5 Hidden Costs of Free Trials (and What to Do Instead)

Are free trials costing your studio more than they’re helping?

In this episode, Chantelle and Michelle reveal the 5 biggest downsides to free trials—and what to do instead if you want better retention, smoother operations, and more confident enrolments.

You’ll learn:

• Why free trials double your workload without guaranteeing enrolments
• How they secretly impact your retention rates and teacher focus
• What to do instead that boosts your bottom line and studio positioning

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📖 Full transcript + blog post: https://studioevolution.com/journal/s3-e6-5-hidden-costs-of-free-trials

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:36 The Debate on Free Trials in Business
• 7:18 The Downsides of Free Trials
• 11:05 Operational Challenges and Teacher Focus
• 14:54 Retention Metrics and Churn Rates
• 18:57 Financial Implications of Free Trials
• 22:04 Positioning and Market Perception
• 25:56 Transitioning Away from Free Trials
• 34:36 Outro

Transcript

Chantelle Bruinsma (00:48)

Welcome to Your Studio Podcast. Hello everyone. It is Chantelle and Michelle. Thanks for listening. Can we just say, we're just kind of having such a fun time talking together, but we get texts and kind of emails and comments from you guys that you are listening and you enjoy the show. And it really makes, we really appreciate it. And we love doing this podcast for you all. It's a lot of fun. And if you have not yet,

Michelle Hunter (00:59)

Yeah, we do.

Chantelle Bruinsma (01:12)

would you please review us? It is the most beautiful thing you could do for our pod. All you have to do is go to our podcast and leave a review. And if you would do that for us today, gosh, we'd be grateful, right friend?

Michelle Hunter (01:24)

we would love it. We would love it. And it really is a hoot. It's kind like the highlight of our week. We get to catch up as well as a talk shop, but it is just so fun. We laugh a lot. We laugh a lot during these podcast episodes.

Chantelle Bruinsma (01:36)

You know it's a good podcast day. Like today I've already had to blow my nose twice and like redo my under eye mascara from tears of laughter. That's when you know that like, yeah, this is, is, is good. This is a good day.

Michelle Hunter (01:43)

Yeah, I've had to write concealer. Yeah.

We're going into a question that gets posted into our Facebook group so much and it is about free trials.

Chantelle Bruinsma (01:55)

Free trials.

Michelle Hunter (01:56)

Now,

Chantelle is known to have a whole theory and her point of view on free trials. And I know it's quite a thing in the studio owner industry. And there's so much we can unpack, like so much, even ways that I want to go here with marketing. There's so much we can go into, but I think Chantelle, would you say free trials are like the first kind of, it was like the thing that everyone does or how they start their studio. It's like.

Come and give us a go, come and give us a free try.

Chantelle Bruinsma (02:30)

And it makes sense. It feels like a very low risk, like a very easy offer to get to people through the door. I get it. And everyone else is doing it. So there's that thought of like, well, if I don't offer free trials, who's going to come and pay when they could just go down the road for free. So there's absolutely so much, you know, understandable reason why you'd have free trials in a studio.

Michelle Hunter (02:35)

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (02:56)

So Michelle, from where you're sitting, kind of what are the benefits of doing free trials from where you sit?

Michelle Hunter (03:00)

Well, I think when you open a studio, it's a really wonderful way to get a lot of traffic in. So like, think it's like a big attraction. It's, it feels, I think as a studio owner, when you market, feels very comfortable. It feels very easy to say in your marketing. You feel like it's something that's very easy to push. I'm going to get a bit more techie here when you run a bit more of a paid ad strategy.

I think sometimes it feels very easy to offer a free element in a paid ad strategy. So when I say paid ad strategy, I mean an Instagram ad, or if you want to do Google ads, yeah, Facebook ads, Instagram ad, you offer something for free. So they click, so you get people interested. So there is that benefit, but it can also shoot you in the foot.

Chantelle Bruinsma (03:30)

Mm-hmm.

Facebook.

