parents.
John Kozicki (22:48.192)
huge.
Yeah, huge, huge for me. Absolutely. Yeah.
Sara Campbell (22:54.954)
I, that is kind of where marketing needs to go, right? It’s about telling the truth about what do you teach? Like who is it that thrives with you? because I know that if, if you’re listening right now, you can probably think of the types of clients who tend to thrive in your studio versus the types of clients who don’t. Right. And, and that’s where we want to think about, well, what is it that helps them thrive there? Like, so.
John Kozicki (23:01.646)
Mm-hmm
John Kozicki (23:17.284)
Bingo. Yes.
Sara Campbell (23:24.704)
What is the truth about how we teach, the people that thrive in our studios? Talk about the pace of learning. Be truthful about it. Tell people what they can expect. That’s when people start to trust you.
John Kozicki (23:34.82)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I’ve said this a lot on the podcast and I’ll say it again and I say this to music instructors all the time. If you are having a hard time figuring out who the right client is for you, if you are having a hard time, as you put it, trying to figure out how to niche down, right? And find who you are as an instructor or what your voice is as a studio.
Just think about who those two or three clients and parents that you have in your studio already that you absolutely love and you have the best conversations with and you have the best relationships with. That’s it. There you go. Whatever you talk about with those people, those are the things that are important to them. However those interactions work, you’ve done your marketing research just by existing in your studio.
Sara Campbell (24:38.218)
We forget that too. We forget that we have the people that are already showing us, like, these are your perfect fit clients. These are your ideal clients, as they say in the marketing world, you know? And if we can learn to lean into that and start using language that we already use, say the stuff that you say in lessons. That’s going to be more authentic and memorable than any kind of, like, marketing jargon you’re going to learn out there. We need to stop aiming for sounding polished and professional.
and start aiming for being clear about what we actually do.
John Kozicki (25:12.846)
Yes, exactly. Let’s see, what are the things, I’m looking at my questions now, because we totally deviated from where I thought we were gonna go with this conversation, because I definitely wanted to go into what makes good marketing, right, that shies away from that. And I think that’s going to vary, obviously, based on studio owner to studio owner or instructor to instructor, right?
we’ve kind of clarified like why things feel gross and why things feel icky. So now when we lean into the good marketing, what might be some tips that you would offer beyond what we just said in starting to really clarify our messages? I mean, do you have any suggestions or techniques?
Sara Campbell (25:46.23)
Yes.
Sara Campbell (26:07.156)
Yeah, absolutely. one of the things you said already, but I’m going to add on to it. So pay attention to the words that students and parents say to you. That’s really important. So pay attention when people are saying, my gosh, I loved this lesson, or I’m so proud of what little Timmy is doing. Pursue those stories. Ask what’s going on. Get that.
Get those conversations going. That’s marketing gold right there. Things like that. Get mindful about capturing real stories and real progress. Everyone who’s listening right now, y’all are fabulous teachers. Can we just capture that and put it in a bottle and show people what it looks like? I know that it can feel tricky because I talk about this with people all the time.
John Kozicki (26:57.497)
Right.
Sara Campbell (27:05.48)
It can feel tricky to have a part of your brain that’s going, how could I use this lesson that I’m having right now? What inside of this lesson could I share with other people? What marketing materials could I get? Could I take a photo? Could I do a video? Because you’re so focused on the teaching because you’re fabulous teacher. But try to train a little part of your brain every week to capture some moments.
John Kozicki (27:25.178)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (27:31.617)
build it into the actual lesson itself as a part of celebrating what your students are doing. So I know it doesn’t always feel natural to grab a phone, because that’s where our cameras live, right, during a lesson. But document the moments, even if they’re small. We don’t have to just celebrate when a student gets an award or when they play at a recital. What about all those small moments that happen on a day-to-day basis when
John Kozicki (27:43.576)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (28:00.201)
something finally clicks and a student goes, Or they come into a lesson super jazz because they learned how to play this intro on a song on their own. Capture those moments. A student plays a game and they win. It’s those small moments of learning that we want to document. And we don’t think of them as major marketing points, but that’s what people want to see.
John Kozicki (28:04.94)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (28:18.202)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (28:28.854)
They want to see real stories. They want to see real progress, even if it’s small, because that feels very compelling. It feels very grounded. People want to know what it looks like to actually work with you, not some super polished version. So become a documenter. Get your phone out. Take pictures every week. Take small videos every week. Ask your students questions like, this is my favorite thing.
John Kozicki (28:28.954)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (28:57.598)
At the end of a lesson, ask your student the question, what was the most valuable thing here for you today? Now, if you have a younger student, you might need to rephrase it with, what was the most fun part of your lesson today? The answers are probably going to shock you.
John Kozicki (29:16.418)
Yes, yeah, because you’re expecting as a music instructor, right, we’re predisposed to think they’re going to mention something about the playing or what they learned or the musical content. And it’s not going to be that.
Sara Campbell (29:33.662)
It’s not, it’s not, that’s not going to be the thing that they take with them. You know, it’s going to be that random conversation that you had about the fact that Rachmaninoff’s hands were weirdly large. You know, that’s what, that’s stuff that they’re going to remember. And those are the stories that really connect with people. Those real life stories that don’t seem super polished and you know, the, the small things that we learn, the funny things that happen. That’s what people.
