TARGETING THE
SENIORS MARKET
From “A Golden Opportunity” –
CMT December/January 2015
Tammy MacEachern is the adminis-
trator for Long & McQuade Charlotte-
town’s music school. She reports that
her lesson program has experienced an
infl ux in interest from older learners
(aged 55+) in recent years; in fact, it
turns out she had just changed the
lettering on the big sign in front of the
store to let people know that L&M can
accommodate lessons outside of the
usual morning and evening slots that
appeal to school kids – “so, like, 10:30
or early afternoons on weekdays when
people [over 55] might have some free
time and our school isn’t as busy.”
This seems like a no-brainer for
stores whose lesson studios are empty
during these hours – extracting more
return-on-investment from existing facil-
ities, with the only additional overhead
being the wages for instructors.
On that same note, MacEachern
was also amidst the process of printing
out some promo materials about her
lesson program to bring down to a
brand new active seniors home that
had just opened nearby. “I saw that as
a huge base of potential students,” she
says. And she’s not alone. There’s an
increasing number of forward-thinking
retailers that recognize the growing
potential of servicing this lucrative and
largely untapped market segment.
Nick Hamlyn of Gary Bennett Music, Corner Brook, NL
ENGAGE THEM TWICE
About fi ve years ago, Gary Bennett Music began hosting sum-
mer music camp programs in addition to their regular individual
lessons. “So we did one voice camp that ended with a cabaret-type performance
after a few weeks, and a rock camp that ended with an outdoor concert in the
park,” Hamlyn offers as examples. “This year, we added a traditional music
camp, with the fi nal performance happening in the store.”
The camps, which run for several weeks through the summer months, are
open to the general public and advertised fairly heavily online and in the local
paper. The idea is to immerse students into more social group settings, and then
hopefully have them stream into regular individual lessons once the camps have
concluded. These have not only been successful in generating a healthy number
of new music students, but also led to existing students starting a new series of
lessons on a second instrument.
The reason behind that is in rock camp, for example, there were typically
six or seven students placed in each band, so if one of those groups had two
drummers, one of the drummers would try an alternate instrument. “So without
getting more people, we were getting more lessons,” Hamlyn notes. “That was
unexpected, but really cool.”
ENGAGE THEM ONSITE
Carol Cook is the co-owner of The Music Room in Pala-
tine, IL, a northwestern residential suburb of Chicago. She
was down at The NAMM Show 2017 in Anaheim to pres-
ent the very fi rst Idea Center session of the event. Called
“7 Ways to Supercharge Your Lesson Program,” her pre-
sentation shared advice sourced fi rst-hand about engaging
and retaining students who come into your store to inquire
about lessons.
The fi rst two ideas she presented as part of it involved starting and develop-
ing a dialogue with your potential enrollees to put yourself in a power position
and to try and fi gure out what they’re seeking from music lessons and, subse-
quently, how you can help them realize those goals.
Tammy MacEachern of Long & McQuade,
Charlottetown, PE
CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE • 23