I'm gonna do my best, Michelle, not to get ranty on this podcast.

Michelle Hunter (03:50)

I know. I know, I know, I know.

But I think this is a real issue we need to shine a light on.

Chantelle Bruinsma (03:57)

Because I have a very, as you said, I have a very strong opinion about this and I'm nervous that I'm going to get on a high horse. So Michelle, can you just kind of have some like hand signal or a code word? It's like dial it down, time out. Turn out your perimenopause rage, turn it down.

Michelle Hunter (04:06)

Yep. I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to do that. But before

we get there, do you think there's an acceptable, because we work with all different kinds of sizes of studio owners, right? think that there is a stage where it is okay for free trials? Do you think when they're first starting?

Chantelle Bruinsma (04:16)

Okay.

You might be listening to this and running free trials and it's working a frickin' charm for you. You might be getting 20 people through the door every week with a free trial. Live your life. If it ain't broken, don't fix it, right? Like if it's really successful for you and you've got a fantastic kind of attraction rate and then you've got a fantastic conversion rate and then you've got a fantastic retention rate, why would you change it? We're not gonna change anything like that, right? Like it's, that's fantastic. If you're onto a winner like that, proceed my friends.

So that's the first thing, if it is successfully working, and I mean from you getting a good volume of students, good conversion of trial into a paid kind of long-term payment plan, and then the retention of those students you're through the door is good, why would we, we're not gonna change anything of that. That's great, we can supplement for sure, but why not keep it? That's how I feel, right?

Michelle Hunter (05:18)

So to be clear,

and to be clear, I think that retention point is very important because I have seen very successful campaigns where a lot of free trials come in. And because like you've got a hundred leads sitting in your lead center, that feels like a success for you. But you said two other keywords there was conversion and retention.

Chantelle Bruinsma (05:22)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah, and the word is churn that I want us to really think about today because churn is what my, in studio evolution, our definition of churn is a student leaving before three months of enrolment. And what's really, how would you say it, what's really deceptive is that if you look at your retention statistics, people will often, studio owners will often count their retention statistics of people who are on paid programs.

Michelle Hunter (05:49)

Mm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (06:05)

and like who stayed from one year to the next. And I actually don't use that metric at all. I have a different way of measuring retention because my perspective is like if someone steps through the front door of your studio, they are one of us, right? They are family, they belong, they're all in. And I don't want that delineation. You're just having a little test to taste. I want them to feel like welcome, you are, you belong here, yeah? And so when you start tracking retention of not just

people who are kind of on those payment plans, but instead every single head who has come for a trial or is a kind of paid student, your retention suddenly looks shit, right? And it's an uncomfortable moment because what happens is that with free trials, it is gonna completely skew the results. But here's what I think is really important is that once a student steps through the door, we have to be helping them feel a strong sense of belonging. And...

Michelle Hunter (06:42)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (07:00)

innately, a free trial is still, they're still just dipping their toe, right? They're still just dipping their toe. So, you know, to answer your question, the retention bit is one of it, but there's a lot of other factors of what the real impact that free trial can have on your business.

Michelle Hunter (07:18)

All right, Chantelle, so that's big. So can you tell us the five downsides to then having free trials?

Chantelle Bruinsma (07:26)

Let's go into this because there's a bunch of different things to think about. And again, as we know, like they feel easy. It feels like lower risk. It feels like low hanging fruit. Just get them in the door. But when you start to dig a little bit deeper, there's strategically a lot of consideration. So five downsides to free trials. The first one is it makes you work too hard.

Michelle Hunter (07:28)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Low risk. Yep. Yes. Yeah.

Okay.

Chantelle Bruinsma (07:54)

Operations wise, you have to do twice as much work. And this is my, know, from a highly efficient lazy person to another highly efficient lazy person. This is, this is why I struggle with the sense of free trials. So you have to do all the work in marketing to get this person in the door. You've got to do all the communication and preparation to get them in the door, but then not only have to sell them to come for a free trial, you have to sell them to then enrol.

