This is part 2 of a 2 part conversation on marketing with Adam Wilson.
In this episode John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) has an engaging conversation with Adam Wilson, co-founder of the boutique advertising agency, D/Cal. This is part two of my conversation with Adam, and in this episode Adam shares valuable advice for business owners and music schools on developing a marketing strategy and practical social media tips.
We discuss the evolution of marketing messages in the music education space, the importance of understanding your brand’s core values, and how to effectively communicate these to your target audience. Adam emphasizes the significance of having a clear ‘why’ behind your brand, which can guide all your marketing decisions.
Additionally, Adam provides actionable steps for creating a consistent brand identity, from logo design to social media content. Whether you’re a solo music instructor or running a music school, this episode is packed with insights to help you refine your marketing efforts and connect better with your audience.
In this episode:
- Essentials for developing your brand
- Understanding your audience
- Social media strategy insights and simplifying content creation
- Finding your brand’s Why, and using it in your marketing
If you haven’t listened to part 1, we highly recommend doing so for additional context. Tune in to learn how to elevate your music school’s marketing game!
Episode Transcript:
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Welcome to the Rock School Proprietor Podcast. I’m John Kozicki.
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This is part two of my conversation with Adam Wilson.
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Adam’s a friend of mine and co-founder of Decal Agency.
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He’s a advertising and marketing industry veteran.
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In this part of our conversation, Adam offers some great advice for business
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owners and music schools about how to develop a marketing strategy and some
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really sound advice on a usable practical strategy for social media.
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If you haven’t listened to part one, I highly suggest you go back and listen
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to that before listening to part two.
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It’ll provide a little extra context for the rest of our conversation.
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Music.
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Thank you for watching.
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You mentioned trends that’s that’s interesting because
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i i think um you know
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i i mean i started teaching guitar lessons
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like almost 20 years ago and so
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much has happened in that time from from how
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the internet has changed how people learn music and where music
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lessons were primarily used to be given in
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music stores and and music stores don’t really exist so
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much anymore and i think because
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of how culture has changed the like what people are looking for also changes
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so i remember a time where it was just customizing your music lessons we’re
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going to teach you what you want to learn was was kind of a message that that
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would resonate with with Right.
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Because they didn’t want the method books or like the boring stuff.
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They were like, you know what, I really want to go learn these songs that I’m
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interested in. So that’s what I started hearing.
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And that’s what I started seeing from other music lesson providers.
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And then there was kind of a shift into we make music lessons fun.
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And again, that’s one of those like super on the nose type of messages.
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And, and I think like, is that where we’re at now? Right. Right.
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That’s a unique position. Yeah, exactly.
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Well, it’s fun here. Well, you know what I, and again, this is why,
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this is why I wanted to talk to you because.
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And again, I’m not trying to offend anyone who uses that messaging, but I’ve seen it.
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I’ve seen that’s their brand tagline. We make music lessons fun.
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Well, okay, let me put it this way. When you work with a client,
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you spend all that time in the front end to determine who is the target market,
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what are they looking for, and then at the end of the project,
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you deliver not just the messaging,
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but you deliver images and maybe videos, and you deliver a whole profile that the client can use.
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And again music studio owners you know we
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we do it for passion we don’t have that
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the the budget that say gibson does so if
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we’re figuring out our our our messaging how can we kind of do the same thing
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with like what our logo is going to look like what are you know what our website’s
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going to look like what our colors are going to be is there i mean any advice
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there oh i see okay so so So essentially developing the brand, a brand from scratch.
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Yeah. So that you can then be consistent as, as you move along.
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So you don’t feel like, you don’t feel like every step and every decision is
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something you have to reinvent yourself.
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Correct. Yeah. Well, I’m going to try to do this fairly efficiently because
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I think where I thought you were going was with limited resources,
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how do I actually implement my marketing day-to-day?
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But we’re going to back the bus up a little bit. Okay, so.
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Again, I go back to how we opened this, you know, getting the brand fundamentals.
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Some people call it the ethos, whatever, however you want, whatever you want to call it, right?
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Like, what is your brand about? Answer, why does it exist?
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What does it do? And then eventually, how does it do it? Like writing that stuff out is great.
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Even, you know, if you search brand architecture and take a Google image,
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find a couple of Google images, usually there’s a mission, there’s a purpose.
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There’s your values you know a handful of values
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it doesn’t hurt it may feel like a kind of
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a fool’s errand busy work but it doesn’t hurt to just get that on paper right
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so so at least you know what your brand’s about because if
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you know a graphic designer or know of
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someone who knows a graphic designer or some there’s
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a lot of these smaller shops you know for for 300
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bucks they’ll make you they’ll give you three logos to choose from
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or whatever if you have that that your brand
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on one sheet what it believes in why
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it exists yes you know some it’s tone i want
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to be i want to be we want to be smart but we don’t want
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to be too professorial like just you’ve got the some semblance of a brief to
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give to someone to build out a logo to help explore brand colors and it shouldn’t
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it shouldn’t cost a lot of money i mean there are a lot of there’s a lot
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of designers out there there’s a lot of graphic designers you know
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and to what degree they understand branding you just have to sort of find that
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you see you should invest the time to write it all down i think once you’ve
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once you have that the levers you can pull obviously social media is a huge one but here’s the thing.
