Background+Statement

__History of Business__

Our client, the Brampton Academy of Music, is part of one of the largest groups of independently owned and operated music studios in Ontario. The franchise was originally established in 1982 at the Milton studio, but later branched out to Brampton, Oakville, Niagara, Burlington, Georgetown, and Toronto.

The Academy of Music offers piano, guitar, drums, vocal, pre-school, and “Rockband” lessons for students of all ages. The teachers, who are all certified under the Ontario Music Teacher’s Guild, follow a set curriculum that is designed to be fun, engaging, and challenging for the students. After the students complete the Ontario Music Teacher’s Guild course, they are transitioned in the Royal Conservatory of Music program.

The Brampton Academy of Music is coming up to it’s 20th year anniversary, and the manager, Andrew Sansone, would like to increase new student enrollment. Due to the nature of the music instruction business, there are two avenues for generating revenue, increasing student enrollment and maintaining the customer loyalty. The business is privately owned and relies solely on existing students and incoming students to sign up and take lessons. The students range in all ages, but the main demographic is Brampton youth, aged 4 to 17 years old. Since the parents are usually the ones who pay for the lessons, we are catering our marketing strategy to convince working-class mothers, fathers, and guardians that their children will benefit the most from taking lessons at the Brampton Academy of Music.

__Client Needs:__


 * 1. Increase Student Enrollment (Customer Acquisition)**

Their current website (@http://bramptonacademy.com) functions as the online public's main source of information. The client wants us to improve their online presence in order to attract new customers. We proposed creating an entirely new website with an updated look and feel. Our client's feedback from our proposal was as follows:
 * Website must be easy to update/edit in the future. Client is not tech-savvy- he hates anything to do with coding/HTML/CSS/etc.
 * Website must maintain the "Academy of Music" franchise logo in it's original form. We can only play around with the "Brampton" part of the logo.
 * Website needs to be engaging.


 * 2. Encourage Student Participation in Extra Programs (Customer Retention/Cross Selling)**

The studio provides students with the opportunity to enroll in "extra" co-curricular actiities within the Academy of Music, such as the "Rockband" program, holiday concerts, and "Funfest," the annual musical competition festival. These programs are an extra cost to the parents, both time and money. However, usually most parents are more than willing to enroll their children in these programs, it's the students that often are too scared or not willing to do "extra work" (aka, practicing longer or attending extra rehearsals) outside of their normal lessons.

The client also recently created a [|Facebook fan page]. However, since Facebook fanpages are undergoing a transition phase into the new "Timeline" layout, the page looked empty and unpopulated. Our plan is to engage current students, along with Brampton youth with this page, and promote "from within" by connecting with other local Brampton pages. On the Facebook page, we will start to initiate conversations with the youth/members of the page as a form of self promotion. Also, we are going to place a link from the website so visitors can also check out the activity on the Facebook page.