So you're doubling up the amount of marketing you have to do and the amount of conversion you have to do and the amount of communication you have to do. It's this feeling of chasing and like they come through the front door and then you see them leaving at the end of the class it's like, no, you haven't enrolled. Come back.

Michelle Hunter (08:39)

Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (08:40)

And then once they've left, then you're on the chase. So energetically, you're like this feeling, this kind of desperation, like, but you're here, why didn't you like me? Like, why won't you like me? And so it's this icky energy of you having to work harder to chase them to enrol. And so that level of operational output is just not as efficient. You know, can I tell you a big truth? It takes the same amount of energy.

Michelle Hunter (08:48)

Yeah. Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (09:07)

to sell them into your ongoing membership as it does to get them into the class for free trial. If you can learn how to do a better job at selling them into your program, it's like bypass it. Like why spend all that energy just getting them on a free trial? Just sell the thing, just sell the main thing, just get them straight credit card details in on the payment plan, done. And you're good to go. Create a better introductory offer, create a better communication about the experience.

and then you're not having to do all this work, right Michelle? mean, like studio owners just having to work so much harder.

Michelle Hunter (09:38)

Thanks

so much harder. so what I'm hearing is like just working on the marketing and the sell and the enrolment page that initially doing all the work there on the front end, it's going to be an easy conversion into the paid program.

Chantelle Bruinsma (09:48)

Mm.

that's right. So people are putting all this effort into kind of doing a free trial, but it actually like it's, it's as it's the same amount of work to just sell them into the program. And then what I recommend is you have a fantastic kind of exit clause. It's like, come for 30 days. If this hasn't met your expectation for you or for your child, no worries. You'll be able to kind of transition. You'll be able to kind of go on your merry way. And so give them that option out, come for 30 days and, they're, but they're already on the payment plan.

So we're not having to get them operationally onto a whole nother system.

Michelle Hunter (10:22)

and you're ready.

And they're ready in, like they feel part of the culture, part of the school, everything that you believe in. that, in whatever period you're picking, that's giving them a good amount of time to fit in.

Chantelle Bruinsma (10:36)

That's right. Like if you know, like I was going to ask a question if you like, how many weeks is it before you know, like they're kind of in, like, is it three weeks? Is it four weeks? Is it six weeks? Kind of like, if you know that it takes that long for them to start feeling that kind of shift in results, start feeling those relationships, that sense of belonging, like you can actually kind of work it like it takes this long and be very confident in kind of communicating that. But we don't need to get them in the door for this little taster, which is such a kind of

false experience of what's really possible, particularly if you teach kids. And even for adults, think it's the same. nothing happens overnight in one class, right? Nothing, no trajectory happens. It takes longer and you can be confident in communicating that. So that's number one. It's this chasing that's super, super hard and then like having to work twice as hard than if we have a different process. That's number one, Michelle. Number two, number two is that if we think about the

what is actually happening when you've got a class happening, right? You've got all these lovely children in the class and then you've got free trial students coming in. Now these free trial students coming in need a lot more of the teacher's attention because we're having to sell. Because the expectation now from the studio owner is like, okay, my teachers have to be like on it. They've got to be connecting. They've got to be kind of after class. They've got to be connecting with that parent or with that student, getting them an enrolment form. The teacher has so much more load that they've got to carry.

Michelle Hunter (11:47)

official. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (12:04)

They've got so much more responsibility, which takes their attention off what.

Michelle Hunter (12:09)

the other students experience and what they're learning and what they continue to be working on every week. Yep. No. Yep.

Chantelle Bruinsma (12:13)

Right? It's not fair. Those other kids are paying top buck. They're

paying top dollar for the experience and yet the teacher's attention is distracted because they're having to kind of get the enrolments happening. And so for me, that actually is a jeopard, it jeopardises the class dynamic, the class culture, and it can jeopardise your retention. What were you gonna say?

Michelle Hunter (12:36)

I was just about to say, yeah.

Sorry, that jeopardises the retention. If the dynamic and the class culture is different and the students are feeling it, they're not gonna wanna stay, because they feel it's different.