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You also have to answer why you’re on social media, right?
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And you’d think the answers to that question are really simple and clear,
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but you really have to just, why am I here?
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To answer that, build pillars. And there’s two that you’ll always have,
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and you can add a couple others.
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Like if you do community engagement as more of a PR thing and just feel good
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and altruistic, that could be your third pillar. Pillar number one is brand.
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And when you’re looking at a calendar, you might want to post two or three times a week.
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You want to make sure that at least 40% of your posts are all about supporting your brand.
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So in your case, let’s say you’re posting four times a week.
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At least two of your posts should be either video, photos, or a little story,
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whatever it is, should be holding up proof that you get kids to play music, to make music together.
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Like the be all end all of your whole operation.
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You need to constantly, it’s a slow drip of proof. So that’s your brand pillar.
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And you can decide on the percentage, but 30, 40%.
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Then your other pillar is more the business transactional side.
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That’s what I have to do to promote and build up my clientele or enroll people.
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There might be certain enrollment periods. You might do a little deal or a little
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free lesson or whatever it is you want to do. That’s sort of the lower funnel.
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Like there’s the marketing funnel, right? Yes. At the top is awareness and the
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middle is consideration. At the bottom is transactional.
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So your second pillar is more transactional. And maybe that’s,
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you don’t want to look like you’re on sale all the time or too selly if someone
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comes to your feed and social. So maybe that’s a 15, 20% thing, right?
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So now you got about 65% of your content and social organic content.
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We haven’t even gotten to the paid side.
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We got that figured out. And then maybe there’s that third, let’s say you’re
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way into your community and you donate and you donate your time and blah, blah, blah.
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Like, well, you’re the stuff you do with the shack, you know,
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that might be that thing. So that’s pillar number three.
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You can have fourth pillar, but whatever. it’s being very
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strategic and it’s it’s funny it’s like our agency is wildly creative but we’re
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wildly creative because we’re strategy is the oracle yeah and and everything
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has to be structured that allows you to be creative you have to be creative
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at the right times with the right message.
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Yeah so if you don’t have those pillars you’re gonna
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you’re gonna find yourself just posting whatever
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exactly yeah yeah you know and
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then once you once you get that going you know if you’ve built up a little war
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chest of for paid media it’s a it’s crazy especially if you know you’re targeting
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so the puzzle pieces start coming together right if you know your archetype
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that you want to go after you can find them on you know through meta’s ad ads
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manager it’s super easy to set up.
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There’s lots of tutorials to set up a paid thing, or you could just boost that
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post that’s doing really well, throw 50 bucks at it and get another three or 4,000 impressions.
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So this is all of this to bring it back around was, I guess,
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like why I was asking like, okay, you want to identify what your messaging is,
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right? You want to understand who you’re talking to.
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And that’s, and that’s just, you already have those people in your studio.
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So those are the conversations you have those people
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figure out like you know roughly you
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know how many kids do they have like what’s their educational background
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right that’s going to start to you’re going to use that in the back end for
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for your advertising yep it also gives you a beacon right when you have all
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this stuff documented when you have what your what your brand colors are what
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what your overall messaging is, what you believe, right?
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Your why, it makes creating all this content easier.
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So you don’t feel like every time like, oh, I got to do this many Facebook posts
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and this many Instagram posts this week.
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You already know what that post is going to be about.
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It’s just how you’re going to word it. And I think that’s always going to be
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the more impactful stuff that’s
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going to resonate with your potential clients and your target market.
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And then when you do get to those more salesy type posts, well,
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the people are already engaged, hopefully, and the people are already thinking about you.
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Doing all of this, again, for a music lesson business owner, it’s a lot of work.
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The idea is, I think, do it in the front end so that you have an idea of when it’s time to do it.
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Again, you’re not scrambling trying to figure it out. Oh, the anxiety of,
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I mean, I have my business and then we’ve also run social accounts for other clients.
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And, you know, I mean, I’m here to tell you, it’s not lost on me.
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You know, you run this, you’re wearing just like every other entrepreneur,
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you’re wearing a gazillion different hats and it can be exhausting.
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Doing, like you said, documenting and doing that upfront brand development and
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getting it on paper, it doesn’t have to be pretty.
