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Tips for Advertising Your Tutoring Business

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Private tutoring is a great way to supplement your income. No matter what you teach, there are proven advertising strategies that can help you attract clients, and keep up with competitors. These advertising techniques work whether you teach math, computers, writing, foreign languages, piano, or anything else. If you need to get your tutoring business off the ground for the first time, or bring your business back to life, you can gain more clients by applying the methods below.

Flyers with Pull Tabs: Design & Placement

Tutoring flyers with pull tabs let potential students get your contact info on a small piece of paper that they can tear off of a flyer. At the top of the flyer, write what service you are offering in a large font. Below that, you can include images, your qualifications, schedule, rates, and contact info. At the bottom of the flyer, make a fringe of pull tabs with your phone or email.

Since the body of the flyer is meant to be read carefully, you should put it in an area where a student can easily take time read your business advertisement.

Handbills: Design & Placement

Handbills are palm-sized flyers (usually a quarter-sheet) that are small enough to be carried in the hand, or tucked into a wallet. The secret to making successful handbill advertisements for your tutoring business: make something that clients will want to hang on to!

On one side of the small flyer, you should write the important information about your tutoring service, and on the other side, you should put something fun or useful. For example, if you tutor a musical instrument, you can put the score for a song on the reverse. If you tutor math, you can put a list or formulas, or some brain teasers on the back. A Spanish tutor might put a list of useful or funny expressions. You can even put a sudoku on the back. Make it worth keeping.

Since handbill advertisements are meant to be grabbed quickly and read later, put them in areas of fast moving foot traffic. Corridors and bulletin boards near exits are ideal spots for these small flyers. Use a large bold font, and bright paper to catch students' eyes

Other Placement Strategies

Public bulletin boards in libraries, college campuses, gorcery stores, and coffee shops will help you find adult student clients. If you tutor children, call local elementary schools and ask if you can place a few advertisements on school bulletin boards, or in the school newsletter. Ask your friends and family if they can post flyers at their work place.

To Price or Not to Price

There are pros and cons to printing your price up front on the advertisement, or negotiating your prices client by client.

Pros of Upfront Pricing: If other tutors in your area/niche are known to have high prices, stating low prices up front will make your advertisements stand out. Also, people are more likely to contact a tutor with up front prices, because they want to avoid the awkwardness of asking.

Cons of Upfront Pricing: If you don't know what your competitors charge, you risk stating a price that is way too high, or too low. Too high and no one will contact you. Too low and you will seem cheap in price and quality. Plus, your competitors can use it to their advantage if they know your price, but you don't know theirs.

Pros of Unstated, Negotiable Prices: If you have students who want to meet frequently for tutoring, you can offer a 'bulk' discount that is more attractive than a printed hourly rate. You can also raise your prices on new clients without having to change your ads. This is good if you realize that you have been charging too little, or if you get a high volume of new calls/email.

Cons of Unstated, Negotiable Prices: Shy people are less likely to inquire about prices if they are not printed. Sometimes hiding your fees can be seen as deceptive, especially if your competitors state theirs.

In the end, you will have to experiment to learn what is best for your business.

Online Tutoring Classifieds

In addition to posting flyers, online ads are another great way to get your business out there. Craigslist is the gold standard in free online ads, but there are other places that may let you post for free or a small fee. To find classifieds that get a lot of traffic from students searching for tutors, type "[your city] [your subject] tutoring" into Google, and see what comes up. Advertise on the sites that are high in the search results.

There are also many sites designed specifically to match tutors with students. As long as they let you post an ad for free, there is no harm in listing your services. But avoid sites that charge a fee or require a cut of your tutoring fees. Tutor-student matching websites don't get a lot of hits, so their fees will not be worth it.

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