Chantelle Bruinsma (12:47)

No. So we've got this revolving door of new students coming through the door every week. The teacher is having to focus so much on that. So it's not actually kind of delivering the absolute connection. And, you know, at the end of class, really working on retention of the paying students, the teachers now having to focus on the non-paying students, which just for me doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It's not fair. It's kind of, it's not putting the focus on where the focus needs to be. The focus needs to be on retention.

Michelle Hunter (13:14)

So if I was a studio owner listening right now and I say, okay, so I pivot away from the free trials, like you said, in number one, market it into a paid period. So the teachers are then having less focus on converting those free trials. How do I then ensure that the teachers are on top of like, you know, obviously that's a communication issue. It's like you got new enrolments, know, Sally's starting this Wednesday, but then how does the student kind of know more about the culture without the teacher?

Chantelle Bruinsma (13:22)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle Hunter (13:41)

having to give them personalised information and just continue on with like, how do they know more about the studio and what to expect when the teacher's just focusing on the lesson and the experience for everyone.

Chantelle Bruinsma (13:52)

Yes. Brilliant question, Michelle Hunter. Onboarding. Most studios are a bit too light on in terms of kind of cultural immersion and really initiating them into expectations and being more explicit in here's how you're to feel, here's what you're going to do, here's what you're going to receive, here's what to understand, here's what to know, here's what to be confident in. There's a lot more strategic, I mean, everyone just sends out their info pack and then it gets frustrated when no one reads it, right? And then

Michelle Hunter (13:55)

Yeah. Okay.

Hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (14:21)

it's like this huge information dump, but there's a lot more really conscious choreography of onboarding which can deliver that. And that means that the pressure when the student walks into the class, it's not this kind of how, you know, this is James, he's here for his first class today. And then it's at the end, it's like, how did you go? How do you feel? It's kind of like, you gonna come back? All of those kind of icky conversations. The tone shifts to.

Let's welcome James. He is one of us and that feels different deeply, deeply. So yeah, a lot of that can be delivered through really optimised onboarding, which is one of the most important things to do for your business across the board. So there's number two. So number one is like this chasing of operationally having to sell them twice. Number two is that the teacher's attention is taken away from the real deal, which is on retention.

Michelle Hunter (14:50)

Yeah. Yep.

Totally.

Mm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (15:16)

And then number three is this whole concept of retention. So when you do free trials, often when we're measuring retention in a studio, we will be looking at the, you know, on an annual retention basis, right? How many students who enrolled in this year have continued on to be enrolled next year, the year above. And what is common,

is that the studio owner only measures the retention of those who are kind of on payment plans or kind of who are kind of enrolled in these classes ongoing. So they're only looking at that number of students who are kind of enrolled to the next number of students. And I don't believe in that form of measurement. I think that there's a different metric we should be measuring. And that is actually any heart that steps into the studio, any head, anybody who comes to any class.

Michelle Hunter (15:48)

Mm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (16:11)

is a student at the studio. And this is my philosophical belief that even if a student comes for a free trial, they belong at our studio, they are one of us. So when we start tracking retention that includes any person who's come to any class, often the retention statistics look absolutely shit. They really do. Because suddenly you've got, oh my gosh, we've had clients like this. I had 100 new students come through the door.

Michelle Hunter (16:32)

Yep. Yep.

Chantelle Bruinsma (16:40)

and I only kept 30 of them. And suddenly it's like, ⁓ shit, truth bomb. So the retention and the particular aspect of retention that we're looking at here is churn. Now how I would define churn is a student leaving within three months of starting. So within the first three months of them attending a free trial, if they don't return within that period of time.

Michelle Hunter (16:46)

funding. Yeah. Yep.