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And and those pillars so you so you can go
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to market with intent a lot of
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i think a lot of entrepreneurs whether it’s you know
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rock schools or you know a framing shop or whatever it is a candle shop down
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the road those everyone’s going through the same thing i don’t have enough time
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in the day to do all of these things right and a lot of that is just whether
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they know it or not They’re harboring a bunch of anxiety over what do I post?
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What do I say next? What do I do next?
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The answer is already there if you’ve done that documentation.
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Yes. Oh, that’s right. I need a brand post.
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Well, at least you’ve narrowed it down.
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Yes. Because you’re not staring at a blank, you know, is it a post?
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Is it a story? Is it a reel?
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You’re not staring at a blank screen going, okay, I got a post.
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That is not a reason to be on social media. I got a post. Right.
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You have to post because of these pillars that I developed because they support.
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And what that does is over time, you’re putting little nickels in the jar every
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time you’re filling up your brand cup. Yeah.
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So, so when that person comes along and maybe sees your promotional messaging
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and they haven’t really heard of you or even looked into you all that much,
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they’ll probably go to your Instagram page and kind of maybe scroll through a little bit.
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The sum of you being on your strategically minded with intent over the past
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several months will pay off in that moment because it’s there on full display,
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the proof of what you’re about.
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When they call you, they’ll probably already know what, just by virtue of just
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a pedestrian walk by of your Instagram page, they’ll already probably have a pretty good idea.
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This is a different kind of music. This is not the buy a bunch of 15 minutes
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or 30 minute lessons with Mrs. Connelly. Mrs.
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Connelly. Yep. This is not a Mrs. Connelly thing.
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Or maybe it is. But identifying and again, bringing it back to like,
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OK, if I’m the maybe I’m the solo instructor and like just promoting myself,
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understanding that that’s what you do and being able to present that in in a clear way.
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Other than I give music lessons, right?
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That’s at least going to give you an edge over anyone else who’s putting out
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like, I give music lessons, who wants some? Sure, yeah, yeah. You know?
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And again, I get it. It’s like, it’s a lot of work up front,
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but it takes away that anxiety to understand, like to make those decisions.
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Once you understand what your brand is about, you have a beacon to shoot for
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when you say, I need photos for my Instagram.
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What am I going to take photos of? Oh, well, you know what? Let me think back to my favorite clients.
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And what do they like to do, right? What are their interactions within the studio?
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Bingo. Then you take some photos of that kid, right? So having all that stuff
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as like your overall, well, brand identity, right?
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Yeah. That helps you to make all those other decisions when otherwise you’re
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kind of fumbling. Like, what do I say in this Instagram post?
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What kind of picture do I take? You know? Yeah.
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That’s going to give you the edge over someone who, again, is just saying like,
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we make music lessons fun, or I have to come up with an Instagram post.
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Let me search Google images for kid playing piano.
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You know, if you’ve got like your original content or your idea of what it’s
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supposed to look like, well, that narrows down your choices.
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So you don’t get to sit decision fatigue in those moments. Right. Yeah.
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All right. Right. So I think, you know, maybe at some point,
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I mean, I don’t want to take this on today, but we can maybe talk about one
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of the projects that we worked on together, which was that power players.
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Yeah. Or the Epiphone power player’s guitar.
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Because that I think is like real life usable information that music lesson
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business owners could use to understand what are the parents in their studio looking for?
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Because you did all that work. You know, you did focus groups and asked questions
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to all those people. So maybe we get into that at some point.
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All right. To make it super, super simple, again, let’s say it’s not me.
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Let’s say it’s not a rock school.
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Let’s say it’s just a solo instructor who’s trying to build their lesson studio
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and attract more students.
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What what advice would you give if any to make simple decisions on something like a maybe a tagline.
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Or what kind of photos do you think people would want to see versus what they
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might not want to see? I don’t know. That might be a hard question to answer.
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Someone just starting out, deciding. Yeah, yeah. Let’s say they’re just starting out. Yeah.
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Well, I mean, I wouldn’t go to tagline first.
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Okay, great. Great. Because I think that’s a mistake that a lot of people do.
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Yeah. And taglines, you know, taglines.
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Yeah. I mean, if look, if you’re a big brand with massive resources,
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you know, a tagline is useful and we can all like rattle off. Right.
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A bunch. Nike, just do it. Sure. Yeah.
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Yeah. Of course, I say that and I’m like, oh, I can’t I can’t I can’t tell a single one.
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Yeah. It’s it’s to build equity in that.
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That’s why we know them. That’s why they’re in our heads, because they have
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the resources to build equity in them over time. That means repetition.
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That means lots of ways to manifest what the meaning behind the tagline,
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all that. So I wouldn’t say that’s super important.
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I would say to that solo person, I would do the same thing we talked about at
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the beginning, is sit down and start with why.
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Yeah. So if they did nothing else, they did nothing else. Start with why do
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you want to do this? Yeah.