John Kozicki (29:52.249)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (30:02.435)
love to see, not just like potential clients, but that’s what your current clients love to see. I think that would be my third tip is stop trying to market all the time to new people.
John Kozicki (30:18.073)
Yes.
Sara Campbell (30:19.419)
Mark it to the people that are already in your studio. That means like, and I am talking about social media here, you know, we can translate this into other things, but if you’re stuck on what to post, write that post like you’re writing it to a parent that’s already in your studio.
John Kozicki (30:23.01)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
John Kozicki (30:39.32)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I think most of us fall into these, these traps where, and I’ll kind of phrase this in two ways. One is we get hyper-focused on student numbers and you know, obviously we’ve got to think about that stuff, but we also have to think about our existing clients and because
retention can get us less focused on new acquisitions. We also get hyper focused when it comes to social media about what reactions we get from from those posts, right? So and then we overanalyze like, okay, what did I do right? What did I do wrong? I can say this with 100 % certainty. When I go on social media,
to write, I always, we do three big concerts every year in my school. And it was maybe five years ago, the first time I did this. After the concert, it two days long, I was exhausted, but I was just like thinking about all the great moments that happened over those two days. prior, I probably would have never thought to do this because I was.
Sara Campbell (31:44.139)
Mm.
John Kozicki (32:06.863)
like really focused on a polished Facebook post or whatever it is. So I just kind of wrote like, boy, I’m exhausted, but here’s what happens. This happened, this happened, this happened. And thanks to the venue, thanks to the parents, thanks to the students and staff. And the reactions were huge on that post, because it was authentic. And every concert after I started doing that, and it’s always the
Sara Campbell (32:16.66)
Right.
John Kozicki (32:36.783)
biggest, like most responsive Facebook post, right? So it’s just me recounting what happened. That’s it. And how I’m feeling. Yeah.
Sara Campbell (32:46.823)
Exactly. Yeah. People can relate to that, right? They can relate to, doing this big fancy event and now you’re exhausted. You know, it’s that type of content, that relatable content, that really human content that people want to see.
John Kozicki (32:50.831)
Yes.
John Kozicki (33:04.345)
Yeah, now obviously we can’t do that all the time, right?
Sara Campbell (33:07.379)
No, it will be emotionally exhausting.
John Kozicki (33:09.849)
Yes, yes, but I think we have to be okay with the ebbing and flowing of like, okay, well, if I’m planning out my social media posts for the week, all right, I’ve got to do one of these, I’ve got to do one of these. Some of them are going to be great, some of them are not going to be great, but it is what it is. That’s part of playing that game. But regardless, try and capture whatever that authenticity is in some small way to implement that into those posts.
Sara Campbell (33:38.454)
That’s when you’re going to start noticing that marketing feels better. It doesn’t feel like you’re selling all the time. That’s what really gets people about marketing, because they mix up marketing with sales. And those are two separate things. And when we start equating that, then we get into this mindset of, well, if my post doesn’t perform well, I’m not going to get sales. Or if this didn’t do well,
John Kozicki (33:43.801)
Yes. Yes.
John Kozicki (34:05.956)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (34:08.115)
I’m not going to succeed and that’s not what marketing is really about.
John Kozicki (34:15.374)
Yeah, that’s great advice. Great advice. Marketing is a long game. Again, going back to that umbrella, there’s a lot going on. So focus on getting your messaging correct first. Focus on figuring out what your true voice is and that authenticity. And then from there, just start letting it flow.
Sara Campbell (34:41.321)
Exactly.
John Kozicki (34:44.334)
Yeah. Well, Sarah, know you’ve got, do you have any openings for coaching or through your savvy music studio marketing group?
Sara Campbell (35:00.755)
Sure. I work one-on-one with a lot of clients, and I have openings now, so people can always reach out. And if you’re looking for more of like a DIY route, one of the things that we have at Savvy that we just opened this past year is called the Music Teacher’s Marketing Library. And it is a library of all kinds of courses about different types of marketing. So it’s definitely not social media only focused.
John Kozicki (35:28.196)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Campbell (35:30.473)
We talk about referral marketing. We talk about networking. We talk about SEO and getting your website found. So that’s a really great place to start. And we have a fun call every month. We have a Q &A call with that group. And that’s always a good time to connect with teachers and learn what other people are doing.
John Kozicki (35:39.556)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (35:53.144)
I love it. I love it. And then what is the website so that they can reach you and I’ll link it in the show notes.
Sara Campbell (36:02.453)
sure, we’re gonna keep it super easy at SavvyMusicStudio.com and that’s where you can find me just about anywhere, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all those places. Feel free to reach out if you’re ever curious. We have a great newsletter that goes out every Monday with lots of ideas and resources and all that kind of cool stuff including pictures of my cats because that is very on brand.
John Kozicki (36:25.466)
Right. Very authentic. Okay. Well, this has been fantastic, Sarah. I really enjoyed this conversation. I think it was, it felt as we sort of pre-sold in the front end, it felt good. It didn’t feel icky. You know, I think it helps people feel a little bit better about the idea of
Sara Campbell (36:32.041)
Yep, exactly.
John Kozicki (36:51.396)
going on to social media or writing marketing emails so that they feel more like themselves as opposed to selling a product, as you mentioned.
Sara Campbell (37:02.411)
That’s exactly it. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, John. This was a really great conversation.
John Kozicki (37:08.185)
Yeah, of course. So we’ll wrap this episode up and we’ll see you next time.