Chantelle Bruinsma (17:07)

that would be a churn based enrolment, churn based retention loss, right? If it's after three months, there might be different reasons, but we're particularly interested for anyone who leaves in the first three months. So if we were to add up all of the free trials you've had over the past 12 months, I'd be super curious to see what that number is and then see what the number of those, what percentage of them actually stayed because that's...

what we're really interested in and it feels good. Here's the interesting thing. It feels good to get these free trials through the door. Oh, we're getting all these free trials. We're getting all this. It feels really good. But what we're not paying attention to is the retention over to the four month mark. And that's why so many studios free trial strategy is actually not serving them because it's not actually delivering that part of what we need for the business.

Michelle Hunter (17:41)

Mm-hmm. ⁓ Yep.

So if we have a studio owner listening right now, that's probably a great metric to look at. It's a confronting metric, but I think it's not easy, but I think that's a really great metric for them, you know, after this podcast to go have a look.

Chantelle Bruinsma (18:05)

It's not easy, hun.

It's important because again, it's this kind of ego metric of it feels easy, it feels safer, I'd say to offer a free trial, it's less confronting. You have to be less in your worth, or so you don't have to be as much in your worth. If everyone around you is offering free trials, you're like, well, I'm just gonna offer free trials too because I'm not gonna be the person. Why would anyone pay to come to my class when they could just go down the road, right? It is confronting to how we value ourselves and the services that we offer.

Michelle Hunter (18:18)

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (18:42)

Ugh! Ugh!

Michelle Hunter (18:42)

Yeah. Okay.

That was big. That was a big one. That was a really big one.

Chantelle Bruinsma (18:46)

It is big, however,

however we look at, know, and this is actually kind of moving us towards number four. Number four is the financial aspect of this.

Michelle Hunter (18:54)

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (18:58)

So if you think about enrolling a student, the most expensive time of a student's experience in your studio from like a, from what we are having to spend is their enrolment. That's when there's the most team investment in communications. That's when we're kind of onboarding, we're getting them set up. There's so much more also paying for advertising, right, Michelle?

Michelle Hunter (19:18)

some of them are even spending $15 to $20 on a good day on a lead coming into the studio.

Chantelle Bruinsma (19:18)

it.

Right, so then you spent 15 to 20 dollars just to get them to come to a free trial and then we haven't quite got the conversion in place to get them over the line and so then your output, you're losing money versus we spend 15 to 20 dollars on a ad to kind of get this new lead into the studio and then we have a...

Michelle Hunter (19:33)

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (19:46)

we get them straight in so we know they were actually getting them into a profitable place as quick as possible. And if your business isn't very profitable, that's one of the areas that we need to tighten up, right? Just tightening up that little area is incredibly important to get your studio profitable as quickly as possible. If you think about all of the, let's say you've had hundred students come to a class, have you added up all the lost revenue? Like even just for one class, like it's a lot of money that's on the table that you are not taking home.

Michelle Hunter (20:06)

Mmm.

And even if I think in our business and a studio business, the effort for your admin person, the amount of time I need to put in a free person into our system to, it's the same amount of time. So we're paying our admin team for the same amount of time and work as a free is into a paid. Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (20:19)

Ah, same amount of work.

And it's the same, it's the same amount of work. You could just do a better job at selling them into a paid program. But again, I think this comes down to our worth. It's kind of, it feels safer to just hope that they're going to come and it's kind of not owning our position of like, no, we, we offer really great classes and we stand behind what we do and we know you're going to love it. So come on board. All you have to do is just join this really simple, easy monthly payment plan and go onto our really convenient.

Michelle Hunter (20:37)

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (20:58)

tuition and at the end of 30 days or the end of 45 days whatever it is like if you're not completely loving these classes you can walk away no obligation to continue you know it's like a 100 % happiness guarantee but what you've done then is that you've started kind of recouping profitability from class one and then also you're not having to do the admin load like from an output like you know I'm into the admin load of getting them onto the system to begin with and then doing all the admin to then like get them onto a payment plan

Michelle Hunter (21:10)

Okay, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (21:27)

And that's again, just like the lack of efficiency in the studio operations that we care about for you, right?

Michelle Hunter (21:32)

Yeah,

totally tightening it up, tightening it all up.

