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Marketing mentoring with a local dancing school

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Background

 

Based in Tunbridge Wells, The Dance Consortium is a small 35-year-old dancing school offering high-quality teaching across different genres of dance. The school had a track record of 90% of pupils achieving distinction in exams and winning medals at The All England Dance Championships.  In recent years they’ve undertaken limited marketing and like many dancing schools, the pandemic meant they lost younger children as classes came to a standstill for many months.

 

Approach

 

Seeing the tremendous value of the dancing school, Sharp Thinking volunteered to help the dancing school over the summer of 2022.

 

This included providing help in 2 key areas:-

 

• Recruiting new followers on Instagram to help create increased awareness locally

• Helping promote their pandemic comeback summer show and raise income to support production

 

Sharp Thinking gave general advice on their social media strategy. In addition, online training was provided on Instagram covering engagement tips.  This included being more strategic with the use of hashtags and content.  An outline content plan was provided to refresh their content and mix it up.

 

Sharp Thinking volunteered to spearhead some PR.  This would be an ideal way to start to build momentum in the run-up to the show providing guidance on a press release and target media.  We agreed to lead with their award win success at the All England Regional dance finals to demonstrate the success of the school and showcase some of the children. 

 

Finally, Sharp Thinking help to devise a sponsorship strategy for their summer show and led the execution of it to raise vital funds to co-fund the production of the show.

 

Results

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Our efforts resulted in significant accomplishments:

- Securing press coverage in four highly-rated local titles, reaching the right audience.
- Doubling the dance school's Instagram followers within six months and establishing strategic partnerships with local businesses.
- Raising nearly £1,000 in a month, the highest amount ever raised, through a targeted sponsorship approach. We also secured a print partner who funded all printing needs for the show. Additionally, we created sponsorship point-of-sale materials at the venue to showcase the generous sponsors.

We're proud of the impact we've made in supporting this local dance school and look forward to continuing our mission to help organisations thrive in the future.

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