Eight Tones Music is a Chinese instrumental music school based in Singapore.
Project Timeline: 2018-2019
Eight Tones Music is Singapore’s newest Chinese music school.
I was brought onto the team to develop a ramp-up strategy for Eight Tones’ marketing and branding.
We found that many people looking for Chinese music lessons were looking for a hobby that would allow them to escape from their stressful work lives.
Chinese musical instruments and Chinese music is often associated with Eastern forms of meditation, along with the aura of “zen”.
We attempted to replicate this ambience with a warm, neutral, colour scheme, with plenty of artificial plants throughout the school.
Testimonials were a key priority in building trust as a new music school. We used testimonials from existing students of teachers who were teaching at the school, and collected more from satisfied students.
Along with testimonials, we focused on getting endorsements by reputable musicians in the local Chinese music scene, and associating the brand with bigger names.
This was done through various collaborations, such as sponsoring a Children’s Concert by Singapore Chinese Orchestra, providing a music ensemble for a National MandoPop Concert, and going on local Mandarin Radio.
We identified one of the target markets to be parents who would like to send their kids for Chinese music lessons. Kiasu Parents being one of the largest forums for parents to discuss and recommend things like tuition and enrichment centres, we created an account for Eight Tones Music and worked on establishing a reputable presence on the forum.
Singapore’s tuition/enrichment market is famously abundant, thanks to the culture of not wanting to lose out. Parents are known to spend as much as thousands each month on extra-curricular activities for their kids, in hopes of giving them an edge when it comes to school admissions.
To appeal to this target market, we created a specialised campaign directed at parents, emphasising on how Eight Tones Music School also prepares students for Direct School Admissions exercises, and also has specialised training for programmes such as IB Music, “O” Level Music, “A” Level Music, and Higher Music.
One of the concerns potential students had was not having an instrument and needing to invest a large sum to purchase one.
To make the decision easier for potential students, we introduced a lessons package where the student would get a free instrument upon signing a contract for a certain number of lessons.
The “bait” of getting a free instrument was also an excellent hook for our social media marketing campaigns.
This was a “two birds with one stone” solution to getting students to commit to long-term learning.
User Research showed that many of our target audience was active on the local trading app, Carousell. There was also a big opportunity to acquire warm leads from people searching up second-hand Chinese instruments, as this meant that they were already interested in learning.
Besides Facebook, we also ran ads on Carousell, specifically in the sections for second-hand Chinese instruments. This was our most successful campaign that resulted in the most conversions.
Throughout the marketing material, we made sure to emphasise on certain selling points of our music school, according to the pain points and desires of our key personas.
“Gabriel’s involvement with Eight Tones Music began when we consulted him to proofread our English language materials. It was evident that he was capable of much more and he eventually took charge of all marketing and communications activities for our music school that opened in 2018.
Through his marketing efforts, we secured over 70 students within the first 3 months of opening our music school.
This was made possible with his knowledge in the area of social media marketing and paid advertising as well as the branding he has helped to build for Eight Tones Music.
He also managed our music ensemble at the SingLang Concert 2018, and also handled the photography, videography and social media coverage for the event.
After which, he arranged a guest appearance for our artists to perform on local radio station LOVE 92.7 FM and prepared the scripts for the interview.
Other areas of his contribution include the creation of our company website, product photography, graphic design, copywriting, and videography.
Gabriel’s eye for detail and wide range of skills has been a great asset to the Eight Tones Music Team and his initiatives have been instrumental to the success of Eight Tones Music.
He is an extraordinary talent and will definitely be an asset to any business.”
Daryl Keuk
Founder of Eight Tones Music LLP