Chantelle Bruinsma (21:35)

tightening

it up, tightening it up. These things matters. And like, I know this is a really scary thought for many of you because the free trials are a safety blanket. And again, this is stepping just into who you want to be as a studio because number five, the five downsides of free trials is positioning. So again, if everyone else is offering free trials, you'd like, who am I to charge? But the problem is,

Michelle Hunter (21:43)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (22:04)

that if everyone's doing free trials, you're just this, again, like if there's like a field of brown horses, you're just one of the brown horses. You're not the sparkly unicorn, right? And we want you to be really standing apart, differentiated from the other studios in your area because otherwise we're just, we're not giving ourselves an advantage. And there is a relationship, there is a perception, very, very clean, very clear.

Michelle Hunter (22:33)

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (22:34)

People do associate quality with value. So the more expensive something is, it's like a Louis Vuitton handbag, right? The more expensive something is, there is a relationship, a preconception of quality. So if you're free trial'n it, and everyone else is free trialing it, versus you've decided no, we offer a kind of a paid, you you just kind of come onto, you just join the studio.

enrol today, you just enrol, they just enrol, they go straight to enrolment. There is going to be confidence, a assuredness to your offering that people can feel. It takes more confidence to not do a free trial, but that's a good thing, that's a good thing.

Michelle Hunter (23:19)

It is a great thing. And you're also going to eradicate the good old studio hoppers. Cause we know that there's families who, with the studios in the area who are offering free trial, they're doing free trials everywhere. They're kind of just what's up next. And you know, I even know that in the community of mums, like if there's, yeah, I'm going to try that for a couple of weeks and then I'm going to try that. But when your positioning is like, no, you can join our program. Like our, our, our services are really valuable. You're going to go, oh, well, yeah, I'm going to be more invested.

Chantelle Bruinsma (23:29)

Uh-huh.

It's communicating that tone of like, you will feel the devotion. You will kind of, when you walk through the door, you will feel like this whole team of teachers in the studio are devoted to your child or to devoted to your health and to your progress. Like that's the difference. And when you kind of can come to this place of really feeling confident to do that, that's going to help your positioning. If you want to be the best studio in town, you have to act like it and you have to have an introductory offer that gets people in the door.

Michelle Hunter (23:51)

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Chantelle, for everyone playing at home, you've just gone through five big downsides and we've asked some questions if we're going to do it. How do we actually get there and move away? Because we're so deep. Some of us are so deep in there in offering it.

Chantelle Bruinsma (24:20)

Mm.

Yeah. And look, there's, a lot of kind of emotional work I'd say to like the strategic work and there's emotional work to get to the place of, of wanting to do this. And look, I want to put on the table again. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it's working really, really well. But if you really resonated with any of those five downsides, being like, a bit close to home, then maybe this is just worth something listening to and just rolling around in your head and considering. And this is the type of thing that we would work really closely with on our clients on supporting

Michelle Hunter (24:31)

Mm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (24:58)

them of how to do this and kind of like how to shape the offer and how to kind of make that transition right. There's a few elements that go into it but for the purpose of this conversation let's talk about it. Now one thing that I want to prepare you for because this is what is going to happen is that you are going to have a less volume of people enrolling off the bat. You're going to have less people doing direct-to- enrolment than you would have a free trial.

But here's what no one's talking about. Your churn rate will drop through the floor. Before you were getting lots of inquiries for a free trial, lots of people kind of coming through the door, but they were walking out just as fast as they came in. It felt good in the moment. And because maybe you haven't been kind of really paying close attention to the numbers on the other side, it's like, doesn't matter. Cause like, there's people coming through the door. But when you start actually adding up how people have enrolled versus

just kind of attended a free trial class, this is when it gets really interesting. So the first thing to be comfortable with and prepare yourself for is like, I'm gonna get less people coming for their first class. But the difference is the people who enrol, the retention is astronomically different. And the growth rate you're gonna see in your business as a result, like if you just work on retention for people in their first six months and their first year,

holy shit it works, right? You just need to get them connected for that first point of contact. So if we can really become comfortable with that, that it's not gonna look like it used to, but that's actually, that was like a false metric. It was a kind of illusion of like everything's going well, but it maybe has not been. So what we're gonna do is concentrate instead on looking at the long-term numbers of people who come and they stay.