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Because eventually it’s going to come through. It’s not that parents are going to go, why?
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Right. Why do you want to do this? Yeah. But my goodness, it’s going to come
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through. And whatever it is, assuming it’s good altruistic reasons,
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and also you want to make a living.
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You know, that will, that should come through. So that should really be the foundation.
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If you don’t have that, you’re going to flail. And, and that should really drive
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how you, what you call your business.
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It could just be your name, or you could come up with a name for it.
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That should really be the filter through which all those other little decisions passes.
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Yeah. I love it. And think of it
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as a filter, right? Yes. Not a rule or a guardrail. It’s, it’s a filter.
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And does, does this make it through, you know?
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So, this might be stupid, but if you would have had a brand that has musical notes,
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again, no offense to anyone that uses musical notes in their logo or their messaging
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or whatever, but that doesn’t evoke why you’re here.
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Mm in my mind, the, the visual of, of musical notes,
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whatever, whatever, whatever the different notes are called or,
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or sort of the, the usual music tropes signals to me that, that this is a traditional thing.
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It’s, it’s, it’s about reading sheet music. It’s about the rudiments.
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It’s about the fundamentals.
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It’s not that you’re not about those, but that’s not where you start.
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That’s not why you’re here.
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I love this. So, you know, you’re, Your drum instructor isn’t here to make sure
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that the kid, you know, learns paradiddles.
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It’ll probably be a useful tool, but it’s a means to an end.
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You know, your drum instructor is here for the same reason you’re here. Yeah, exactly.
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You know, Mandy and I have done a whole episode on like our own personal whys
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and like how people can start to discover their why.
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But you said it exactly. Exactly. The music notes are not the why, they’re the what.
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Sure. Totally. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So if you’re that solo person,
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you know, it’s just before you start thinking about a logo and all that.
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So get that why figured out.
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And in there, almost always, I guarantee it, especially if you write it out,
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just write out a little manifesto kind of thing.
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It can be dramatic and be this or whatever, but just like explain why you do
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this and be as dramatic as possible.
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You’re going to, you’re going to find little trigger words in there that are going to inspire.
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Oh, they’re going to give you logo ideas. Like your manifesto that kind of explains
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your why we’ll give you your logo ideas.
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It will give you your photography style ideas.
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Yeah. Love it. So it all comes back. It all comes back to like your purpose,
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like why you’re doing it, Because that’s, again, going to resonate with everyone else.
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With like, why would I want to take music lessons, right?
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Exactly. And your why could be anything. It could be, I want to make as many
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kids scared of music as possible.
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And if that’s your why, then that should drive how your brand mark should look
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and maybe even your colors and maybe even your messaging and all of that. Yeah.
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I mean, sometimes it’s fun to flip it or flip it on its head and go, OK, what?
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And when we were talking about the social media thing, too, it’s like,
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well, what shouldn’t I post?
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There you go. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good place to start. Like,
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what is diametrically opposed to why I do this?
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OK, well, at least I’ve got what I shouldn’t post covered. Yeah.
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Yeah. What is the, it’s, I can’t believe I’m going to mention this.
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It’s the, it’s the Seinfeld episode. I’m just going to do the exact opposite.
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I mean, see, the thing is, we don’t have to do the exact opposite,
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but we can think about what that would be. And it often reveals what we should do. Yeah. Yeah.
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All right. So I think we, we gotta bring this one home.
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I love the idea of, cause it all, again, it all comes back to like, why do you do this?
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If you can identify and like really find out why you do it.
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And it’s, you know, again, everyone’s going to have a different why,
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but you’re going to have to dig a little bit under the surface.
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Not just like, I mean, I joked on, on a previous episode that like at first
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my why was I just never wanted to have a real job again.
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Right. But as I, as I sort of like.
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Pulled back layers i i start to start to understand what
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the real why was so again identify the
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why make all those decisions use that as a filter as you said adam which is
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great use that as your filter to make all the other decisions from messaging
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identifying you know your your your ideal client what you know as you said the
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logo what the logo is going to look like what your colors are going to be, everything.
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Adam Wilson, Decal Agency, thank you for coming on the Rock School Proprietor Podcast.
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Thank you, John. Thank you. We’ll see everyone next time. All right.
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If you have topic suggestions or maybe need some clarification on any of the
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topics that Adam spoke about, feel free to reach out.
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Contact us at info at rockschoolproprietor.com.
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As always, we’d love to hear from you. Show notes and transcripts are also on
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the website rockschoolproprietor.com. I’m at rock.school.proprietor on Instagram,
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LinkedIn as John Kozicki.
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Please connect with me. I’d love to connect with you.
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If you enjoy the show and gained insight from our conversations,
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then we count that as a win.
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All we ask in return, pay it forward. Share the show with someone you’ve.
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Music.