That's the most critical thing, Michelle, for us to be thinking about. In terms of how to actually shape it, so, you know, from a very simple perspective, we're gonna be just working on your messaging for the program. Just sell the program, it's fantastic. I bet your program is wonderful, you just haven't quite learned how to position it. This is what we work on in six weeks in The Leap. It is getting.

Michelle Hunter (26:52)

Okay.

Chantelle Bruinsma (27:14)

all of your communication, all of your marketing, all of your offer, getting all the value, hitting all the emotional touch points that can help people go direct to enrolment. My preferred strategy is direct to enrolment that they don't even need to inquire. They don't even need to reach out to clarify anything that we're gonna be so precise, so strategic on how we communicate everything about this program. They've got the confidence to make a decision to give you all their credit card details right then and there while you are watching Netflix on the couch.

Michelle Hunter (27:27)

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (27:44)

Yep, that's my dream for your life. It's like my dream.

Michelle Hunter (27:47)

And

it's, it's, it's the dream and just playing in real time as well. We've got a studio owner who just went through a big decrease of this, you know, in our evolution community. And by focusing on direct-to- enrolment, they would normally, you know, someone doing free trials would get, you know, maybe 30, 40 leads. They actually got 15 leads and they've grown by 12 enrolments in the last two weeks. If you, if you would be happy growing six enrolments, I'd be pretty happy with that. If you, if you could keep the momentum on that it works, but if you can be comfortable.

in not getting a hundred leads that you've got to invest energy into, but better quality leads at a lower rate, you'll probably find that your conversion is better. But as Chantelle said, less work.

Chantelle Bruinsma (28:23)

Yeah.

And that's it. So straight away, by that client of ours, we've kind of shifted from free trial to a direct to enrolment approach. We're profitable from the bat, like even kind of spending on advertising costs. We've reduced our operations cost of kind of labor, of doing the admin efficiency. We've then improved our kind of classroom engagement from the teacher and the feeling of cohesion and belonging. Like we have really, we've reduced the churn risk of them leaving after three months. It's like the difference between.

Free trials, like in the fruit bowl of students, free trials are like the kind of slightly mushy banana, you know, like they're the low hanging fruit. They're the ones that are there, it's easy to pick it up, they're the ones that are always there in the fruit. You can reliably get a mushy banana from my fruit bowl anyway, right? But it's the mangoes you want. It's the mangoes you want. Yeah, you might have to work a little bit harder for them. You maybe have to pay a little bit more in terms of advertising to get them, but when you get them, they are the best.

Michelle Hunter (29:03)

Hmm.

Hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (29:26)

They are radical, right? They are beautiful. So it's deciding who your students are that you want to attract. Now, the other thing I wanted to give you full permission to do, again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But if things you've heard in this conversation have kind of like are rolling around you in your head a little bit, there is another way to kind of approach this whole thing. And that is the down sell. So what I would really encourage you to do in this transition time is we lead with the best foot forward.

We change all of your marketing, all of your communications to, enrolling is easy. It's as simple as $24 a week, whatever it is, right? And you get them on this monthly payment plan. You get them hooked in in the system. But if you've got an inquiry who's kind of really hesitant, like really just struggling to enrol and you've gone back and forth with them, back and forth, and they're still kind of just not pressing the go button to enrol, offer them to come in for a trial. Have it up your sleeve. If you're like, you know what, I think this family, like, I'm not sure if this is the best fit for them.

Let them come along. We don't have to be hardline on this necessarily, but I want you to lead with this best strategy and the strategy that works the best is going direct to enrolment. You can always kind of have a little quiet people come in for a free trial, but we're not going to lead with it because what that does to the culture in the studio is, in my experience, not the best.

Michelle Hunter (30:47)

So valuable, Chantelle, so valuable. And if you do want more help nutting out that enrolment strategy, join us in The Leap. You'll get access to monthly calls, a dedicated Facebook group, and a curriculum like no other. And you can check it out at studievolution.com forward slash LEAP.

Chantelle Bruinsma (31:04)

That's right. And when you start The Leap the first six weeks are dedicated to teaching you this entire new approach to marketing, which is direct to enrolment. So it's how to structure the communications of everything in your kind of, we're going to work on one program first and get the marketing for that program really working. In the first six weeks, we're going to transform all of your marketing for that program and make sure that you've enrolled at least 20 new students on that new approach within the six weeks. After that is when we shift gears to phase two.

Now phase two, we've got you 20 students. Now I'm like, okay, I want 100 more. So phase two is in between the live rounds, these six week intensive, we shift to phase two, which is how to get 100 more students the next kind of 100 in your studio. And every month there's kind of coaching from me personally on how to craft this offer, what to do to tweak the messaging to get more conversions, how to get the advertising working for direct to enrolment These are big important questions that we need to resolve in your business. And if we do it really well, holy shit.

Michelle Hunter (31:36)

Mm-hmm.

Chantelle Bruinsma (32:02)

You are off and running. So, ⁓ if you would like to go right now, as Michelle said, studioevolution.com forward slash leap, you can join this, take the six weeks. Let's get the first 20 in the door. It's going to be a different way of marketing your studio, but it works. It works. You can go check out the results on that page. And then from there, we shift gears into phase two. So free trials are from my experience, one of the most successful ways we can transform the growth of your business.

Michelle Hunter (32:16)

Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (32:29)

It feels like easy mushy banana kind of low hanging fruit, but in order to shift the positioning and the consistent growth and the retention of your business, you will never ever look back. But sometimes it's hard to do this on your own. And that's why being able to bounce it with me on a monthly call, flick me your marketing in the group, being able to kind of check out your website. Those types of things are just invaluable to make sure you're making these big strategic jumps, these big strategic leaps, holding someone's hand.

and not doing it in a way that's like gonna potentially sabotage the business. So I hope that this call has not been too confronting. Was I too ragey, Michelle?

Michelle Hunter (33:04)

No,

know, Chantelle, it's, it's, it's a, your brain is a wonder. Your brain is a wonder. And you know, when we have so many people ask us about free trials, you just delivered it perfectly. And you know, you've made your point very clear and some things were confronting, but we have to, we have to, to really see the right metrics and if it's the right growth for your studio.

Chantelle Bruinsma (33:24)

Yeah, this is, and this is why some studios just stay like bashing their heads against a brick wall for years and years and years, but they haven't got the courage to move away from free trials, even though it's not supporting their business, the positioning, the profitability, the operational ease, the retention. I mean, there's so many benefits to moving away from this, but it's scary as hell to do so. It feels like jumping off without a safety net, right? But if you do it right, my gosh, your business becomes this just.

Michelle Hunter (33:45)

Yeah.

Chantelle Bruinsma (33:53)

growth machine because we've got the retention, we've got the profitability, we've got the operational ease, it just across the board changes every dynamic but it comes from you stepping into a place first and foremost of owning your worth and like no when you come in this is how we do it you're going to join straight away into our easy monthly tuition, join the studio and you'll see for yourself can you own it with confidence? Can you? Is my question for you all today.

Big one, Michelle, big chats today.

Michelle Hunter (34:23)

Big one,

big one. All right, well everybody, thank you so much. We thoroughly enjoyed today and we can't wait to hear your feedback and to see you in The Leap. See you next time, friends.

Chantelle Bruinsma (34:32)

That's right, go take the loop

today my friends, we'll see you in there. Bye!

Chantelle Bruinsma (34:38)

Love what you hear? Make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode and leave us a review. Interested in working with us and want to find out more about how we can help you? Head to studioevolution .com forward slash start.